W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

W. C. Fields ous that Fields blew up and telephoned the police. At the same time, Gene Fowler, one of the guests, called some of his friends on the homicide squad. At first glance, what with the abundance of official help, it would seem that the problem might soon have been solved. But when the patrolmen and the homicide agents arrived they got into a rackety jurisdictional row, and the matter of Fields and his butler was more or less shelved. Throughout most of the uproar Fields continued to eat, having had nothing but martinis since breakfast. Around midnight he gave the butler a check and fired him. Three days later, the man having refused to leave, Fields chased him off the grounds with a revolver. He fired several shots and thought he winged him as the butler vaulted over a neighbor's wall, though no report was ever made. The fellow got clean away. About two months after this, Fields went to dinner at Pandro Berman's and the talk turned to butlers. "I've got a gem," said Berman. "A wonderful stroke of luck, really. He runs this house like a well-oiled machine." A few minutes later the small, wizened man whom Fields had fired came in and set a plate of unidentifiable hors d'oeuvres in front of the comedian. Fields refused to eat them. "This guy will poison you," he yelled at Berman. "You'll see." He left the table and sat in the living room during dinner; afterward, on his way home, he stopped at a roadside stand and ate four hot dogs. Fields had more than the average run of butler trouble. Another man he hired, a strapping bruiser known around the house as "The chimpanzee," raised dissension from the beginning. Fields was afraid of the chimpanzee, who belonged to a Turnverein and spent all his spare time developing his muscles. He hung a couple of big rings in the garage and worked out on them daily. One time after his boss had detected impudence in his manner, the chimpanzee went out to the garage, jumped up to 258