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

as high as anybody's. Later, at home, he would report fictitious chats with his neighbor, upon which occasions he referred to De Mille as "Cease," a comradely abbreviation of "Cecil." "Talking to Cease out there a minute ago," he'd say. "We're going to put a gate down on that lower end to keep out the picnickers." Deanna Durbin lived on a nearby hill for a while, causing Fields great distress. He was worried sick that she might come out and sing in her yard. Against this awful contingency he prepared several measures. For a while he figured that he would have her arrested; later, he thought he might get a dog and train it to howl at the sound of feminine melody ; perhaps the severest of his statements was that he would "get a good bead from the upstairs balcony and shoot her." The house on De Mille Drive was entered after a long walk down a red-tile lane overhung with trellises. On either hand, carpetlike lawns sloped off steeply; they rolled and dipped with the contours of Fields' private hills. On one side of the house they formed an irregular bowl, whose face was as sheer as an alpine pasture. In the center was a lily pond, upon whose rippled surface a toy sailboat, given him by Magda Michael, steered to and fro in the shifting ocean breeze. It was to be the scene of an episode that Fields never quite got over. The house had cavernous rooms, many of them paneled in rich oak or walnut, and long, broad stairways. Fields' decor, though interesting, was a sharp departure from that of most Spanish houses in southern California. In the center of his living room, beneath an elegant chandelier, he had a pool table in pretty good condition, and in the drawing room he had a ping-pong table. Around the walls of both rooms stood high-bottomed chairs such as are found in most pool halls, and a further attraction of the living room was a small bowling alley. A low-ceilinged balcony, 269