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W. C. Fields
star. The scene in which he was installed as sheriff of the lawless Western town was of interest. Fields was happy to be identified on the side of the law for once, particularly since he had succeeded to the office by fraud, but he was convinced that, in real life, if the opportunity had arisen, he still would have been slighted in some way. Consequently, at the banquet to celebrate his taking over he found himself seated, at the lower end of a fifty-foot table, in a closet. Moreover, the ends of a feather boa kept drifting down into his plate. He made repeated stabs at them with a fork, finally pinning them temporarily to the wall. Altogether, it was a pretty scraggly-looking company and a banquet scene dismal enough for all ordinary purposes, being laid in a run-down saloon, but at the head of the table, Joseph Calleia, the outgoing sheriff, was making an emotional speech in which he reminded the diners that "all this" had been made possible by the incoming Cuthbert J. Twillie. His remarks prompted a certain amount of boozy applause, but Twillie, in his closet, was occupied in staving off the boa.
The head of Universal's publicity department, Danny Thomas, remembers how Fields used to arrive on the set each morning, at whatever hour suited him best, usually with Magda Michael, who helped him with his lines, and carrying his hampers, shakers and laprobes. He had insisted that the studio equip his dressing room with a front porch, an innovation of star temperament, and he took rests there in a rocker on sunny days. When a violent dispute arose over the story, every hour or two, he would retire to his rocker, withdraw miles into his shell, and be, for all practical purposes, incommunicado. The directors could plead, abuse, storm, and threaten, and he would continue to rock silently, his little frosty blue eyes distant and unfriendly. When Fields blew up in his lines, his answer was always that he had "a poor memory." This was an old and specialized lack, for his memory about other
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