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Biography of W. C. FieldsName: W. C. FieldsBirth Date: April 9, 1879 Death Date: December 25, 1946 Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: comedian, actor W. C. Fields The American comedian W. C. Fields (1879-1946) appeared in many of the classic early motion picture comedies.The son of an immigrant Cockney vegetable peddler, W. C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield on April 9, 1879, in Philadelphia, Pa. At the age of 11 he became a vagrant on the city's streets. He survived by stealing, was frequently arrested, and so damaged his nose in alley fights that its swollen bulbosity later became part of his comic trademark, as did the hoarse voice that was partly produced by childhood colds.Fields practiced juggling fanatically, becoming one of the most skillful performers in history. At 14 he got his first professional booking. Within 3 years he was an established entertainer and, driven by his obsessive fear of falling back into poverty, had begun his lifelong clamor for better pay and better billing.By his early 20s (during which Fields entered a brief, though never legally dissolved, …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…left a character who entered American folklore: an engagingly pompous and malevolently cold-eyed humbug who spoke for all who ever secretly yearned to cheat at cards or retaliate against such institutions as the law, banks, and motherhood. Further Reading The best book about Fields is Robert L. Taylor's touchingly funny W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (1949). Carlotta Monti, W. C. Fields and Me (1971), is a memoir about Fields by his former mistress. A readable, extremely detailed biography is James Curtis's W.C. Fields: A Biography (2003). Other useful works are Donald Deschner, The Films of W. C. Fields (1966), and William K. Everson, The Art of W. C. Fields (1967).Fields, Ronald J., W.C. Fields: a life on film, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984.Gehring, Wes D., W.C. Fields, a bio-bibliography, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984.Taylor, Robert Lewis, W.C. Fields: his follies and fortunes, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. |