Chapter
9: The Legend of Whitey
William
Claude Dukenfield was born in Darby, PA on January 29, 1880.
A June 5, 1880 census enumeration shows that 40 year old James L.
Dukenfield and his 25 year old wife Kate lived a mile from Darby at 64th &
Woodland Ave. in Philadelphia with baby son Claude. Their actual place of abode
was a rented house at 6320 Woodland Ave., near the later site of the Benn
Theater. In those days, James
worked as an innkeeper for a Darby hotel. Family tradition confirms that Kate gave birth to her son
there, rather than the Philadelphia apartment.
According to Betty Shell, archivist for the Darby Free Library Co., some
local residents believe W. C. Fields was born in the Arlington Hotel, 7th
& Main Sts., which burned down years ago.
Others claim the blessed event took place at The Buttonwood Hotel (9th
& Main Sts.,) later called The National, which was torn down in the
1970’s. Still others suggest The
Blue Bell Inn, next to Cobbs Creek at 72nd & Woodland Ave., only
nine blocks away from the Dukenfields’ residence.
In his biography of Fields Simon Louvish wrote:
“the name of the hotel, the family recalls, was the Arlington, though
another name mentioned in dispatches is the Buttonwood.”1
Darby store owner Harold S. Finigan claims that his grandfather owned The
Arlington Hotel and employed James Dukenfield as manager there at one time.
James had a diverse employment history and could have worked in more than
one Darby hotel at different times. However
they may disagree on the details, most Darby citizens swear that the comedian
drew his first breath in their borough—with the majority evenly divided
between The Arlington and The Buttonwood. Kate Dukenfield told her son Leroy that a black woman named
Kitty, who lived nearby, assisted her during and after Claude’s birth.
Kitty put a gold spoon in the baby’s mouth, examined the reflections of
his saliva on the spoon, and prophesied:
“this boy is going to get someplace.”2
James
Dukenfield did not stay long in southwest Philadelphia after Claude’s birth.
The 1882 City Directory states that he resided at 2552 Germantown Ave. in
the eastern section of North Philadelphia, where other members of his family
lived.
James
was a crusty, hard-drinking Civil War veteran who had two fingers shot off at
the Battle of Fair Acres (Virginia.) His
brother George remained with the Pennsylvania 72nd Regiment to fight
at Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg.
George Dukenfield was killed in action at Gettysburg on July 2, 1863 and
buried in the National Battlefield Cemetery, Section C, Grave 18.
The
Dukenfield family moved from one rented dwelling to another between 1882 and
1898, but always stayed within the small Fairhill section of North Philadelphia,
near 10th & Allegheny Ave. During
that time they lived in the following two-story rowhouses:
1882-1883
2552 Germantown Ave.
1884-1888
929 Somerset St.
1889-1892
2803 Germantown Ave.
1893-1896
92 Goodman St. (11th & Ontario)
1897
25 Rising Sun Ave.
1898
3911 Marshall St.
Friends
called young Claude Dukenfield “Whitey” because of his light blonde hair.
He probably attended William Adamson Public School on 4th St.
below Lehigh Ave. at first, then transferred to the new Fairhill Primary School
at Somerset & Marshall Sts. circa 1888.
W. C. Fields was a self-educated man, who avidly read Shakespeare,
Dickens, Swift, Twain, and others. While
on the road, he always carried a trunk-full of classics.
Although intelligent and well-read, he did not advance beyond the 4th
grade. From the age of ten he
helped out with his father’s produce business, occasionally shouting out “rutabagas!”
“artichokes!” or “pomegranates!” even though they had none.
James Dukenfield seems to have had both a stand, and a wagon pulled by a
horse named “White Swan.” At
one time he also owned a thoroughbred, which he never raced.
According to Leroy Dukenfield, The Valley Green Inn then offered a bottle
of Madeira wine to the first horse-drawn sled to arrive after each snowfall.
James dearly wished to win this prize, but never managed it.
Claude accompanied his father to Wissahickon Valley Park to exercise this
horse. He sometimes returned to the
Valley’s sylvan precincts by hitching rides on the Germantown Avenue trolley.
His younger brother Leroy later became Fairmount Park’s chief arborist.
The
produce business did not intrigue Whitey, so when the boy turned 13 Grandmother
Ann Felton steered him to a job as counter boy in a cigar store. The
only lasting result of this position would be Claude’s life-long smoking
habit. This shop sold only 3 cent stogies, but the boss instructed him to accept
nickels from patrons desiring a 5 cent cigar on the grounds that “the customer
is always right.” After falling asleep at the counter one night, knocking over
a kerosene lamp, and nearly catching himself and the store on fire, Claude ended
his career as a tobacconist in 1893 and applied to Strawbridge &
Clothier’s department store as a “cash boy” for a weekly salary of $2.
Strawbridge’s required him to replenish cash registers with change.
During his tenure there he had to fight a nagging temptation to sprint
out the door with the till. Whitey
soon became bored with his cash boy duties, and tried to get fired by
intentionally falling through a skylight. Worried
about a lawsuit, the Quaker management not only retained Dukenfield, but gave
him a raise.
Claude quit Strawbridge’s after three months.
His antics may have induced the company to install a pneumatic tube
system for transferring cash throughout the store. He ended up back at James Dukenfield’s produce stand, where
he often seemed more of a liability than a help.
Ever since seeing the Byrne Brothers juggle in a circus performance, he
practiced tossing and catching apples, oranges, and sickle pears.
“By the time I could keep two oranges going, I’d ruined $40. worth of
fruit.”3 He ate most of his mistakes. James
Dukenfield frequently reprimanded and sometimes smacked his son for these
shenanigans. One day in the spring of 1894 he caught “Whitey” juggling
and stepped on a rake the boy had left in the aisle, knocking himself upside the
head before he could launch into a tirade.
Claude failed to stifle a smirk and got chased down the street by his
furious, rake-wielding father. “My
father, unfortunately, lost his poise and angrily pursued me.
Finding that he could not catch me, he shouted through the balmy air that
I was never to return.”4
The runaway story comprises an integral part of the “Whitey Myth.”
It contains both fact and fiction. Over
the years the comedian told different versions to various people.
The one related to Alva Johnston in 1935 has it that James stepped on a
shovel, barked his shin, then struck 14 year old Claude on the shoulder blade
with the shovel. A short time later
the resentful boy climbed onto the storeroom loft, dropped a lug box onto his
father’s head, exited from a second story window, and ran off to join a
traveling carnival, where he took care of elephants and learned to juggle.
Fields’ sister Adele Dukenfield Smith dismissed both the assault on her
father and the carnival tale as apocryphal, adding:
“father was very strict. W.C.
and Walter used to needle him mercilessly to get his goat, but it was all for
fun. We all respected and loved our parents.”5
Claude
did run away from home for several weeks, perhaps months, but never strayed far
from his own neighborhood. As a
young fugitive he first slept in a “dug-out”—that is, a hole in a field
covered by boards. His friends
brought him food pilfered from their mothers’ pantries.
He made up the difference by shoplifting and soliciting hand-outs from
Kate during his father’s absences. The
dug-out’s roof leaked and his friends’ care packages soon ceased. During inclement weather Claude slept at Grandmother Ann
Felton’s house (921 Sterner St.), Uncle William Felton’s house (1153 Venango
St.), the cellar of “Pothead Edwards” (with a missing window he could crawl
through,) the backroom of a saloon, on a billiard table in a pool hall, and
“The Orlando Social Club”—a vacant second floor space above a
blacksmith’s forge at 11th & Ontario, which he and his buddies used as a
hideout. Claude often
returned home during the day to visit his mother, get a bite to eat, and perhaps
bum a few cents for the road. Once
he strolled in the house, almost bumped into his father, quickly swiped a packed
lunch from the parlor table, and ran out the door.
It seems that W.C. often embellished stories in his subsequent years,
especially when in his cups. Over
cocktails in a Hollywood restaurant Fields confessed the robbery of a Chinese
laundry to Alva Johnston of The New Yorker.
This store had a bell on the door to alert its proprietor when a customer
entered. “Whitey” devised a
plan to foil this alarm. He had an
accomplice stand in the middle of the trolley tracks outside the shop. When the streetcar driver loudly rang his bells at the boy,
“Whitey” dashed in, grabbed cash from the drawer, and fled.
A similar strategy was employed to steal lemon meringue pies from a
bakery. Young Dukenfield could not
have avoided Eastern Penitentiary if he actually perpetrated all the thefts
later described to Hollywood cronies.
In 1935 Fields told Alva Johnston that his life as a tramp taught him
that the lower orders of humanity enjoyed kicking those down on their luck.
He got into more of his share of fights simply because of his lowly
status as a “street-person.” Though
14 year old Dukenfield could hold his own in fights, a nineteen year old sailor
on leave from the Navy once beat him severely.
The combination of sleeping outside in cold weather and frequently
getting punched in the face gave Fields nasal problems, which aggravated the
alcohol-induced nose-swelling of later years.
At
this time Claude became a habitué of bars which offered free buffet lunches.
He’d buy a nickel glass of ginger ale, then eat pickled herring,
hardboiled eggs, bread, cole slaw, cheese, pretzels, sausages, and anything else
he could snatch. This practice
rapidly wore out his welcome in the pubs along Germantown Ave.
One day a bartender aware of his freeloading banged a mug of ginger ale
on the bar so hard it frothed over. With
an offended look Whitey admonished: “Be
careful, my friend, or you’ll lose my patronage.”6
How
long this homeless period lasted must remain a subject for speculation.
It seems that he spent between six weeks and four months on the lam
during the spring and summer of 1894, but never left Philadelphia.
When the prodigal son returned to his parents’ household, all agreed
that his days as a huckster’s apprentice were over.
Wanting to earn good money, he got a job in the galley of a Chestnut St.
oyster bar, and sold newspapers on the side.
As a newsboy he would yell the headline:
“Five men swindled!” After
a customer bought a paper, he’d cry: “Six
men swindled!”7
After a few months of prying open shellfish, washing dishes, and lugging
heavy, foul-smelling garbage cans around, Whitey left the mollusk emporium and
secured more congenial employment in a billiard hall, where he supplemented his
income by hustling. Here he
expanded his repertoire to include trick pool shots, and balancing stunts with
cue sticks and cigars. In his
50’s Fields retained the hustler mentality when he played handball, tennis,
and golf for money with Hollywood friends.
Competitors such as Sam Hardy and Gene Fowler remembered “Bill”
intentionally missing a few tennis shots, upping the bet, then coming from
behind to beat them.
Whitey always had superior athletic ability.
He ran fast, boxed cannily, and effortlessly smashed hard line drives
with a baseball bat. His hand-eye
coordination enabled him to juggle teacups, hats, Indian clubs, apples, billiard
balls, frying pans, golf balls, and almost anything else you could grab with a
hand.
To
get tennis balls for juggling, Whitey jumped on the back of the Germantown Ave.
streetcar and rode up to the high-rent district he had spied on excursions to
Valley Green. Claude hid in the
bushes by the Germantown Cricket Club’s tennis courts on Manheim Ave., and
scooped up any balls that bounced over or squirted under the fence.
Other props came from trash cans. He
rummaged through cigar store refuse for wooden boxes, and devised stunts with
them that jugglers still use today. To
get ideas for new tricks, Whitey went to vaudeville shows at Gilmore’s Grand
Auditorium (805 Walnut St.), Hashim’s Grand Opera House (Broad &
Montgomery), Enoch’s Varieties (7th below Arch), and The Trockadero
Theater (10th & Arch.) He
would later perform in most of these theaters.
Kate Dukenfield and Grandmother Ann Felton regarded the pool room as a
hangout for low-lifes, and persuaded Claude to take a job on “one of the
leading ice wagons in Philadelphia,”8 as assistant to proprietor Andy
Donaldson, who lived around the corner. Fields
may have developed his hearty animosity for dogs as an ice delivery boy in 1896.
He later reminisced: “Strange
are the furbelows of destiny. My
superior on the ice wagon was a juggling enthusiast.
After teaching him to juggle the accounts, I remained with him for two
years…” 9
Andy
Donaldson apparently introduced Whitey to 27 year old Reading Railroad clerk
Bill Dailey (2850 N. 11th St.,) who fancied himself a promoter.
Grandmother Ann Felton disapproved of this new friend.
In a letter to Dailey (c. 1930) Fields wrote:
“I remember my old grandmother going to have you arrested… She blamed
you for me having lost my job on the ice wagon with Andy Donaldson, and in all
probability she was right. I might still have that job, or a better one, or even
have my own wagon and route by this time.”10
Young Dukenfield now realized that the 9-to-5 working world held no
attraction for him. “I was always
a lazy boy (and) hated to get up and go to school.
I loved to stay in bed. The
thought of having to work for a living filled me with horror…
The stage appealed to me at once…”11
In 1896 Bill Dailey became his agent.
“Whitey” played his first engagement at a Methodist Church’s
strawberry festival on an overcast Saturday in spring with his friend
“Troubles” acting as stage assistant. Things
did not go smoothly. The pastor
refused to allow cigar boxes in the church building because they had once
contained “the devil’s weed.” After conferring with “Troubles,” Claude
explained that the boxes were custom-made for juggling and never actually
contained tobacco. The preacher then reluctantly let the show go on.
However, when the entertainers requested payment, they were referred to
an absent church treasurer. By a
stroke of good fortune it had rained that day.
To make themselves whole, Whitey and his helper grabbed all the umbrellas
in the vestibule, and exchanged them in a Germantown Ave. pawn shop.
The partners then went to a restaurant at Broad & Cambria, where they
ordered “steak, chicken, potatoes, beans, applesauce, peach pie, cheese, milk,
and coffee.”12
Fields claimed to have acted as a shill for part-time thimble-rig Bill
Dailey. One early Saturday morning
in October, 1896 the pair snatched bread, butter, milk, and newspapers from
doorsteps, hopped a freight to Trenton, and entered the fairgrounds. Dailey set up a crate and thundered: “It’s the old army
game. One will get you two, two
will get you four, four will get you eight.
Find the little pea. . . A boy can play as well as a man.”13 Whitey
stepped up, threw down a dollar, guessed the shell covering the pea, and won two
bucks. He put down two more, won
four, and then let the suckers line up. This
window of opportunity closed rapidly. The police arrived and arrested Dailey.
Dukenfield was ejected from the fair with a swift kick in the butt. “A well-aimed number twelve…double-soled boot came flush
upon my fundament. He almost raised
me over the fence.”14
Better gigs were to come. Dailey
booked him at Bately Hall (2748 Germantown Ave.,) and this led to jobs in
assorted venues before Red Men, Baptists, Knights of Pythias, Odd Fellows, and
bar patrons. He auditioned at
theaters in Philadelphia and Camden. On
January 13, 1898 he performed at The Natatorium & Physical Institute (219 S.
Broad St.) Billing
himself as “Whitey the Boy Wonder,” Claude played at the First Grand Concert
& Hop of Lady Meade Lodge in Peabody Hall (1218 S. 8th St.) on
March 13th. Soon after
that he juggled at the Third Grand Concert of the Manhattan Athletic Club, held
at Bately Hall. Regulars in the
taproom at Germantown & Somerset began calling him “Whitey the
Playactor.” Claude adopted tramp attire as his stage costume since he
couldn’t afford a fancy suit. He
had lived the life of a hobo in 1894, so this persona came naturally to him.
It also enabled him to transform muffed stunts into comedy business.
This made them seem in character, and intentionally done as part of the
act. He answered a newspaper ad in
1898, and got work at Fortescue’s Plymouth Park, just outside Norristown.
The cost of carfare exceeded his pay, but the experience was valuable.
“Sliding Billy Watson” told him that J. Fortescue also owned an
amusement pier in Atlantic City and recommended that he go down for a try-out.
W. C. Dukenfield took the train to Atlantic City with a pair of German
teeter-board acrobats and landed a $10. a week juggling job at the Fortescue
Amusement Pier. His verbal contract
also required that he work as a “drowner.”
Pier vendors noticed that ice cream, peanut, popcorn, and lemonade
receipts increased when a crowd gathered near their boardwalk kiosks, so Whitey
and an accomplice staged fake rescues to stimulate sales.
When friends asked in later years why he never swam in the pool of his
Hollywood hacienda, Fields described his duties as a drowner, and asked:
“would you like to swim if you drowned 168 times?”15
In August, 1898 a small theatrical company held auditions in Atlantic
City. They liked Claude’s act and
hired him for their traveling show. Due
to go on his first tour on September 19th, he returned to 3911 N.
Marshal St. and spent a few weeks with his family.
His sister Adele described Claude’s final departure from home, which
occurred about September 17, 1898. “Our
mother Kate packed a couple sandwiches in a paper bag and some coffee in a
thermos and walked with him to the corner where he caught the trolley out for
his first tour with the Keith Circuit. She
was crying when she returned to the house, but… soon got over it…”16
Fields
toured the world as a juggler between 1900 and the early 1920’s, but usually
returned to visit his family for a few days up until 1925.
His younger brother Leroy remembered Claude’s trunks piled high inside
615 Pike St. and 3923 Marshall St. when the show came to town.
Although Kate Dukenfield was a stay-at-home, she took advantage of
Claude’s free tickets on several occasions, usually attending with her
children, or brother W. C. Felton. Fields
never returned to Philadelphia after July 13, 1925, the date of Kate
Dukenfield’s funeral, though he wrote frequently to brother Walter and sister
Adele, less often to sister Elsie Mae and kid brother Leroy (1895-1974), who was
fifteen years his junior. As an
arborist for Fairmount Park, Leroy lived most of his adult life in a city-owned
house at “Rittenhousetown,” Lincoln Drive & Wissahickon Ave. Though not
always on the best of terms with his “bossy” older brother, he acknowledged
that Claude dutifully sent their mother $10. a week (about $60. in year-2000
dollars) from 1898 until 1925.
“Last
week I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.”
“In
Philadelphia they roll up the sidewalks on Sundays.”
“Anyone
smiling after curfew in Philadelphia is liable to arrest.”
“A
woman dropping a glove on a street in Philadelphia can be hauled before a judge
for strip-teasing.”
After
beholding a bad publicity photo of himself as a tramp juggler he commented:
“This kind of thing might get back to Philadelphia and ruin me
socially.”
Proposed
epitaph: “Here lies W. C. Fields.
I would rather be living in Philadelphia.”
(From a 1925 Vanity Fair magazine article that polled various
celebrities for humorous epitaphs. Fields
was actually buried in an unmarked grave at Hollywood’s Forest Lawn Cemetery
in December, 1946, then exhumed and cremated a year later, pursuant to the terms
of his will. A brass plaque stating
“W. C. Fields 1880-1946” is the only marker.)
In
My Little Chickadee, Cuthbert
J. Twillie cuts the deck at a table in a western saloon.
A rube (Fuzzy Knight) asks: “Is
this a game of chance?” Twillie:
“Not the way I play it.” The
cowboys catch him cheating. Twillie
inquires: “Do you know where I might purchase a book of rules?”
In a later scene a mob drags him out to a gallows, under suspicion of
being the masked bandit. With the rope around his neck he states:
“This will be a great lesson to me.”
They ask him if he has any last requests:
“I’d like to see Paris.” The
hangman tightens the noose. “Philadelphia
will do!”
In
his letters to Philadelphia pals Thomas Hunt and Bill Dailey, Fields betrays
some fondness for his hometown.
June
23, 1938
Mr.
Thos. A. Hunt,
5120
Arch St.
Phila.,
PA
Dear
friend Tom:
I
was glad to get your letter and to know that you were well,
and
to also know that you listened to the broadcast a couple
of
Sundays ago.
You
wrote me some while back, telling me you were slightly
financially
distressed but I was not hitting on all cylinders at
the
time myself, but have since garnered a few elusive kopeks
and
am enclosing you a check for $25. in case you can use it.
I
have never forgotten the old days at the Orlando Social Club,
over
Mr. Wright’s wheelwright shop. . . up at the shady trees,
when
you had me elected janitor without dues; when I slept
in
the back room on an improvised bed made by removing
one
of the doors and using several bags of hay to pinch hit
for
a box-springs mattress. Those were
the happy days. Of
all
my friends—Eddie Tishner, Jack Sparks, Charlie Tishner,
Dick
Gamble, Martin Quinn, the Kanes, the McCaffreys, the
Garrs,
Eddie Roach, Feet Leibie, etc.—you are the most vivid
in
my memory.
I
hope you are well and happy.
Sincerely,
your old tramp friend,
“Whitey”
One
of the heirs in Fields’ will was: “Mabel
Roach, a life-long friend, now residing at 1931 Independence (St.), Phila.,
PA” (near Ogontz Ave. in West Oak Lane.)
Grudging
praise from Caesar: Fields
once admitted to drinking companion Gene Fowler that Philadelphia was “a great
town for breweries.”
Police
arrested Fields several times in his younger days:
c.
March, 1901 for punching a bobby in London while drunk.
(“He pushed me into the gutter.”)
c.
May, 1901 in Paris, for coming to the aid of an acrobat friend who was set upon
by three gendarmes.
c.
May, 1902, for racing a bicycle down Broad St. near Lehigh Ave. in Philadelphia.
The arresting officer was Patrolman John Ulrich, 2010 Madison St.
c.
June, 1903 for fighting in an Australian pub.
“I was defending a dame whose virtue was impugned… and may have been
a little hasty.”
c.
April, 1905 for throwing an “overripe bockwurst” on the floor of a
restaurant in Leipzig, Germany.
c.
September, 1928 in New York (at the behest of the Humane Society) for
contributing to the death of a canary. As
a part of his stage skit “The Dentist” Fields would grab a canary out of a
roomy jacket pocket and release it while probing through a male patient’s
heavy beard. One night the canary,
apparently disoriented by a camera flash, rammed into scenery and fell dead to
the stage. A woman in the audience
summoned police, who arrested Fields. At arraignment the judge ruled this event
an accident.
Fields
rated Philadelphia prisons above the rest:
“He recalled the gentility of his keepers, the thick bean soup, and the
scrubbed burlap racks. ‘When you get right down to it, there’s nothing like
Philadelphia.’ “17
Historian
James Smart noted that several of Fields’ characters’ surnames derived from
Philadelphia families, including Bogle, Wolfinger, Muckle, Hoffnagle, Finch,
Snavely, Winterbottom, Bensinger, Twillie, Ogilby, Dunk, and McGonigle.
A
Fields Sampler
“A
rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.”
On
life: “A man’s lucky if he gets
out of it alive.”
On
Roosevelt’s New Deal: “I think it’s a raw deal.”
“My
family was poor, but dishonest.”
“Norristown
is famed for its insane asylum.”
“I
am free of all prejudice. I hate
everyone equally.”
“Everything
I like is either immoral, illegal, or fattening.”
“I
never drink anything stronger than gin before breakfast.”
In
a cranky mood one day, Fields told Gene Fowler that he was cutting the local
orphanage out of his will. Fowler:
“Why ruin your reputation with such a mean gesture?”
Fields: “Have you ever
heard a corpse complain about being unpopular?”
Lady
reporter: “Do you like children
at all?” Fields:
“Only if they’re properly cooked.”
In
It’s A Gift, Baby Leroy dips storeowner Harold Bissonette’s watch in
molasses. His mother laughs, then
says: “I don’t know why he’s
behaving like this. You should see
him when he’s alone.” Bissonette
mumbles: “Yes, I’d like to see
him alone.”
In
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break a rock from an avalanche hits Fields in
the head. His movie niece Gloria
runs over to his supine form and asks if he’s injured.
“No. How could a rock falling 10,000 feet possibly hurt anyone?”
Fields’
Chinese restaurant order in International House (1932):
“A bird nest and two hundred-year-old-eggs boiled in perfume.”
After the food arrives he takes a bite, summons the server, and asks:
“Has the chef by some mischance omitted the paprika?”
Cuthbert
J. Twillie in My Little Chickadee: “We
lost our corkscrew in the wilds of Afghanistan and were compelled to live on
food and water for several days.”
In
the Pussycat Café bank guard Egbert Souse asks bartender Shemp Howard:
“Did I spend $20. in here last night?”
Howard:
“Why, yes, you did, Mr. Souse.”
Fields:
“Thank Heaven! I thought I
lost it.”
Fields’
pragmatism, mistrust of glitz, and trouper’s work ethic were all
Philadelphian. The very idea of a
middle-aged man from 9th & Somerset living in Beverly Hills
evokes a guffaw. When Egbert Souse
takes over for drunken film director A. Pismo Clam in The Bank Dick, the
audience sees how one of Fields’ Marshall St. neighbors might shoot a movie
scene. W. C. dismissed Philadelphia
as a show business backwater, and resented its tendency to ignore native talent.
For all that, he valued the city’s authenticity, and recognized its
influence on his personality.
Footnotes
1
Simon Louvish, Man on the Flying Trapeze:
The Life & Times of W.C. Fields, W.W.
Norton & Co., N.Y., 1977, p. 28.
2
James Smart, “W.C. Fields in Philadelphia,” The Shackamaxon Society,
Philadelphia, PA, 1972, p. 3.
3
Robert Lewis Taylor, W.C. Fields: His
Follies & Fortunes, Doubleday,
New York, 1949, p. 16.
4
Smart, p. 7.
5
Ronald J. Fields, ed., W.C. Fields By Himself, Prentice-Hall, Englewood
Cliffs, N.J., 1973, p. 12.
6
Johnston, Alva, “Legitimate Nonchalance,” Profiles Section of
New Yorker Magazine, Feb. 2, 1935, Feb. 9, 1935, and Feb. 16, 1935.
7
Smart, p. 10.
8
Ibid.,
9
Ibid., p. 11.
10
Ibid., p. 13.
11
Ronald Fields, p. 6.
12
Taylor, p. 36.
13
Ronald Fields, p. 9.
14
Ibid.
15
Taylor, p. 43.
16
Ronald Fields, p. 10.
17
Taylor, p. 127.
Other
Source:
Most
of the W. C. Fields’ quotes come from William K. Everson, The Art of W.C.
Fields, Bobbs-Merrill Co., New York, N.Y., 1967.