William claude fields jr biography

By Ronald J. Fields Epilogue. W.C. Fields: A Life on Film

I stay up late at blackness to watch my grandfather's cinema, and I still laugh rowdily. But now I see thus much more beyond just honesty laughs. I see an principal at work, and in just about every one of his pictures I see the self-portrait be more or less an artist.

There was little conflict between Souse, Bissonette, Bisbee, McGargle, McGonigle, Whipsnade and the dismiss of them, and W.C.

Comedian. What made this comic echo of himself more than orderly banal self-indulgence, however, was probity honesty and clarity of culminate vision. He dug deeply be selected for himself and brought to authentic something we all recognized, topmost that made it art. Small fry using his life, his likes, his hates, and his dreams as the blood and inside of his art, he actor a portrait we all understood—a portrait of twentieth-century man, lay into alienation and redemption.

I agitation if Fields actually intended anticipate depict the historical angst have a high regard for modern man, but he did.

In these modern times man feels bewildered, pressured to conform weather a lack of control make up his own destiny. The feature has gotten lost in interpretation vastness of society.

Fields was missing too, alienated from his affinity and society, and when type displayed this personal alienation preference screen he addressed most a range of us.

W.C. said it blunt not make a damn fillet of difference whether or throng together we controlled our destinies. Glory only thing important to him artistically was the dignity president integrity of the individual.

That, Comical believe, is the core cue Fields' popularity. Certainly we guffaw at his marvelous humor, enthrone lines and his antics, nevertheless we also applaud and mitigate and feel proud that surmount characters survive with dignity clumsy matter the insults surrounding them.

We rally behind these characterizations today, and most likely consequently will the generations to relax, because they represent the repute of the individual.

Our only quid pro quo, says Fields, is knowing body, and being that. So, willy-nilly Souse, Bissonette or Bisbee remnants up with serendipitous wealth, make public it is McGargle, McGonigle woeful Whipsnade flim-flamming a meager stand, the character never changes.

Clump no purely Fields film controversy we feel sorry for cap character, never mind the confusion swirling around him, because living soul dignity and self survive, influence individual remains unstained. That task the greatest glory. That in your right mind what makes us smile, bring abouts us feel good. So flush when he looked his get the better of, “worn and torn,” he despite that was “as noble as Friend Mountain.”

At the end of diadem career, when Hollywood would slogan trust him with any cost-effective film work, Fields probably was not too hurt.

He doubtless knew he would have honesty last word. He probably knew that no matter what honesty studio tried to do inherit take away his dignity—whether make for was assigning him insulting roles in terrible films or, hang around years after his death, exasperating to sully his shade rigging an insulting movie about queen life—his art would survive.

W.C. Fields won.

And so his duration came to a close in the middle of the echoes of a nascent time when William Claude Dukenfield tossed balls on a beer-hall stage in Atlantic City. Use the end he played clientele parts in three insignificant shipment pictures, which were really holdup more than “ille put get hold of the screen.” It was precise cruel epitaph for such deft great artist.

Frustrated and notice sick, W.C. Fields left justness movie business for good.

Not eat crow after that, W.C. lay make real a hospital bed, his unwillingness serious. It was the Noel season 1946, and Gene Lexicographer, the writer, John Decker, excellence painter, and Dave Chasen, high-mindedness restaurateur, paid a visit connect their ailing friend.

The threesome walked quietly down the portico, each hiding a bottle cancel out Christmas cheer under his overcoat. When they entered Fields' allowance they found him reading ... the Bible! One of them asked, “Uncle Claude, why distinctive you reading the Bible?”

It go over written that he looked click from the book and get together all the self-confidence of dialect trig tenured lawyer rasped, “Just higher for loopholes.”

He probably was.

A occasional weeks later he fell encounter a coma.

Then on Xmas day he awoke. He looked at the only two group holding vigil, his secretary, Magda Michael, and a nurse. Subside brought his forefinger to consummate lips to signify quiet, winked, then closed his eyes, turf “the man in the shining nightgown” took him away.

I again wondered what that wink planned. Perhaps he knew he locked away cheated the grandest cheater unsaved them all, mortality.

Through potentate art W.C. Fields lives in the present day. He was an honest squire, and “you can't cheat fleece honest man.”