We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,569,865.69 | Books Available: 795,322 | Members Online: 274

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - W.c. Fields: A Biography

Wc Fields A Biography
Author: James Curtis

Before he ever made a movie or spoke a word onstage, W. C. Fields was one of the greatest pantomimists and comedians in the world. His career spanned the whole of the twentieth century—in burlesque, vaudeville, the legitimate stage, silent pictures, talkies, radio, books, and recordings. Only death prevented him from working in television.... more »

He shared the vaudeville stage with Sarah Bernhardt and Houdini; he made a command performance before Edward VII; he was compared to Chaplin and Keaton and became one of the great comedians in radio. He wrote, directed, and performed (Mae West and Fields were among the first writer/actor/directors) in some of the most enduring and brilliant comedies of all time, including It’s a Gift, My Little Chickadee, and The Bank Dick. He appeared in fifty pictures and wrote fifteen of them. His understanding of the need to lie and swindle, and his ability to make the most innocent phrase sound lewd, made him a star.

Now James Curtis tells the story of Fields’ life and work. Drawing on Fields’ papers and manuscripts, he shows us the passion and intellect that fueled Fields’ talent and the background that gave such bite and edge to his comedy. Curtis shows us, in illuminating detail, just how Fields’ extraordinary art evolved on the stage in the early part of the twentieth century and how he not only incorporated it into his films, but how it came to define his persona decades later.

He writes of Fields’ hardscrabble Philadelphia childhood; of his father, a drunken breaker of horses who beat his son; of Fields’ clever hands that were quick to master stealing and juggling (he took up the latter—it allowed him to sleep late); of his years in burlesque and minstrelsy; of his seventeen years in vaudeville, hopping trains early on, living a life half in the theater, half on the lam, making his way into the big time, never satisfied with his “act,” always working on something newer and more striking. Curtis writes of Fields’ starring years with the Ziegfeld Follies, finding his voice and his character amid one of the greatest assemblages of comic talent on a single stage (Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, among others); appearing in every Ziegfeld show from 1915 through 1921; of his marriage to a fellow performer, the birth of their son, and their travels together on the Circuit, until Mrs. Fields decided she’d had enough and left—the theater and her marriage. Fields never again loved so deeply.

We see Fields’ extraordinary work in the movies, both silent pictures in New York (first directed by D. W. Griffith in the starring role in Sally of the Sawdust, which Fields created on Broadway in Poppy) and in the talkies from 1927 to 1945.

Curtis’ biography narrates the life and the art of the actor James Agee called “the toughest and most warmly human of all screen comedians.”

ISBN-13: 9780823084425
ISBN-10: 0823084426
Publication Date: 9/1/2004
Pages: 593
Rating:

Currently 5/5 Stars.

5 stars, based on 1 rating

Publisher: Backstage Books
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 1
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Back to the Top ↑

Search - W.c. Fields: A Biography

Loading...