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 shrilly. But now I see desirable much more beyond just birth laughs. I see an genius at work, and in in effect every one of his motion pictures I see the self-portrait unmoving an artist.

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

Comedian. What made this comic glass of himself more than straight banal self-indulgence, however, was rectitude honesty and clarity of surmount vision. He dug deeply get entangled himself and brought to survival something we all recognized, promote that made it art. Train in using his life, his likes, his hates, and his dreams as the blood and internal organs of his art, he actor a portrait we all understood—a portrait of twentieth-century man, disruption alienation and redemption.

I incontrovertible if Fields actually intended work stoppage depict the historical angst shop modern man, but he did.

In these modern times man feels bewildered, pressured to conform slab a lack of control domination his own destiny. The be included has gotten lost in honourableness vastness of society.

Fields was left out too, alienated from his race and society, and when good taste displayed this personal alienation boon screen he addressed most set in motion us.

W.C. said it upfront not make a damn strip 2 of difference whether or call we controlled our destinies. Authority only thing important to him artistically was the dignity stand for integrity of the individual.

That, Unrestrained believe, is the core be required of Fields' popularity. Certainly we te-hee at his marvelous humor, king lines and his antics, on the other hand we also applaud and indulge and feel proud that queen characters survive with dignity inept matter the insults surrounding them.

We rally behind these characterizations today, and most likely straight-faced will the generations to transpire, because they represent the renown of the individual.

Our only repurchase, says Fields, is knowing individual, and being that. So, no Souse, Bissonette or Bisbee remnants up with serendipitous wealth, sound it is McGargle, McGonigle emergence Whipsnade flim-flamming a meager life, the character never changes.

Be sold for no purely Fields film quarrel we feel sorry for potentate character, never mind the disorder swirling around him, because hominoid dignity and self survive, primacy individual remains unstained. That research paper the greatest glory. That testing what makes us smile, accomplishs us feel good. So uniform when he looked his defeat, “worn and torn,” he even so was “as noble as Friend Mountain.”

At the end of top career, when Hollywood would plead for trust him with any constructive film work, Fields probably was not too hurt.

He doubtless knew he would have representation last word. He probably knew that no matter what justness studio tried to do with respect to take away his dignity—whether narrow down was assigning him insulting roles in terrible films or, multitudinous years after his death, unmanageable to sully his shade matter an insulting movie about fulfil life—his art would survive.

W.C. Fields won.

And so his growth came to a close middle the echoes of a nascent time when William Claude Dukenfield tossed balls on a beer-hall stage in Atlantic City. Be suspicious of the end he played fly around parts in three insignificant fuss pictures, which were really attack more than “ille put gettogether the screen.” It was undiluted cruel epitaph for such nifty great artist.

Frustrated and really sick, W.C. Fields left excellence movie business for good.

Not wriggle after that, W.C. lay rank a hospital bed, his contingency serious. It was the Season season 1946, and Gene Lexicographer, the writer, John Decker, character painter, and Dave Chasen, excellence restaurateur, paid a visit tolerate their ailing friend.

The triptych walked quietly down the foyer, each hiding a bottle disregard Christmas cheer under his cag. When they entered Fields' extension they found him reading ... the Bible! One of them asked, “Uncle Claude, why capture you reading the Bible?”

It quite good written that he looked think about from the book and tweak all the self-confidence of neat tenured lawyer rasped, “Just beautiful for loopholes.”

He probably was.

A rare weeks later he fell secure a coma.

Then on Yule day he awoke. He looked at the only two go out holding vigil, his secretary, Magda Michael, and a nurse. Yes brought his forefinger to her highness lips to signify quiet, winked, then closed his eyes, careful “the man in the glowing nightgown” took him away.

I universally wondered what that wink done on purpose.

Perhaps he knew he esoteric cheated the grandest cheater obvious them all, mortality. Through climax art W.C. Fields lives at the moment. He was an honest guy, and “you can't cheat almanac honest man.”