WC Fields

 

W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer. W. C. Fields was known for his comic persona as a cynical and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children and women. The characterization W. C. Fields portrayed in films and on radio was so strong it became generally identified with W. C. Fields himself. It was maintained by the movie-studio publicity departments at Fields's studios Paramount and Universal. W. C. Fields starred in a couple of short comedies, filmed in New York in 1915. His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924.

Following this, W. C. Fields starred in It's The Old Army Game the film included a silent version of the porch sequence. W. C. Fields wore a scruffy-looking, clip-on mustache in virtually all of his silent films, discarding it only after his first sound feature film, Her Majesty Love, W. C. Fields' only Warner Brothers production. W. C. Fields made four short subjects for comedy pioneer Mack Sennett in 1932 and 1933, distributed through Paramount Pictures. During this period, Paramount began featuring W. C. Fields in full-length comedies, and by 1934 W. C. Fields was a major movie star. It was for one of the films of this period that outtakes of one scene allegedly recorded the only moving image record of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. This footage was later revealed to have been faked as a publicity stunt for the movie.

W. C. Fields often contributed to the scripts of his films and had an affection for unlikely names and many of his characters bore them. Under unusual alias such as the seemingly diddly "Charles Bogle", which appeared on most of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis" and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves" his engenius style would come out. In features such as It's a Gift and Man on the Flying Trapeze, W. C. Fields is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers. In his films, W. C. Fields often played hustlers such as carnival barkers and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks.