In response to an e-mail touting the benefits if drinking water, I immediately responded with the un-bowdlerized quote by W. C. Fields. And it occurred to me that his popularity is not what it once was.
During the 1970’s when casual drug use was more acceptable, Fields was on TV and on posters and his voice was imitated in advertising, as the huckster you could love in spite of himself (years before Joe Isuzu “invented” the concept).
Buster Keaton gets all the love from the arty types due to, by Keaton’s own admission, he never cared if the audience identified with him: it was all about the gag. Chaplin’s popularity receeded for this same reason: you can’t go after the audiences funny bones and tear ducts and engage their intellects as well. But there was still too much genius in Charlie Chaplin to dismisss him as being nothing but twee.
Fields, for his part, hated dogs and hated kids. Dogs and kids hated him back. The great quest of his character was not to save any locomotives or orphans, but to just get the people in his life to leave him alone so he could get drunk.
And I for one love him for that. Family and employers DO treat us like devices, and I can understand how getting useless via alcohol is an act of rebellion. Dogs DO shit wherever they please and exasperated us. I think people in the Great Depression needed an angry, substance-abusing Everyman, who’d say on their behalf “I played by all of society’s rules, and this is what I get? Fuck off!”
The big problem with your analysis, Slithy is that Fields was never a very popular star in his era. His most successful films were where he was a supporting character, not a lead, and the ones that are best regarded today barely broke even in their time. Women especially did not like him. Fields was always loved by critics, but the audience preferred Laurel and Hardy. (That was reversed in the 70s and 80s, but now L&H are making a comeback, while Fields is fading away).
It’s also simplistic to say any generalizations about Fields, though. Among the great comedians, he had the greatest range of characters, from mild-mannered family man who meekly takes what life offers (The Man on the Flying Trapeze, The Bank Dick) to out-and-out con man (You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man).
My favorite moment of Fields was The Fatal Glass of Beer. It’s a movie that doesn’t seem particularly funny the first time around, but the more you watch it, the funnier is becomes.
I also loved the way Fields twitted the censors. In radio, he often talked about his son, Chester, and it took some time before his sponsor – a cigarette company – caught on and told him to stop. And in The Bank Dick, Shemp Howard’s bar is always referred to as “The Black Pussy.”
For a man whose voice and inflection are among the most famous in movie history, I’m always amazed to find out that Fields made so many silent films. But it’s still wrong to put him in the same sentence as Keaton and Chaplin. The break between silent and sound films is as large as an ocean. Two different worlds.
Chaplin is far more extreme an example of someone forgotten today. I’ve been researching that period and the references to Chaplin are staggering. He was the most famous person in the world. He was a combination of The Beatles and Justin Bieber and and every rock star in between rolled up into one body. There was a day of hysterical sightings of him all over the country in 1917. He was casually and repeatedly spoken of with the greatest geniuses in art history and as the only figure of the 20th century who would be remembered in 500 years as Rembrandt is. Keaton was merely great. Time has obliterated that.
Too many of Fields’ films are set in the trivia of everyday home life for us to appreciate them, I think. The surroundings dull him. I like the non-contemporary surrealism of International House and You Can’t Give a Sucker an Even Break best myself because of that.
His greatness is undeniable. But he’s a figure of the past, and his popularity will come and go.
In his movies, I think Fields comes off as unpolished, but surprisingly edgy for the Hays Code 1930s… who else would respond to the query “Do you like children?” with “Only if properly cooked”? I don’t think there was any other well-known film star of the time, except perhaps Mae West, who pushed the boundaries of society so insistently.
I’m particularly fond of this clip. I believe it’s from “It’s a gift”.
The pushy salesman looking for “Carl LaFong” cracks me up.
“Carl LaFong. Capitol C, small a,small r small l. Capitol L small a Capitol F, small o, small n, small g. He’s a railroad man you know. Gets up at the crack of dawn”.
That whole bit cracks me up for some reason. Then Bissenet’s (Fields) wife comes out and yells at him for inviting his friends up at the crack of dawn to tell “ribald” stories.
Darn, I was going to nominate the porch scene from It’s A Gift, too. “Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g. LaFong. Carl LaFong.”
His response, “No, I don’t know Carl LaFong. Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g, and if I did know Carl LaFong, I wouldn’t admit it.”
So much in that clip, the coconut bouncing down the steps, Baby Leroy pushing grapes through the knothole, the two women…
His films don’t get much play these days but I find they’ve aged much more gracefully than say Chaplin’s.
Ah yes, the two women. I think they were cut of off the clip I linked to.
One of them, the daughter I presume, is on the ground and going to the pharmacy and is having an inane shouting conversation with her mother on a floor above Fields. “Do you want Ipecac or Syrup of Squill?”
When she finally leaves and the shouting stops, he tries to go back to sleep only to have his wife again come bursting out, this time to accuse him of flirting loudly with the woman upstairs.
Will Hays was made head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in 1922, after huge complaints about immorality in movies. He didn’t do much and many states formed their own censorship boards. In 1929 the Catholic Church exerted its power and wrote a new code, the one we know now. Hays ignored that one too. Finally, in 1934 they replaced him with Joseph Breen, a stauch Catholic who clamped down and enforced the Code to the letter. The Hays Code is a misnomer, since that meant nothing. It’s the Breen Code that hurt the careers of Fields and West so badly. The early sound movies from 1930-34 are uniformly baudier and freer than the later movies, although the weaknesses of lack of movement in cameras and other problems of the early sound era mean that they are shown less often because they mostly aren’t very good.
I’ve never understood why Hays gets tagged with this. It’s 100% Breen.
I have an old copy of Fields for President, by the man himself, published in 1940. Any book whose opening line is “Los Angeles Man Held in Cruller-Factory Break” has got to be funny. I especially like his phony anecdote about rooming next door to a seal at “the old Excelsior Hotel in Chillicothe, Ohio” or something like that. The dry humor wears very well, IMO.
That same book features Fields reminiscing about his first “marihuana cigarette” (!!)
You won’t consider me rude if I play with ma mitts on will yer?
You’re lucky it wasn’t a Newfoundland dog that bit yer.
Fields: Was I in here last night and did I spend a twenty dollar bill?
Shemp: Yeah.
Fields: What a load that is off of my mind. I thought I’d lost it.
Oulotta Hemoglobin: The only game I ever played was beanbag.
Fields: Bean bag? Ahhh, it becomes very exciting at times. I once saw the championships played in Paris. Many people were killed.
I have a vinyl LP of radio shows with Fields, Don Ameche and Edgar Bergen. I haven’t listened to it for years. One bit that sticks in my mind includes what I think was an ad lib. Fields is telling Ameche a story that is set in a court room. He says what is clearly supposed to be one of the laugh lines in the story, and the audience doesn’t respond. Fields says “The jury laughed immoderately.” Cracks me up just thinking about it.
“Women are like elephants to me- I like to look at them, but I wouldn’t want to own one.”
One of my favorite exchanges:
“I claim that ferryboat race of yours was the world’s greatest gamble.”
“No, don’t forget- Lady Godiva put everything she had on her horse.”
