Cast

W.C. Fields

Acting

Cast

W.C. Fields

Known for

Acting

Born

1880-01-29

From

Darby, Pennsylvania, USA

Died

1946-12-25

Also known as William Claude Dukenfield, Bill Fields, Charles Bogle

Biography

William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program). He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.

W.C. Fields

W.C. Fields

Biography

The Movie Orgy

Vaudeville

Song of the Open Road

Hollywood on Parade No. B-10

You're Telling Me!

Alice in Wonderland

Six of a Kind

Bob Hope's World of Comedy

Down Memory Lane

That's Entertainment, Part II

Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage

David Copperfield

Tillie and Gus

Her Majesty, Love

Hooray for Hollywood

Pool Sharks

Tales of Manhattan

Follow the Boys

My Little Chickadee

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

If I Had a Million

The Big Broadcast of 1938

The Golf Specialist

The Bank Dick

Mississippi

The Hollywood Clowns

Man on the Flying Trapeze

The Big Parade of Comedy

So's Your Old Man

The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender

That Royle Girl

The Fatal Glass of Beer

Show-Business at War

Million Dollar Legs

The Old-Fashioned Way

Cavalcade of the Academy Awards

The Dentist

Mae West and the Men Who Knew Her

W.C. Fields: 6 Short Films

Going Hollywood: The '30s

Oops, Those Hollywood Bloopers!

Poppy

It's a Gift

The Barber Shop

International House

Sensations of 1945

Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch

Hidden Hollywood II: More Treasures from the 20th Century Fox Vaults

W.C. Fields: Straight Up

Running Wild

It's the Old Army Game

The Circus: Premiere

You Can't Cheat an Honest Man

The Pharmacist

Janice Meredith

Hollywood Heaven: Tragic Lives, Tragic Deaths

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break

Fools for Luck

The Potters

Sally of the Sawdust

Tillie's Punctured Romance

How to Break 90 #3: Hip Action

Two Flaming Youths