Birth and early career
Natural William Claude Dukenfield within Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, Jim Dukenfield, come from either an English-Irish family of noble origins (being descendent of Lord Dukenfield of Cheshire), & his mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was as well of British descent. But, Jim Dukenfield was of a working class around Engl&, and in the United States, sold vegetables from either the cart, an enterprise where the immature William assisted. Fields ran out of front yard at age Eleven & entered vaudeville. By age Xxi he was traveling as a comedy juggling act, becoming a star around each Northward America & Europe. Inside 1906 he made his Broadway debut in the musical comedy A Ham Tree, signing sustaining impresario Florenz Ziegfeld.

Hollywood
Such as numerous vaudevillians, Fields worked within silent films and one-reelers, however he 1st hit large theatrical fame within 1923 in the Broadway musical Poppy, in which he perfected his persona as an oily, failing confidence man. Fields late appeared around talking feature & short cases, including a 1934 classic ''It's a Gift'', which included a version of his stage sketch of trying to sleep on the back porch as a result of nagging family and being bedeviled by noisy neighbors and traveling salesmen. ("You're drunk!" "Yeah, and you're crazy! But I'll be sober tomorrow, and you'll be crazy for the rest of your life!")

Fields got an affectionateness for unbelievable list & numbers of of his characters wore the children. When he was typically as well a writer in his films, the credits typically include quite unusual list substituting for his have, like "Mahatma Kane Jeeves" or even "Otis Cribblecoblis". He likewise utilized a ordinary-sounding "Charles Bogle" many days.

He was renowned juggler, & this staple of his music hall work discovered its way into microscopic & tantalizing segments of his moving-picture show now and again. His music hall work besides involved a routine sustaining a billiard table, and so the billiard table likewise processed numbers of appearances within his glaze over the years. Around somewhat of the parallel to Groucho Marx's famous greasepaint mustache, Fields wore the seedy shopping clip-inside moustache in most of his silent films, eventually discarding it another time talking picture began.

Within his films he typically played hustlers like carnival barkers & cardsharp, spinning yarns & distracting his marks, when sustaining this gem from either Mississippi: "Whilst traveling through the Andes Mountains, we lost our corkscrew. Had to live on food and water for several days!"

He was the womb-to-tomb fan of creator Charles Dickens, and achieved one of his career ambitions by swimming a character Mr. Micawber, inside MGM's David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor, in 1935. Around 1936, Fields recreated his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures wherein Richard Cromwell, played the wooer of Fields' girl, Rochelle Hudson. ("If we should ever separate, my little plum, I want to give you just one bit of fatherly advice." "Yes, Pop?" "Never give a sucker an even break!"). He got antecedently transferred his noted role onto the screen a decade earliest inside Sally of the Sawdust (1925) directed by the legendary D.W. Griffith (whose career was in a slump). A former effort at bringing Poppy to the screen was non the profits.

Fields's ego occasionally had in the way of significant roles. He turned down the role of the Wizard in The Wizard of Oz fearing the role would exist as "too small".

Radio
Unwellness, worsened by his heavily swallowing, stopped Fields' film operate for the period, however he manufactured the comeback commodities trading insults by owning Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on radio in 1938. ("Is it true your father was a gate-leg table?" "If it is, your father was under it!"). This and then-supposed "rivalry" between them carried onto film around ''You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939). Within 1940 he made My Little Chickadee with Mae West, when well as The Bank Dick'', which perhaps can become his virtually all easily-known film ("Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?" "Yeah!" "Boy, is that a load off my mind... I thought I'd lost it!").

He wwhen known to his friends as "Bill", the fact evidenced around Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, in which he played himself. Edgar Bergen too known as him "Bill" in the radio shows. Charlie McCarthy known as him by more list. Inside films where he wwhen portrayed as with a boy, he for instance known as the character "Claude". Inside England he wwhen occasionally billed as "Wm. C. Fields", presumptively to keep away from contention due to "W.C." existence a abbreviation for "Water Closet", although it can exist as safely assumed that Fields himself was amused per coincidence.

Death
Fields spent his final weeks inside a hospital, in which the friend stopped by for the visit & caught Fields reading the Bible. He enquired when to how come, since Fields was an atheist, to which Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes." Around the final irony, W. C. Fields died around 1946 of a belly haemorrhage on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day.

Burial
He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. There stand been stories that he wanted his grave marker to understand, "On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia", his front yard town, & similar to the line he utilized within The Little Chickadee, "I'd like to see Paris before I die... Philadelphia would do!" This hearsay has as well been twisted into "I would rather be here than in Philadelphia." Whatever his wishes may st& been, his internment marker only has his title, & birth and dying years.

His mistress Carlotta Monti is among several population world health organization own chronicled Field's life, within her book, W.C. Fields and Me. the book was mass produced into a film of the equivalent title within 1976.

Caricatures

Fields' face, complete by having bulbous nose, rotund immune system & blustery, rhinal voice stand typically been caricatured . Two or three examples: Many contemporary cartoons contained Fields characterizations. [http://members.aol.com/EOCostello/f.html] A comic strip The Wizard of Id features an attorney known as "Larsen E. Pettifogger", world health organization is an perceptible parody of Fields & potentially borrows from either a character title "Larsen E. Whipsnade" that Fields utilized inside ''Professional people Might't Cheat an Honest Human. When a Frito-Lay organization was pressured to pull their Mexican stereotyped character known as a "Frito Bandito" in the late 60s, they substituted the Fields lookalike known as "W.C. Fritos". Fields was real life to mimicker. E.g., Ed McMahon could do the hone Fields, & invoked it on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from instance to time.

Filmography
His Lordship's Dilemma (1915) (short subject) Pool Sharks (1915) (short subject) (also writer) Janice Meredith (1924) Sally of the Sawdust (1925) That Royle Girl (1925) It's the Old Army Game (1926) (also writer) So's Your Old Man (1926) The Potters (1927) Running Wild (1927) A Trip Through the Paramount Studio (1927) (short subject) Two Flaming Youths (1927) Tillie's Punctured Romance (1928) Fools for Luck (1928) The Golf Specialist (1930) (short subject) (also writer) Her Majesty, Love (1931) Million Dollar Legs (1932) If I Had a Million (1932) The Dentist (1932) (short subject) (also writer) The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933) (short subject) (also writer) Hollywood on Parade No. 9 (1933) (short subject) The Pharmacist (1933) (short subject) International House (1933) Hip Action (1933) (short subject) The Barber Shop (1933) (short subject) (also writer) Tillie and Gus (1933) Alice in Wonderland (1933) Six of a Kind (1934) You're Telling Me! (1934) The Old Fashioned Way (1934) (also writer) Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934) It's a Gift (1934) (also writer) David Copperfield (1935) Mississippi (1935) Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) (also writer & director) Poppy (1936) The Big Broadcast of 1938 (1938) You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939) (also writer) My Little Chickadee (1940) (also writer) The Bank Dick (1940) (also writer) Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) (also writer) Tales of Manhattan (1942) (scenes deleted) Show Business at War (1943) (short subject) Follow the Boys (1944) Song of the Open Road (1944) Sensations of 1945'' (1944)