W.C Fields and the American Family Comedy
 

I watch fewer movies than almost anyone (they don’t call them films any more, do they?), and I suppose it’s indicative of something that one of my few cinematic  idols is W.C. Fields.

I give Louvish an A+ for the research behind his recent biography, and about a C- for the Writing, which reminds me annoyingly of the narrative of an educational film. I would love to have a utility which strips the Writing from factual books where it isn’t needed, the way you can strip Word formatting from a document to get the plain-text version. (It would be too much to ask authors to write for me in the first place, of course, since no one else would ever buy a book suited to my tastes).  I also don’t appreciate the authorial-judgment obbligato found at the end of every biography, where the lightweight biographer solemnly proclaims his verdict on a much more interesting guy who actually did something with his life. But at least you can skip these verdicts, which are normally at the end (pp. 480-484 in Louvish’s book – Louvish’s pontification isn’t especially bad, but I hate all of ‘em). 

So far I’ve finished the part about Fields’ life before film. He adds more evidence to Ronald Fields’ family archive material, showing that most of what people think they know about Fields’ early life is inaccurate and easily explainable by Fields commendable habit of bullshitting reporters. (Then as now, the media liked to believe that entertainers had a criminal, gutter-punk past, which Fields really did not). Field’s actual childhood was pretty interesting without the BS, and Louvish has a lot of good stuff about his international career as a juggling tramp. Along the way you get an great history of early XXc entertainment -- I had not known that vaudeville was a cleaned-up, respectable version of burlesque.

Deschner’s book has a lot of good stuff about the movies themselves. It was worth my $3 to know that the emaciated man with the vacant stare you see in a lot of them was named Bill Wolf.

They had a Fields festival here awhile back, concurrent with Louvish’s book tour. One thing I realized then was that in “It’s a Gift” Fields probably invented the American family comedy. It’s all there in Fields’ movies, and I’d like to know if anyone did it before him: the resigned, henpecked, inept husband, the long-suffering, exasperated wife, and the smart-mouth, cheerful kids.   Movie trivia buffs define themselves and each other according to the family comedies they watched when they were kids -- from Ozzie and Harriet through the Brady Bunch and half a dozen others down to whatever kids are watching today. According to this paradigm, some of Fields’ movies would have been the family comedies of my mother’s generation, and I’m an old guy myself already now. Time does fly.

And then Fields’ vaudeville would have been the entertainment of my grandmother’s generation. Trivia: if Fields ever reached Sioux City Iowa where my grandmother lived (and where her grandfather had founded the first brewery when it was a frontier town), he would have performed at a theatre run by the Friedmans -- the parents of “Dear Abby” and “Ann Landers”.* According to Louvish, there were 5,000 vaudeville theaters nationawide at that time, which brought low culture to every nook and cranny of the land. Much the same was true of music venues before radio and phonographs – my favorite jazz trivia is how Charlie Christian was discovered in Bismarck, North Dakota.

There are people willing to stick up for the electronic media, but somehow I doubt that 70 years from now people will look back at the TV/ film/ Top Forty crap of today the way we look back now at 30's jazz, W.C. Fields, and vaudeville in general. But then, I really am an old guy. 

And mercifully, I won’t live to see it, if it happens.

* CORRECTION: My basic idea wasn't bad, but the advice columnists' parents only got into the entertainment business in the 30's, though they did live in Sioux City when Fields performed there in 1912 and 1913. (Louvish, p. 159, p.173). According to the census,my grandmother still did live in Sioux City when she was 23 years old in 1910, though she married and moved away (but not too far away) not long after that. And Lederer is one of the advice-column twins' married names, not their maiden name.

P.S. Flo Ziegfeld of the Ziegfeld Follies is always thought to have been Jewish, but he was the son a Lutheran  classical musician. In fact, many Jewish comedians did "German acts" of the Katzenjammer Kid type. During WWI these were supposely renamed "Dutch acts", though the American English word "Dutch" has always included Germans -- "Pennsylvania Dutch" are German. My Iowa Dutch relatives call themselves Hollanders -- this might have started during WWI when the Germans moved in on their Dutch name. (My Iowa saloonkeeper ancestor was a German, however; the Iowa Dutch tended toward teetotalling).

P.P.S. W.C. Fields had his own gym and a personal trainer (named Bob Howard) during the 40's. It didn't work, he was still fat, but he was definitely ahead of his time. (Louvish, p. 444).

P.P.P.S. Fields was also an "intellectual property"  pioneer, and took extreme steps to copyright his work (Louvish, p. 206.)

P.P.P.P.S. I just read Curtis' biography. It's a good one and I'm not sure how to compare it with Louvish's. Curtis seems to have talked to more people, where Louvish seems to have mostly done archive work. Curtis has a lot more to say about Fields' personal relationships, including his love life (which seems to have been civilized but highly unromantic), as well as his health.

Little scraps of info from Curtis: Fields had a phobia about buying property and always rented. He left one house because swans from the facing lake kept invading his yard and attacking him. (The swan of ballet and symbolist poetry is mythical; swans are tough and mean, though not as tough and mean as penguins, who have beaks like snapping turtles). And on p. 476 Curtis claims --  quoting Les Paul himself -- that Fields' comedy disc "The Day I Drank a Glass of Water" was Les Paul's first multi-track recording (and maybe anyone's) .

The Sioux City Friedmans  

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All original material copyright John J. Emerson 

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