W. C. Fields

William Claude Dukenfield, known professionally as W. C. Fields, was born on January 29, 1880, in Darby, Pennsylvania, the eldest child of a working-class family. His father, James Lydon Dukenfield, descended from an English family that had emigrated from Sheffield, Yorkshire, in 1854, and had served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment during the Civil War, sustaining a wound in 1863. Fields's mother, Kate Spangler Felton, was of British ancestry. The family later settled in Philadelphia, where Fields's formal education was limited to grade school. His relationship with his father was volatile, and he ran away from home repeatedly beginning at age nine. By age twelve, a physical altercation with his father prompted another departure. He held brief jobs in 1893 at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store and at an oyster house before committing himself to a career in performance.

Fields had identified a natural aptitude for juggling at an early age, and a performance he witnessed at a local theater motivated him to develop the skill seriously. By seventeen he was performing a juggling act at church and theater engagements. In 1898, drawing inspiration from vaudeville performer James Edward Harrigan, known as the "Original Tramp Juggler," Fields adopted a costume of scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo and entered vaudeville under the name W. C. Fields. To manage a stutter, he performed entirely without speaking. The earliest known printed mention of his stage name appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer in August 1899, which listed him among the acts on Fred Irwin's touring bill. By September of that year, the Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette identified him as the bill's primary draw, describing his juggling of rubber balls, hats, and boxes as a unique feature performed in time with the orchestra.

In 1900, Fields departed the Irwin ensemble and launched a solo career, billing himself as a vaudeville headliner. That June he was performing at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. He subsequently toured North America, Europe, Australia, and South Africa, achieving international recognition. Performing for English-speaking audiences, he discovered that muttered patter and sarcastic asides generated additional laughs, and he gradually incorporated comedy into his juggling act. In 1904, his father visited him for two months while he was performing in English music halls, and Fields used his earnings to enable his father's retirement, purchase him a summer home, and encourage his family to become literate so they could correspond by letter.

Fields made his Broadway debut in 1905 in the musical The Ham Tree, a production that required him to deliver spoken dialogue for the first time in his stage career. He continued touring in vaudeville until 1915, and in 1913 performed on a bill with Sarah Bernhardt, first at the New York Palace and subsequently in England at a royal performance before King George V and Queen Mary. Beginning in 1915, Fields appeared in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies, where he performed a celebrated billiards sketch featuring bizarrely shaped cues and a custom-built table. He starred in the Follies from 1916 through 1922, performing not as a juggler but as a comedian in ensemble sketches. His Broadway credits include the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, George White's Scandals of 1922, and the musical Poppy, in which he starred in 1923 playing a colorful small-time con man. That role established the roguish persona he would carry into subsequent stage and film work. His Broadway career extended from 1905 to 1930 and also encompassed the musicals Ballyhoo of 1932 and The Ham Tree, among other productions.

From 1915 onward, Fields's stage costume consisted of a top hat, cutaway coat and collar, and a cane. Film historian Roger Sabin has noted a resemblance between this costume and that of the comic strip character Ally Sloper. Fields's juggling act and his pool routine were both reproduced in portions of his later films, including The Old Fashioned Way and Six of a Kind, both from 1934. His film and radio persona, characterized by a raspy drawl, a prominent nose, grandiloquent vocabulary, and physical comedy, was closely identified with Fields himself and was actively promoted by the publicity departments at Paramount and Universal studios. That persona was further reinforced by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W. C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, the publication of Fields's personal letters, photographs, and notes in grandson Ronald Fields's book W. C. Fields by Himself revealed that Fields had been married, financially supported his son, and maintained affectionate relationships with his grandchildren. Fields died on December 25, 1946.