“You've heard the old legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets the laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the screen,” W. C. Fields once said. “I'm going to kill everybody. But, at the same time, I'm afraid of everybody-just a great big frightened bully. There's a lot of that in human nature. When people laugh at me, they're laughing at themselves. Or, at least, the next fellow.” Unlike other great comedians of his era, Fields never asked audiences to love him; the con artists and bibulous cowards he created on stage and screen rarely deserved an even break, and the films he starred in and often wrote-under such aliases as Charles Bogle, Otis Criblecoblis, and Mahatma Kane Jeeves-are startlingly unsentimental. Yet there is something affecting about the way Fields could be simultaneously pompous and abject, muttering an outrageous line under his breath as though nobody were listening. And Fields's talent for the verbal and visual non sequitur remains a peculiar delight. An evening with Fields isn't just another night at the movies-it's a gift.
Juliet Clark
On August 3, author James Curtis will join us to introduce It's a Gift and sign copies of his new book, W. C. Fields: A Biography, which eminent Fieldsian John Cleese calls “the definitive book about America's most profound comedian.” Curtis has selected some of his favorite Fields films for inclusion in this series. He is the author of James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters and Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges.