DEATH OF OUTSTANDING COMEDIAN

Rotorua Morning Post, Issue 5306, 20 January 1947, Page 2

DEATH OF OUTSTANDING COMEDIAN

W. C. FIEILDS NOSBD HIS WAY INTO F.U1E. W. C. Pields, "the actor with the riose," died Chrfstmas Day in Pasadena, California. !No more fitting date pn which to die could have been chosen by the man who, of all American blni">"players, " ' ostentatiously loved his grog and the whole of mankind. . No sadder loss, on a day of pfoverbial joy and celebration, could have been spffered 'by the millions addicted .to Field's peculiar form of American comedy. Claude William Dunkenfield was born in Philadelphia in January, 1880. At an early ago, after a difference of opinion with his father James, he. "crowned" the unsuspecting parent and left home, J ■ There followed hard years for young Dunkentield, during which he slept in, parks in warm weather, and in doorways and holes in t'he ground in winter. His way.of life was scarcely noble. He lived 'by his sins — smartness at eards, sleight-cf-hand in bars where counter-lunches were served — rather than by his virtues, which were at that time unrevealed either to himself or to the world. Seeing a juggling act gave him the idea of turning his nimble fingers to account as wage-earners. He became, in a few years, a iknown prestidigitateur, and in a few more years was much in demand all over the world. He had, • in addition to extraordinary digital ability, a face which expressed nothing in the way of emotion, and little in the way of sense. Fields was in Australia in 1915 when he was .summoned to America by C. B. Gillingham to do an act in the reveue • "Watch Your Step." He made the 29-day journey to play one night in the revue, after which • Gillingham dropped him. But it was a lucky drop; his next engagement was with Florcnzy Ziegfeld in the famous "Follies," where he stayed for t, more than a decade. Talking Pictures. He had seen the world, and some of the world had seen him; but it was only with the coming of talking pictures that he gained the vast audience which ■mll regret his death. His adventures with the "Follies," Earl Carroll's "Vanities," George White's "Scandals," as well as his early years of struggle and bitter hardship, somehow fitted him perfectly for the part of comparatively speechle'ss comedian by which he became famous on the screen. His far-away look, his fruity and inane bablings, and his constant consumption of hard liquor in defiance of all moral criticism made him, on film, a unique character. Much of this conj tinued in pr'ivate life. ! Not so long ago, when in court on a ; matter of income-tax "neglect," he ex- | plained to the court that he had' failed ! to include in his .'expenses the enovmous sums he was forced to spend on keeping his nose (which was, he said, his chief source of income) in its famous state of bul'bous uuddiness. For this, he explianed, he had to provide himself ivith an expensive mixture of rum and orange-juice. Those who saw him in such films as "So's Your Old Man," "David Copper-" j field" (in which he played Micawber), I "Mrs. Wiggs," "The Big Broadcast of | 1938," and others, will mourn the [ death of one who, before an accident last year put him to bed for the last time, gave much new zest and joy to screen Comedy, and who passionately loved the good things of life, which 1 he has now done with once and for all.