W. C. Fields, Hollywood Legend
To much excitement, it was announced that Fields would next team up with Mae West. One of America’s biggest stars in the mid-thirties, West, now aged 43, had also recently been cut loose by Paramount after her popularity waned. Months would pass before a script and director would be selected, the result of Fields’ cantankerous and territorial approach to his participation. Surprisingly, the two actors were able to co-exist and what was eventually entitled “My Little Chickadee,” came to pass. The film was a commercial success but West was apparently embittered by the experience in which Fields was paid substantially more, got a dubious screenwriting credit and she received poor reviews that caused Universal to pass on another more expensive option for a second film. She would disparage Fields for the rest of her life.
Charles Laughton, against his better judgment, had been persuaded to take the key role of Wilkins Micawber and after three days of shooting, the skilled actor was convinced that he was completely unsuitable to continue. Reluctantly, Selznick and director George Cukor set about getting the man they had initially contemplated casting: WC Fields. Because he was under contract with Paramount, the actor would not come cheap and Fields, always mindful of money and sensing he had MGM over a barrel, held out for $50,000 for two weeks work.
With Paramount reluctant to cast him in anything tangible, Fields decided to head in a different direction and embrace the medium of radio. By 1937, he was appearing on the prestigious Chase and Sanborn hour mostly trading barbs with Edgar Bergen’s ventriloquist dummy, Charlie McCarthy. The radio show quickly became the most popular in the US but the pressure on Fields to perform on a weekly basis was unpleasant and as soon as he got another film from Paramount, he quit.
WC Fields died on Christmas Day, 1946. Despite the legal protestations of his wife and son, he was eventually cremated and interred in a vault in Forest Lawn Cemetery. The plaque adorning his ashes merely lists his stage name and the years of his birth and death. Contrary to urban myth, there is no epitaph concerning the city of Philadelphia.
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