PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE HISTORY

W.C. F    Z  F   B S   S

Becoming a Character Comedian

Arthur Frank Wertheim Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History

Series Editor

Don B. Wilmeth Brown University Emeritus Professor Providence, USA Aims of the Series Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History is a series devoted to the best of theatre/performance scholarship currently available, ­accessible and free of jargon. It strives to include a wide range of topics, from the more traditional to those performance forms that in recent years have helped broaden the understanding of what theatre as a category might include (from variety forms as diverse as the circus and burlesque to street buskers, stage magic, and , among many others). Although historical, critical, or analytical studies are of special interest, more ­theoretical projects, if not the dominant thrust of a study but utilized as important underpinning or as an historiographical or analytical method of exploration, are also of interest. Textual studies of drama or other types of less traditional performance texts are also germane to the series if placed in their cultural, historical, social, or political and economic context. There is no geographical focus for this series and works of excellence of a diverse and international nature, including comparative studies, are sought.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14575 Arthur Frank Wertheim W.C. Fields from the and Stage to the Screen

Becoming a Character Comedian Arthur Frank Wertheim Historian, Rancho Palos Verdes California, USA

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History ISBN 978-1-349-94985-4 ISBN 978-1-349-94986-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-94986-1

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Cover image © In the “Sleeping Porch” scene Fields futilely tries to place a heavy block of ice in his icebox. The Comic Supplement/1925 Follies. Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com.

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Nature America Inc. The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A. In honor of my beloved brother Jack—a devoted friend, a caring helpmate, and an exemplar of strength and courage to the end—R.I.P Introduction

My life with W.C. Fields started on a spring day in May 2007. An article in The announced that the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences was staging an exhibition on its fourth floor gallery titled: “The Amazing Peregrinations and Pettifoggery of One William Claude Dukenfield, late of Philadelphia, PA., familiarly known to Crowned Heads and Hoi Polloi alike as W. C. Fields.” Entering the door to the show, I was bowled over by the sight. The walls were covered with colorful posters; original playbills; handwritten and typed personal letters; contracts; cartoons; photographs; stage scripts; movie scenarios; souvenirs from his performances abroad; and much much more. At one end of the room gales of laughter stemmed from visitors watching his films. The show embodied a treasure trove of memorabilia recently donated by the Fields family so that the public might encounter the astonishing career of an eminent comedian, who brought so much hilarity to people around the world. As if he was a skeleton in a closet, the Fields Papers were once pad- locked in the basement of his widow’s home. Fields’s five grandchildren were not even allowed to see what was hidden behind a bolted door. They believed that the “Bogeyman” lived in the basement. After Fields’s widow died, the contents were placed in storage. The curse of silence about the comedian was finally broken by his grandson, Ronald J. Fields, who gained access and released his findings in his groundbreaking bookW. C. Fields By Himself (1973). His complete papers remained unavailable for researchers until the family gifted them to the Academy.

vii viii Introduction

After the show, I was granted permission to research the material with the goal of perhaps writing his life story. After perusing the multi-page inventory and the material for a few months, I became convinced that the seventy-one boxes in the Fields Papers are possibly the most voluminous and valuable collection of an American performer’s career. The collection is a gold mine. It begins with his date book listing his first stage appear- ances in 1898 and ends with papers about his lengthy confrontational probate trial lasting until the mid-1950s. A journey through Fields’ career from 1898 to 1946 is an incredible ride that yields significant information about his appearances in practi- cally every performance art during the first half of the twentieth century: club shows; burlesque; medicine, museum, and minstrel shows; American ; British music halls; leading European variety theaters; three Broadway revues, including performances in six annual Ziegfeld Follies; a star in the long-running Broadway show Poppy; twelve silent movies; thirty-­ two sound shorts and features; guest spots on radio comedy programs; and a recording of the artist six months before his death. Responsible for this amazing body of work primarily is that comedy came naturally to Fields—it was in his DNA. As I worked my way through the research, a number of revelations stood out. Fields’s long stage career from 1898 to 1930 had a major influ- ence on his comedy. While a performer in burlesque in 1899 he made a monumental decision—to use juggling as a means to furnish comedy in his act. In the Ziegfeld Follies he next became a character comedian playing roles that became the quintessence of his art. While in Ziegfeld’s spectacular revue he created two comic char- acterizations: the good-natured charlatan and besieged husband; two impersonations that reappear in his films. When he went to Hollywood permanently in 1930 to make films he took with him not only his stage scenarios but the techniques he had learned in the theater. He repeated his vaudeville acts juggling balls, manipulating cigar boxes, and pool tricks for the screen Pool Sharks (1915). His 1918 Follies’ sketch as a frustrated bun- gling golfer is reused in The Golf Specialist (1930). Three of his four shorts for Mack Sennett stem from his stage sketches. Fields’s hilarious “Back Porch” scene from the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies is repeated in the silent picture It’s the Old Army Game (1926) and It’s a Gift (1934). Three of his last movies can even be traced back to his stage career. Fields pos- sessed the talent to make these sketches appear pristine and side-­splitting on the screen. Introduction ix

Since Fields’s vaudeville juggling act was mostly silent, he turned to pantomime to amuse his audience. He never trained as a pantomimic art- ist; it happened instinctively. Fields started intentionally missing a trick, grimaces, feigns embarrassment, and then completes the stunt, which pro- vokes theatergoers to laugh heartedly. Building on his talent, he showed various emotions by using different body movements, diverse facial expressions and gestures, and unique mimicry. Fields honed his flair for pantomime on the Broadway stage and used this skill in his silent motion pictures, which require feelings and dialogue to be expressed by an actor’s movements. Although his inimitable voice usurps the screen in his talkies, Fields still uses pantomime to demonstrate his emotions. Fields’s massive correspondence sheds light on new information about his life off stage. The letters help to unravel many legends about him and to discover the truth behind many fabrications, beginning with the come- dian’s own hyperbolic tales about his personal life. Adding to the conun- drum are the numerous trumped-up stories written by studio publicists and fan magazine writers who were anxious to create an exciting rags-­ to-­riches tale about a runaway poverty-stricken lad who climbed to fame. Thanks to the Fields Papers numerous questions about Fields’s life can be answered. His letters reveal that his comic persona and private life were strongly intertwined. The correspondence provides insights into his tragic relation- ships with his wife and son; affairs with other women; clashes with his father; battles with censors; confrontations with stage producers and film moguls; his complex dual personality; prejudices; and frustrations, among others. Because Fields’s wife refused to divorce him the correspondence between the two ranges from the practical (continual complaints that the money he sends was meager) to the vitriolic (wild accusations about each other). His wife controls their son and feeds him unflattering stories about his father. Fields and his son consequently remain estranged for years. The letters uncover a life full of despair. His tyrannical father became a demon who haunted him all his life. Fields’s occasional lengthy affairs with other women fell apart, leaving him lonely until he found another companion, who eventually left. He paid the price for treading on a con- tinual precarious path as an entertainer. His roller coaster showbiz career alternated from the depths of joblessness accompanied by depression to the pinnacle of fame bursting with exhilaration. Fields recognized that pain was the springboard for his comedy. These excruciating relationships impacted his persona on stage and screen; x INTRODUCTION

­propelled him, for instance, to impersonate the beleaguered husband tormented by a despotic wife and sassy son. His role as a confidence man operating shell games, pitching quack medicine, pool hustler, and card shark stems from the crookedness he experienced as a youngster, as a showman, and from his fellow beings. Fields’s personal life and pub- lic persona coalesced to create a famous stinging American iconoclast, who through satire and parody lashed out at sacrosanct institutions and ­society’s dishonesty. The Fields Papers unleashed the need for a three-part sequential series that re-evaluates the evolution of his comedic art and its relationship to his personal life. The first book,W.C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian, discusses his early life and stage career until 1915. This second volume, W.C. Fields from the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway Stage to the Screen: Becoming a Character Comedian, dramatizes a momentous turning point in Fields’s career. During his appearances in six Follies and two other Broadway shows from 1915 to 1925 he moved from being typecast as a vaudeville comic juggler to a character comedian performing a variety of roles. While in the famous revue he underwent a burst of creativity writing sketches that depict dysfunctional families (as his own) and played a milquetoast husband berated by a bossy wife. Between Follies’ engagements Fields became a star in the Broadway play Poppy (1923–24), impersonating Eustace McGargle, a kindhearted con man. McGargle is the first of many memorable mountebanks that he portrayed on the screen. In his final Follies in 1925, Bill magnified his role as a beleaguered husband in hilarious scenes that were repeated in two films. By the end of his appearances before the footlights in 1925, Fields has created his two most durable characters—an endearing con artist and harassed husband—an achievement that would soon bring him fame as a top film comedian. The final part in the series highlights his stage, screen, and radio suc- cesses after the Follies, his satirical iconoclasm, and his Phoenix-like rise to become an American cultural icon. The three books, in total, enliven the extraordinary saga of a virtuoso comedian, often called a comic genius, legendary iconoclast, and “Great Man,” who brought so much laughter to millions while enduring so much anguish. Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to the grandchildren of W.C. Fields: Dr Harriet A. Fields; Ronald J. Fields; William C. Fields, III; and Allen Fields. They all graciously granted me full support and co-­ operation to write about their grandfather and consented to interviews, which yielded significant information and insights. During a visit to the to research Fields’s copyrighted stage sketches, I learned that Harriet Fields lived in Washington, DC. Over lunch we had an informative conversation about her grandfather during which she encouraged my project and offered to assist me. From that time to the present, her help has proved to be invaluable. I would also like to acknowl- edge grandson Everett Fields for his insights pertaining to the story of his grandfather. The family’s goal is to ensure that current generations and generations to come know the joy of their grandfather’s art through humor, and most important, to make his work accessible to the world community. Toward that end, the family has given the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Fields’s papers, memo- rabilia, and artifacts—a voluminous treasure trove that covers the humor- ist’s entire life and career from beginning to end. Since Fields appeared in nearly every form of popular entertainment during the first half of the twentieth century—from burlesque to the talkies—the papers provide a wealth of information for researchers in the performing arts. Its vast scope (correspondence; writings; illustrations; scripts; movie production files; stage files; radio files; subject files; scrapbooks; contracts; financial papers;

xi xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS estate and probate research files, etc.) makes it possibly the nation’s richest collection of a performing artist. Many thanks are extended to the diligent archivists in the Department of Special Collections at the Margaret Herrick Library for their aid in helping me research the Fields Papers: Barbara Hall, Research Archivist, and Howard Prouty, Acquisitions Archivist. Faye Thompson, Photograph Department Coordinator, helped me select the many photographs in the Fields collection and order digital copies. The staff behind the desk was extremely efficient in paging the material, making items available every day, and photocopying what I needed. Together they made my innumer- able visits to the library a very pleasant experience. The Fields family chose a superb place to work and a wonderful home for their grandfather’s valu- able collection. I might still be wading through the Fields Papers if it was not for my research assistant, Dr Emily Carmen. I cannot thank her enough for her diligent work. She shared in the research at the library, typed docu- ments unavailable for photocopying, and did numerous transcriptions. A film scholar, her knowledge of cinema history aided me in understand- ing Fields’s movie career. Individuals at libraries also deserve my grati- tude for their help. Uppermost is the help of Dr Barbara Bair, Historian, Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. She helped guide me through the collections that deal with W.C. Fields, especially the large number of copyrighted stage sketches he deposited at the library. She also helped trace copyright information about Alfred Cheney Johnston’s pho- tograph of Florenz Ziegfeld. I wish to also thank Nils Hanson, author of , for giving me copies of programs and photographs from the Follies. My thanks are also extended to the staff of numerous other libraries who were very helpful: Ned Comstock, Cinematic Art Library, University of Southern California, who helped guide me through their various col- lections and oversaw the photocopying of important material; Geraldine Duclow, archivist, Free Library of Philadelphia; staff, Harvard Theatre Collection; Margaret Stevens-Garmon, Theatre Collections Archivist, Museum of the City of New York; Rick Watson, Research Associate, Performing Arts Collection, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; and K. Kevyne Baar, Project Archivist, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University for providing me with Fields’s involvement with Actors’ Equity strikes. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii

I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge the authors of several books on Fields. Their findings and writings were extremely helpful to me as guideposts to Fields’s story. Uppermost are the two books by his grandson, Ronald J. Fields, W.C. Fields by Himself (1973) and W.C. Fields: A Life on Film (1984). The former is an excellent groundbreaking book comprising considerable letters and documents about his grandfather, which proved indispensable for my study. The latter book on his grand- father’s films contains a mine of information about Fields’s movie career. I very much appreciate his kindness in granting me permission to quote from the two books. Five other books were valuable to my research. W.C. Fields: A Bio-­ Bibliography and Groucho and W.C. Fields: Huckster Comedians by Wes D. Gehring provide gems of information and insights into his subject’s life and comedy. Gehring has also written about Fields’s valuable Follies’ scripts, which the comedian deposited at the Library of Congress. They proved crucial to understanding the evolution of Fields’s comedy in the Follies. David T. Rock’s W.C. Fields–An Annotated Guide is also valuable for its list of chronology; bibliography; filmography; cartoons; recordings; and miscellaneous subjects. Two other books W.C. Fields: A Biography by James Curtis and Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W.C. Fields by Simon Louvish, have uncovered a wealth of new infor- mation about their subject. They especially deserve credit for disproving many legends about Fields. Both books were helpful to my study, espe- cially for cutting through the fog of fabrications about the comedian. In regard to the study of Ziegfeld the following books were helpful: a large volume, The Ziegfeld Touch, by Richard and Paulette Ziegfeld, pres- ents the most complete story of the impresario and his productions. Two recent books commemorate Ziegfeld’s prominent role in American the- atre: Ethan Mordden’s Ziegfeld: The Man Who Invented Show Business and Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson, Ziegfeld and His Follies: A Biography of Broadway’s Greatest Producer. Also helpful were important specialized studies of the Follies: Linda Mizejewski’s Ziegfeld Girl and Susan Glenn’s Female Spectacle delve into the role of women in the revue. A much-­ needed book on the history of songs in the Follies is by Ann Ommen van der Merwe. The preparation and production of this book included several indi- viduals, who I especially wish to thank. First, I very much appreci- ate the strong support of Don B. Wilmeth, editor, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, who granted me the opportunity again xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS to ­contribute to his outstanding series. Named Asa Messer Emeritus Professor of Theatre and English, Brown University, Don has contrib- uted more than 60 works in theater and performance history, including recently co-editing The Group Theatre (2013). He was awarded the 2012 Theatre History Preservation Award from the Theatre Museum for his remarkable achievements. I wish very much to thank him for recognizing the important need for a study about the life and career of W.C. Fields. Crucial to the publication of W.C. Fields at the Follies were the dili- gent editors at Palgrave McMillan in charge of Studies in Theatre and Performance History. Jenny McCall, Editorial Director, Humanities & Publisher, Theatre & Performance, has been wonderful to work with, extremely helpful in answering my queries, and finding solutions to the many problems I encountered. April James, her assistant editor, answered my queries quickly and helped me complete the numerous documents necessary for the book’s publication. I wish to extend my thanks to both for their conscientious assistance. My thanks also to Rachel Nishan, my indexer at Twin Oaks Indexing, for her excellent work. Symbols and Abbreviations

Frequently Cited Names and Sources

WCF William Claude Fields WCFALOF Ronald J. Fields, W. C. Fields: A Life on Film (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984). WCFB W. C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography, commentary by Ronald J. Fields (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-­Hall, 1973). WCFP W. C. Fields Papers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Department of Special Collections, Beverly Hills, CA.

Manuscript Collections and Archive Symbols

AEPTL Actors’ Equity Files, Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, New York, NY. AMPAS Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Department of Special Collections, Beverly Hills, CA. CFOHCU Center for Oral History, Butler Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

xv xvi SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

HTC Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. MMIOHP Museum of the Moving Image Oral History Program, Astoria, Queens, New York, NY MPD-LOC Motion Picture Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC MSD-LOC Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC NYPAL New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Billy Rose Theatre Collection & Robinson-Locke Collection, Lincoln Center, New York, NY PFL-TC Philadelphia Free Library Theater Collection, Philadelphia, PA.

Newspapers and Magazines

CEP Chicago Evening Post CHE Chicago Evening Examiner LADN Los Angeles Daily News LAE Los Angeles Examiner LAT Los Angeles Times MPW Motion Picture World NYEJ New York Evening Journal NYEP New York Evening Post NYEW New York Evening World NYH New York Herald NYHT New York Herald Tribune NYMT New York Morning Telegraph NYSN New York Sunday News NYST New York Sunday Telegraph NYT New York Times NYTEL New York Telegram NYWT New York World Telegram SEP Saturday Evening Post Contents

Part I 1915: A Momentous Year 1

1 Confronting Florenz Ziegfeld 3

2 Pool Sharks and His Lordship’s Dilemma 21

Part II The Beleaguered Sportsman 37

3 Spoofing Croquet 39

4 Lampooning Tennis 51

5 The Frustrated Duffer 63

Part III Entr’actes 77

6 The Three Musketeers 79

7 Bessie and Hattie 93

xvii xviii Contents

8 Fields’s Well Never Went Dry 105

9 From the Midnight Frolic to the Front Lines 115

Part IV Lampooning the Dysfunctional Family 125

10 The Flivertons 127

11 The Breakup with Ziegfeld 139

Part V Broadway Stardom 153

12 Oh, What a Scandal! 155

13 “Confidence Man of the Ages” 167

14 Two Legendary Iconoclasts Converge 189

15 The Comic Supplement 203

16 A Follies Farewell 223

Epilogue: Fields Encounters D.W. Griffith 239

Appendix: The Ziegfeld Mystique 245

Index 249 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Impresario Extraordinaire, 1927 portrait by Follies’ photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston (Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., LC-USZ62-55581) 6 Fig. 1.2 Illustration drawn by Fields for the Philadelphia Press depicting Williams and other performers during the 1915 Follies’ road tour, March 12, 1916 (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 16 Fig. 2.1 Ad for Pool Sharks (1915). Competing against Bud Ross in a pool game for the love of a girl in Fields’s first commercial film, a knockabout-slapstick silent short at odds with the comedian’s classic style (Author’s collection) 27 Fig. 3.1 Dressed in his iconic showman’s attire as Eustace P. McGargle in Poppy (1936), Fields shows off his croquet skill on the lawn at Countess De Puizzi’s (Catherine Doucet) house while Egmont (Bill Wolfe) is about to throw a rock at him (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 48 Fig. 5.1 Venerating Lillian Loraine in “Any Old Time at All.” 1918 Follies. Left to right: Fields, Rogers, Lorraine, Cantor, and Kelly (Courtesy, Nils Hanson & W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 67 Fig. 5.2 “An Episode on the Links.” 1918 Follies. On the far left unidentified performer, followed by Harry Kelly as the caddy, Fields teaching Allyn King golf, and far right with a rifle is (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 72

xix xx List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Bessie Poole, Fields’s amour, 1916–23 (Author’s collection) 95 Fig. 7.2 Hattie Fields holding infant Claude, , ca. November 1904 (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 100 Fig. 10.1 “The Family Ford” scene, 1920 Ziegfeld Follies. Sitting on the ground, left to right, as Mrs. Fliverton, Fields as Mr. Fliverton, and Ray Dooley as Baby Rose (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 132 Fig. 13.1 Fields playing McGargle’s Kadula-Kadula as Madge Kennedy watches, Poppy 1923–24 (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 182 Fig. 14.1 H.L. Mencken at his desk in Baltimore (©Enoch Pratt Free Library. Maryland’s State Library Resource Center. All rights reserved) 194 Fig. 15.1 W. C. Fields as Pa trying to take care of baby Gertie (Rae Dooley) in the “Sleeping Porch” (“Back Porch”) scene in The Comic Supplement or 1925 Follies (Courtesy, W. C. Fields Productions Inc., www.wcfields.com) 211 Fig. 16.1 Marquee, , 1925 Follies. Starring W.C. Fields and (Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Tom B’hend and Preston Kaufmann Collection) 224 Fig. 16.2 “The Great Glorifier” with the Ziegfeld Girls at his last Follies in 1931. He died a year later (©Bettman/Corbis) 233 Fig. E.1 W. C. Fields’s signature (Courtesy W. C. Fields Productions, Inc., www.wcfields.com) 243 Prologue: Becoming a Character Comedian

Gene Buck, Florenz Ziegfeld’s ace talent scout, sat watching W.C. Fields’s performance on the opening night of the musical Watch Your Step. Known for his sharp eye for spotting exceptional up-and-coming entertainers, he had heard rumors that Fields’s role might be cut. Buck and Sime Silverman, Variety’s founder, later ate in a restaurant after the show and spotted the comedian eating alone. A Fields aficionado, Broadway Sime convinced Buck that Fields was a rising star. Ziegfeld’s right-hand-man fired off a quick note to Fields: “See me in New York if anything goes wrong.”1 Fields soon visited Buck’s office in Times Square where he encountered one of Broadway’s most respected and influential show business figures. A multi-talented Renaissance man, Buck worked as a prolific lyricist, sketch writer, producer, director, and illustrator of sheet music covers. Most important for Fields was that Ziegfeld valued Buck’s opinion. Bill picked out a spiffy suit, parted his slicked down hair in the middle, and wore a fake mustache attached by a wire clip to his nose. “The mustache, I wear,” he told an interviewer, “isn’t even supposed to look as if it belonged to me. It is a black one and falls off. It makes people laugh.”2 As he straightened his jiggling mustache back into place, he walked nervously into Buck’s office. Sitting behind the desk was an amiable mild-­ mannered showman, who immediately made Fields feel at home. Bill was still seething about being terminated after the first night in Watch Your Step, which had become a Broadway hit. “Did you see me in that turkey?” he asked.3 Other principals, who feared Fields might upstage them, forced the producer to fire him. After conversing for a time, Buck told Fields that he would ask Ziegfeld to engage him for the Follies, considered the most

xxi xxii Prologue: Becoming a Character Comedian dazzling revue on Broadway. Buck warned Fields about Ziegfeld’s belief that beautiful showgirls were the key to the Follies’ success. The impresario viewed comedians as fillers between acts celebrating the titillating Ziegfeld Girls. As he left, Buck cautioned him not to be overly confident. After much persuasion by Buck, Ziegfeld decided to give Fields a chance. Bill was in Duluth when the local newspaper reported the news: “W. C. Fields, The Silent Humorist, now playing at the Orpheum will close his vaudeville work after next week and it will be the last vaudeville audiences will see of him for some time as he will go immediately to New York to begin rehearsals for the new Ziegfeld Follies, which will open in New York, June 1.”4 Fields was ecstatic when he received the final confirmation: “Kindly report, New Amsterdam Theatre, stage entrance, Ten AM Wednesday, the 19th for rehearsals, Follies of 1915.”5 Fields eagerly jumped at the chance to join the Follies. He viewed Ziegfeld’s popular revue as an outstanding oppor- tunity to end the grind of vaudeville with its long road trips, to enlarge his repertoire as a comedian, and to write his own sketches. A newspaper’s pre- diction that his performance in Duluth “will be the last vaudeville audiences will see of him for some time” proved true. Except for sporadic presenta- tions of his Follies sketches, his vaudeville appearances became infrequent. During his six appearances in the Follies between 1915 and 1925 he morphed from being a silent comic juggler into a character comedian play- ing a variety of roles. He reworked his Follies routines to work in his films, which later brought him fame. But in 1915 Fields had no idea that he would become a star in the Ziegfeld Follies. The insecurity that plagued him during his career rose up with a vengeance. From the time he started entertaining as a tramp juggler in Philadelphia in 1898, he had experi- enced the hazards of show business. The fear of being a flop and walking the streets looking for a job constantly haunted him. When Fields entered the stage door of the New Amsterdam Theatre for the first time, he suddenly felt different. He sensed that he was about to com- mence a critical turning point in his career. Bill’s prophecy proved precise.

Notes 1. “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker, January 25, 1947, clipping, WCF file, NYPAL. 2. Sally Benson, “It Is Much Easier to be Funny Without Saying Anything,” NYST. January 13, 1924. 3. “Talk of the Town.” 4. Duluth Herald, April 22, 1915, WCF file, NYPAL. 5. Ziegfeld correspondence, box 19, WCFP. PART I

1915: A Momentous Year CHAPTER 1

Confronting Florenz Ziegfeld

A carpet of fresh grass, the color of light green jade, lay over Central Park on the bright spring morning of May 19, 1915. Further downtown on Broadway near Times Square the boulevard was relatively quiet com- pared to its evening explosion of theatergoers arriving at showplaces under brightly lit marquees. After completing his last and lengthy world tour in 1913–14, Fields was stunned by the expansion of Times Square, hailed as the “crossroads of the world.” The number of magnificent theaters, lavish restaurants, and elegant hotels had multiplied. The sparking illumination of countless electric lights cast a glittering glow, a radiance hailed as the Great White Way. The area pulsated with energy, excitement, and artistic power unleashing distinct stage productions, a cornucopia of drama, com- edy, musicals, cabaret, variety, revues, and numerous others attractions. At ten o’clock Fields entered through the stage door of the 1800-­ seat New Amsterdam Theatre to start a new adventure at the home of the Ziegfeld Follies—considered the most spectacular revue on the Great White Way. After arriving he went up a few steps to a long and narrow low-ceiling corridor that led to the stage where he would entertain thou- sands and become a star comedian. The auspicious day inaugurated Fields’s lengthy association with Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., impresario extraordinaire of his famous Follies. Fields

© The Author(s) 2016 3 A.F. Wertheim, W.C. Fields from the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway Stage to the Screen, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-94986-1_1 4 A.F. WERTHEIM performed in six annual productions between 1915 and 1925 and also made numerous appearances in shows at the Midnight Frolic, the swanky late-night supper club on the theater’s roof. At age thirty-five Bill looked fit and trim, his hair still whitish blond, despite his fifteen-year exhausting grind on the vaudeville circuits across the USA and around the world from 1900 to 1915. During these years Fields evolved from a tramp juggler to a silent humorist who used his pan- tomime skill to generate laughter. Instead of the weekly grind of traveling from one city after another, the Follies also offered Bill an opportunity to stay in New York for several months before the show went on the road. Fields’s performances in the Follies fueled an extraordinary burst of creativity, spawning one of the most fertile periods in his career. On it stages Fields discovered a new comedic voice though the characters he created in his sketches. The Follies gave him the opportunity to perform diverse speaking parts, including dancing and singing. Most importantly, the revue inspired him to write his own sketches—routines that he later transferred to the screen. By providing the building blocks to become a renowned film comedian, his years at theFollies energized a turning point in his career. Fields knew that he was about to encounter Broadway’s most powerful producer, who was already celebrated in mid-career for staging dazzling revues. Many epithets have described Ziegfeld’s significance in American popular theater from “The Great Glorifier” (1934) to the “The Man Who Invented Show Business” (2008).1 Born in 1867, Florenz Ziegfeld was raised by a well-respected upper middle-class family in Chicago. His father, a German immigrant, operated the Chicago Musical College, a position that made him a significant figure in the Windy City’s cultural life. Uninterested in high culture, the young Ziegfeld preferred popular entertainment, a craze that was sweeping the nation in the late-nineteenth century. He first promoted the appearances of the muscular strongman Eugene Sandow who became famous for his incredible weightlifting feats in a fig leaf costume that attracted society ladies to go backstage to feel his muscles. While scouting for talent in Europe in 1896, Ziegfeld met the Polish-­ French actress, Anna Held, a vivacious singer with long auburn hair, glowing brown eyes, and an eye-catching hour-glass figure with an eighteen-inch waist. As her manager and lover, Ziegfeld starred her in many Broadway musicals. They shared a common-law marriage by living together for sixteen years. The pair made many trips to Europe where Held exposed Ziegfeld to French culture and encouraged him to create CONFRONTING FLORENZ ZIEGFELD 5 a revue in the USA similar to the Parisian Folies Bergère. The firstFollies premiered in 1907 at the Jardin de Paris night club on the roof garden of the New York Theatre. After Ziegfeld separated from Held, he met the talented charming stage and screen star at a party in 1913. A year later he married Burke but it was a precarious union. Known as a flirtatious lothario, the producer indulged in extramarital affairs with several Ziegfeld girls, includ- ing a passionate romance with the Follies’ star Lillian Loraine. Ziegfeld’s wife and friends called him Flo, showgirls addressed him politely as Mr Ziegfeld, and performers nicknamed him Ziggy. Burke described the handsome impresario as “slim and tall and immac- ulate in full evening dress. He had a Mephistophelean look, his eyebrows and eyelids lifting, curved upward in the middle.” Flo’s dark brown hair was parted in the middle and at the end of his “long and slender and graceful” hands were “well-kept nails.” Tall and athletic, his commanding presence dominated a room. When the unpredictable Ziegfeld was mel- low, Burke experienced a “small, tired voice” but when angry he yelled in a “large resonant voice,” which caused the recipient to retreat to the nearest exit. As an impeccable dresser, Flo owned a large wardrobe with tailored suits and handmade shoes. He displayed an extravagant life style when traveling, three limousines, a private railroad car, and a luxurious shipboard suite. He and his wife possessed several properties, including Burkeley Crest, a massive twenty-four acre estate at Hastings-on-Hudson about twenty miles north of Broadway. Their country home comprised a huge gabled mansion, bountiful gardens, a menagerie Japanese, tea houses, horse stables, and a plethora of other attractions. They also owned a Florida winter retreat in Palm Beach and a hideaway camp for hunting and fishing north of Montreal. All the theater moguls relished luxury but none outdid Ziegfeld in conspicuous consumption (Fig. 1.1).2 Considered the penultimate impresario, Ziegfeld created the era’s most lavish revue—a smorgasbord of about twenty different scenes divided into two acts. The revue was a unique form of popular entertainment on Broadway from 1894 to 1939, but its heyday was from 1915 to 1925—a period that corresponded to Fields’s appearances. Unlike vaudeville’s string of specialty acts, the revue was shaped around a large cast who appeared intermittently during the performance in distinct acts. Sometimes there was a theme or topic but it often got lost amidst all the spectacular rou- tines. A revue playbill featured stunning show girls, comedians, singers, dancers, and music by rising talented composers such as , 6 A.F. WERTHEIM

Fig. 1.1 Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., Impresario Extraordinaire, 1927 portrait by Follies’ photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston (Courtesy of the Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., LC-USZ62-55581)

George Gershwin, and . Adding to Ziegfeld’s extravagan- zas were the innovative precision and processional dancing numbers by the innovative choreographer Ned Wayburn. Breathtaking eclectic sets bathed in rich dazzling colors were designed by the avant-garde Viennese designer Joseph Urban. Fields soon discovered that the highest priority for Ziegfeld was showcasing his gorgeous Ziegfeld Girls, who stunned the audience with their sensuality, beauty, and daring outfits. The Follies’ mantra heralded “Glorifying the American Girl.” Long-legged showgirls strutted down a staircase or across the stage doing the Ziegfeld Walk, a gait accenting straight back, curved pelvis, lifted shoulders, and jutting breasts. The showgirls were attired in eye-catching costumes designed by Lucile (Lady Duff-Gordon), a British couturier whose fashions were the rage among Manhattan’s high society. They appeared in gowns of flowing chiffon, silk, and satin, sometimes rapped in mink and chinchilla, and at other times dressed in bathing suits, short skirts and tights, and risqué costumes with plunging necklines. Tabloids sensationalized reports about the Ziegfeld Girls having affairs with “stage-door Johnnies” or marrying “sugar daddies.” Most had unhappy brief marriages; some became mistresses such as Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst’s amour; and others graduated to movie fame (Davies, Marilynn Miller, and , among them). By CONFRONTING FLORENZ ZIEGFELD 7

­contrast, many met tragic endings—suicides; alcoholic addiction; multiple divorces ending in abject poverty; and as a finale disappearing into obscu- rity living lonely lives in old-age actors’ homes. Olive Thomas, one of Ziegfeld’s mistresses, left the Follies for a lucrative film career and married , Mary’s brother. She died at age twenty-two from mistak- enly taking poisonous tablets instead of sleeping pills. Ziegfeld, an incorrigible lothario, bedded a flock of them and was spot- ted one day by an unexpected intruder having intercourse on top of his desk. He kept his mistress, Lillian Loraine, in an apartment in the Hotel Ansonia located one floor below the residence he shared with Anna Held. The Great Glorifier of American Beauty ironically touted his alluring women as the centerpiece of his Follies while simultaneously treating them as property. The Ziegfeld Girl needed to meet several standards. “Beauty, of course, is the most important requirement and the paramount asset of the appli- cant,” Ziegfeld wrote. “When I say that, I mean beauty of face, form, charm, and manner, personal magnetism, individuality, grace and pose. These are details that must be settled before the applicant has demon- strated her ability either to sing or dance.”3 According to Ziegfeld, the ideal figure met the measurements of a 36-inch bust, 26-inch waist, and 38-inch hips. He obsessed about the shape of their ankles, the first feature the audience saw when the curtain rose. They were selected from hun- dreds of white-only applicants, initially appraised by trustworthy assistants who whittled the number down so that Ziggy could make the final selec- tion during auditions. A refined flesh peddler, he transformed the look of the showgirl from the bulky female body found in raunchy burlesque and beer halls to a slimmer, taller, younger, and sexier paradigm of feminine beauty. Allyn King, a stunning singer and dancer, illustrates how difficult it was to meet these standards. Her career included five seasons as a principal with the Follies followed by appearances in Broadway shows. During this time she struggled with a weight problem due to the fact that producers demanded that she remain slim. Her contract stipulated that she must not “increase in weight more than sixteen pounds or decrease in weight more than ten pounds.” Her twenty-six inch waist could not “vary more than one-half inch.” If so, the producer could cancel her contract after one week’s notice.4 When she failed to meet her contract requirements due to her weight problem, her show business career ended. Bouts of depression caused her to jump to death from a five-story apartment building.