It’s a Gift: W.C. Fields in the Movies

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Cinema Series It’s a Gift: W.C. Fields in the Movies, taking place every Tuesday through July 6, is revelatory and richly rewarding. Watching Fields is always richly rewarding, just as watching any great physical comic, from classics like Chaplin, Keaton and The Marx Brothers to modern comedians Jim Carrey and Jack Black. But the emphasis on Fields’ early silent work, with occasional live piano accompaniment by Ben Model (www.silentfilmmusic.com) is enlightening for shining a light on Fields’ entrance into film in 1915 at the considerably advanced age of 35, having already made a name for himself as a vaudeville and stage star. The more well-known Fields of later films such as The Dentist (1932), My Little Chickadee (1940) and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941) was, admittedly, often caustic and not exactly huggable and lovable. But in these early silent films, we see a more tender Fields, the camera’s light freshly hitting the twinkle in his mischievous eye.

There was a nice New York feel to the screening of So’s Your Old Man (1926) on a recent Tuesday, the film having been shot in New York, as many of them were (Queens, Hicksville, Brooklyn) and an audience member sharing that copies of the out-of print book W.C. Fields: A Life on Film written by Fields’ grandson Ronald Fields are available at the Strand. Fields’ granddaughter, Harriet Fields, in attendance to introduce the screening and take questions, was pleased to hear that as she rather shamelessly (and why not?) hawked Fields and the website www.wcfields.com. Of course, she was preaching to the converted , but here’s hoping Fields’ work will find new audiences on DVD. It is somewhat depressing to consider, though, is he too minor to survive? And what about Keaton? Chaplin as icon is assured his prominent place, but what of the Marx Brothers? Will they become like the Ritz Brothers? There is no substitute for seeing a film like So’s Your Old Man (or the week before Sally of the Sawdust starring Carol Dempster, a sweetie whose eyes could break your heart) with a live audience laughing up at the screen, sharing a life-affirming if fleeting bond. One has to wonder if there will exist such an audience fifty years from now, a hundred years from now. Mike Fishman.

www.wcfields.com
www.nypl.org/locations/lpa