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W.C. Fields from sound film and radio comedy to stardom : becoming a cultural icon /

W.C. Fields is known as a virtuoso comedian and legendary iconoclast who gave the gift of laughter to multitudes. As the first author to use the newly-opened Fields Papers at the Academy library, Arthur Frank Wertheim illuminates the comedian's arduous ascent to stardom during Hollywood's...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wertheim, Arthur Frank, 1935- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: London, United Kingdom : Palgrave Macmillan, [2018]
Series:Palgrave studies in theatre and performance history.
Subjects:
Fields, W. C. > (William Claude), > 1880-1946.
Actors > United States > Biography.
Comedians > United States > Biography.
Actors.
Comedians.
United States.
Biography.
Table of Contents:
  • Welcome back to Hollywood
  • The Sennett quartet
  • "The world's biggest entertainment joy ride"
  • Three of a kind
  • From silent to sound
  • Return to the sawdust trail
  • The mail-order groom
  • Magnum Opus.1
  • A perfect mixture of the part and the actor
  • Mississippi River card shark
  • All in the family
  • A vocal McGargle emerges
  • The heart is a lonely hunter
  • Battling sickness
  • Radio saved my life!
  • The big broadcast of 1938
  • The paramount purge
  • Battling universal
  • Combustible co-stars
  • Magnum Opus.2
  • The great man
  • Swan songs
  • Doomsday at Bundy Drive
  • Scenes before the final exit
  • The man in the bright nightgown cometh
  • Epilogue : becoming a cultural icon.