I recently met Dr. Harriet A. Fields, a health-care advocate whose celebrated grandfather W.C. Fields is the subject of a 28-film retrospective opening Friday at Film Forum — as well as taking a fresh look at a couple of films in the series.
Dr. Fields and her brother Ronald (author of “W.C. Fields by Himself’’ and “W.C. Fields on Film’’) will be appearing before tonight’s 7:40 p.m. showing of the Great Man’s masterpiece “It’s a Gift’’ (1934) which is part of a bill that includes my favorite Fields film, “The Man on the Flying Trapeze’’’ (1935) and an uncensored print of the classic 1932 short “The Dentist.’’
The Fields grandchildren have been aggressively promoting W.C. Fields’ legacy, donating his extensive collection of papers, photos, posters and other memorabilia to the Motion Picture Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library. They’ve supported a traveling exhibition that appeared last year at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, and also promote his work at wcfields.com
Fields may have cultivated an image of hating children during his lifetime, but “he took his first born grandchild, W.C. Fields III, home from the hospital,’’ says Harriet Fields. “Baby LeRoy and other child actors he worked with say he was the nicest, sweetest man.’’
W.C. Fields, who died in 1946, enjoyed a great resurgence of popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s when young people embraced his anti-authoritarian stance.
“Every society needs somebody to question the people in charge,’’ says Harriet Fields, who as a nurse-educator has helped expose conditions in nursing homes. “We really need people to speak up.’’
“W.C. Fields is relevant and alive today because he comes from the heart,’’ says his granddaughter. “His films are shown to children dying of cancer.”
Neither she nor her three brothers went into show business, but Allen Field’s son Austin – W.C. Fields’ great-grandson – is a juggler and magician.
I hadn’t watched a couple of Fields features showing at Film Forum in many years. Neither of them is available on DVD in this country, nor are three surviving Paramount silents in the series (“So’s Your Old Man,’’ “Running Wild’’ and “It’s the Old Army Game’’) that I have never seen.
Fields is billed second, after Jack Oakie, in his second talkie feature, the surrealist political comedy “Million Dollar Legs’’ (1932), showing April 29 and directed by Eddie Cline, who later helmed the Fields masterpiece “The Bank Dick.’’
Fields plays the unnamed president of the mythical kingdom of Klopstokia, whose daughter (Susan Fleming, who married Harpo Marx) is being wooed by Oakie’s visiting American brush salesman. Oakie brings them and other Klopstokians (including Andy Clyde) to Los Angeles to compete in the Olympics.
Hugh Herbert plays Klopstokia’s secretary of the treasury, who is plotting with the other cabinet ministers to overthrow the president with the help of the local seductress Mata Machree (Polish actress Lyda Roberti). Full of absurdist humor, this very funny pre-code comedy is very much of a piece with a pair of 1933 political satires, “Diplomanics’’ (Joseph L. Mankiewicz of “All About Eve’’ fame is a credited writer on both) and “Duck Soup.’’
“Tillie and Gus’’ (1933), the sole directorial effort of writer Francis Martin (“International House’’) is much funnier than I remembered. This 58-minute comedy re-teamed Fields with the British actress Allison Skipworth, with whom he memorably appeared in a segment of “If I Had a Million’’ (1932); Fields refused to work with her again after “Six of A Kind’’ (1934).
Fields is at his most warmly sympathetic as a con man who teams up with ex-wife Skipworth to help their niece (Jacqueline Wells, later known as Julie Bishop) and her family from losing a ferry boat she’s inherited.
The funniest sequence has Fields mixing paint according to directions from a radio show; only the couple’s child – Baby LeRoy, Fields’ later nemesis in “It’s A Gift’’ – changes the channel to an exercise program.
As it happens, I interviewed Clifford Jones (aka Philip Trent), the actor who played LeRoy’s father, back in 1981.
“The baby hated Fields and he couldn’t stand him,’’ he recalled. “Baby would take one look at Fields’ bulbous beak and start screaming. Fields would yell for me, since I was a new father and got along with the baby.’’
