W.C. FIELDS – Global Stage to Silent and Talking Films and Radio
We cannot separate W.C. Fields silent films from the totality of his career. Achieving great success on the stage in nearly every continent, combining stage and silent films in New York, then to Hollywood in talking films.
W.C. Fields’ father, James Dukenfield emigrated as a teenager with his four brothers and father, from Sheffield, England to Philadelphia – the rest as we say is history.
W.C. Fields born January 29, 1880, the first of five children of James and Kate Felton Dukenfield, whose ancestors came from England a century earlier, developed a facility to juggle with the vegetables and fruit from his father’s produce cart.
Practicing hours a day, he soon began to make local appearances performing on the narrow streets and by ways of Philadelphia.
Still a teenager, with his mother’s loving blessing, young Bill took the train to New York and the Bowery – a hub for vaudeville theatre at the time. Arriving as an 18-year-old, W.C. Fields would perform sometimes twenty shows a day until his fingers were raw and near bleeding, saying he relished the opportunity to hone his craft of juggling.
From the Bowery, W.C. Fields toured the world in vaudeville, turning 21 at the Wintergarten in Berlin. After fifteen years appearing on nearly all continents, W.C. Fields returned to New York as Star of Broadway.
It is on Broadway and in New York City where W.C. Fields silent film career began. Unlike the other comedy icons, who were all in California and Hollywood making silent films, W.C. Fields remained on Broadway and continued to perform on stage as Star with interludes crossing the East River to Gaumont Studios for his first silent film Pool Sharks in 1915. Later across the Hudson River to make his first talking short film, The Golf Specialist in 1930, at Ideal Studios, New Jersey near the film studios in Fort Lee.
During this time W.C. Fields made 15 silent films, five of which are lost. I never give up hope that some will be found in a vault in a far-off corner of the world. These films were made while W.C. Fields was performing on Broadway, taping the silents across the East River at Astoria Studios during the day, and coming back to Manhattan to star on Broadway at night. You can almost feel the dynamic creative artistic energy. And the love W.C. Fields had performing to live audiences.
For the most part, the theme of W.C. Fields silent films are the same as his talking films, taking much from his stage performances throughout the world and weaving in juggling, golf, pool. Indeed, he was billed as the world’s greatest juggler breaking the language barrier, and described in the local presses as the young American stole the show.
For instance, the silent It’s the Old Army Game (1926) included scenes that W.C. Fields used in the classic talking film It’s A Gift (1934) on the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. The silent film So’s Your Old Man (1926), also on the National Film Registry, became the talking film You’re Telling Me (1934).
At request, W.C. Fields was the first American in command performance before the King and Queen of England.
W.C. Fields drew his art from the human condition – domestic life and its travails, job, work, marriage, children, in-laws. W.C. Fields said that people are basically funny, they just don’t know it, so he studied us, exaggerates what he sees, and serves it back to us in his art, then we see ourselves and we all can laugh.
In 1923/24, W.C. Fields starred on Broadway in the stage play Poppy. In 1925, W.C. Fields crossed the East River to Astoria Studios and filmed the silent film version, Sally of the Sawdust directed by D.W. Griffith. Griffith said of Fields, “I’m crazy about him. He has a sweet sadness, a gentility, a subtlety. Something about his acting I can’t just put into words. He is a great actor and artist…I have the greatest admiration for him.”
There is a sweetness and gentleness in the character and person of W.C. Fields that is disarming and endearing. He portrays “everyman”.
A listing of W.C. Fields silent films can be found in the essential filmography W.C. Fields: A Life on Film by brother Ronald J. Fields, and also on www.wcfields.com.
James Agee has said, “W.C. Fields deals in high and cosmic art.” W.C. Fields is cerebral, there is no instance in the human condition that we cannot find solace in the art through humor of W.C. Fields. Roger Ebert said that “Charlie Chaplin is our greatest clown, W.C. Fields is our greatest comic.” Graham Greene said he was as Dickensian a character as any Dickens produced and was a release for put upon souls.
In 1930, at fifty years of age, W.C. Fields left the Broadway stage and silent films in New York to try his hand at talking films in Hollywood. With stage and silent films behind him, of all the comedy icons already in Hollywood, W.C. Fields is the only one to rise to the top in all the media of the time – talking films and radio.
W.C. Fields said, “If I can make them laugh, and through that laughter make this old world seem just a little brighter, then I am satisfied. Thank you, Grandpa, for continuing to make the world laugh – the best medicine of all.
Dr. Harriet A. Fields, 2025
Patron, Slapstick Festival
Reference: Fields, R. J. (1984), W.C. Fields: A Life on Film, St. Martin’s Press.