Volume 21, Number 17 · October 31, 1974
Toward the Black Pussy Cafe
By Wilfrid Sheed
W.C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Biography
with commentary by Ronald J. Fields
Warner Paperback Library, 510 pp., $1.95
Of all the subjects that don't need de-mythologizing, one would have thought W.C. Fields was pre-eminent. With comedians in general it seems important that their life and their work be taken as one. 'I hear he writes his own lines' is a phrase that echoes from childhood. The lot of the gag-writer is a bitter one: unless he consents to be a performer himself, like Mel Brooks or Carl Reiner, we don't want to know about him.
Review, 3883 words
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