1880-01-29 ( 145 years old ) in Darby, Pennsylvania, USA
William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program).
He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.
Movies
I Know A Riddle
2004-04-01
W.C. Fields: 6 Short Films
2000-01-01
The Silver Screen: Color Me Lavender
1997-11-01
Mae West and the Men Who Knew Her
1994-08-09
W.C. Fields: Straight Up
1986-01-02
Going Hollywood: The '30s
1984-01-01
Hollywood Out-takes and Rare Footage
1983-02-25
Oops, Those Hollywood Bloopers!
1982-01-01
The Hollywood Clowns
1979-03-23
That's Entertainment, Part II
1976-05-16
Hooray for Hollywood
1976-01-01
Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
1975-08-06
The Movie Orgy
1968-01-01
The Big Parade of Comedy
1964-09-02
Hollywood: The Selznick Years
1961-12-31
Down Memory Lane
1949-08-01
Sensations of 1945
1944-06-30
Song of the Open Road
1944-06-21
Follow the Boys
1944-05-05
Show-Business at War
1943-05-21
Tales of Manhattan
1942-08-05
Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
1941-10-10
The Bank Dick
1940-11-29
Cavalcade of the Academy Awards
1940-07-31
My Little Chickadee
1940-02-09
You Can't Cheat an Honest Man
1939-02-17
The Big Broadcast of 1938
1938-02-11
Poppy
1936-06-17
Man on the Flying Trapeze
1935-08-03
Mississippi
1935-03-22
David Copperfield
1935-01-18
It's a Gift
1934-11-30
Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch
1934-10-28
The Old-Fashioned Way
1934-07-13
You're Telling Me!
1934-04-06
Six of a Kind
1934-02-09
Alice in Wonderland
1933-12-18
Tillie and Gus
1933-10-13
The Barber Shop
1933-07-28
How to Break 90 #3: Hip Action
1933-06-23
International House
1933-05-27
The Pharmacist
1933-04-21
The Fatal Glass of Beer
1933-03-03
Hollywood on Parade No. B-7
1933-01-01
The Dentist
1932-12-09
If I Had a Million
1932-11-18
Million Dollar Legs
1932-07-08
Her Majesty, Love
1931-12-15
The Golf Specialist
1930-08-22
Fools for Luck
1928-06-11
Tillie's Punctured Romance
1928-03-03
The Circus: Premiere
1928-01-13
Two Flaming Youths
1927-12-17
Running Wild
1927-06-10
The Potters
1927-01-15
So's Your Old Man
1926-10-25
It's the Old Army Game
1926-07-10
That Royle Girl
1925-12-07
Sally of the Sawdust
1925-08-01
Janice Meredith
1924-12-08
Pool Sharks
1915-09-19
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