W.C. Fields and Me

, the screen legend's mistress for the last fourteen years of his life.

ynopsis

The Universal Pictures release begins in 1924 in New York City, where W.C. Fields is a Ziegfeld Follies headliner, and ends with his 1946 death in California at the age of 67. In between, it dramatizes his life and career with emphasis on the latter part of both, when the "Me" of the title played a prominent role, with a number of fictionalized events added for dramatic impact.

Having lost his girl friend Melody to another man and most of his life savings due to careless investments by his broker, Fields heads west to Santa Monica, where he operates a wax museum until he's offered a film role. He quickly becomes a major screen presence and a notorious drinker.

While at a party with John Barrymore, Gene Fowler and Dave Chasen, Fields is introduced to starlet Carlotta Monti, whom he hires as a live-in secretary. In order to stifle her theatrical aspirations, he arranges for her to fail a screen test. His plan backfires when the producer decides she has some talent, and Fields threatens to quit Paramount Pictures unless she's discouraged from pursuing a career in films. When she learns the truth, Carlotta leaves him and goes to New York.

When Barrymore passes away, she returns to Hollywood to comfort Fields. On the set of "My Little Chickadee", she learns from her lover's son Claude why her efforts to get him to marry her routinely have been rebuffed - his first marriage has never been dissolved legally. Although hurt by the revelation, Carlotta resigns herself to a life of unwedded bliss that often crumbles into sorrow and frustration as the relentlessly mean-spirited Fields continues to drink heavily and his health steadily declines. The comic is hospitalized and, after enduring great physical pain, dies on Christmas Day, a holiday he had despised with a passion, with Carlotta at his bedside.

Production notes

The Pacific Electric Railway car used in the film had been saved from the scrap heap, refitted with an internal combustion engine, rubber tires, and a steering mechanism, and used in several period films set in Los Angeles prior to its appearance in this film. In 2001 it was refurbished to operate on a rail line serving San Pedro, California [ [http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/title.jsp?stid=94940 "W.C. Fields and Me" at Turner Classic Movies] ] .

Principal cast

*Rod Steiger ..... W.C. Fields
*Valerie Perrine ..... Carlotta Monti
*Jack Cassidy ..... John Barrymore
*John Marley ..... Studio Head Bannerman
*Bernadette Peters ..... Melody
*Dana Elcar ..... Agent Dockstedter
*Paul Stewart ..... Florenz Ziegfeld
*Billy Barty ..... Ludwig
*Allan Arbus ..... Gregory LaCava
*Milt Kamen ..... Dave Chasen
*Louis Zorich ..... Gene Fowler
*Andrew Parks ..... Claude Fields

Principal production credits

*Producer ..... Jay Weston
*Original Music ..... Henry Mancini
*Cinematography ..... David M. Walsh
*Production Design ..... Robert F. Boyle
*Costume Design ..... Edith Head, Bill Jobe

Critical reception

In his review in the "New York Times", Vincent Canby called the film "dreadful" and added, "It holds up a wax dummy of a character intended to represent the great misanthropic comedian and expects us to feel compassion but only traps us in embarrassment . . . the movie needn't have been quite as brainless as it is. That took work. First off, Bob Merrill . . . has supplied a screenplay that originally may have been meant as the outline for a musical. It exhibits a tell-tale disregard for facts and the compulsion to make a dramatically shapeless life fit into a two-act form . . . Then there's Arthur Hiller, a director who makes intelligent films when the material is right . . . and terrible ones when the writers fail. Most prominent in the mess is Rod Steiger, who . . . reads all of his lines with the monotonous sing-song manner used by third-rate nightclub comics doing Fields imitations. He also speaks most of them out of the corner of his mouth as if he'd had a stroke." [ [http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9C04E3DC173EE334BC4953DFB266838D669EDE "New York Times" review] ]

"TV Guide" awarded it three out of a possible four stars with the comment, "Though the great comedian would have hated this film [and Fields purists undoubtedly will be outraged with the many inaccuracies in it] , this movie biography . . . has a certain appeal thanks to Steiger's handling of the lead role . . . Rather than ape Fields, [he] creates his own interpretation of the man, capturing subtle nuances that create a better-rounded character." [ [http://www.tvguide.com/movies/wc-fields/review/122237 "TV Guide" review] ]

"Time Out London" calls it a "witless biopic [that] leaps through pseudo-history with cretinous inaccuracy. Sloppily slung together, hell-bent on wringing hearts with the drama of the last, lonely, drink-sodden years, it can't get even the simplest facts straight, and doesn't do much of a job on the tear-jerking either . . . Steiger makes a brave stab at the part, but the reality and genius of Fields never get a look in." [ [http://www.timeout.com/film/reviews/64309/w-c-fields-and-me.html "Time Out London" review] ]

References

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075409/ "W.C. Fields and Me" at the Internet Movie Database]