A Flask of Fields: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of W.C. Fields

by Richard J. Anobile

William Claude Dukenfield (1880 – 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an American actor, comedian, juggler and writer. His career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a silent juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act and was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for several years. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy “Poppy” (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. This book of visual and verbal gems from the films of W. C. Fields – a unique film book. It includes over 700 illustrations. All the photos in the book are frame blow-ups taken directly from the original negatives of the films. Editor Richard J. Anobile has faithfully reconstructed the classic scenes from the films of W.C. Fields and coupled the blow-ups with the original dialogue as spoken on the screen. The introduction was written by Judith Crist (1922 – 2012) who was an American film critic and academic. She appeared regularly on the Today show from 1964 to 1973 and was among the first full-time female critics for a major American newspaper, in her case, The New York Herald Tribune. She was the founding film critic at New York magazine and became known to most Americans as a critic at the weekly magazine TV Guide and at the morning TV show Today.

Hardcover

Published January 1, 1972

About the author

Anobile pioneered the use of the movie frame blow-up technique to recreate entire films in book form. His books were valuable resources especially in a time before VCR's and DVD's and the internet. While they might be viewed as simplistic picture books now, they were an attempt at curating film at a time when it was often still an after-thought. Anobile has spent much of the rest of his life in film production.

Reviews

[Anthony McGill · Rating 4 out of 5]

No photo book can really capture the true comedic genius of W. C. Fields but this collection of frame blow ups and dialogue from the best of his Paramount and Universal films gives movie buffs and fans the chance to relive many of the classic magic moments, both visual and verbal, from his most beloved performances.

More than 700 sequential photos taken from the original negatives from the films: 'Tillie and Gus' - 'International House' - 'You're Telling Me' - 'It's a Gift' - 'Man on the Flying Trapeze' - 'The Old Fashioned Way' - 'My Little Chickadee' - 'You Can't Cheat an Honest Man' - 'Never Give a Sucker an Even Break' and 'The Bank Dick.'

Introduction by noted film critic Judith Crist.
Review based on original Darien House hardcover edition, 1972. 272 pages.

FIELDS (to Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy): "Quiet - you termites' flophouse. Ladies and gentlemen, up on the platform we have the Great Edgar and his whispering pine, Charlie McCarthy - they baffle science."
CHARLIE: "Are you eating a tomato or is that your nose?"
FIELDS: "Very good - very good Charles. You must come down with me after the show to the lumber yard and ride piggyback on the buzz saws."
CHARLIE: "Nobody's going to find me after the show."
FIELDS: "Yes they are - you'll be hanging in my window as Venetian blinds."
CHARLIE: "Oh, that makes me shudder."
FIELDS: "Quiet - or I'll throw a woodpecker on ya."

[Evan · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the 1970s, movie photo books like this got published because home video did not exist, and the availability of old films was scattershot; you either had to wait a few years for them to show up at a revival theater or film festival (and then be available when they were screened) or religiously scan the weekly TV Guide hoping that one of them might actually be aired at 2 in the morning at which point you tried mightily to stay awake during it -- and probably failed and slept through the finale; this happened to me many times. :(

When this book was published, in 1972, the Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields revivals were in full swing. Hippies and their youthful cohorts, the new generation of cineastes and artists gravitated to their anarchic disrespect (the Marxes) and grumbled contempt (Fields) for the Establishment. They were subversives of their parents' and grandparents' generation; a sign that revolt lurked healthily in the confines of an otherwise scrubbed, censored America. The book assumes that this revival immortalizes these comedians, and yet the "household word" status of Fields particularly is on much shakier ground today. He is in danger of becoming a lost cultural artifact to today's younger generations.

This book followed a similar previous effort by Anobile on the Marx Brothers called Why a Duck.... In both books, the objective was to simulate the movie experience for readers in a time before home video by reproducing selected sequential stills from the films with the attendant dialog. As such, the book is a bit of a superfluous relic now, of not much use anymore as a reference. But this sort of still-filled coffee table book served its purpose of giving Fields fans something in lieu of actually seeing the movies.

Reading (and looking) through this entirely today (5/14/11) I actually found myself laughing at some of the sequences (particularly the one in which Fields takes his time with bits of dawdling business before checking for burglars in the cellar, to the flustered chagrin of his wife, in The Man on the Flying Trapeze from 1935), and also finding some gems that I missed when actually watching these scenes in motion. Putting some of these scenes under the still microscope (particularly a couple of scenes from Tillie and Gus and You Can't Cheat an Honest Man) allowed me to better appreciate some of the wit that otherwise passed me by in films that I otherwise felt were sub-par for Fields.

The one section of real value in the book is Judith Crist's completely superb introductory essay that fully, in just a few pages, captures the art and spirit of W.C. Fields better than anything I have ever read.

[Calvin]

It's Fields, so it certainly is fun. But nothing all that impressive.