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William Claude Dukenfield (January 29, 1880^[1] – December 25, 1946), better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer.^[2] Fields was known for his comic persona as a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children and women.

The characterization he portrayed in films and on radio was so strong it became generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained by the movie-studio publicity departments at Fields's studios (Paramount and Universal) and further established by Robert Lewis Taylor's 1949 biography W.C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, with the publication of Fields's letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields's book W.C. Fields by Himself, it has been shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), and he financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.

However, Madge Evans, a friend and actress, told a visitor in 1972 that Fields so deeply resented intrusions on his privacy by curious tourists walking up the driveway to his Los Angeles home that he would hide in the shrubs by his house and fire BB pellets at the trespassers' legs. Several years later Groucho Marx told a similar story on his live performance album, An Evening with Groucho.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, James Lydon Dukenfield, was from an English family that emigrated to America from Sheffield, England in 1854.^[3][4] James Dukenfield served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War and was wounded in 1863.^[5] Fields's mother, Kate Spangler (née Felton), 15 years younger than her husband, was a Protestant of German ancestry.^{[citation needed]} The 1876 Philadelphia City Directory lists James Dukenfield as a clerk. After marrying, he worked as an independent produce merchant and a part-time hotel-keeper.^[6]

Claude Dukenfield (as he was known) worked at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store and in an oyster house, before he left home at age 18 (not 11, as many biographies have said).^{[citation needed]} At age 15, he had begun performing a juggling act at church and theater shows, and entered vaudeville as a "tramp juggler" using the name W. C. Fields.^[3] He soon was traveling as "The Eccentric Juggler", and included amusing asides and increasing amounts of comedy into his act, becoming a headliner in North America and Europe. In 1906 he made his Broadway debut in a musical comedy, The Ham Tree.

Fields embellished stories of his youth, but his home seems to have been a reasonably happy one. His family supported his ambitions for the stage, and saw him off on the train for his first stage tour. His father visited him for two months in England, when Fields was performing there in music halls.^[3]

Fields was known among his friends as "Bill". Edgar Bergen also called him Bill in the radio shows (while Charlie McCarthy called him many names). Fields played himself in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, and his "niece" called him "Uncle Bill". In one scene he introduced himself: "I'm W.C., uh, Bill Fields." When he was portrayed in films as having a son, he often named the character "Claude", after his own son. He was sometimes billed in England as "Wm. C. Fields", due to "W.C." being the British slang for a water closet or toilet. His public use of initials was a commonplace formality of the era in which he grew up. "W.C. Fields" also fit more easily onto a marquee than "W.C. Dukenfield".

Personal life[link]

W.C. Fields

Fields married a fellow vaudevillian, chorus girl Harriet "Hattie" Hughes, on April 8, 1900.^[7] Their son, William Claude Fields, Jr., was born on July 28, 1904.^[8] Although Fields was "an avowed atheist [who] regarded all religions with the suspicion of a seasoned con man", he yielded to Hattie's wish to have their son baptized.^[9]

At the time Fields was away from Hattie on tour in England. By 1907, however, he and Hattie had separated; she had been pressing him to stop touring and settle down to a respectable trade, while he was unwilling to give up his own livelihood.^[10] Until his death, Fields continued to correspond with Hattie and voluntarily sent child-support payments.

He had another son, born on August 15, 1917, with girlfriend Bessie Poole, named William Rexford Fields Morris.^[11] Bessie was an established Ziegfeld Follies performer and met Fields while performing in New York City at the famous Amsterdam Theater. Her beauty and quick wit attracted Fields, who was the featured act from 1916 until 1922. She was killed in a bar fight several years later, leaving their son to be raised in foster care, where he acquired the surname Morris by his foster-mother. Fields sent voluntary support to young Bill in care of his foster mother until he graduated from high school, when he sent $300 as a gift.

Fields lived with Carlotta Monti (1907–1993) after they met in 1932, and they began a relationship that lasted until his death in 1946. Monti had small roles in a couple of Fields' films, and in 1971 wrote a biography, W.C. Fields and Me, which was made into a motion picture at Universal Studios in 1976.

Fields and alcohol[link]

Fields's screen character was often fond of alcohol, and this trait has become part of the Fields legend. In his younger days as a juggler, Fields himself never drank, because he didn't want to impair his functions while performing. The loneliness of his constant touring and traveling, however, compelled Fields to keep liquor on hand for fellow performers, so he could invite them to his dressing room for companionship and cocktails. Only then did Fields cultivate a fondness for alcohol.

Fields expressed his feelings to Gloria Jean (playing his niece) in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I am indebted to her for." Equally memorable was a line in the 1940 film My Little Chickadee: "Once, on a trek through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew...and were forced to live on food and water for several days!" The oft-repeated anecdote that Fields once claimed he never drank water "because fish fuck in it" is unsubstantiated.^{[citation needed]}

On movie sets, Fields kept handy a vacuum flask of mixed martinis, which he referred to as his "pineapple juice". While filming Tales of Manhattan, a prankster switched the contents of the flask, filling it with actual pineapple juice. Upon discovering the prank, Fields was heard to yell, "Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?!"^[12]

In 1936 Fields became gravely ill, his health worsened by his heavy drinking. Fields's film series came to a halt while he recovered; he made one last film for Paramount, The Big Broadcast of 1938. The comedian's troublesome behavior kept other producers away, and Fields was professionally idle until he made his debut on radio. By then Fields was very sick and suffering from delirium tremens.

On stage[link]

Vaudeville[link]

Fields started as a juggler in vaudeville, appearing in the makeup of a genteel "tramp" with a scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo. He juggled cigar boxes, hats, and a variety of other objects in what appears to have been a unique and fresh act, parts of which are reproduced in some of his films. Fields confined his act to pantomime so that he could play international theaters. Fields toured several continents and became a world-class juggler and an international star. He worked bits of juggling into many of his films. A good portion of his act is contained in The Old Fashioned Way.

Broadway[link]

Back in America, Fields found that he could get more laughs by adding dialogue to his routines. His trademark mumbling patter and sarcastic asides were developed during this time. (According to the A&E Biography program about Fields (1994), when he was young his mother would sit with him on the front steps and mumble comments about the passersby.)

He soon starred on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's Ziegfeld Follies revues. There he delighted audiences with a wild pool skit, complete with bizarrely shaped cues and a custom-built table used for a number of hilarious gags and surprising trick shots. His pool game is reproduced, at least in part, in some of his films, notably in Six of a Kind (1934).

He starred in multiple editions of the Follies and in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy, where he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time confidence man.

Films[link]

Silent era[link]

Fields starred in a couple of short comedies, filmed in New York in 1915. His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924. He reprised his Poppy role in a silent-film adaptation, retitled Sally of the Sawdust (1925) and directed by D.W. Griffith. Following this, he starred in It's The Old Army Game (1926) which featured his friend Louise Brooks, later to become a screen legend for her role in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box in Germany. The film included a silent version of the porch sequence which would one day be expanded in the sound film It's a Gift (1934). Fields wore a scruffy-looking, clip-on mustache in virtually all of his silent films, discarding it only after his first sound feature film, Her Majesty Love, his only Warner Brothers production.

At Paramount[link]

Fields made four short subjects for comedy pioneer Mack Sennett in 1932 and 1933, distributed through Paramount Pictures. During this period, Paramount began featuring Fields in full-length comedies, and by 1934 he was a major movie star. It was for one of the films of this period (International House) that outtakes of one scene (Fields, and two other actors) allegedly recorded the only moving image record of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. This footage was later revealed to have been faked as a publicity stunt for the movie.

He often contributed to the scripts of his films, under unusual pseudonyms such as the seemingly prosaic "Charles Bogle", which appeared on most of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble"; and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", a play on mahatma and on a phrase an aristocrat might use when about to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves". In features such as It's a Gift and Man on the Flying Trapeze, he is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers.

In his films, he often played hustlers such as carnival barkers and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks. He had an affection for unlikely names and many of his characters bore them. Some examples are:

• "Larson E. [read "Larceny"] Whipsnade" (You Can't Cheat an Honest Man);
• "Egbert Sousé" [pronounced 'soo-ZAY', but pointing toward a synonym for a 'drunk'] (The Bank Dick);
• "Ambrose Wolfinger" (Man on the Flying Trapeze); and,
• "The Great McGonigle" (The Old-Fashioned Way).

The carnival fraud was not the only character Fields played. He was also fond of casting himself as the victim: a hapless householder constantly under the thumb of his shrewish wife and/or mother-in-law. His 1934 classic It's a Gift included his stage sketch of trying to escape his nagging family by sleeping on the back porch, and being bedeviled by noisy neighbors and traveling salesmen. That film, along with films such as You're Telling Me! and Man on the Flying Trapeze, ended happily with a windfall profit that restored his standing in his screen families.

Although lacking formal education, he was well read and a lifelong admirer of author Charles Dickens, whose characters' unusual names inspired Fields to do likewise for his various characters. He achieved one of his career ambitions by playing the character Mr. Micawber, in MGM's David Copperfield in 1935. In 1936, Fields re-created his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures.

Supporting players[link]

Fields had a small cadre of supporting players that he employed in several films:

• Kathleen Howard, as a nagging wife or antagonist.
• Alison Skipworth, as his wife (although 16 years his senior), usually in a supportive role rather than the stereotypical nag.
• Grady Sutton, typically as a country bumpkin type, as either a foil or an antagonist to Field's character.
• Baby LeRoy, a pre-school child fond of playing pranks on Fields' characters.
• Tammany Young, as a dim-witted, not intentionally harmful assistant; appeared in seven Fields films until his sudden death from heart failure in 1936.
• Bill Wolfe, a gaunt looking character, usually a Fields foil.
• Jan Duggan, an oldish woman (actually about Fields' age) who played small roles as a widow type. It was about her character that Fields said in The Old Fashioned Way, "She's all dressed up like a well-kept grave."
• Franklin Pangborn, a fussy, ubiquitous character actor of the period who played in several Fields films, most memorably as J. Pinkerton Snoopington in The Bank Dick.
• Elise Cavanna, whose on-screen interplay with Fields was compared (The Art of W.C. Fields 1967 by William K. Everson) to that between Groucho Marx and Margaret Dumont

At Universal[link]

Fields's renewed popularity from his radio broadcasts with Bergen & McCarthy earned him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1939. His first feature for Universal, You Can't Cheat an Honest Man, carried on the Fields-McCarthy rivalry. In 1940 Fields made My Little Chickadee, with Mae West, and The Bank Dick, perhaps his best-known film, in which he has the following exchange with bartender Shemp Howard:

Fields: "Was I in here last night, and did I spend a $20 bill?"

Shemp: "Yeah."

Fields: "Oh boy, what a load that is off my mind... I thought I'd lost it!"

Fields often fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging and his own choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and the resulting film, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, (1941) is a masterpiece of absurd humor in which Fields appeared as himself, "The Great Man". Universal's singing star Gloria Jean played opposite Fields, and his old cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn served as his comic foils. But the film Fields delivered was so surreal Universal recut and reshot parts of it and then quietly released both the film and Fields.

Sucker turned out to be his last starring film. By then he was much heavier and less mobile than he had been at the peak of his film career during 1934–1935, when he was reasonably fit and trim.

Fields completed a scene for the 20th Century Fox film Tales of Manhattan (1942), in which he played an eccentric professor hired by Margaret Dumont to give a temperance lecture to a gathering of high society swells. This scene was cut from the film before release, supposedly due to running time. It was discovered in the vaults at Fox in the mid 1990s and was included in the video and DVD releases of the movie.

On radio[link]

While Fields was inactive in films due to extended illness, he recorded a short speech for a radio broadcast. His familiar, snide drawl registered so well with listeners that he quickly became a popular guest on network radio shows.^[13] One of his funniest routines had him trading insults with Edgar Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on The Chase and Sanborn Hour.

Fields would twit Charlie about his being made of wood:

Fields: "Tell me, Charles, is it true your father was a gate-leg table?"

McCarthy: "If it is, your father was under it!"

When Fields would refer to McCarthy as a "woodpecker's pin-up boy" or a "termite's flophouse," Charlie would fire back at Fields about his drinking:

McCarthy: "Is it true, Mr. Fields, that when you stood on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, 43 cars waited for your nose to change to green?"

Bergen: "Why, Bill, I thought you didn't like children."

Fields: "Oh, not at all, Edgar, I love children. I can remember when, with my own little unsteady legs, I toddled from room to room."

McCarthy: "When was that, last night?"

Thanks to radio, Fields reached an even wider audience than before, and he was soon in demand for films again.

Final years[link]

Fields occasionally entertained guests at his home. Generally, Fields fraternized with other actors, directors, and writers who shared his fondness for good company and good liquor. John Barrymore, Gregory La Cava, and Gene Fowler were a few of his intimates. Anthony Quinn and his wife Katherine DeMille (daughter of Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille) were visiting Fields one afternoon when the Quinns' two-year-old son, Christopher, drowned in Fields’s lily pond. Fields was greatly distraught by this incident, and brooded about it for months.^[14]

In the 1994 Biography TV show, his 1941 co-star Gloria Jean described how she would visit his house from time to time, and they would talk. Gloria Jean found Fields to be kind and gentle in real life, and believed that Fields yearned for the kind of family he lacked when he was a child. The show also reported that Fields eventually reconciled with his long estranged wife and son, and enjoyed playing with his grandchildren.

With a presidential election looming in 1940, Fields toyed with the idea of lampooning political campaign speeches. He wrote to vice-presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, intending to glean comedy material from Wallace’s speeches, but when Wallace responded with a warm, personal fan letter to Fields, the comedian decided against skewering Wallace. Instead, Fields wrote a book entitled Fields for President, consisting of humorous essays in the form of a campaign speech. Dodd, Mead and Company published it in 1940 but declined to reprint it at the time. The book did not sell well, mostly because people were confused as to whether it was meant to be taken seriously. In 1971, Dodd, Mead reprinted it when Fields was seen as an anti-establishment figure. The 1940 edition includes illustrations by Otto Soglow, while the 1971 reprint is illustrated with photographs of Fields.

Fields's film career slowed down considerably in the 1940s. His illnesses confined him to brief guest-star appearances in other people's films. An extended sequence in 20th Century Fox's Tales of Manhattan (1942) was cut from the original release of the film; it was later reinstated for some home video releases. He performed his famous billiard-table routine one more time on camera, for Follow the Boys, an all-star entertainment revue for the Armed Forces. (Despite the charitable nature of the movie, Fields was paid $15,000 for his appearance, and he was never able to perform in person for the armed services.) In Song of the Open Road (1944), Fields juggled for a few moments, remarking, "This used to be my racket". His last film, the musical revue Sensations of 1945, was released in late 1944.

He also guested occasionally on radio as late as 1946, often with Edgar Bergen, and just before his death that same year he recorded a spoken-word album, delivering his comic "Temperance Lecture" and "The Day I Drank A Glass Of Water" at Les Paul's studio, in which Paul had just installed his new multi-track recorder. The session was arranged by Paul's old Army pal Bill Morrow, a friend he had in common with Fields. Fields's vision had deteriorated so much that he read his lines from large-print cue cards. It was W. C. Fields's last performance.

Death[link]

Fields spent his last weeks in a hospital, where a friend stopped by for a visit and caught Fields reading the Bible. When asked why, Fields replied, "I'm checking for loopholes." Fields died in 1946 (from an alcohol-related stomach hemorrhage) on the holiday he claimed to despise: Christmas Day.^[15] As documented in W.C. Fields and Me (the memoir of Carlotta Monti, published in 1971 and made into a 1976 film of the same name starring Rod Steiger), he died at Las Encinas Sanatorium, Pasadena, California, a bungalow-type sanitarium where, as he lay in bed dying, his longtime and final love, Carlotta Monti, went outside and turned the hose onto the roof, so as to allow Fields to hear for one last time his favorite sound—the sound of falling rain. According to the documentary W.C. Fields Straight Up,^[16] his death occurred in this way: he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a finger to his lips, and died. Fields was 66, and had been a patient for 22 months. His funeral took place on January 2, 1947, in Glendale, CA.

Fields was cremated and his ashes interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California. There have been stories that he wanted his grave marker to read either "On the whole, I would rather be in Philadelphia", his home town, or "All in all, I would rather be in Philadelphia", both of which are similar to a line he used in My Little Chickadee: "I'd like to see Paris before I die...Philadelphia would do!" In the same film, he made a point of referring to "Philadelphia cream cheese"; whether he knew of the actual J. L. Kraft Foods product is unknown. Given his fondness for words, maybe he just liked the sound of his own home town's name. This rumor has also morphed into "I would rather be here than in Philadelphia". The anecdote that Fields often remarked, "Philadelphia, wonderful town, spent a week there one night" is unsubstantiated. It is also said that Fields wanted "I'd rather be in Philadelphia" on his gravestone because of the old vaudeville joke among comedians, "I would rather be dead than play Philadelphia". Whatever his actual wishes might have been, the interment marker for his ashes merely bears his stage name and the years of his birth and his death. The genesis of the line as originally phrased can be found in a 1925 article in Vanity Fair entitled "A Group of Artists Write Their Own Epitaphs." The mock-epitaph for Fields reads "Here Lies / W.C. Fields / I Would Rather Be Living in Philadelphia."^[17]

Unrealized film projects[link]

W. C. Fields was the original choice for the title role in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. One rumor was that he believed the role was too small. Another alleged that he was asking too much money: his asking price was $100,000, while MGM offered $75,000. However, his agent asserted that Fields rejected the role because he wanted to devote his time to writing You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.

Fields also figured in an Orson Welles project. Welles's bosses at RKO Radio Pictures, after losing money on Citizen Kane, urged Welles to choose as his next film a subject with more commercial appeal. Welles considered an adaptation of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers which would have starred Fields and John Barrymore, but Fields's schedule would not permit it. The project was permanently shelved, and Welles went on to adapt The Magnificent Ambersons.

During the early planning for his film It's a Wonderful Life, director Frank Capra considered Fields for the role of Uncle Billy, which eventually went to Thomas Mitchell.

Influence and legacy[link]

According to Woody Allen (in a New York Times interview from January 30, 2000), W. C. Fields is one of only six "genuine comic geniuses" he recognized as such in movie history, along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers.^[18]

A W.C. Fields commemorative stamp was issued by the United States Postal Service on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the comedian's birth in January 1980.

Caricatures and imitations[link]

Fields, with his bulbous red nose (partly as a result of rosacea, although his parents also had bulbous noses), rotund body and nasal, braying voice, has been imitated for decades in a wide variety of media. A few examples:

• The comic strip The Wizard of Id by Johnny Hart and Brant Parker features an attorney called "Larsen E. Pettifogger", an obvious parody of Fields, named in allusion to Fields's character Larson E. Whipsnade from You Can't Cheat an Honest Man.
• Big Chief Wahoo was a newspaper strip drawn by Elmer Woggon and written by Allen Saunders that was later reprinted in comic books like Famous Funnies. It featured a W.C. Fields-like carpetbagging con artist and snake oil salesman named J. Mortimer Gusto, (a.k.a. "the Great Gusto"). According to Saunders, Fields was flattered. The feature gradually evolved into Steve Roper and Mike Nomad.
• Frito-Lay's controversial Frito Bandito advertising mascot in the late 1960s was retired in favor of an animated Fields lookalike called "W.C. Fritos".
• In addition to the above Fritos ads, Fields was mimicked and caricatured in a great many animated cartoons and commercials. They ranged from classic Looney Tunes shorts like The Coo-Coo Nut Grove (1936), At Your Service, Madame (1936) and Little Blabbermouse (1940), to Walt Disney's Mickey's Polo Team (1936) and Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938). In the late 1960s Warner Brothers again spoofed Fields's persona with their character Merlin the Magic Mouse, voiced by Larry Storch, and a TV ad for Cocoa Puffs cereal featured Sonny disguising himself as Fields, voiced by Chuck McCann.
• Cartoonist Al Hirschfeld has portrayed Fields in caricature many times, including the book cover illustrations for Drat!, A Flask of Fields and Godfrey Daniels! – all edited by Richard J. Anobile.
• The Firesign Theater's How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You're Not Anywhere at All (Columbia CS-9884 — July 1969) includes a character "Bill" who speaks in fluent W.C. Fields-ese.
• The TV show Gigglesnort Hotel featured a puppet character named "W. C. Cornfield", which was an obvious caricature of Fields.
• Fields was an easy target for impressionists and mimics. Ed McMahon aped Fields on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Family Feud host/Match Game panelist Richard Dawson frequently did imitations of Fields. Master impressionist Rich Little often imitated Fields on his TV series The Kopykats, and used a Fields characterization for the Ebenezer Scrooge character in his 1978 HBO special Rich Little's Christmas Carol, a one-man presentation of A Christmas Carol.
• In Great Britain, comic Les Dawson's Fieldsian character, Zebediah Twain, was obviously an affectionate tribute. British comedian Benny Hill also mimicked Fields, reportedly one of his heroes, in sketches and musical numbers on The Benny Hill Show.
• Fields was also caricatured in the Belgian comic strip Lucky Luke by Morris and René Goscinny, in the album Western Circus and the French animated film La Ballade des Dalton as Dr. Aldous Smith.
• The character of Horatio K. Boomer on radio's Fibber McGee & Molly, voiced by Bill Thompson, was a vocal parody of Fields.

In other popular culture[link]

• Actor Rod Steiger did a brief impression of Fields in the film No Way to Treat a Lady (1968). Steiger later impersonated him at length in the big screen biography W.C. Fields and Me in 1976.
• Singer/songwriter duo Boyce & Hart included a song on their 1967 LP "Test Patterns" called "My Little Chickadee." The song features an impersonation of Fields in spoken interludes.
• Fields, whose popularity enjoyed a renaissance in the late 1960s, is included in the cover photo array on the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
• The Firesign Theatre's 1968 album Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him includes a sketch satirizing the hippie counterculture called "W.C. Fields Forever." Eric Idle's Beatles spoof, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, features an album cover parody of Magical Mystery Tour in which the song Strawberry Fields Forever is renamed "W.C. Fields Forever."
• In the finale of the 1970s TV series Gangsters, writer Philip Martin appeared as "W.D. (White Devil) Fields", a ninja assassin who adopted the appearance and mannerisms of Fields in order to lull his opponents into a false sense of security. His first line in the series was "Birmingham, eh? On the whole I'd sooner be in Philadelphia." Martin was credited as "Larson E. Whipsnade". Fields also turns up as a wax figure brought to life by KAOS agents in a Get Smart episode titled House of Max, Part II, which first aired January 16, 1970.
• On Sesame Street, muppet performer Jerry Nelson used an impression of Fields for the voice of the inept magician The Amazing Mumford.
• In the 1991 movie The Rocketeer, which was set in 1938, Bob Leeman^[19] played the part of W. C. Fields. In the 1982 ABC TV biopic Mae West, starring Ann Jillian, Fields was impersonated by comedy actor Chuck McCann.
• While recovering from an assassination attempt, President Ronald Reagan reportedly said, "All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia", which alluded to the site of the 1981 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament's Final Four games held at the same time as Reagan's hospitalization.
• "Filthy McNasty," the villainous bank robber from The Bank Dick, inspired jazz pianist Horace Silver's composition of the same name, introduced on his 1961 Blue Note LP Doin' the Thing: The Horace Silver Quintet at the Village Gate. According to Silver (quoted by Herb Wong in the liner notes for The Best of Horace Silver) the classic Fields film was playing on television while Silver was inspired to compose the tune.
• In the Gilmore Girls episode 'I'd Rather Be In Philadelphia, Lorelai's father states while in hospital; 'Well all in all, I think I'd rather be in Philadelphia'.

Filmography[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: W. C. Fields

Information for this filmography is derived from the book, W. C. Fields: A Life on Film, by Ronald J. Fields. All films are feature length except where noted.

Further reading[link]

• W. C. Fields, Fields for President (1940, 1971) Dodd, Mead ISBN 0-396-06419-1. (Humorous essays about Fields's stance on marriage, politics, finance, etc.)
• Robert Lewis Taylor, W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes (1949) Doubleday & Co., (1967) New American Library ISBN 0-451-50653-7. (First book biography, with many firsthand quotes from friends and colleagues)
• Gene Fowler, Minutes of the Last Meeting (1954) Viking Press
• Eddie Cantor, As I Remember Them (1963) Duell, Sloan & Pearce
• Donald Deschner (ed.), The Films of W.C. Fields (1966, 2000) Citadel Press
• Corey Ford, "The One and Only W.C. Fields" from The Time of Laughter (1967) Little, Brown
• William K. Everson, The Art of W.C. Fields (1967) Random House ISBN 0-517-01232-4. (First book-length examination of the Fields films)
• Richard J. Anobile (ed.), Drat!: Being the Encapsulated View of Life by W. C. Fields in His Own Words (1968) World Publishing
• David Robinson, The Great Funnies: A History of Film Comedy (1969) E.P. Dutton
• Jan Kindler, "Elysian Fields" from Playboy (March 1969)
• Bosley Crowther, "W.C. Fields Comedy Festival" from New York Times Film Reviews, 1959–1968 (1970) Arno Press
• Andre Sennwald, capsule reviews from New York Times Film Reviews, 1932–1938 (1970) Arno Press
• Raymond Durgnat, "Suckers and Soaks" from The Crazy Mirror: Hollywood Comedy and the American Image (1970) Dell Publishing
• Andrew Bergman, "Some Anarcho-Nihilist Laff Riots" from We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films (1971) New York University Press
• Otis Ferguson, "The Great McGonigle" from The Film Criticism of Otis Ferguson (1971) Temple University Press
• Carlotta Monti (with Cy Rice), W.C. Fields and Me (1971) Prentice-Hall, ISBN 978-0139444548. (basis of the 1976 film starring Rod Steiger)
• Richard J, Anobile (ed.), A Flask of Fields: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Films of W.C. Fields (1972) W.W. Norton
• Leonard Maltin, Selected Short Subjects (first published as The Great Movie Shorts, 1972) Crown Publishers, (revised 1983) Da Capo Press
• Ronald J. Fields (ed.), W.C. Fields by Himself: His Intended Autobiography with Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Notes, Scripts and Articles (1973) Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-944462-9.
• W. C. Fields (with Charles Grayson), The Bank Dick (1973) Simon & Schuster (the August 22, 1940 screenplay)
• W. C. Fields (with John T. Neville, et al.), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (Rupert Hughes, et al.) Tillie and Gus (1973) Simon & Schuster (Continuity scripts derived from these films)
• Penelope Gilliatt, "To W.C. Fields, Dyspeptic Mumbler, Who Invented His Own Way Out" from Unholy Fools: Wits, Comics, Disturbers of the Peace (1973) Viking Press
• Gerald Mast, The Comic Mind: Comedy and the Movies (1973, 2nd ed. 1979) University of Chicago Press
• Donald W. McCaffrey, "The Latter-Day Falstaff" from The Golden Age of Sound Comedy (1973) A.S. Barnes
• Nicholas Yanni, W.C. Fields (1974) Pyramid Library
• Richard J. Anobile (ed.), Godfrey Daniels!: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Short Films of W. C. Fields (1975) Crown
• Walter Kerr, The Silent Clowns (1975) Alfred A. Knopf, (1990) Da Capo Press
• Stuart Byron and Elizabeth Weis (eds.), The National Society of Film Critics on Movie Comedy (1977) Grossman/Viking
• Leonard Maltin, The Great Movie Comedians (1978) Crown
• Will Fowler, The Second Handshake (1980) Lyle Stuart
• Louise Brooks, "The Other Face of W.C. Fields" from Lulu in Hollywood (1982) Alfred A. Knopf
• Ronald J. Fields, W.C. Fields: A Life on Film (1984) St. Martin's Press
• Wes D. Gehring, W.C. Fields: A Bio-Bibliography (1984) Greenwood Press
• Gerald Weales, Canned Goods as Caviar: American Film Comedy of the 1930s (1985) University of Chicago Press
• David T. Rocks, W.C. Fields: An Annotated Guide (1993) McFarland & Co.
• Wes D. Gehring, Groucho and W.C. Fields: Huckster Comedians (1994) University Press of Mississippi
• Simon Louvish, It's a Gift (1994) British Film Institute
• Simon Louvish, Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W.C. Fields (1999) Faber & Faber ISBN 0-393-04127-1. (New biography with new research)
• Ronald J. Fields with Shaun O'L. Higgins, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: W.C. Fields on Business (2000) Prentice-Hall
• James Curtis, W.C. Fields: A Biography (2003) Alfred A. Knopf ISBN 0-375-40217-9. (The definitive, comprehensive biography, with many "apocryphal" stories from previous bios corrected)
• Scott MacGillivray and Jan MacGillivray, Gloria Jean: A Little Bit of Heaven (2005) iUniverse ISBN 978-0-595-67454-1. (Authorized biography with recollections of Fields at work)
• Wes D. Gehring, Film Clowns of the Depression (2007) McFarland & Co.
• Gregory William Mank (et al.), Hollywood's Hellfire Club (2007) Feral House

References[link]

External links[link]

• W. C. Fields at the Internet Movie Database
• W. C. Fields at the Internet Broadway Database
• Official site
• Official fan club
• Criterion Collection essay by Dennis Perrin on W.C. Fields: Six Short Films
• The Fatal Glass of Beer (iPod format) at the Internet Archive

Jayne Mansfield
Mansfield in The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
Born	Vera Jayne Palmer (1933-04-19)April 19, 1933 Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Died	June 29, 1967(1967-06-29) (aged 34) Slidell, Louisiana
Cause of death	Traffic accident
Resting place	Fairview Cemetery, Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania 40°52.08′N 75°15.20′W / 40.868°N 75.2533°W / 40.868; -75.2533
Other names	Vera Jayne Peers, Vera Palmer
Occupation	Actress, singer, Playmate, nightclub entertainer, model
Years active	1954-1967
Notable work(s)	The Girl Can't Help It, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, Too Hot to Handle, The Wayward Bus, Promises! Promises!
Television	The Red Skelton Hour, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Ed Sullivan Show
Spouse	Paul Mansfield (m. 1950–1958) «start: (1950)–end+1: (1959)»"Marriage: Paul Mansfield to Jayne Mansfield" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Jayne_Mansfield) Miklós Hargitay (m. 1958–1964) «start: (1958)–end+1: (1965)»"Marriage: Miklós Hargitay to Jayne Mansfield" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Jayne_Mansfield) Matt Cimber (m. 1964–1966) «start: (1964)–end+1: (1967)»"Marriage: Matt Cimber to Jayne Mansfield" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Jayne_Mansfield)
Children	Jayne Marie Mansfield (b. 1950) Miklós "Mickey" Hargitay, Jr. (b. 1958) Zoltán Hargitay (b. 1960) Mariska Hargitay (b. 1964) Antonio "Tony" Cimber (b. 1965)
Parents	Herbert William Palmer (1904–1936) Vera Jeffrey Palmer/Peers (1903–2000)
Awards	Theatre World Award (1956); Golden Globe for New Star Of The Year – Actress (1957); Golden Laurel for Top Female Musical Performance (1959)
Signature
Website
http://www.jaynemansfield.com/

Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967) was an American film, television and theater actress. In February 1955, she became one of the early Playmates. Keeping her first husband's last name, Mansfield worked in Hollywood and on Broadway.^[1] A leading sex symbol during the late 1950s, she was one of the original blonde bombshells.^[2] Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films which emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, hourglass figure and cleavage-revealing costumes. 20th Century Fox signed a six-year contact with Mansfield to replace Marilyn Monroe as their resident blonde sex symbol. Throughout her career, she was compared by the media to Monroe and another sex symbol, Mamie Van Doren. Mansfield was a Playboy Playmate of the Month and appeared in several issues of the magazine.

Although many people have never seen her movies, Jayne Mansfield remains, long after her death, one of the most recognizable icons of 1950s celebrity culture.^[3] Her statuesque figure (she claimed dimensions of 40-21-35), her unique sashaying walk, and her breathy baby talk made history.^[4] "From 1955 until the early 1960s, Mansfield reigned as Hollywood's gaudiest, boldest D-cupped B-grade actress" and was known as "the working man's Monroe".^[5]

Mansfield became a major Broadway star in 1955, a major movie star in 1956, the darling of the movie community in 1957, and a box-office has-been in 1958.^[6] While Mansfield's film career was short-lived, she had several box office successes and won a Theatre World Award, a Golden Globe and a Golden Laurel. In 1955, she enjoyed success with Broadway musical Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and its film version. She is remembered for starring roles in Rock Hunter? (1957) and the comedy film The Girl Can't Help It (1956), both films produced by 20th Century Fox. Of her rare dramatic roles, The Wayward Bus (1957) is regarded as the best. She also sang for studio recordings, including the album Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me and the singles Suey and As the Clouds Drift by (with Jimi Hendrix, one of the most influential musicians of his era).^[7] Mansfield's notable television work included The Red Skelton Show (1959–1963) and The Ed Sullivan Show (1957).

Her career declined first to low-budget foreign movies and major Las Vegas nightclub dates; then to television guest appearances; next to touring plays and minor Las Vegas nightclub dates; and finally ended in small nightclub dates.^[6] As the demand for blonde bombshells declined during the 1960s, Mansfield remained a popular celebrity, continuing to attract large crowds outside the U.S. and in lucrative and successful nightclub tours. Her film career continued with lower-budget melodramas and comedies (many filmed in the United Kingdom and Europe), including Heimweh nach St. Pauli and L'Amore Primitivo. In the independent film Promises! Promises! (1963), she became the first major American actress to have a nude starring role in a Hollywood motion picture. Despite initial success, her later career dwindled into cheap European films, slapped-together American quickies like Single Room Furnished (1965), and plenty of nightclub and summer-theater work.^[8]

Mansfield was married three times: first to her childhood sweetheart Paul Mansfield (1950–1958), then to actor–bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay (1958–1963) and finally to film director Matt Cimber (1964–1966). She had five children: Jayne Marie Mansfield (born 1950), Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay (born 1958), Zoltán Anthony Hargitay (born 1960), actress Mariska Magdolna Hargitay (born 1964) and Antonio "Tony" Cimber (born 1965). Mansfield died in an automobile accident at age 34.

Early life and education[link]

Jayne Mansfield was born Vera Jayne Palmer on April 19, 1933 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of Herbert William (1904–1936), of German ancestry, and Vera Jeffrey Palmer (1903–2000), of English descent.^[9] Vera Jayne's father, Elmer E Palmer, was from the largely Cornish area of Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania,^[10] where he was involved with the slate industry.^[11] She inherited more than $90,000.00 from her Elmer ($724,983 in 2012 dollars^[12]) and more that $36,000.00 from her maternal grandmother Alice Jane Palmer in 1958 ($289,993 in 2012 dollars^[12]).^[11][13] Jayne spent her early childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey,^[14] where her father was an attorney who practiced with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner. In 1936, when Jayne was three years old, Herbert William died of a heart attack while driving a car with his wife and daughter. Following his death, Jayne's mother worked as a teacher. In 1939 Vera Palmer married sales engineer Harry Lawrence Peers and the family moved to Dallas, Texas,^[15] where Jayne was known as Vera Jayne Peers.^[16][17] She married Paul James Mansfield (a student at the University of Dallas) on May 10, 1950. Their daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield, was born on November 8, 1950.

Frequent references have been made to Jayne's very high IQ, which she claimed was 163, and her ability to speak five languages.^[18] Jayne graduated from Highland Park High School in 1950.^{[19][20][21][22]} While in high school, Jayne took lessons in violin, piano and viola. She also studied Spanish and German.^[23][24] She consistently received high Bs in school (including in mathematics).^[25] After marriage, Jayne and Paul enrolled into Southern Methodist University to study acting, where lacking finances to afford day care, carried around her daughter Jayne Marie.^[26][8][27] In 1951, she moved to Austin, Texas, with Paul, and studied dramatics at the University of Texas at Austin, until her junior year.^{[20][21][22][26]} While attending the University of Texas, she worked as a nude model for art classes, sold books door-to-door, and worked in the evenings as receptionist of a dance studio.^[28][29][30] While studying and trying to earn a living, she joined the Curtain Club (a campus theatrical society, at that time also had Tom Jones, Harvey Schmidt, Rip Torn, and Pat Hingle among its members)^[29][31][32] and was active at the Austin Civic Theater.^[29]

In 1952, she moved back to Dallas and for several months, became a student of actor Baruch Lumet, who was father of director Sidney Lumet and founder of the newly founded and now defunct Dallas Institute of Performing Arts.^[33][34][35] Lumet called Jayne and Rip Torn his "kids", and seeing her potential, provided her private lessons.^[20][36] Paul was then called to the United States Army Reserve for the Korean War.^[30] Her life became easier with Paul's army allotment.^[37] After spending a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia (a US Army training facility) they moved to Los Angeles in 1954, where Jayne studied Theater Arts at UCLA during the summer,^[21][20] and returned to Texas to spend the fall quarter at Southern Methodist University.^[38] While in California, she left Jayne Marie with her maternal grandparents (Jayne's parents).^[30] She managed to maintain a B grade average, between a variety of odd jobs, including: a stint as a candy vendor at a movie theater (where caught the eye of a TV producer)^[8], a part-time model at the Blue Book Model Agency (where Marilyn Monroe was first noticed),^[39] and working as a photographer at Esther Williams' nightclub, the Trail.^[40][38][26] She would later complain that the public did not care about her brains. "They're more interested in 40–21–35", she said.^[41] She was reputed to be Hollywood's "smartest dumb blonde".^[27]

Early career[link]

During her tenure at the University of Texas at Austin, Mansfield won several beauty contests, including: Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, and Miss Fire Prevention Week. The only title she refused was Miss Roquefort Cheese, because she believed it "just didn't sound right".^[43] Mansfield accepted a bit part in a B-grade film titled Prehistoric Women (produced by Alliance Productions, alternatively titled The Virgin Goddess) in 1950.^[30] In 1952, while at Dallas, she and Paul participated in small local-theater productions of The Slaves of Demon Rum and Ten Nights in a Barroom, and Anything Goes in Camp Gordon, Georgia. After Paul left for military service, Mansfield first appeared on stage in a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman on October 22, 1953, with the players of the Knox Street Theater, headed by Lumet.^[38]

While at UCLA she entered the Miss California contest (hiding her marital status), and won the local round before withdrawing.^[44] Early in her career the prominence of her breasts was considered problematic and led her to be cut from her first professional assignment: an advertising campaign for General Electric, which depicted several young women in bathing suits relaxing around a pool.^[45] In 1954, she auditioned at both Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. for a part in The Seven Year Itch but failed to impress.^[38] That year, she landed her first acting assignment in Lux Video Theatre, a series on CBS ("An Angel Went AWOL", October 21, 1954).^[38] In the show she sat at the piano and delivered a few lines of dialogue for $300.00.^[46]

She posed nude for the February 1955 issue of Playboy, an event that helped launch Mansfield's career^[47] and increased the magazine's circulation;^[48] Playboy had begun publishing from publisher–editor Hugh Hefner's kitchen the year before.^[49] In 1964, the magazine repeated the pictorial.^[50] Photos from that pictorial was reprinted in a number of Playboy issues, including: December 1965 ("The Playboy Portfolio of Sex Stars"), January 1979 ("25 Beautiful Years"), January 1984 ("30 Memorable Years"), January 1989 ("Women Of The Fifties"), January 1994 ("Remember Jayne"), November 1996 ("Playboy Gallery"), August 1999 ("Playboy's Sex Stars of the Century"; Special edition), and January 2000 ("Centerfolds Of The Century").

Film career[link]

Career beginnings (mid-1950s)[link]

Mansfield's first film part was the supporting role of Candy Price in Female Jungle (1955), a low-budget drama which was completed in 10 days. Her part was filmed in only a few days, and she received $150 for her performance ($1,301 in 2012 dollars^[12]). Female Jungle was released in January 1955 by producer Burt Kaiser. That year Paul Wendkos offered Mansfield the dramatic role of Gladden in The Burglar (1957), his film adaptation of David Goodis' novel. The film was done in film noir style, and Mansfield appeared alongside Dan Duryea and Martha Vickers. The Burglar was released two years later, when Mansfield's fame was at its peak. She was successful in this straight dramatic role, although most of her subsequent film appearances would be either comedic or capitalize on her sex appeal.

On February 8, 1955, Mansfield was signed by Warner Bros. to a six-month contract after one of its talent scouts discovered her in a production at the Pasadena Playhouse. She filed for divorce from Paul the same day.^[51] Warner wanted Mansfield as its version of the popular (and lucrative) Marilyn Monroe of 20th Century Fox. Mansfield was given a bit part in Pete Kelly's Blues (1955), starring and directed by Jack Webb. She made one more movie with Warner Bros., which gave her another small (but significant) role as Angela O'Hara opposite Edward G. Robinson in Illegal (1955). The film offered another rare serious performance by Mansfield. After leaving Warner Bros. she made an uncredited cameo appearance in Hell on Frisco Bay (1955), starring Alan Ladd.

Film stardom (late 1950s)[link]

Trailer of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957)

Mansfield at the premiere of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in Stockholm, Sweden

In 1955, Mansfield enjoyed a successful Broadway run in the musical Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. She returned to Hollywood on May 3, 1956 with no work and a $20,000.00 mink coat ($170,967 in 2012 dollars^[12]).^[27] 20th Century Fox signed a six-year contract with her immediately. The studio wanted Mansfield to replace Marilyn Monroe (their resident blonde bombshell), and promoted her as "Marilyn Monroe King-Sized".^[52]

Mansfield received her first starring film role as Jerri Jordan in the Frank Tashlin's The Girl Can't Help It (1956).^[53] The film, originally titled Do-Re-Mi, featured a high-profile cast of contemporary rock and roll and R&B artists including Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, The Platters and Little Richard.^[54] Mansfield then played a dramatic role in The Wayward Bus (1957) adapted from John Steinbeck's novel. In this film, she attempted to move away from her "blonde bombshell" image and establish herself as a serious actress. It enjoyed reasonable success at the box office, and Mansfield won a Golden Globe in 1957 for New Star Of The Year – Actress (beating Carroll Baker and Natalie Wood) for her performance as a "wistful derelict". It was "generally conceded to have been her best acting", according to The New York Times, in a fitful career hampered by her flamboyant image, distinctive voice ("a soft-voiced coo punctuated with squeals"), voluptuous figure and limited acting range.^[55]

She reprised her role of Rita Marlowe in the 1957 film version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, co-starring Tony Randall and Joan Blondell. 20th Century Fox launched their new blonde bombshell with a 40-day 16-country tour of Europe for the studio in 1957. She attended the premier of Rock Hunter (release as Oh! For a man in UK) in London, and met the Queen of England as part of the tour.^[56][57][58]

Mansfield's fourth starring role in a Hollywood film was in Kiss Them for Me (1957), in which she received prominent billing alongside Cary Grant. However, in the film itself she is little more than comic relief; Grant's character prefers a sleek, demure redhead played by fashion model Suzy Parker. Kiss Them for Me was described as "vapid" and "ill-advised", and was a box-office disappointment. The film was Mansfield's final starring role in a mainstream Hollywood studio film.^[59] It also marked one of the last attempts by 20th Century Fox to publicize her.^[60]

The continuing publicity surrounding Mansfield's physical appearance failed to sustain her career.^[61] She was offered a part opposite James Stewart and Jack Lemmon in the romantic comedy Bell, Book and Candle (1958), but had to turn it down because of her pregnancy. Mansfield's rival, Kim Novak, would replace her in the film. In 1958, Fox gave Mansfield the lead role as Kate opposite Kenneth More in the western spoof The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw. Although it was filmed in 1958, it was not released in the United States until 1959. The film required Mansfield to sing three songs. But, since she was not a trained singer, the studio dubbed Mansfield's voice with that of singer/actress Connie Francis.^[62][63] When released in the United States, it became her last mainstream film success. Following The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw Fox tried to cast Mansfield opposite Paul Newman in Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, his ill-fated first attempt at comedy. However, after intense lobbying by Newman and Joanne Woodward she was replaced by Mansfield's Wayward Bus co-star Joan Collins.^[64]

Career decline (early 1960s)[link]

Promises! Promises!, the first Hollywood motion picture with sound to feature a mainstream star in the nude^[65]

Despite her publicity and popularity, Mansfield had no quality film roles after 1959. She starred in a series of low-budget films, the majority made in Europe.^[66] These films are largely obscure, and some are considered lost. In 1959, Fox cast her to appear in two independent gangster thrillers in England: The Challenge (co-starring Anthony Quayle) and Too Hot to Handle (co-starring Christopher Lee). Both films were low-budget, and their American releases were delayed. Too Hot to Handle was not released in the United States until 1961 as Playgirl After Dark, while The Challenge would not be seen by American audiences until 1963 under the title It Takes a Thief. In the USA, censors objected to a scene in Too Hot to Handle where Mansfield was nearly nude (wearing sliver netting, with sequins painted over her nipples).^[67]

When Mansfield returned to Hollywood in mid-1960, 20th Century-Fox cast her in It Happened in Athens (1962). She received first billing above the title, but only appeared in a supporting role. It Happened in Athens starred a handsome newcomer: Trax Colton, an "unknown" whom Fox was trying to mold into a heartthrob. This Olympic Games-based film was shot in Greece in fall 1960, but was unreleased until June 1962. It was a box-office failure, and Mansfield's 20th Century-Fox contract was dropped.

In 1961 Mansfield agreed to play Lisa Lang in The George Raft Story, starring Ray Danton as Raft. She accepted the part primarily for the money, and because the film was going to be filmed in Hollywood rather than Europe. Soon after the release of The George Raft Story, Mansfield returned to European films. Over the next few years she appeared primarily in low-budget foreign films such as Panic Button (Italy), Heimweh nach St. Pauli (Germany), Einer frisst den anderen (Germany) and L'Amore Primitivo (Italy).

In 1963, Tommy Noonan persuaded Mansfield to become the first mainstream American actress to appear nude in a starring role in the film Promises! Promises!. Nude photographs of Mansfield on the set were published in the June 1963 issue of Playboy, which resulted in obscenity charges against Hugh Hefner in Chicago city court.^[68] Promises! Promises! was banned in Cleveland, but enjoyed box-office success elsewhere. As a result of the film's success, Mansfield landed on the Top 10 list of box-office attractions for that year.^[69] The autobiographical Jayne Mansfield's Wild, Wild World (which she co-authored with her then-husband, Mickey Hargitay), published immediately after Promises! Promises!, contained 32 pages of black-and-white photographs from the film on glossy paper.^[70]

Career end (late 1960s)[link]

Soon after her success in Promises! Promises! Mansfield was chosen from many other actresses to replace the recently-deceased Marilyn Monroe in Kiss Me, Stupid, a romantic comedy which would co-star Dean Martin. She turned the role down due to her pregnancy with daughter Mariska, and was replaced with Kim Novak.

In 1966 Mansfield was cast in Single Room Furnished, directed by then-husband Matt Cimber. The film required Mansfield to portray three different characters, and was Mansfield's first starring dramatic role in several years. It was briefly released in 1966 but did not enjoy a full release until 1968, almost a year after her death. After Single Room Furnished wrapped Mansfield was cast opposite Mamie Van Doren and Ferlin Husky in The Las Vegas Hillbillys, a low-budget comedy from Woolner Brothers. Despite her career setbacks, Mansfield remained a highly-visible celebrity during the early 1960s with her publicity antics and stage performances. In early 1967, Mansfield filmed her last film role: a cameo in A Guide for the Married Man, a comedy starring Walter Matthau, Robert Morse and Inger Stevens. Mansfield received seventh billing as "Girl with Harold".^[71] Before her tragic death Mansfield's time was split between nightclub performances and the production of her last film: A Guide for the Married Man, a big-budget production directed by Gene Kelly.

Stage career[link]

Mansfield acted both on stage and in films. She was a student of acting, theater arts and dramatic in college and with Baruch Lumet. She started acting with campus clubs and summer stock theatre. Her first big break was at Broadway. In her later career she was more busy on stage, performing and making appearances with her nightclub acts, club engagements and performance tours.

Theater[link]

During her tenure at Dallas, she and Paul participated in a number of local theater productions. Between 1951 and 1953 she acted in The Slaves of Demon Rum, Ten Nights in a Barroom and Anything Goes. Her performance in an October 1953 production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman in Dallas, Texas attracted Paramount Pictures to audition her.^[72] Lumet trained her for the audition.^[20] In 1955, she went to New York and appeared in the Broadway production of George Axelrod's comedy Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, also featuring Orson Bean and Walter Matthau. She starred as Rita Marlowe (a wild, blonde Hollywood starlet a la Monroe) in the musical that spoofed Hollywood. In the production her wardrobe principally consisted of bath-towel.^[73][74] Brooks Atkinson of the New York Times described the "commendable abandon" of her scantily-clad rendition of Rita Marlowe in the play as "a platinum-pated movie siren with the wavy contours of Marilyn Monroe".^[75] Her acting drew attention of comedy director Frank Tashlin, who regarded Mansfield as a "living cartoon" and cast in the film version of the play.^[8] She performed in 450 shows of the play between 1955-56.^[76] She was considered one of the biggest Broadway to Hollywood success stories.^[26]

In 1964, she performed in stage productions of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (at Carousel Theater) and Bus Stop (at Yonker Playhouse). Both co-starred Mickey Hargitay and were well-reviewed.^[77][78] She toured small towns in the US alternating between the two plays.^[79] In 1965, she performed in another pair of plays – Rabbit Habit (at Latin Quarter) and Champagne Complex (at Pabst Theater). Both were directed by Matt Cimbers and were poorly-reviewed.^[80][81]

Nightclub[link]

In February 1958, Tropicana Las Vegas launched Mansfield's striptease revue The Tropicana Holiday (produced by Monte Proser, co-starring Mickey Hargitay) under a four weeks contract which was extended to eight.^[82][83][84] The opening night raised $20,000.00 for March of Dimes ($161,107 in 2012 dollars^[12]). She received $25,000.00 per week for her performance as Trixie Divoon in the show ($201,384 in 2012 dollars^[12]), while her contract with 20th Century Fox was paying her $2,500.00 per week ($20,138 in 2012 dollars^[12]).^[85][86][87] She had a million-dollar policy with Lloyd's of London in case of Hargitay dropping her as he whirled Mansfield around for the show.^[88][89] When three of her films – The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, The Loves of Hercules and It Happened in Athens – failed at the box office, Mansfield turned to Las Vegas again. In December 1960, Dunes hotel and casino launched Mansfield's revue The House of Love (produced by Jack Cole, co-starring Hargitay). She received $35,000.00 a week as her salary ($274,961 in 2012 dollars^[12]), which was the highest in her career.^[90][91] Her wardrobe for the shows at Tropicana and Dunes featured a gold mesh dress with sequins to cover her nipples and pubic region.^[82][76][92] That controversial sheer dress that was referred to as "Jayne Mansfiled and a few sequins".^[93] She returned to Las Vegas in 1966, but her show was staged at Fremont Street, away from the Strip where Tropicana and Dunes was.^[82] Her last nightclub act French Dressing was at Latin Quarter in New York in 1966.^[94] It was a modified version of the Tropicana show, and ran for six weeks with fair success.^[95]

20th Century Fox Records subsequently recorded the The House of Love for an album entitled Jayne Mansfield Busts Up Las Vegas in 1962. In 1967, independent documentary Spree (alternative title Las Vegas by Night) on the antiques of Las Vegas entertainers was released. The film, narrated as a part of a travelogue of Vic Damone and Juliet Prowse, featured Mansfield, Hargitay, Constance Moore and Clara Ward as guest stars. Mansfield strips and sings "Promise Her Anything" from the film Promises! Promises!.^[96][97][98] A court order prohibited using any of the guest stars to promote the film.^[99][100] In 1966, Matt Cimbers directed The Las Vegas Hillbillys, a low-budget poorly-reviewed film featuring Mansfield, Ferlin Husky and Mamie Van Doren in the lead. Mansfield and her arch-rival Van Doren did not appear in single frame together.^[76] Mansfield's wardrobe, in her role as Las Vegas show girl Tawni Downs, consisted of the shapeless styles of the 1960s to hide her weight problems after the birth of her fifth child.^[101]

Television career[link]

Mansfield and Bob Hope on a USO tour in 1957

Mansfield's first leading role on television was with NBC's Sunday Spectacular "The Bachelor" in 1956.^[102] In her first appearance on British television in 1957 she recited from Shakespeare (including a line from Hamlet - "Oh that this too, too solid flesh should melt") and played piano and violin.^[103][104] Her notable performances in television dramas included episodes of Burke's Law, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Red Skelton Hour (three episodes), Kraft Mystery Theater and Follow the Sun. Mansfield's performance in her first series Follow the Sun ("The Dumbest Blonde"; Season 1, Episode 21; February 04, 1962; produced by 20th Century Fox Television) was hailed as the advent of a "a new and dramatic Jayne Mansfield".^[105] She appeared on a number of game shows including Talk it up, Down You Go (as a regular panelist in),^[106] The Match Game (one rare episode has her as a team captain), What's My Line? (as a special mystery guest) and It Pays to Be Ignorant.

She performed in a number of variety shows including The Jack Benny Program (on which she played violin), The Steve Allen Show and The Jackie Gleason Show (during the mid-1960s, when the show was the second-highest-rated program in the U.S.).^[107] She was a guest in three episodes of the The Bob Hope Show touring with team. In 1957, she toured United States Pacific Command areas of Hawaii, Okinawa, Guam, Tokyo and Korea with Bob Hope for the United Service Organizations for 13 days appearing as a comedienne;^[108] and in 1961, toured Newfoundland, Labrador and Baffin Island for a Christmas special.^[109] Her talk show career includes a very large number of talk shows, as she appreciated the publicity and appeared frequently in talk shows.^[104] One of her more notable appearances in a talk show was in The Ed Sullivan Show (Season 10, Episode 35; May 26, 1957) right after her success with Rock Hunter. In the show she played violin with a six person back-up.^[110] After the show she exclaimed, "Now I am really national. Momma and Dallas see the Ed Sullivan show!"^[111]

By 1958, she charged $20,000.00 per episode for television performance ($161,107 in 2012 dollars^[12]).^[112] In 1964, Mansfield turned down the role of Ginger Grant on the up-and-coming television sitcom Gilligan's Island, although her acting roles were becoming marginalized, because the part (which eventually went to Tina Louise) epitomized the stereotype of which she wished to rid herself.^[113] The widespread rumor that Jayne Mansfield had a breast-flashing dress mishap at the 1957 Academy Awards was found to be baseless by Academy researchers.^[114] Ten days before her death, she read To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, a poem by Robert Herrick about early death on The Joey Bishop Show (Mansfield's last television appearance).^[115]

As late as the mid-1980s, Mansfield remained one of the biggest TV draws.^[116] In 1980, The Jayne Mansfield Story aired on CBS starring Loni Anderson in the title role and Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mickey Hargitay. It was nominated for three Emmy Awards. She was featured in the A&E Television Networks TV series Biography in an episode titled Jayne Mansfield: Blonde Ambition.^[117][118] The TV series won an Emmy Award in outstanding non-fiction TV series category in 2001.^[119] A&E again featured her life in another TV serial titled Dangerous Curves in 1999.^[120] In 1988, her story and archival footage was a part of TV documentary Hollywood Sex Symbols.

Music career[link]

Mansfield sang in English and German for a number of her films, including The Las Vegas Hillbillys, Too Hot to Handle, Homesick for St. Pauli and Promises! Promises!; however, in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw her character lip synced to Connie Francis singing "In The Valley Of Love", "Strolling Down The Lane With Billy" and "If The San Francisco Hills Could Only Talk". Mansfield had classical training in piano and violin, playing violin with a six-musician back-up ensemble on The Ed Sullivan Show.^[121] In 1958, an orchestra was recorded for the 31st Academy Awards ceremony with Jack Benny on first violin, Jayne Mansfield on violin, Dick Powell on trumpet, Robert Mitchum on woodwind, Fred Astaire on drums and Jerry Lewis as conductor; however, the performance was canceled.^[122]

In 1964 Mansfield released a novelty album called Jayne Mansfield: Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, in which she recited Shakespeare's sonnets and poems by Marlowe, Browning, Wordsworth, and others against a background of Tchaikovsky's music. The album cover depicted a bouffant-coiffed Mansfield with lips pursed and breasts barely covered by a fur stole, posing between busts of Tchaikovsky and Shakespeare.^[123] The New York Times described the album a reading of "30-odd poems in a husky, urban, baby voice". The reviewer went on to remark that "Miss Mansfield is a lady with apparent charms, but reading poetry is not one of them."^[124] Jimi Hendrix played bass and lead guitar for Mansfield in 1965 on two songs ("As The Clouds Drift By" and "Suey"), released as a 45-rpm single. According to Hendrix historian Steven Roby (Black Gold: The Lost Archives Of Jimi Hendrix, Billboard Books), this collaboration occurred because they shared the same manager.^[125][126]

Personal life[link]

Film critic and exploitation movie expert Whitney Williams wrote of Mansfield in Variety in 1967 that "her personal life out-rivaled any of the roles she played".^[127] Mansfield was married three times, divorced twice and had five children. She also reportedly had affairs and sexual encounters with numerous individuals, including Claude Terrail (owner of the Paris restaurant La Tour d'Argent),^[128] Robert F. Kennedy,^[129] John F Kennedy,^[130] Brazilian billionaire Jorge Guinle,^[131], her attorney Samuel S. Brody and Anton LaVey.^[132] She met John F Kennedy through his brother-in-law Peter Lawford at Palm Springs, California in 1960, before he had his affair with Marilyn Monroe, but the "affair" did not last.^{[133][134][135]} She also had a well-publicized relationship in 1963 with singer Nelson Sardelli, whom she said she planned to marry when her divorce from Mickey Hargitay was finalized.^[136] At her death Mansfield was accompanied by Sam Brody, her married divorce lawyer and lover at the time.^[137][138]

First marriage[link]

Jayne met Paul Mansfield, her senior and a popular student at Highland Park High School, Dallas, at a party on Christmas Eve of 1949.^[139] On May 6, 1950, she married Paul in Fort Worth, Texas in Fort Worth, Texas. At the time of their marriage, Jayne was 17, and was three months pregnant. Paul was 21.^{[140][141][142][143]} On November 8, 1950, Mansfield gave birth to their daughter, Jayne Marie Mansfield.^[38] Some sources cite Paul as the father of her child,^[140][141] while others allege the pregnancy was the result of date rape.^{[144][145][146]} According to biographer Raymond Strait she had an earlier "secret" marriage on January 28, after which she conceived her first child.^[147] Paul hoped the birth of their child would discourage her interest in acting. When it did not, he agreed to move to Los Angeles in late 1954 to help further her career.^[148] She juggled motherhood and classes at the University of Texas, then spent a year at Camp Gordon, Georgia while Paul Mansfield served in the United States armed forces. Coming back from the Korean War he took a job with a small newspaper in East Los Angeles, California and lived in a small apartment with Jayne. After a series of marital rows around Jayne's ambitions, infidelity and her animals (a Great Dane, three cats, two Chihuahuas, a poodle, and a rabbit), they were divorced on January 8, 1958.^{[149][150][151]} After the divorce he remarried, settled into the business of public relations, and moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, while failing win suits to gain custody of Jayne Marie or restraining her from traveling abroad with her mother.^[152][153] Two weeks before her mother's death in 1967, Jayne Marie (then 16) accused her mother's boyfriend at that time, Sam Brody, of beating her.^[55] The girl's statement to officers of the Los Angeles Police Department the following morning implicated her mother in encouraging the abuse, and days later a juvenile court judge awarded temporary custody of Jayne Marie to Paul's uncle William W. Pigue and his wife Mary.^{[154][155][140]} After turning adult Jayne Marie complained that she had not received a dime from the Mansfield estate or heard from her father since her mother died.^[156][157]

Second marriage[link]

Mansfield met her second husband Mickey Hargitay at the Latin Quarter in New York in May 13, 1956, where he was performing as a member of the chorus line in Mae West's show.^[158] She immediately fell for him, which subsequently resulted in a squabble with West.^[159][27] Hargitay was an actor and bodybuilder who had won the Mr. Universe competition in 1955.^[160] He proposed to her with a $25,000.00 10-carat diamond ring on 6 November, 1957, right after she returned from her 40-day European tour.^[161][162] On January 13, 1958, days after her divorce from Paul was finalized, Mansfield and Hargitay married at the Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. The unique glass chapel made public and press viewing of the wedding easy. Mansfield wore a sensational pink skintight wedding gown made of sequins with a 30 yard flounce.^[163][164]

Mansfield and her husband toured widely in stage shows, where her leopard-spot bikini became a topic of discussion and newspaper coverage.^[165][166] Hargitay spinning her over his head while grabbing her at the waist as a highlight of her shows made more headlines.^[167][168]

During this marriage she had three children, Miklós Jeffrey Palmer Hargitay (born December 21, 1958), Zoltán Anthony Hargitay (born August 1, 1960) and Mariska Magdolna Hargitay (see below). Zoltan was in the news when a lion attacked him and bit his neck while he and his mother were visiting the theme park Jungleland USA in Thousand Oaks, California on 23 November, 1967. He suffered from severe head trauma, underwent three surgeries at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, California, including a six hour brain surgery, and contracted meningitis. He recovered. Mansfield's attorney Sam Brody sued the theme park on her behalf for $1,600,000.00.^{[169][170][171]} The negative publicity led to closure of the theme park.^[172]

The couple divorced in Juarez, Mexico, in May 1963, where Nelson Sardelli accompanied Mansfield.^[173] She had previously filed for divorce on May 4, 1962, but told reporters "I'm sure we will make it up."^[174] Their acrimonious divorce had the actress accusing Hargitay of kidnapping one of her children to force a more-favorable financial settlement.^[175] After their divorce, Mansfield discovered she was pregnant. Since being an unwed mother would have killed her career, Mansfield and Hargitay announced they were still married. Mariska was born January 23, 1964, after the actual divorce but before California ruled it valid.^[176] Mariska later became an actress, best known for her role as Olivia Benson in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. After her birth, Mansfield sued for the Juarez divorce to be declared legal and won. The divorce was recognized in the United States on August 26, 1964.^[177] Shortly after Mansfield's funeral, Mickey Hargitay sued his former wife's estate for more than $275,000 ($1.92 million in 2012 dollars^[12]) to support the children whom he and his third (and last) wife, Ellen Siano, would raise.^[177]

Third marriage[link]

Mansfield married Matt Cimber (a.k.a. Matteo Ottaviano, né Thomas Vitale Ottaviano), an Italian-born film director, on September 24, 1964 in Mulegé, Baja California Sur, Mexico. The couple separated on July 11, 1965 and filed for divorce on July 20, 1966.^[178] Cimber and Mansfield became involved when he directed her in a widely-praised stage production of Bus Stop in Yonkers, New York (which costarred Hargitay).^[179][180] Cimber took over the management of her career during their marriage, and guided her through a series of increasingly tawdry projects like Promises, Promises.^[8] Her marriage to Cimber began to collapse in the wake of Mansfield's alcohol abuse, open infidelities and her disclosure to Cimber that she had only been happy with her former lover, Nelson Sardelli. Work on Mansfield's film, Single Room Furnished directed by Cimber (1966) was suspended.^[181] The couple had one son, Antonio Raphael Ottaviano (a.k.a. Tony Cimber, born October 18, 1965). Mansfield's youngest child Tony was raised by his father, Matt Cimber, whose divorce from the actress was pending when she was killed.

Death[link]

Gravestone at Fairview Cemetery (Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania), photographed in 2007

Mansfield's cenotaph (with incorrect birth year) at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, Hollywood, California

In Biloxi, Mississippi for an engagement at the Gus Stevens Supper Club, Mansfield stayed at the Cabana Courtyard Apartments near the club. After an evening engagement on June 28, 1967, Mansfield, her lover Sam Brody, their driver, Ronnie Harrison and the actress's children (Miklós, Zoltán and Mariska) set out in Stevens' 1966 Buick Electra 225 for New Orleans, where Mansfield was scheduled to appear for an early-morning television interview. Before leaving Biloxi, the party made a stop at the home of Rupert and Edna O'Neal (a family who lived nearby). After a late dinner with the O'Neals (during which Mansfield's last photographs were taken), the party set out for New Orleans. On June 29 at approximately 2:25 a.m., on U.S. Highway 90, east of the Rigolets Bridge, the car crashed into the rear of a tractor-trailer which had slowed for a truck which was spraying mosquito fogger. The automobile struck the rear of the trailer and went under it. The three adults in the front seat were killed instantly; the children, in the rear, survived with minor injuries.^[182]

Allegations that Mansfield was decapitated are untrue, although she suffered severe head trauma. The urban legend was spawned by the appearance in police photographs of a crashed automobile with its top virtually sheared off, and what resembled a blonde-haired head tangled in the car's smashed windshield. However, this was probably either a wig Mansfield was wearing or her actual hair and scalp.^[183] The death certificate stated that the immediate cause of Mansfield's death was a "crushed skull with avulsion of cranium and brain".^[184] After her death, the NHTSA began requiring an underride guard (a strong bar made of steel tubing) on all tractor-trailers. This bar is known as a Mansfield bar, or a DOT bar.^[185][186]

Mansfield's funeral took place on July 3 in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania. Her last rites were conducted by Rev. Charles Montgomery, a pastor of the Zion Methodist Church (destroyed by fire in February 1970 and rebuilt as Grace United Methodist Church),^[187] in a private service at the chapel of the Pullis Funeral Home.^[188] Of her three husbands, only Mickey Hargitay was present at the funeral.^[189] She is interred in Fairview Cemetery, southeast of Pen Argyl, beside her father Herbert William Palmer. Her heart-shaped gravestone reads, "We Live to Love You More Each Day". A cenotaph was placed in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California by the Jayne Mansfield Fan Club (with an incorrect birth year; Mansfield tended to provide incorrect information about her age). In 1968, two wrongful-death lawsuits were filed on behalf of Jayne Marie Mansfield and Matt Cimber. The former for $4.8 million ($39.7 million in 2012 dollars^[12]) and the latter for $2.7 million ($22.3 million in 2012 dollars^[12]).^[190]

Recognition[link]

Mansfield's star Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6328 Hollywood Boulevard.^[191] (photographed in 2011)

• Mansfield won many local beauty pageants, including Miss Photoflash, Miss Magnesium Lamp, Miss Fire Prevention Week, Gas Station Queen, Miss 100% Pure, Miss Analgesin, Miss Cherry Blossom Queen, Miss Blues Bonnet of Austin, Miss Direct Mail, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Fill-er-up, Miss Negligee, Miss Nylon Sweater, Miss Freeway, Miss Electric Switch, Miss Geiger Counter, Miss 100% Pure Maple Syrup, Miss 4 July, Miss Tomato and Miss United Dairies.^[192]
• In February 1955 Mansfield was the Playmate of the Month in Playboy,^[42] in which she subsequently appeared over 30 times.^[193]
• She received a Theatre World Award (Promising Personality) for Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1956 .^[194]
• Photoplay awarded Mansfield a Gold Medal Award as one of the most promising young actresses of 1956-1957.^[195]
• She received a Golden Globe (New Star of the year, Actress) for Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? in 1957.^[196][197]
• Mansfield won a Golden Laurel in 1959 for Top Female Musical Performance in The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, a western spoof directed by Raoul Walsh.^[198] although the songs were performed by Connie Francis.^[62][63]
• On Mother's Day of 1960, the Mildred Strauss Child Care Chapter of Mount Sinai Hospital, New York declares her family as the "Family of the Year".^[199]
• Italian film, radio and television journalists awarded her the Silver Mask award in 1962.^[200]
• Mansfield received the Oscar of the Two World award in Italy.^[201][202]
• In 1963, Mansfield was voted one of the top-10 box-office attractions by an organization of American theater owners for her performance in Promises! Promises! (a film banned in parts of the U.S.).^[69][203]