W.C. Fields Biography

Fast Facts

• Had the honor of being inducted into the Juggling Hall of Fame
• The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp featuring his image on what would have been his 100th birthday
• Started performing as a juggler when he was 15, soon adopting the stage name that would stick with him for the rest of his career
• Toured in burlesque and vaudeville, eventually headlining in the Ziegfeld Follies in 1915
• His early comic routines included playing a golf and pool huckster and a beleaguered family man
• His comic stage personal was that of a top-hatted, hard-drinking, cynical, curmudgeonly swindler
• His in-character catchphrases included "my little chickadee," "never give a sucker an even break" and "Godfrey Daniel," his substitute for swearing
• Disliked music, a fact he attributed to hearing his father singing almost constantly as a child
• Would keep a vacuum flask of mixed martinis on movies sets which he referred to as pineapple juice, and during the filming of "Tales of Manhattan," someone filled his flask with real pineapple juice as a joke
• An amateur cartoonist, he drew some of his own publicity material and would send sketches and self-drawn holiday cards to his friends