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Article: Close encounters with W.C. Fields.
- Article from:
- The Saturday Evening Post
- Article date:
- December 1, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1987 Saturday Evening Post Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH W.C. FIELDS
In the darkened auditorium of the Loew's Met theater in Brooklyn, I first watched and fell in love with the mechanics of laughter as practiced by a bulbous-nosed comedian named W.C. Fields.
It was Tuesday afternoon and I was playing hooky from school, an activity I indulged in as often as I could get away with a scrawled (sometimes painfully forged) note from my father. The picture, called It's a Gift, contained, in my still-considered opinion, the funniest single sequence ever filmed.
Fifteen years old at the time, how could I possibly imagine that this rasping-voiced, manic genius would be the Pied Piper ...