The deadpan comedian W.C. Fields was fresh off the movie “It’s a Gift” when he leased a secluded Spanish-style estate for $300 a month on 6 acres of orange groves in Encino. That was October 1934. By ...

GODFREY DANIEL! MOTHer of pearl! Simon Louvish wants to set the record straight on the life of W. C. Fields. In Man on the Flying Trapeze (564 pages. Norton. $29.95), Fields's latest biographer starts ...

Jan. 29 marks the 25th anniversary of the release of a commemorative stamp honoring W.C. Fields. He would have been 100 years old on that day. In the early days of talking film, he was one of the ...

The 1930s film comedian/curmudgeon W.C. Fields was always at his best when he had an irritant to bounce his biting one-liners against, like a precocious child, a cute dog or the voluptuous Mae West.

When he was 12 years old, Ron Fields almost cracked up watching It’s a Gift on TV. He was laughing so hard he had to leave the room. “Wow,” he said when he had recovered. “W.C. Fields has to be the ...