W. C. Fields from Sound Film and Radio Comedy to Stardom

Arthur Frank Wertheim is the author of the first two volumes in the W.C. Fields trilogy illuminating the comedian’s life and career: W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway (Palgrave, 2014) and W.C. Fields from the Ziegfeld Follies and Broadway Stage to the Screen (Palgrave, 2016).

1. Welcome Back to Hollywood.- 2. The Sennett Quartet.- 3. “The World’s Biggest Entertainment Joy Ride”.- 4. Three of a Kind.- 5. From Silent to Sound.- 6. Return to the Sawdust Trail.- 7. The Mail-Order Groom.- 8. Magnum Opus.1.- 9. “A Perfect Mixture of the Part and the Actor”.- 10. Mississippi River Card Shark.- 11. All in the Family.- 12. A Vocal McGargle Emerges.- 13. “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter”.- 14. Battling Sickness.- 15. Radio Saved My Life!.- 16. The Big Broadcast of 1938.- 17. The Paramount Purge.- 18. Battling Universal.- 19. Compustible Co-Stars.- 20. Magnus Opus.2.- 21. The Great Man.- 22. Swan Songs.- 23. Doomsday at Bundy Drive.- 24. Scenes Before the Final Exit.- 25. The Man in the Bright Nightgown Cometh.

“A thorough, insightful study not only of Fields’ film comedies, but of the inner turmoil that fueled his genius.” (Kirkus, kirkusreviews.com, December 29, 2019)