Customer Reviews

Man on the Flying Trapeze: The Life and Times of W. C. Fields

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Louvish seems to spend about a third of the book on Fields' life, another third criticizing Robert Lewis Taylor's earlier Fields biography, and a final third relating the history of the English Music Hall circa 1895-1915. (Pages and pages of this with no mention of Fields whatsoever!)
Taylor's book may be innacurate-but as another reviewer noted, it's a heck of a lot more entertaining.

With the wealth of family scrapbooks and intimate anecdotes provided by Ronald Fields (W.C.'s grandson), it is difficult to see how someone could so thoroughly destroy what should have been an entertaining book. Louvish's mess is unreadable, aggravating, smarmy and smart-alecky. A sheer waste of precious anecdotes clumsily recounted by an inept writer. When Louvish does any original research on his own, he gets his facts wrong, to boot. Forget this mess and seek out W.C. FIELDS BY HIMSELF, at least the Fields letters are undoctored there and in the great man's own entertaining style of prose.

Simon Louvish once again dazzles the reader with his tremendous research, and still is able to make an interesting subject boring. Louvish gathers many details about Fields' early life and career and uses this material to punch holes in the constantly repeated misinformation previous biographies contained (most of the misinformation was supplied by Fields himself. For the facts alone this book is worth the purchase for any fan of "The Great Man," but don't expect to be enthralled by the writing style of Louvish, who has a tendency to write while patting himself on the back. Not enough time is spent on Fields' movie career and his personal life remains a mystery despite Louvish's efforts. Probably the best biography available on W.C. Fields, which only proves how well he covered his tracks.

I really cannot understand why someone would give this book a bad review.

FIRST - It is rare that there is a book written about THE GREAT MAN. We should give a hearty handclap to those who take the time to revisit such a great comedian and orginal personality.

SECOND - It is rare that a book would be honest enough to say where it's shortcomings may be. Meaning that, much to my and I'm sure other peoples amusement, our friend W.C. did a lot of tall-tale telling in his day. It is hard to decifer where truth on his life lay. Louvish checks with all resources to find whre the turth may be. He had access to family members, W.C.'s own scrapbooks, library archives, etc. He presents the book in the begining as a sort of mystery - and that's what it is. Even W.C.'s own authorized bio is full of holes and tall tales - and Louvish proves it. Those who are familiar with THE GREAT MAN know that even he fouled up his own tale telling at times.

THIRD - This book is not only a biography but a historical account. A good biography should not only tell the story of a person but should also give you points of reference in regards to time, event, people & places. Louvish does this. He gives you helpful background on key people and places in W.C.'s life. It allows the reader to understand the subject clearer. And this information is presented clear and concise - not as a "filler" for the text.

FOURTH - For those who feel that Louvish is being a "wiseguy" by the way he writes I ask you to think about who the subject matter is! One of the biggest and most original wiseguy of them all. I feel it makes the book more personal and fun to read.

If you're a fan of Fields you read it & judge for yourself. However, unlike some more ignorant folk, you must remember that ANY biography is not an "end all" to who that person is. A personality is a many layered thing, and so is telling the story of someones' life.

Take the book as it is. An enjoyable journey into the world of W.C Fields. You may learn something new, or you may not. However I'm sure you'll enjoy!

Although I have reservations, Simon Louvish's *Man on the Flying Trapeze* is a thoroughly competent job, strong in many areas. Louvish paints the vaudeville show circuit out of which Fields's later inimitable character was born with just the right amount of detail. Fields's earliest years were spend both in America and in Europe as one of a series of variety acts presented as part of an evening's performance (he was often on stage for only 12 minutes), and Louvish recreates this ambiance with some deftness, not easy to do when researching materials 90 years old. The Ziegfeld Follies live again! Similarly, by the time Fields starts in motion pictures in 1915, and with an explicitness that grows throughout the book, Louvish gets behind Fields's connection with the studios that filmed him. Chapter 23 on the now obscure producer J. P. McEvoy is a great piece of detective work: here is a key figure who underlies most of Fields's most sympathetic satirical postures.

Louvish doesn't claim to have figured out what he cannot: what caused the breakdown of Fields's marriage to Hattie Hughes? A biography that does include many of Fields's well-known lines--"Have you had this tooth pulled before?"--and reprises the best skits has much else to relish: e. g., the movie studio atmosphere and the hilarious objections to Fields's then-too-smutty-but-now-tame-enough gags. Louvish represents dutifully if a little thinly Fields's decline from illnesses brought on by alcoholism.

Now a few cavils. We need more on why William Claude Dukenfield was able to transform his life into comedy. Why could he and not others sublimate his anger and tensions first into juggling and then into physical and finally verbal humor? If the book needs the inspiration of genius to answer this point, that nevertheless is what a Fields fan wants. It also needs a fuller, richer aesthetic and intellectual context in appraising Fields's films. Less consequentially, Louvish on occasion needs more distance from Fields; adopting the master's voice in the narrative ("Never give a sucker an even break, particularly when he might be your biographer," p. 165) blurs the vision instead of clarifying it. There are a few factual errors: *Babbitt* was published in 1922, not 1921; the poem on p. 388 that Louvish thinks is Fields's was written by Ogden Nash (surely the W. W. Norton Company has editors for such details?)

Nevertheless, *Man on the Flying Trapeze* is an entertaining and illuminating biography, and I am grateful for it. Godfrey Daniel!

W.C. Fields was a great comic and a true original. As such he is deserving of a great biography - this isn't it! Louvish is simply not a good writer. His lame attempts at jokes a la Fields fall flat as does his editorializing. He also can't quote film lines accurately which is a pretty serious failing when we're talking about films available on video or seen regularly on AMC or TCM. Yes, Louvish has done research but, like his equally lame Marx Brothers bio, the research is spoiled by a poor, self-indulgent style.

Skip this poorly written excuse for a biography, search out a copy of Ronald Fields' "W.C. Fields by Himself", and let the Great Man speak for himself. Even though "W.C. Fields His Follies and Fortunes" may not be accurate, it's a lot more fun than this and captures the spirit of Field far better than Louvish.

Louvish's strength as a researcher provides much of the value of this book. No other researcher has covered Fields' vaudeville years as extensively. Louvish extracts much of his material from sources like the vast Fields' family archives, Will Fowler's personal collection of Fields material, and sketches filed for copyright purposes at the Library of Congress. Louvish's goal is to trace the origin and evolution of Fields' characters and sketches. He succeeds admirably by showing influences from predecessors and collaborators such as George Hobart (The Ham Tree), McIntyre and Heath (vaudeville sketches), and J.P. McEvoy (The Comic Supplement). By displaying the roots of Fields' acts, Louvish illustrates the sequential development of Fields' iconic persona beginning with his first performances in 1898.

As noted by other reviewers, Louvish's narration suffers from a few annoyances. The most offensive Louvish traits are his tendency to get ahead of himself in a story, and his insistence on inserting himself into the narrative. This leads to an occasional section in the book that comes across as confusing or obtrusive. Both of these weaknesses might have been minimized prior to publication if W.W. Norton had assigned a stronger editor.

Despite its breadth and depth, the book is not intended to be an ultimate Fields biography. Readers intrigued by scandal and legends will find little material to sustain their curiosity. One exception is the examination of his split with his wife Hattie and a clear documentation of a sustained connection at a distance throughout his career. But the Louvish book is not a prurient examination of Fields' peccadilloes; it is a serious documentation of the evolution of the Fields' performances on stage, screen, and radio. Louvish interleaves a few paragraphs here and there to debunk myths perpetuated by Robert Lewis Taylor (W.C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes) and Carlotta Monti (W.C. Fields and Me), but many Fields fans will prefer Taylor's and Monti's dressed-up imagery to Louvish's naked facts. In the final analysis, Man on a Flying Trapeze is a painstaking expansion of earlier work by Everson (The Art of W.C. Fields), Deschner (The Films of W.C. Fields) and Ronald Fields (W.C. Fields by Himself and W.C. Fields: A Life on Film).

Louvish deserves much praise for this book. Despite the infrequent editorial lapses, his scholarship is admirable and the result is enlightening.

I love W. C. Fields! To me he is the eternal comic genius, and I can watch his films over and over, always convulsing with laughter. This biography is fine, and gives me new insight into the man himself. My complaints with it may be considered merely quibbles, especially because the author ends far too many sentences and paragraphs with a string of periods, thusly... Also, I'm a stickler for facts, and it bothers me tremendously that he misidentifies Albert Fall as President Coolidge's Secretary of the Interior rather than President Harding's; and the ultimate anathema to a Three Stooges fan: he writes that Shemp Howard replaced Moe, rather than Curley!!! Please get a good fact-checker, or a much more attentive editor!

Simon Louvish sets out to separate the facts from the fiction of W.C.Fields and, as others have noted, has covered much of the same ground that Field's grandson Ronald has covered. Fields shrewdly understood human nature in that well told lies are much more interesting than the truth, which is prosaic and often ambiguous.

Louvish shines in his account of how Fields career evolved and how it belied F. Scott Fitzgerald's idea that there are no second acts in American life.

Fields had flourished on the vaudeville stage with routines that had been honed and tested with audiences around the world. He had faced hostility and even outright sabotage from promoters like Ziegfeld, who thought the only role for comedians was to fill the stage until the girls had changed clothes for their next number.

It was on the stage that Fields developed most of his comic themes using the writer J.P McEvoy. McEvoy was no Mahatma Kane Jeeves (My hat, my cane, Jeeves); McEvoy was a real comic writer who wrote the Comic Supplement, which was the source material for much of comedy in the classic film It's A Gift.

Fields bombed in his silent movie career. He was no Charlie Chaplin. It wasn't until that voice with its raspy cynicism matched up with his sense of words and language did his comedy really come alive.

It also becomes clear that Field's last film, Never Give A Sucker An Even Break, is his monument to all the directors and producers who tried to wreck his movies, and above all, to Joseph Breen, the censor, whose inane morals enforcement sucked the life out of the movies. In fact, I too would like to drink a toast to Breen with a double shot of nanny goat's milk...if I had any.

Simon Louvish is not for everyone. His style nettles some readers and his conclusions infuriate others. But he uncovers new material in each of his books I've read, adding to the body of evidence we measure these performers by.
In 'The Life and Times of W.C. Fields' he digs through mountains of prevarications, misconceptions, myths and outright lies to present a hitherto unseen image of The Great One while allowing the reader to judge for himself the validity of his theories. I value an author who doesn't feel a compelling need to force me to go along with his assumptions.
While some may criticize Louvish' style, I find him readable and provocative. I recognize other works on Fields' life and career may have appeal, there is certainly room for biographies by non-family members whose bias or need for obfuscation is not as apparent.
Reader beware: if you are not ready to question the W.C. Fields mythology, this is not the book for you. On the other hand, if you are open-minded and willing to question the validity of certain Fields truisms, you will find this volume entertaining and well written.