ALS signed “The G[reat] M[an],” three pages, 8.5 x 11, no date. Letter to his mistress Carlotta Douglas, referred to in the greeting as “Katrinka.” After opening about the New York weather and what she should pack for her visit, Fields writes, In part: “I am enclosing you a check for a hundred dollars for a light coat in all probability you left the coat in question here and haven’t enough to send for it. However it is ever thus with music lovers they have no time to think of anything else. It amounts to a disease ultimately. Do not study too hard and become a bore and have your friends forsake you. Singers after a while become genuine pests, and people avoid them, and then begin to get disgusted with each other. Too much shop talk and rehearsing. This finishes the sermon for today…
That abortion ‘You Can’t Cheat an honest man’ is doing the second best business of the year. Can you beat it? I will probably do a good picture some day and it will do the second lowest gross of the year. To return to the weather conditions again, (as I told you) when it turns warm, it will do so over night, or over day, not giving your blood time to cool off, and you will probably suffer from nausea…Winter is bad, Spring is worse, and summer is no bargain. Sept., Oct., and early Nov. I liked comparable to the winter climate of Calif. All the rest of the months I give to Dr. Citron.” On the last page, Fields also adds a vertical postscript which reads, “Dell has had some bad dreams about me so she is coming out to see me. And convince herself I am well.” In fine condition, with central horizontal and vertical fold, some mild toning, and light feathering to last half page of text. Accompanied by the original mailing envelope, addressed in Fields’s hand and signed in the return address area, “c/o W. C. Fields.”
Fields’s persona screams loudly from this correspondence, turning the text into a platform from which the comedian virtually springs from beyond. He nearly barks at his mistress,“Do not study too hard and become a bore and have your friends forsake you. Singers after a while become genuine pests, and people avoid them...This finishes the sermon for today,” letting his controlling, dominating essence blow through the pages. He blasts the success of 1939 hit he scripted and starred in, You Can’t Cheat an Honest Man, stating, “I will probably do a good picture some day and it will do the second lowest gross of the year.” Displaying the typical melodramatic temperament of an alcoholic, Fields excelled at his craft, and is cited by Woody Allen as being one of the six genuine comic geniuses, next to Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers. Fields succumbed to an alcohol-related stomach hemorrhage on Christmas in 1946, leaving a legacy of brutish sarcasm, self-proclaimed misanthropy, and above all, laughter. Pre-certified PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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