William Claude Dukenfield, also known as W.C. Fields, was the eldest of five children born to James Dukenfield, a Cockney immigrant, and Kate Felton, a native of Philadelphia. He attended school for four years before dropping out to work with his father, selling vegetables from a horse cart. At the age of eleven, after frequent fights with his abusive father, W.C. Fields ran away from home.
For a period, he lived in a hole in the ground, surviving on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice, and by the age of thirteen, he had developed his skills as a pool player and juggler.
It was during his time as an entertainer at an amusement park in Norristown, Pennsylvania, that W.C. Fields developed his signature technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893, he was hired as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier in Atlantic City, where he would often pretend to drown in the ocean to draw in customers.
By the age of nineteen, W.C. Fields was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At the age of twenty-three, he opened at the Palace in London and performed alongside Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He also starred at the Folies-Bergere, where he shared the stage with young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier.
W.C. Fields went on to perform in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 to 1921. He also appeared in the highly acclaimed musical "Poppy," which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925, D.W. Griffith made a film adaptation of the play, renamed "Sally of the Sawdust," starring W.C. Fields.
W.C. Fields' first film, "Pool Sharks," was released in 1915, when he was thirty-five years old. He went on to make thirty-seven films for Paramount, mostly featuring spontaneous dialogue on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939, he switched to Universal, where he wrote and starred in films mainly for himself.
W.C. Fields died after suffering from several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.
