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

"[Fields] was his own greatest creation, and in Louvish, this complicated artist has finally found the biographer he deserves." ? Malcolm Jones, Jr., NewsweekMan on the Flying Trapeze is the first biography in decades ? and the only accurate one ? of the beloved cinematic curmudgeon and inimitable comic genius W. C. Fields. Simon Louvish brilliantly sifts through evidence of Fields's own self-creation to illuminate the vaudeville world from which Fields sprang and his struggles with studios and censors to make his hilarious films-in the process confirming suspicions (yes, he did drink) and confounding them (he doted on his grandchildren). "One of the best movie biographies to come along in quite some time. . . . [A] book to cherish." ? Film Review "[Man on the Flying Trapeze] nicely regales us with many vaudevillian stories. . . . Louvish does a heroic job." ? Katharine Whittemore, New York Times Book Review "A rapturous, giddy, and irrepressible book. . . . Let us be clear: this is a delight, a marvel of research . . . and a superb argument for the case that William Claude Dukenfield was, and is, the greatest comic the movies have given us." ? David Thomson "At last 'the Great Man' (as Fields called himself, accurately) has a great biography." ? Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Illustrated