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

Man 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)