Book Review: Selling W.C. Fields to 20th Century America

In the latest of his wonderful Beyond Ballyhoo book series from BearManor Media, Richard S. Greene presents a series of ads and promotions for the comedy great W.C. Fields. 

The bulk of this oversized near-500 page collection are photos, ad sheets, posters, and artwork from throughout Fields’ long career that included films from the silent era into the 1940s, the Ziegfeld Follies, and radio.  Fields achieved stardom in all of these areas, and the book is colorful, visually stimulating, and annotated with informative prose, as per all of Greene’s books in this series.

What makes this current book even more fascinating is that Fields enjoyed a massive cult following from high school and college students in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  Fields movies were all over television, and playing on well-attended campus showings.  He was suddenly “cool” to that area of mainstream culture.  Marketing exploded with a cartoon of Fields promoting corn chips as “W.C. Fritos” with a series of collectable pencil erasers with that image.  He was portrayed by impressionists on TV commercials.  Clips from his movies were released in affordable 8mm films for home viewing (this is before VHS and Beta tapes happened).  Record albums were released containing audio comedy clips from his films.  His radio appearances also found their way to records.  Richard Greene’s painstaking, focused research manages to compile images for all of these terrific little bits of nostalgia that are now nostalgic themselves.

This book also includes several examples of other books on various aspects of Fields’ work by everyone from Donald Deschner, to William K. Everson, to --- me!   Books by Fields’ grandson Ronald are also featured, and it is Ronald Fields who pens this book’s introduction.

Every book in Greene’s Beyond Ballyhoo series is a visual delight, and this one is no exception. It is an absolute must for fans of comedy cinema’s rich history.  It has everything.

The book is available at this link:  FIELDS/BALLYHOO