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., Newsweek

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) Illustrated