Webster’s New World Dictionary defines a curmudgeon as “a surly, ill-mannered person; a cantankerous fellow”. One of my favorite curmudgeons was W.C. Fields. His real name was William Claude Dukenfield, the eldest of five children born January 29, 1880, in Darby, Pennsylvania, and ran away from home at the age of 11. During his lifetime he starred in 37 films. Fields died December 25, 1946, in Pasadena, California.
Nothing was held sacred to him or safe from his barbed wit. Asked how he liked children, he replied, “Fried,” and added, “Children should neither be seen or heard from – ever again.”
He saved some of his most caustic zingers for Philadelphia. “I once spent a year in Philadelphia,” he remarked. “I think it was on a Sunday. Last week I went there, but it was closed.” When asked why he disliked Philadelphia so much, he replied, “That town is so dull that the tide went out one day and never came back.”
“It was a woman who drove me to drink,” he once reflected, “but I never wrote to thank her.” And he complained bitterly to a friend that “some weasel had stolen the cork out of his lunch.” But his legendary drinking was just that – legendary. It was just his shtick. He was actually a tea-totaller.
Field’s famous comment: “Never give a sucker an even break” has endured to this day.
Ray Cassidy
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