[13] Fields later embellished stories of his childhood, depicting himself as a runaway who lived by his wits on the streets of Philadelphia from an early age, but his home life is believed to have been reasonably happy.

[16] Fields enabled his father to retire, purchased him a summer home, and encouraged his parents and siblings to learn to read and write so they could communicate with him by letter.

In addition to many editions of the Follies, Fields starred in the 1923 Broadway musical comedy Poppy, wherein he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time con man.

In vaudeville, burlesque, and in the rapidly expanding motion picture industry, many of his fellow performers and comedy writers often copied or "borrowed" sketches or portions of routines developed and presented by others.

[31][32] As his popularity with audiences continued to rise after 1915, following his initial work in films, other entertainers started to adopt and integrate parts of his successful acts into their own performances.

[33] In 1918, he began to combat this by registering his sketches and other comedy material with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.[34][35] Nevertheless, the practice continued and became so frequent by 1919 that he felt "compelled" to place a prominent warning that year in the June 13 issue of Variety, the most widely read trade paper at the time.

[33] In it, he cautions fellow performers that all of his "acts (and businesses therein) are protected by United States and International copyright", stressing that he and his attorneys in New York and Chicago will "vigorously prosecute all offenders in the future".

[36] Other examples of Fields's stage-to-film use of his copyrighted material is the previously discussed 1918 Follies sketch "An Episode on the Links" and its recycling in both his 1930 short The Golf Specialist and in his feature You're Telling Me!

[36] A few more of his copyrighted creations include "An Episode of Lawn Tennis" (1918), "The Mountain Sweep Steaks" (1919), "The Pullman Sleeper" (1921), "Ten Thousand People Killed" (1925), and "The Midget Car" (1930).

[38] Between 1918 and 1930, he applied for and received 20 copyrights covering 16 of his most important sketches, which Fields biographer Simon Louvish has described as the "bedrock" upon which he built his stage career and then prolonged that success through his films.

[41] Under her influence, he became an enthusiastic reader and traveled with a trunk of books, including grammar texts, translations of Homer and Ovid, and works by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Dickens to Twain and P. G.

[56] His role in Paramount Pictures' International House (1933), as an aviator with an unquenchable taste for beer, did much to establish Fields's popular reputation as a prodigious drinker.

[63] In 1915, Fields starred in two short comedies, Pool Sharks and His Lordship's Dilemma, filmed at the French Gaumont Company's American studio in Flushing, New York.

[64] His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924, when he played a supporting role in Janice Meredith, a Revolutionary War romance starring Marion Davies.

On the basis of his work in that film and Griffith's subsequent production That Royle Girl, Paramount offered Fields a contract to star in his own series of feature-length comedies.

All of these were commercial failures and are now lost;[70] when producer Charles R. Rogers bought the rights to the Tillie property in 1932, he inherited the negative of the Fields version and the film went out of circulation permanently.

[77] Fields's 1934 classic It's a Gift includes another one of his earlier stage sketches, one in which he endeavors to escape his nagging family by sleeping on the back porch, where he is bedeviled by noisy neighbors and salesmen.

He fell ill with influenza and back trouble requiring round-the-clock nursing in late June 1935, and then was emotionally shattered by the sudden deaths of two of his closest friends, Will Rogers on August 15 and Sam Hardy on October 16.

[79] He was gingerly approached the next year to recreate his signature stage role in Poppy for Paramount Pictures; he accepted but was very weak throughout the production and a double was often used in long shots.

Fields's farewell film for Paramount received critical acclaim and earned an Oscar for best original song (Thanks for the Memory),[82] but exhibitors and audiences were disappointed.

In 1940 he co-starred with Mae West in My Little Chickadee, and then starred in The Bank Dick in which he has the following exchange with Shemp Howard, who plays a bartender: Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films.

[89] Fields personally recruited Universal's then-popular singing star Gloria Jean and his old cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn as his co-stars.

Fields, reading his scripts from large-print cue cards and with his delivery noticeably slower than usual, still succeeded in doing funny and flavorful monologues about "demon rum."

[98] Carlotta Monti wrote that in his final moments, she used a garden hose to spray water onto the roof over his bedroom to simulate his favorite sound, falling rain.

Fields's loyal secretary and executor Magda Michael, intent on carrying out her employer's wishes, fought for the bequest, which was reinstated in December 1950 in the form of a $25,000 donation to "some college in Los Angeles County" to benefit orphans.

[109]In features such as It's a Gift and Man on the Flying Trapeze, he is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers.

A favorite bit of "business", repeated in many of his films, involved his hat going astray—either caught on the end of his cane, or simply facing the wrong way—as he attempts to put it onto his head.

[117] James Curtis says of Man on the Flying Trapeze that the "disapproving mother-in-law, Mrs. Neselrode, was clearly patterned after his wife, Hattie, and the unemployable mama's boy played by [Grady] Sutton was deliberately named Claude.

During the early planning for his film It's a Wonderful Life, director Frank Capra considered Fields for the role of Uncle Billy, which eventually went to Thomas Mitchell.

[129] According to Woody Allen (in a New York Times interview from January 30, 2000), Fields is one of six "genuine comic geniuses" he recognized as such in movie history, along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers.