February 13th 2025 Auction
A check boldly signed by American comedian W.C. Fields (1880-1946) as "W.C. Fields" on the signature line. December 3, 1934. [Los Angeles, California]. Check 730 was made out to the order of the "The Vendome" (A liquor outlet) in the amount of $7.85 drawn from Fields' account at the Hollywood & Cahuenga Branch of Security-First National Bank of Los Angeles. The personal check is partly printed and partly handwritten, bearing the usual clerical hand stamps and perforated marks. Expected wear including a central off-center vertical fold. 8.25" x 3.125."
The fact that this signed check relates to alcohol is significant, because of Fields' on-screen persona as an irascible but endearing drunkard. Many of Fields' most memorable movie lines revolve around alcohol, such as, "Once, on a trek through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew... and were compelled to live on food and water for several days" ["My Little Chickadee" (1940)]. As it turned out, Fields' Hollywood image was inseparable from his real-life dependence on alcohol, which often manifested in his surreptitiously sipping gin from a flask and being intoxicated on set. Life imitated art; Fields celebrated hard-drinking culture when he quipped, "I cook with wine; sometimes I even add it to the food.”
An unsigned black and white photograph of screen legend W.C. Fields is also included.
W.C. Fields (January 29, 1880 – December 25, 1946), was an American actor, comedian, juggler and writer. Fields' career in show business began in vaudeville, where he attained international success as a silent juggler. He began to incorporate comedy into his act and was a featured comedian in the Ziegfeld Follies for several years. He became a star in the Broadway musical comedy Poppy (1923), in which he played a colorful small-time con man. His subsequent stage and film roles were often similar scoundrels or henpecked everyman characters. Among his trademarks were his raspy drawl and grandiloquent vocabulary.
With One of a Kind Collectibles LOA
W.C. Fields Check to Liquor Outlet
Click above for larger image.