Word: dukenfield
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...dears, how William Claude Dukenfield would have chuckled over the irony surrounding his 100th birthday. To mark the date, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp honoring the Philadelphia-born comic who soared to film fame and immortality as W.C. Fields. The postmen forgot that Fields, so pinchpenny that he could name every bank in which he had an account and estimate the interest due, had willed not only his money but his name-and the attendant publicity value-to his heirs. Thus, to print the Fields stamp, the U.S. had to pay a royalty...
Alone in the Big City. As Larsen E. Whipsnead of the radio, or Cuthbert J. Twillie in My Little Chickadee, he was simply being himself. He was born Claude William Dukenfield, son of a poverty-stricken Philadelphia family. When he was about eleven he crowned his father with a heavy wooden box in retaliation for a whipping and ran away from home. He slept in alleys and on porches, often awoke in agony from cold. He stole milk, crept into saloons to snatch free lunch. He was always using his fists and always coughing (he later discovered that...
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