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Audiobooks > Biography & Autobiography >  Entertainment & Performing Arts > W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes
W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes Audiobook, by Robert Lewis Taylor Play Audiobook Sample

W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes Audiobook

By: Robert Lewis Taylor
W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes Audiobook, by Robert Lewis Taylor Play Audiobook Sample
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Read By: Grover Gardner Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Listen Time: at 1.0x Speed 6.33 hours at 1.5x Speed 4.75 hours at 2.0x Speed Release Date: August 2012 Format: Unabridged Audiobook ISBN: 9781481575249
3.15789473684211 out of 53.15789473684211 out of 53.15789473684211 out of 53.15789473684211 out of 53.15789473684211 out of 5 (3.16) - 38 listener ratings
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Subtitle: His Follies and Fortunes

"The life of W.C. Fields is a striking endorsement of Shakespeare's thought, 'Sweet are the uses of adversity'. From infancy, Fields found life laborious sledding, and he took extraordinary measures to triumph over all. Nobody in our recent history absorbed such a buffeting as a child and emerged so relentlessly successful in after life. By the time of his death, on Christmas Day in 1946, he was widely acknowledged to have become the greatest comic artist ever known."—from the book

Robert Lewis Taylor's masterly biography, first published in 1949 and long out of print, fully captures the perverse and cantankerous wit and charm of this great man, his films, and the exceptional life he led, all from his uniquely jaundiced perspective.

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"Pretty good bio on Fields that touches on his vaudeville years as much as the legendary comedies that made him a star. Seems like Fields was always "on", making jokes about mogo on the gogogo to his doctor after being diagnosed with TB. His life was one big drunken comedy!"

— Andy (4 out of 5 stars)

W. C. Fields Listener Reviews

Overall Performance: 4.25 out of 54.25 out of 54.25 out of 54.25 out of 54.25 out of 5 (4.25)
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  • Overall Performance: 4 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 54 out of 5

    " Fields aficionados like to bash this book for bending the facts and at the same time not-so-secretly enjoying the shit out of it. It's the most fun of all the Fields bios, and for a long time it was the only show in town. "

    — Evan, 10/16/2013
  • Overall Performance: 3 out of 53 out of 53 out of 53 out of 53 out of 5

    " It didn't really bother me that some of the stories in this book might be exaggerated,or even made up, I still found it a very interesting read, although I still don't know whether I like the guy or not, he was a mass of contradictions. "

    — Tony, 5/8/2013
  • Overall Performance: 5 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 5

    " entertaining but the author took as fact every tall tale fields ever told about his life, which were in fact every tale fields ever told about his life. "

    — captain, 4/3/2013
  • Overall Performance: 5 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 55 out of 5

    " One of my favorites from my youth. I can't remember another book as capable of making me laugh out loud. "

    — Karl, 3/18/2013

About Robert Lewis Taylor

Robert Lewis Taylor (1912–1998) was an American author and winner of the 1959 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He was born in Carbondale, Illinois, and graduated from University of Illinois in 1933. In 1939, he became a writer for the New Yorker magazine as an author of biographical sketches. Additionally, his work appeared in the Saturday Evening Post and Reader’s Digest. In 1949, the Saturday Evening Post commissioned a series of biographical sketches of W. C. Fields, and he published them together as W. C. Fields: His Follies and Fortunes. His 1958 novel The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters won the Pulitzer Prize, and several of his novels have been made into major motion pictures, a television series, and a musical.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner (a.k.a. Tom Parker) is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.