W. C. FIELDS - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED - HFSID 289990

W. C. FIELDS
Letter to his mistress Carlotta, lambasting New York weather, music lovers, and his latest movie, which he calls "an abortion." Fields signs ironically as "The Great Man." A vivid example of Fields' view of the world!
Autograph Letter signed: "The G. Man", 3 pages, 8½x11. No place, no date, but mailing envelope is postmarked postmarked April 13, 1939, with his handwritten return address of "Bel Air, Cal". To "Dear Katrinka" [Carlotta Monti], in full: "Thanks for your letter which was despondent indeed. N. Y. will make one so. I do not want to go all over these items, again, and again, but I must divest myself of a few more - more weather pro[g]nostications. Spring in N.Y. is most capricious. One day it will snow, and the next day it will be real warm. Warm sunshine will greet you in the morning and a cold rain will follow within a few hours or vice versa. Therefore you need a light coat and my suggestion would be no sweater. The brown overcoat I gave you is ideal for an eastern spring coat. It is semi rain proof and will keep out the chill wind. However, I am enclosing you a check for a hundred dollars for a light coat - in all probability you have the coast in question here and haven't enough to send for it. However, it is ever thus with music lovers they have no time to think of anything else. It amounts to a disease ultimately. Do not study too hard and become a bore and have your friends forsake you. Singers after a while become pests, and people avoid them, and then begin to get disgusted with each other. Too much shop talk and rehearsing. This finishes the sermon for today. I go on the Radio Gatewood to Hollywood Hour on Sunday afternoon (April 23) I think. I will do only a few minutes for Jessie Laskey as a gesture of friendship. The weather here continues fine altho today there is a cool wind fairly high for California. That abortion 'You Can't Cheat an Honest Man' is doing the second best business of the year. Can you beat it? I will probably do a good picture some day and it will do the second lowest gross of the year. To return to weather conditions again (as I told you), when it turns warm it will do so overnight, or over day, just giving your blood time to cool off, and you will probably suffer from nausea. Some people take medicine to offset this unpleasantness. Make local inquiries. Winter is bad, spring is worse, and summer is no bargain. Sept., Oct. and early Nov. I liked comparable to the winter climate of Calif. All the rest of the months I give to Dr. Gitron. Keep well, do not get excited. If your nerves are quiet you will be happier. A pinch on the check. [signature] Well Lee had some bad dreams about me so she is coming out to see me. And convince herself I am well." Accompanied by original mailing envelope, signed in the return address "W. C. Fields", addressed in his hand to "Miss Carlotta Douglas/c/o Nolles, New York City, N.Y."  W.C. Fields (1880-1946) began entertaining as an amusement park juggler at the age of fourteen. He was a vaudeville headliner before he was twenty and toured Europe in 1901, giving a command performance at Buckingham Palace. His Broadway debut in The Ham Tree (1905) was followed by appearances in the Ziegfeld Follies (1915-1921) and in George White's Scandals (1933). Fields starred in Poppy on Broadway (1923) and the next year made his first film, Janice Meredith (1924). Fields' style, verbal rather than visual, and irascible con-man philosophy made him a favorite, especially with the advent of sound, where his raspy voice provided the final touch to his comedy. He starred in movies including My Little Chickadee (1940) and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Fields' mistress from 1932 until his death was starlet Carlotta Monti, who often performed under the name of Carlotta Douglas, as shown here. Her tell-all memoir, W. C. Fields and Me, was the basis for the 1976 film. Fields was never divorced from his wife, Harriet "Hattie" Hughes, though they had been separated since 1904. Consequently, Monti was passed over in the settlement of Fields' estate. You Can't Cheat an Honest Man was released in 1939. Fields' character was actually called "the great man in a 1941 film, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. Normal mailing folds .  Lightly creased. Otherwise, fine condition. Envelope soiled and creased. Two items.