A beautiful fountain pen signature on a 7x5 album page, adding Best Wishes, by W.C.Fields (1880-1946) the American comedian, actor, juggler and writer. Fields was known for his comic persona as a misanthropic and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children and women. This characterization, which he portrayed in films and on radio, was so strong it became generally identified with Fields himself and was maintained by the movie-studio publicity departments at Fields's studios (Paramount and Universal). At age 15, he had begun performing a juggling act at church and theater shows, and entered vaudeville as a "tramp juggler" using the name W. C. Fields. He soon was traveling as "The Eccentric Juggler", and included amusing asides and increasing amounts of comedy into his act, becoming a headliner in North America and Europe. In 1906 he made his Broadway debut in a musical comedy, The Ham Tree, and the first of his many movie appearances came in 1915.  Fields the juggler never drank because he did not want to impair his functions while performing. Eventually, however, the loneliness of constant traveling prompted him to keep liquor in his dressing room as an inducement for fellow performers to socialize with him on the road. Only then did he begin to drink on a regular basis. On movie sets Fields kept handy a vacuum flask of mixed martinis, which he euphemistically referred to as his "pineapple juice". While filming Tales of Manhattan, a prankster switched the contents of the flask with actual pineapple juice. Upon discovering the prank, Fields was heard to yell, "Who put pineapple juice in my pineapple juice?"  Fields expressed his fondness for alcohol to Gloria Jean (playing his niece) in Never Give a Sucker an Even Break: "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I am indebted to her for." Equally memorable was a line in the 1940 film My Little Chickadee: "Once, on a trek through Afghanistan, we lost our corkscrew...and were forced to live on food and water for several days!" The oft-repeated anecdote that Fields refused to drink water "because fish fuck in it" is unsubstantiated. In 1936 Fields's heavy drinking precipitated a significant decline in his health. By the following year he had recovered sufficiently to make one last film for Paramount, The Big Broadcast of 1938, but his troublesome behavior kept other producers away and he remained professionally idle until his debut on radio. By then, however, he was chronically ill, and suffering from delirium tremens.

There is another autograph on the page, by Jen Latona, an English music hall singer from the early 1900s, dated 1912 so it is probably safe to assume that the Fields autograph is from the same time as he did tour the English music halls at that period. The W.C.Fields signature could easily be matted alone for display purposes, as I have illustrated.