Lew Fields
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Lew Fields (1 January 1867, New York City - 20 July 1941, Beverly Hills, California), born Moses Schoenfeld, was an American actor, comedian, vaudeville star and theatre manager and producer.
Fields was half of the great comic duo Weber and Fields, the other half being Joe Weber. Fields and Weber started performing in museums, circuses, and variety houses in New York City. The young men had a "Dutch act" in which both portrayed German immigrants: such "dialect acts" (German, Irish, Jewish/Yiddish/ Blackface/African-American) were extremely common at the time, the comedy coming from the actors' mangling of the English language and dropping of malapropisms as they undertook life in America - in the case of Weber and Fields (or "Mike and Meyer" as their characters were known) and many of the other acts of this genre, this often involved gross stereotyping by dress and behavior, but also comedic and often sympathetic portrayals of the characters' attempts to fit into American society, or to "make it big" with some crafty scheme or at least to survive the typical poverty of the immigrant (a typical "Mike and Meyer" routine involved Meyer, the clever one, unsuccessfully trying to coach Meyer, the simpler one, in a scheme to get them a free lunch at a working-class saloon).
They toured successfully in vaudeville for many years, becoming one of the most successful and richest acts in vaudeville. In 1896 the partners opened the Weber and Fields Music Hall where they produced very successful burlesques of popular Broadway shows. In the music hall's casts were some of the greatest performers and comics on the American stage at that time including Lillian Russell, Fay Templeton, and DeWolf Hopper.
The partners separated in 1904 and Fields took over operations at the music hall. He also went on to produce many musicals. When Fields starred in the 1911 stage comedy The Hen-Pecks, one of the supporting comedians in the cast was an obscure Englishman named Vernon Castle, later a famous ballroom dancer. In the RKO Radio Pictures film The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), Fields appeared as himself, re-enacting a slapstick comedy scene from The Hen-Pecks with Fred Astaire portraying Castle.
In 1923, Weber and Fields reunited for a short film made by Lee DeForest in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, where the team recreated their famous pool hall routine. This film premiered at the Rivoli Theater in New York City on 15 April 1923. They also reunited for the 27 December 1932 inaugural show at Radio City Music Hall, which proved to be the last stage appearance of the two as a team.
Fields was the father of Dorothy, Herbert, and Joseph, all of whom enjoyed theatrical careers of their own.
