“My Art Never Satisfies Me”

Abstract

From his seat at Keith’s Union Square Theater, “Chicot” (Epes Winthrop Sargent), an influential vaudeville critic, saw Fields perform soon after he returned home. His perceptive eye observed that Fields had changed his appearance by toning down his grotesque makeup. He “was not like most of the tramp jugglers who took Harrigan for their model. His dress was neater and cleaner without being less funny? With the depression of the 1890s over, the tramp costume on stage had mostly become passé, although Chaplin revived it for the screen in 1914. Fields later felt that the “grotesque, big false noses, weird wigs, outlandish costumes and frightful make-ups” caused an act to be overdone, “insulting the intelligence of the audience.”¹