Five balls in the mailbox...

                                          

How Fields got stamped

 

Seeing W.C. Fields juggle five balls on a postage stamp last year gave jugglers everywhere a boost.  Fields got there primarily through the lobbying efforts of Vick Knight, president of a Fields fan dub in Hollywood, and director of development at the Children's Hospital of Orange Co. in Orange, CA. Knight said his club, "The Bank Dicks," proposed the idea to the U.S. Postal Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C., for nine years before their hero was finally lionized.

 

"We didn't get anywhere requesting just a general stamp of Fields," Knight recalled. "So, we presented a specific design, with an illustration taken from the movie, 'My Little Chickadee:" It was a non-juggling image of the comedian peering stealthily over a hand of cards.                     \

 

Even with that effort, it took a bureaucraltc helping hand from congressman William Dannemeyer (R-CA), a member of the Postal Advisory Committee, to get the idea approved. "He helped us out a lot after I emceed an election banquet for him!" Knight stated.

 

With the skids greased, the Fields stamp was approved by the committee as the fourth in a series of six called "The Performing Arts," drawn by Jim Sharpe of Westport, CT. The first three were of Jimmy Rogers, George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Two have yet to appear.

 

Sharpe never saw Knight's design. He was at liberty to compose his own image of Fields, and arrived at the five ball version after three months of extensive, but enjoyable, research.

 

"He's always been one of my favorite people," Sharpe said.                      .

 

"Though Fields was maybe best known as a comedian, I found out he started out as a comedy juggler:" Sharpe continued. "In all the stamps but Jimmy Rogers, I drew a small figure of the man performing along with a larger facial portrait" Hence, Will Rogers appears with a lariat and Cohanas a dancer.

 

"I tried to tie each man's career together with the two images:' said Sharpe, who has done cover illustrations for "Time" and "T.V. Guide." "So, I pictured Fields juggling, as he did early in his career, then created the portrait as he looked in later years. "