title: W. C. Fields

text: Claude Dukenfield (as he was known) had a volatile relationship with his short-tempered father. He ran away from home repeatedly, beginning at the age of nine, often to stay with his grandmother or an uncle. His education was sporadic and did not progress beyond grade school. At age twelve he worked with his father, selling produce from a wagon, until the two had a fight that resulted in Fields running away once again. In 1893, he worked briefly at the Strawbridge and Clothier department store, and in an oyster house.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields later embellished stories of his childhood, depicting himself as a runaway who lived by his wits on the streets of Philadelphia from an early age, but his home life is believed to have been reasonably happy. He had already discovered in himself a facility for juggling, and a performance he witnessed at a local theater inspired him to dedicate substantial time to perfecting his juggling. At age 17, he was living with his family and performing a juggling act at church and theater shows.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1904 Fields's father visited him for two months in England while he was performing there in music halls. Fields enabled his father to retire, purchased him a summer home, and encouraged his parents and siblings to learn to read and write so they could communicate with him by letter.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Inspired by the success of the "Original Tramp Juggler", James Edward Harrigan, Fields adopted a similar costume of scruffy beard and shabby tuxedo and entered vaudeville as a genteel "tramp juggler" in 1898, using the name W. C. Fields. His family supported his ambitions for the stage and saw him off on the train for his first stage tour. To conceal a stutter, Fields did not speak onstage. In 1900, seeking to distinguish himself from the many "tramp" acts in vaudeville, he changed his costume and makeup and began touring as "The Eccentric Juggler". He manipulated cigar boxes, hats, and other objects in his act, parts of which are reproduced in some of his films, notably in the 1934 comedy "The Old Fashioned Way".


title: W. C. Fields

text: By the early 1900s, while touring, he was regularly called the world's greatest juggler. He became a headliner in North America and Europe and toured Australia and South Africa in 1903. When Fields played for English-speaking audiences, he found he could get more laughs by adding muttered patter and sarcastic asides to his routines. According to W. Buchanan-Taylor, a performer who saw Fields's performance in an English music hall, Fields would "reprimand a particular ball which had not come to his hand accurately" and "mutter weird and unintelligible expletives to his cigar when it missed his mouth".


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1905 Fields made his Broadway debut in a musical comedy, "The Ham Tree". His role in the show required him to deliver lines of dialogue, which he had never before done onstage. He later said, "I wanted to become a real comedian, and there I was, ticketed and pigeonholed as merely a comedy juggler." In 1913 he performed on a bill with Sarah Bernhardt (who regarded Fields as "an artiste [who] could not fail to please the best class of audience"), first at the New York Palace and then in England in a royal performance for George V and Queen Mary. He continued touring in vaudeville until 1915.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Beginning in 1915, he appeared on Broadway in Florenz Ziegfeld's "Ziegfeld Follies" revue, delighting audiences with a wild billiards skit complete with bizarrely shaped cues and a custom-built table used for a number of hilarious gags and surprising trick shots. His pool game is reproduced in part in some of his films, notably in "Six of a Kind" in 1934. The act was a success, and Fields starred in the "Follies" from 1916 to 1922, not as a juggler but as a comedian in ensemble sketches. In addition to many editions of the "Follies", Fields starred in the 1923 Broadway musical comedy "Poppy", wherein he perfected his persona as a colorful small-time con man. In 1928, he appeared in "The Earl Carroll Vanities".


title: W. C. Fields

text: His stage costume from 1915 onward featured a top hat, cut-away coat and collar, and a cane. The costume had a remarkable similarity to that of the comic strip character Ally Sloper, who may have been the inspiration for Fields's costume, according to Roger Sabin. The Sloper character may in turn have been inspired by Dickens's Mr Micawber, whom Fields later played on film.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1915, Fields starred in two short comedies, "Pool Sharks" and "His Lordship's Dilemma", filmed at the French Gaumont Company's American studio in Flushing, New York. His stage commitments prevented him from doing more movie work until 1924, when he played a supporting role in "Janice Meredith", a Revolutionary War romance starring Marion Davies. He reprised his "Poppy" role in a silent-film adaptation, retitled "Sally of the Sawdust" (1925), directed by D. W. Griffith for Paramount Pictures. On the basis of his work in that film and Griffith's subsequent production "That Royle Girl", Paramount offered Fields a contract to star in his own series of feature-length comedies. His next starring role was in "It's the Old Army Game" (1926), which featured his friend Louise Brooks, later a screen legend for her role in G. W. Pabst's "Pandora's Box" (1929) in Germany. Fields's 1926 film, which included a silent version of the porch sequence that would later be expanded in the sound film "It's a Gift" (1934), had only middling success at the box office. The following three films Fields made at Astoria, however—"So's Your Old Man" (1926, remade as "You're Telling Me!" in 1934), "The Potters" (1927), and "Running Wild" (1927—were successes on an increasing scale and gained Fields a growing following as a silent comedian. "Running Wild" was the most successful of these, with a final cost of $179,000 and bringing in domestic rentals of $328,000 and another $92,000 from overseas. Rivalry between Paramount studio executives B. P. Schulberg on the West Coast and William Le Baron on the East Coast led to the closure of the New York studio and the centralization of Paramount production in Hollywood. "Running Wild" was the last silent film Paramount made at Astoria. When the filming was completed on April 28, the remaining handful of personnel left on the lot were let go with two weeks' severance pay, and the studio went idle. Fields went immediately to Hollywood, where Schulberg teamed him with Chester Conklin for two features and loaned him and Conklin out for an Al Christie-produced remake of "Tillie's Punctured Romance" for Paramount release. All of these were commercial failures and are now lost.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields wore a scruffy clip-on mustache in all of his silent films. According to film historian William K. Everson, he perversely insisted on wearing the conspicuously fake-looking mustache because he knew it was disliked by audiences. Fields wore it in his first sound film, "The Golf Specialist" (1930)—a two-reeler that faithfully reproduces a sketch he had introduced in 1918 in the "Follies"—but gave up wearing a mustache after his first sound feature film, "Her Majesty, Love" (1931), his only Warner Bros. production and the only time he wore a more realistic mustache for a role.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In the sound era, Fields appeared in thirteen feature films for Paramount Pictures, beginning with "Million Dollar Legs" in 1932. In that year he also was featured in a sequence in the anthology film "If I Had a Million". In 1932 and 1933, Fields made four short subjects, distributed through Paramount Pictures, for comedy pioneer Mack Sennett. These shorts, adapted with few alterations from Fields's stage routines and written entirely by himself, were described by Simon Louvish as "the 'essence' of Fields". The first of them, "The Dentist", is unusual in that Fields portrays an entirely unsympathetic character: he cheats at golf, assaults his caddy, and treats his patients with unbridled callousness. William K. Everson says that the cruelty of this comedy made it "hardly less funny" but that "Fields must have known that "The Dentist" presented a serious flaw for a comedy image that was intended to endure", and Fields showed a somewhat warmer persona in his subsequent Sennett shorts. Nevertheless, the popular success of his next release, "International House", established him as a major star. A shaky outtake from the production, allegedly the only film record of that year's Long Beach earthquake, was later revealed to have been faked as a publicity stunt for the movie.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's 1934 classic "It's a Gift" includes another one of his earlier stage sketches, one in which he endeavors to escape his nagging family by sleeping on the back porch, where he is bedeviled by noisy neighbors and salesmen. That film, like "You're Telling Me!" and "Man on the Flying Trapeze", ended happily with a windfall profit that restored his standing in his screen families. With those screen successes, Fields in 1935 was able to achieve a career ambition by playing the character Mr. Micawber in MGM's "David Copperfield".


title: W. C. Fields

text: The strain of all this activity exacted a terrible physical toll on Fields's health. He fell ill with influenza and back trouble requiring round-the-clock nursing in late June 1935 and then was emotionally shattered by the sudden deaths of two of his closest friends, Will Rogers on August 15 and Sam Hardy on October 16. The combination of these events provoked a complete breakdown for Fields that laid him up for nine months. He was gingerly approached the next year to recreate his signature stage role in "Poppy" for Paramount Pictures; he accepted but was very weak throughout the production and a double was often used in long shots. After filming was complete, he relapsed when he learned another close friend and screen partner, Tammany Young, had died in his sleep on April 26 at age 49. Losing three friends in less than a year sent Fields into a deep depression, plus he stopped eating, his back pain flared up, and his chronic lung congestion trouble returned with a vengeance, eventually turning into pneumonia. He would be in hospitals and sanitariums for various treatments until the summer of 1937.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In September 1937 Fields returned to Hollywood to "star" in Paramount's complicated musical variety anthology "The Big Broadcast of 1938", appearing with Martha Raye, Dorothy Lamour, and Bob Hope. In an unusual twist, Fields plays the roles of two nearly identical brothers (T. Frothingill Bellows and S. B. Bellow), collaborating with several noted international musicians of the time, including Kirsten Flagstad (Norwegian opera soprano), Wilfred Pelletier (Canadian conductor of New York's Metropolitan Opera Orchestra), Tito Guizar (Mexican vocalist), Shep Fields (conducting his Rippling Rhythm Jazz Orchestra), and John Serry Sr. (Italian-American orchestral accordionist). The film received critical acclaim and earned an Oscar in 1939 for best music in an original song ("Thanks for the Memory"). Fields, however, loathed working on the film and particularly detested the director, Mitchell Leisen, who felt the same way about Fields and thought him unfunny and difficult. ("He was the most obstinate, ornery son of a bitch I ever tried to work with" was Leisen's opinion.) The arguments between Fields and Leisen were so constant and intense during the five-month shoot that when the production concluded on November 15, 1937, Leisen went home and had a heart attack.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields in the early years of his film career became highly protective of his intellectual properties that formed his acts and defined his on-screen persona. In burlesque, vaudeville, and the rapidly expanding motion picture industry, many of his fellow performers and comedy writers often copied or "borrowed" sketches or portions of routines developed and presented by others. Not surprisingly, as Fields's popularity with audiences continued to rise after 1915, following his initial work in films, other entertainers started to adopt and integrate parts of his successful acts into their own performances. Fields in 1918 began to combat the thievery by registering his sketches and other comedy material with the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Nevertheless, the pilfering continued and became so frequent by 1919 that he felt "compelled" to place a prominent warning that year in the June 13 issue of "Variety", the most widely read trade paper at the time. Addressed to "Nibblers", more specifically to "indiscreet burlesque and picture players", Fields's notice occupies nearly half a page in "Variety". In it, he cautions fellow performers that all of his "acts (and businesses therein) are protected by United States and International copyright", stressing that he and his attorneys in New York and Chicago will "vigorously prosecute all offenders in the future". The concluding "W. C. Fields" was printed in such large letters that it dominated the two-page spread in the paper.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields continued personally and with legal counsel to protect his comedy material during the final decades of his career, especially with regard to that material's reuse in his films. For example, he copyrighted his original stage sketch "An Episode at the Dentist's" three times: in January 1919 and twice again in 1928, in July and August. Later, 13 years after its first copyright registration, that same sketch continued to serve Fields as a framework for developing his already noted short "The Dentist". He also copyrighted his 1928 sketch "Stolen Bonds", which in 1933 was translated into scenes for his two-reel "black comedy" "The Fatal Glass of Beer". Other examples of Fields's stage-to-film use of his copyrighted material is the previously discussed 1918 "Follies" sketch "An Episode on the Links" and its recycling in both his 1930 short "The Golf Specialist" and in his feature "You're Telling Me!" in 1934. "The Sleeping Porch" sketch that reappears as an extended segment in "It's a Gift" was copyrighted as well by Fields in 1928. A few more of his copyrighted creations include "An Episode of Lawn Tennis" (1918), "The Mountain Sweep Steaks" (1919), "The Pullman Sleeper" (1921), "Ten Thousand People Killed" (1925), and "The Midget Car" (1930). The total number of sketches created by Fields over the years, both copyrighted and uncopyrighted, remains undetermined. The number, however, may exceed 100. Of that body of work, Fields between 1918 and 1930 applied for and received 20 copyrights covering 16 of his most important sketches, the ones that Fields biographer Simon Louvish has described as the "bedrock" upon which the legendary comedian built his stage career and then prolonged that success through his films.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields married a fellow vaudevillian, chorus girl Harriet "Hattie" Hughes (1879–1963), on April 8, 1900. She became part of Fields's stage act, appearing as his assistant, whom he would blame entertainingly when he missed a trick. Hattie was educated and she tutored Fields in reading and writing during their travels. Under her influence, he became an enthusiastic reader and traveled with a trunk of books, including grammar texts, translations of Homer and Ovid, and works by authors ranging from Shakespeare to Dickens to Twain and P. G. Wodehouse.


title: W. C. Fields

text: The couple had a son, William Claude Fields, Jr. (1904–1971) and although Fields was an atheist—who, according to James Curtis, "regarded all religions with the suspicion of a seasoned con man"—he yielded to Hattie's wish to have their son baptized.


title: W. C. Fields

text: By 1907, he and Hattie had separated; she had been pressing him to stop touring and settle into a respectable trade, but he was unwilling to give up show business. They never divorced. Until his death, Fields continued to correspond with Hattie (mostly through letters) and voluntarily sent her a weekly stipend. Their correspondence would at times be tense. Fields accused Hattie of turning their son against him and of demanding more money from him than he could afford.


title: W. C. Fields

text: While performing in New York City at the New Amsterdam Theater in 1916, Fields met Bessie Poole, an established Ziegfeld Follies performer whose beauty and quick wit attracted him, and they began a relationship. With her he had another son, named William Rexford Fields Morris (1917–2014). Neither Fields nor Poole wanted to abandon touring to raise the child, who was placed in foster care with a childless couple of Bessie's acquaintance. Fields's relationship with Poole lasted until 1926. In 1927, he made a negotiated payment to her of $20,000 upon her signing an affidavit declaring that "W. C. Fields is NOT the father of my child". Poole died of complications of alcoholism in October 1928, and Fields contributed to their son's support until he was 19 years of age.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields met Carlotta Monti (1907–1993) in 1933, and the two began a sporadic relationship that lasted until his death in 1946. Monti had small roles in two of Fields's films and in 1971 wrote a memoir, "W. C. Fields and Me," which was made into a motion picture at Universal Studios in 1976. Fields was listed in the 1940 census as single and living at 2015 DeMille Drive. (Cecil B. DeMille lived at 2000, the only other address on the street.)


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's screen character often expressed a fondness for alcohol, a prominent component of the Fields legend. During his early career as a juggler, Fields never drank at all because he wanted to remain sober while performing. Eventually, the loneliness of constant travel prompted him to keep liquor in his dressing room as an inducement for fellow performers to socialize with him on the road. Only after he became a "Follies" star and abandoned juggling did Fields begin drinking regularly. His role in Paramount Pictures' "International House" (1933), as an aviator with an unquenchable taste for beer, did much to establish Fields's popular reputation as a prodigious drinker. Studio publicists promoted this image, as did Fields himself in press interviews.


title: W. C. Fields

text: 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 compelled 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.


title: W. C. Fields

text: On movie sets, Fields shot most of his scenes in varying states of inebriation. During the filming of "Tales of Manhattan" (1942), he kept a vacuum flask with him at all times and frequently availed himself of its contents. Phil Silvers, who had a minor supporting role in the scene featuring Fields, described in his memoir what happened next:


title: W. C. Fields

text: In a testimonial dinner for Fields in 1939, the humorist Leo Rosten remarked of the comedian that "any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad". The line—which "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" later erroneously attributed to Fields himself—was widely quoted, and reinforced the popular perception that Fields hated children and dogs. In reality, Fields was somewhat indifferent to dogs, but occasionally owned one. He was fond of entertaining the children of friends who visited him, and doted on his first grandchild, Bill Fields III, born in 1943. He sent encouraging replies to all of the letters he received from boys who, inspired by his performance in "The Old Fashioned Way", expressed an interest in juggling.


title: W. C. Fields

text: It was often thought that his red bulbous nose was a result of his drinking, but it is now believed that he suffered from the skin condition rosacea (leading to rhinophyma, which was sometimes referred to as a "whiskey nose", "gin blossom", "toros nose", and "potato nose").


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1936, Fields's heavy drinking precipitated a significant decline in his health. He was chronically ill and suffering from pneumonia complicated by Paget's disease. By the following year he recovered sufficiently to make one last film for Paramount, "The Big Broadcast of 1938". Fields tried to inject his own material into the scenes already written, but when Paramount issued an ultimatum to perform according to the shooting script, Fields refused and Paramount fired him. Fields was outraged by the dismissal: "When the picture is finished and my stuff proves to be the outstanding feature of the picture, what happens? I am given my congé and the director and the supervisor and the producer who are responsible for this $1,300,000 flop go calmly on their way, working for the studio making another picture. The "star" has flopped."


title: W. C. Fields

text: Physically unable to work in films, Fields was off the screen for more than a year. During his absence, he recorded a brief speech for a radio broadcast. His familiar snide drawl registered so well with listeners that he quickly became a popular guest on network radio shows. Although his radio work was not as demanding as motion-picture production, Fields insisted on his established movie-star salary of $5,000 per week. He joined ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and Bergen's dummy Charlie McCarthy on "The Chase and Sanborn Hour" for weekly insult-comedy routines.


title: W. C. Fields

text: When Fields would refer to McCarthy as a "woodpecker's pin-up boy" or a "termite's flophouse," Charlie would fire back at Fields about his drinking:


title: W. C. Fields

text: During his recovery from illness, Fields reconciled with his estranged wife and established a close relationship with his son after Claude's marriage in 1938.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's renewed popularity from his radio broadcasts with Bergen and McCarthy earned him a contract with Universal Pictures in 1939, brokered by promoter-producer Lester Cowan. The first feature for Universal, "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man", carried on the Fields–McCarthy rivalry. It was originally announced as an Bergen-McCarthy starring vehicle, with Fields's name in much smaller type as a guest star. Fields dominated the action and stole the film, winning star billing in the process.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1940 he co-starred with Mae West in "My Little Chickadee", and then starred in "The Bank Dick" in which he has the following exchange with Shemp Howard, who plays a bartender:


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields fought with studio producers, directors, and writers over the content of his films. He was determined to make a movie his way, with his own script and staging, and his choice of supporting players. Universal finally gave him the chance, and the resulting film, "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" (1941), was an absurd satire of Hollywood moviemaking. Fields appeared as himself, characterized as "The Great Man." Advance publicity named the film "The Great Man" before Universal adopted the final title. Fields personally recruited Universal's then-popular singing star Gloria Jean and his old cronies Leon Errol and Franklin Pangborn as his co-stars. Director Eddie Cline filmed the rambling script as Fields conceived it, culminating in an incoherent string of blackout sketches. In an attempt to add structure to the film, Universal recut and reshot parts of the feature without Fields's participation. Both the film and Fields were released quietly in late 1941. "Sucker" was Fields's last starring film.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields fraternized at his home with actors, directors and writers who shared his fondness for good company and good liquor. John Barrymore, Gene Fowler, and Gregory La Cava were among his close friends. On March 15, 1941, while Fields was out of town, Christopher Quinn, the two-year-old son of his neighbors, actor Anthony Quinn and his wife Katherine DeMille, drowned in a lily pond on Fields's property. Grief-stricken over the tragedy, he had the pond filled in.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields had a substantial library in his home. Although a staunch atheist—or perhaps because of it—he studied theology and collected books on the subject. According to a popular story (possibly apocryphal, according to biographer James Curtis), actor Thomas Mitchell caught Fields reading a Bible. Mitchell asked what he was doing, and Fields replied, "Looking for loopholes."


title: W. C. Fields

text: In a 1994 episode of the "Biography" television series, Fields's 1941 co-star Gloria Jean recalled her conversations with Fields at his home. She described him as kind and gentle in personal interactions, and believed he yearned for the family environment he never experienced as a child.


title: W. C. Fields

text: During the 1940 presidential campaign, Fields authored a book, "Fields for President", with humorous essays in the form of a campaign speech. Dodd, Mead and Company published it in 1940, with illustrations by Otto Soglow. In 1971, when Fields was seen as an anti-establishment figure, Dodd, Mead issued a reprint, illustrated with photographs of the author.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's film career slowed considerably in the 1940s. His illnesses confined him to brief guest film appearances. An extended sequence in 20th Century-Fox's "Tales of Manhattan" (1942) was cut from the original release of the film and later reinstated for some home video releases. The scene featured a temperance meeting with society people at the home of a wealthy society matron Margaret Dumont, in which Fields discovers that the punch has been spiked, resulting in drunken guests and a very happy Fields.


title: W. C. Fields

text: He enacted his billiard table routine for the final time for "Follow the Boys", an all-star entertainment revue for the Armed Forces. (Despite the charitable nature of the movie, Fields was paid $15,000 for this appearance; he was never able to perform in person for the armed services.) In "Song of the Open Road" (1944), Fields juggled for a few moments and then remarked, "This used to be my racket." His last film, the musical revue "Sensations of 1945", was released in late 1944. By then his vision and memory had deteriorated so much that he had to read his lines from large-print blackboards.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In 1944, Fields continued to make radio guest appearances, where script memorizations were unnecessary. A notable guest slot was with Frank Sinatra on Sinatra's CBS radio program on February 9, 1944.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's last radio appearance was on March 24, 1946, on the Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy Show on NBC. Just before his death that year, Fields recorded a spoken-word album, including his "Temperance Lecture" and "The Day I Drank a Glass of Water", at Les Paul's studio, where Paul had installed a new multi-track recorder. The session was arranged by one of his radio writers, Bill Morrow, and was Fields's last performance.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Listening to one of Paul's experimental multi-track recordings, Fields remarked, "The music you're making sounds like an octopus. Like a guy with a million hands. I've never heard anything like it." Paul was amused, and named his new machine OCT, short for octopus.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields spent the last 22 months of his life at the Las Encinas Sanatorium in Pasadena, California. In 1946, on Christmas Day—the holiday he said he despised—he had a massive gastric hemorrhage and died, aged 66. Carlotta Monti wrote that in his final moments, she used a garden hose to spray water onto the roof over his bedroom to simulate his favorite sound, falling rain. According to a 2004 documentary, he winked and smiled at a nurse, put a finger to his lips, and died. This poignant depiction is uncorroborated and "unlikely", according to biographer James Curtis. Fields's funeral took place on January 2, 1947, in Glendale, California.


title: W. C. Fields

text: His cremation, as directed in his will, was delayed pending resolution of an objection filed by Hattie and Claude Fields on religious grounds. They also contested a clause leaving a portion of his estate to establish a "W. C. Fields College for Orphan White Boys and Girls, where no religion of any sort is to be preached". After a lengthy period of litigation, his remains were cremated on June 2, 1949, and his ashes interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale.


title: W. C. Fields

text: A popular bit of Fields folklore maintains that his grave marker is inscribed, "I'd rather be in Philadelphia"—or a close variant thereof. The legend originated from a mock epitaph written by Fields for a 1925 "Vanity Fair" article: "Here Lies / W. C. Fields / I Would Rather Be Living in Philadelphia". In reality, his interment marker bears only his stage name and the years of his birth and death.


title: W. C. Fields

text: He often played a "bumbling hero". In 1937, in an article in "Motion Picture" magazine, Fields analyzed the characters he played:


title: W. C. Fields

text: You've heard the old legend that it's the little put-upon guy who gets the laughs, but I'm the most belligerent guy on the screen. I'm going to kill everybody. But, at the same time, I'm afraid of everybody—just a great big frightened bully . ... I was the first comic in world history, so they told me, to pick fights with children. I booted Baby LeRoy ... then, in another picture, I kicked a little dog . ... But I got sympathy both times. People didn't know what the unmanageable baby might do to get even, and they thought the dog might bite me.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In features such as "It's a Gift" and "Man on the Flying Trapeze", he is reported to have written or improvised more or less all of his own dialogue and material, leaving story structure to other writers. He frequently incorporated his stage sketches into his films—e.g., the "Back Porch" scene he wrote for the "Follies" of 1925 was filmed in "It's the Old Army Game" (1926) and "It's a Gift" (1934); the golf sketch he performed in the lost film "His Lordship's Dilemma" (1915) was re-used in the "Follies" of 1918, and in the films "So's Your Old Man" (1926), "The Golf Specialist" (1930), "The Dentist" (1932), and "You're Telling Me" (1934).


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields's most familiar characteristics included a distinctive drawl, which was not his normal speaking voice. His manner of muttering deprecatory asides was copied from his mother, who in Fields's childhood often mumbled sly comments about neighbors who passed by. He delighted in provoking the censors with double entendres and the near-profanities "Godfrey Daniels" and "mother of pearl". A favorite bit of "business", repeated in many of his films, involved his hat going astray—either caught on the end of his cane, or simply facing the wrong way—as he attempts to put it onto his head.


title: W. C. Fields

text: In several of his films, he played hustlers, carnival barkers, and card sharps, spinning yarns and distracting his marks. In others, he cast himself as a victim: a bumbling everyman husband and father whose family does not appreciate him.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields often reproduced elements of his own family life in his films. By the time he entered motion pictures, his relationship with his estranged wife had become acrimonious, and he believed she had turned their son Claude—whom he seldom saw—against him. James Curtis says of "Man on the Flying Trapeze" that the "disapproving mother-in-law, Mrs. Neselrode, was clearly patterned after his wife, Hattie, and the unemployable mama's boy played by [Grady] Sutton was deliberately named Claude. Fields hadn't laid eyes on his family in nearly twenty years, and yet the painful memories lingered."


title: W. C. Fields

text: Although lacking formal education, Fields was well read and a lifelong admirer of author Charles Dickens, whose characters' unusual names inspired Fields to collect odd names he encountered in his travels, to be used for his characters. Some examples are:


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields often contributed to the scripts of his films under unusual pseudonyms. They include the seemingly prosaic "Charles Bogle", credited in four of his films in the 1930s; "Otis Criblecoblis", which contains an embedded homophone for "scribble"; and "Mahatma Kane Jeeves", a play on Mahatma and a phrase an aristocrat might use when about to leave the house: "My hat, my cane, Jeeves".


title: W. C. Fields

text: W. C. Fields was (with Ed Wynn) one of the two original choices for the title role in the 1939 version of "The Wizard of Oz". Fields was enthusiastic about the role, but ultimately withdrew his name from consideration so he could devote his time to writing "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man".


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields figured in an Orson Welles project. Welles's bosses at RKO Radio Pictures, after losing money on "Citizen Kane", urged Welles to choose as his next film a subject with more commercial appeal. Welles considered an adaptation of Charles Dickens' "The Pickwick Papers" which would have starred Fields, but the project was shelved, partly because of contract difficulties, and Welles went on to adapt "The Magnificent Ambersons".


title: W. C. Fields

text: During the early planning for his film "It's a Wonderful Life", director Frank Capra considered Fields for the role of Uncle Billy, which eventually went to Thomas Mitchell.


title: W. C. Fields

text: A best-selling biography of Fields published three years after his death, "W. C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes" by Robert Lewis Taylor, was instrumental in popularizing the idea that Fields's real-life character matched his screen persona. In 1973, the comedian's grandson, Ronald J. Fields, published the first book to challenge this idea significantly, "W. C. Fields by Himself, His Intended Autobiography", a compilation of material from private scrapbooks and letters found in the home of Hattie Fields after her death in 1963.


title: W. C. Fields

text: According to Woody Allen (in a "New York Times" interview from January 30, 2000), Fields is one of six "genuine comic geniuses" he recognized as such in movie history, along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho and Harpo Marx, and Peter Sellers.


title: W. C. Fields

text: The Surrealists loved Fields's absurdism and anarchistic pranks. Max Ernst painted a "Project for a Monument to W. C. Fields" (1957), and René Magritte made an "Homage to Mack Sennett" (1934).


title: W. C. Fields

text: Fields is one of the figures that appears in the crowd scene on the cover of The Beatles' 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The "Firesign Theatre" titled the second track of their 1968 album "Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him" "W. C. Fields Forever", as a pun referring to the Beatles song "Strawberry Fields Forever".


title: W. C. Fields

text: The United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp on the comedian's 100th birthday, in January 1980.


title: W. C. Fields

text: Information for this filmography is derived from the book, "W. C. Fields: A Life on Film", by Ronald J. Fields. All films are feature length except where noted.


title: Cantinflas

text: Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes (12 August 1911 – 20 April 1993), known by the stage name Cantinflas (), was a Mexican comedian, actor, and filmmaker. He is considered to have been the most widely-accomplished Mexican comedian and is celebrated throughout Latin America and in Spain as a popular icon. His humor, loaded with Mexican linguistic features of intonation, vocabulary, and syntax, is beloved in all the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and in Spain and has given rise to a range of expressions including "cantinflear", "cantinflada", "cantinflesco", and "cantinflero".


title: Cantinflas

text: Though some of his films were translated into English and French, the wordplay was so particular to Mexican Spanish that it was difficult to translate. He often portrayed impoverished farmers or a peasant of "pelado" origin. The character allowed Cantinflas to establish a long, successful film career that included a foray into Hollywood. Charlie Chaplin once commented that he was the best comedian alive, and Moreno has been referred to as the "Charlie Chaplin of Mexico". To audiences in most of the world, he is best remembered as co-starring with David Niven in the Oscar-winning film "Around the World in 80 Days", for which Moreno won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.


title: Cantinflas

text: As a pioneer of the cinema of Mexico, Moreno helped usher in its golden era. In addition to being a business leader, he also became involved in Mexico's tangled and often dangerous labor politics. His reputation as a spokesperson for the downtrodden gave his actions authenticity and became important in the early struggle against "charrismo", the one-party government's practice of co-opting and controlling unions.


title: Cantinflas

text: Moreover, his character Cantinflas, whose identity became enmeshed with his own, was examined by media critics, philosophers, and linguists, who saw him variously as a danger to Mexican society, a bourgeois puppet, a verbal innovator, and a picaresque underdog.


title: Cantinflas

text: Mario Fortino Alfonso Moreno Reyes was born in Santa María la Redonda neighbourhood of Mexico City, and grew up in the tough neighbourhood of Tepito. He was one of eight children born to Pedro Moreno Esquivel, an impoverished mail carrier, and María de la Soledad Reyes Guízar (from Cotija, Michoacán). The others were Pedro, José ("Pepe"), Eduardo, Esperanza, Catalina, Enrique, and Roberto.


title: Cantinflas

text: He made it through difficult situations with the quick wit and street smarts that he would later apply in his films. His comic personality led him to a circus tent show, and from there to legitimate theatre and film.


title: Cantinflas

text: He married Valentina Ivanova Zubareff, of Russian ethnicity, on 27 October 1936 and remained with her until her death in January 1966. A son was born to Moreno in 1961 by another woman; the child was adopted by Valentina Ivanova and was named Mario Arturo Moreno Ivanova, causing some references to erroneously refer to him as "Cantinflas' adopted son". Moreno Ivanova died on 15 May 2017, of a presumed heart attack.


title: Cantinflas

text: Moreno served as president of one of the Mexican actors' guilds known as "Asociación Nacional de Actores" (ANDA, "National Association of Actors") and as first secretary general of the independent filmworkers' union "Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Producción Cinematográfica" (STPC). Following his retirement, he devoted his life to helping others through charity and humanitarian organizations, especially those dedicated to helping children. His contributions to the Roman Catholic Church and orphanages made him a folk hero in Mexico.


title: Cantinflas

text: In 1961, Cantinflas appeared with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at shopping centers and supermarkets in San Antonio, Texas, to support the successful Democratic nominee to the United States House of Representatives for Texas's 20th congressional district, Henry B. Gonzalez, who defeated his Republican challenger, John W. Goode. Gonzalez was the first Hispanic elected to the Texas State Senate and as a U.S. congressman from Texas.


title: Cantinflas

text: As a young man, Cantinflas performed a variety of acts in travelling tents, and it was here that he acquired the nickname "Cantinflas". According to one obituary, "Cantinflas" is a meaningless name invented to prevent his parents from knowing he was in the entertainment business, which they considered a shameful occupation. Cantinflas confirmed as much in 1992, in his last television interview. Of course, the relationship between Moreno's little-used first given name "Fortino" and the character in William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" Fortinbras offers a striking parallel with the stage name of much younger contemporary Chespirito ("Little Shakespeare" in a garbled Mexican pronunciation).


title: Cantinflas

text: Before starting his professional life in entertainment, he explored a number of possible careers, such as medicine and professional boxing, before joining the entertainment world as a dancer. By 1930 he was involved in Mexico City's "carpa" (travelling tent) circuit, performing in succession with the Ofelia, Sotelo of Azcapotzalco, and finally the Valentina "carpa", where he met his future wife. At first he tried to imitate Al Jolson by smearing his face with black paint, but later separated himself to form his own identity as an impoverished slum dweller with baggy pants, a rope for a belt, and a distinctive mustache. In the tents, he danced, performed acrobatics, and performed roles related to several different professions.


title: Cantinflas

text: In the mid-1930s, Cantinflas met publicist and producer Santiago Reachi and subsequently partnered with him to form their own film production venture. Reachi produced, directed, and distributed, while Cantinflas acted. Cantinflas made his film debut in 1936 with "No te engañes corazón" ("Don't Fool Yourself Dear") before meeting Reachi, but the film received little attention. Reachi established Posa Films in 1939 with two partners: Cantinflas and Fernandez. Before this, Reachi produced short films that allowed him to develop the Cantinflas character, but it was in 1940 that he finally became a movie star, after shooting "Ahí está el detalle" ("There's the rub", literally "There lies the detail"), with Sofía Álvarez, Joaquín Pardavé, Sara García, and Dolores Camarillo. The phrase that gave that movie its name became a "Cantinflas" (or catchphrase) for the remainder of his career. The film was a breakthrough in Latin America and was later recognized by "Somos" magazine as the 10th greatest film produced largely in Mexico.


title: Cantinflas

text: In 1941, Moreno first played the role of a police officer on film in "El gendarme desconocido" ("The Unknown Police Officer" a play on words on "The Unknown Soldier). By this time, he had sufficiently distinguished the "peladito" character from the 1920s-era "pelado", and his character flowed comfortably from the disenfranchised, marginalized, underclassman to the empowered public servant. The rhetoric of "cantinflismo" facilitated this fluidity. He would reprise the role of Agent 777 and be honored by police forces throughout Latin America for his positive portrayal of law enforcement.


title: Cantinflas

text: "Ni sangre, ni arena" ("Neither Blood, nor Sand" a play on words on the bullfighter/gladiator phrase "Blood and Sand"), the 1941 bullfighting film, broke box-office records for Mexican-made films throughout Spanish-speaking countries. In 1942, Moreno teamed up with Reachi, Miguel M. Delgado, and Jaime Salvador to produce a series of parodies, including El Circo, an interpretation of Chaplin's "The Circus".


title: Cantinflas

text: The 1940s and 1950s were Cantinflas' heyday. In 1941, Reachi, the Producer rejected Mexican Studios companies and instead paid Columbia Pictures to produce the films in its Studios in Hollywood. By this time, Cantinflas' popularity was such that he was able to lend his prestige to the cause of Mexican labor, representing the National Association of Actors in talks with President Manuel Ávila Camacho. The talks did not go well, however, and, in the resulting scandal, Moreno took his act back to the theatre.


title: Cantinflas

text: On 30 August 1953, Cantinflas began performing his theatrical work "Yo Colón" ("I, Columbus") in the "Teatro de los Insurgentes", the same theatre that had earlier been embroiled in a controversy over a Diego Rivera mural incorporating Cantinflas and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Critics, including the PAN and archbishop Luis María Martínez, called the mural blasphemous, and it was eventually painted without the image of the Virgin.


title: Cantinflas

text: "Yo Colón" placed Cantinflas in the character of Christopher Columbus, who, while continually "discovering America", made comedic historical and contemporary observations from fresh perspectives. For the first few months, he persuaded the King and Queen of Spain to fund his voyage so that he could let his wife "drive" so she could make a wrong turn and discover Mexico instead, allowing him to also discover Jorge Negrete so that the Queen – an ardent fan – could meet him. When Negrete died just before Christmas of 1953, he changed it first to Pedro Infante until his death four years later, and then finally to Javier Solis until his death in 1966.


title: Cantinflas

text: In 1956, "Around the World in 80 Days", Cantinflas' American debut, earned him a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a musical or comedy. Variety magazine said in 1956 that his Chaplinesque quality made a big contribution to the success of the film. The film ultimately made an unadjusted $42 million at the box office (over $678 million in 2018 dollars). While David Niven was billed as the lead in English-speaking nations, Cantinflas was billed as the lead elsewhere. As a result of the film, Cantinflas became the world's highest-paid actor.


title: Cantinflas

text: Moreno's second Hollywood feature, "Pepe", attempted to replicate the success of his first. The film had cameo appearances by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Maurice Chevalier, Shirley Jones, Ricardo Montalban, James Coburn, Debbie Reynolds, César Romero, and other stars. His humor, deeply rooted in the Spanish language, did not translate well for the American audience and the movie was a notorious box office disappointment. He still earned a Golden Globe nomination for his part. Later in a 1992 American interview, Moreno cited the language barrier as the biggest impediment to his making it big in the United States.


title: Cantinflas

text: After returning to Mexico, Cantinflas starred in the comic drama "El bolero de Raquel" (1957), the first Cantinflas film to be distributed to the United States by Columbia Pictures. The film was followed by more Cantinflas-Reachi-Columbia productions: "El analfabeto" (1961), "El padrecito" (1963), and "Su excelencia" (1967). After "Su excelencia", Cantinflas began to appear in a series of very low-budget comedies directed by Miguel M. Delgado, which were produced by his own company "Cantinflas Films". These films lasted until "El Barrendero", in 1982.


title: Cantinflas

text: Like Charlie Chaplin, Cantinflas was a social satirist. He played "el pelado", an impoverished Everyman, with hopes to succeed. With mutual admiration, Cantinflas was influenced by Chaplin's earlier films and ideology. "El Circo" (the circus) was a "shadow" of Chaplin's silent film, "The Circus" and "Si yo fuera diputado" ("If I Were a Congressman") had many similarities with the 1940 film, "The Great Dictator". Cantinflas' films, to this day, still generate revenue for Columbia Pictures. In 2000, Columbia reported in an estimated US$4 million in foreign distribution from the films.


title: Cantinflas

text: A life long smoker, Cantinflas died of lung cancer on 20 April 1993 in Mexico City. Thousands appeared on a rainy day for his funeral. The ceremony was a national event, lasting three days. He was honored by many heads of state and the United States Senate, which held a moment of silence for him. His ashes lay at the crypt of the Moreno Reyes family, in the "Panteón Español" ("Spanish Cemetery") in Mexico City.


title: Cantinflas

text: A 20-year legal battle followed between Mario Moreno Ivanova, Cantinflas' son and heir to his estate, and the actor's blood nephew Eduardo Moreno Laparade over the control of 34 films made by Cantinflas. The nephew claimed his uncle gave him a written notice, Moreno Ivanova argued that he was the direct heir of Cantinflas and that the rights belonged to him. In 2014, Eduardo Moreno Laparade won the rights at the Mexican Supreme Court to 39 films and the name.


title: Cantinflas

text: At the same time, there was another legal battle between Columbia Pictures and Moreno Ivanova over control of these films. Columbia claimed that it had bought the rights to the 34 films four decades earlier, although the court noted several discrepancies in the papers. Moreno Ivanova wanted the rights to the films to remain his, and more generally Mexico's, as a national treasure. On 2 June 2001 the eight-year battle was resolved with Columbia retaining ownership over the 34 disputed films.


title: Cantinflas

text: Among the things that endeared him to his public was his comic use of language in his films; his characters (all of which were really variations of the main "Cantinflas" persona but cast in different social roles and circumstances) would strike up a normal conversation and then complicate it to the point where no one understood what they were talking about. The Cantinflas character was particularly adept at obfuscating the conversation when he owed somebody money, was courting an attractive young woman, or was trying to talk his way out of trouble with authorities, whom he managed to humiliate without their even being able to tell. This manner of talking became known as "Cantinflear", and it became common parlance for Spanish speakers to say ""¡estás cantinfleando!"" (loosely translated as you're pulling a "Cantinflas!" or you're "Cantinflassing!") whenever someone became hard to understand in conversation. The Real Academia Española officially included the verb, "cantinflear", "cantinflas" and "cantinflada" in its dictionary in 1992.


title: Cantinflas

text: In the visual arts, Mexican artists such as Rufino Tamayo and Diego Rivera painted Cantinflas as a symbol of the Mexican everyman.


title: Cantinflas

text: Cantinflas' style and the content of his films have led scholars to conclude that he influenced the many "teatros" that spread the message of the Chicano Movement during the 1960s-1970s in the United States, the most important of which was El Teatro Campesino. The "teatro" movement was an important part of the cultural renaissance that was the social counterpart of the political movement for the civil rights of Mexican Americans. Cantinflas' use of social themes and style is seen as a precursor to Chicano theater.


title: Cantinflas

text: A cartoon series, the "Cantinflas Show", was made in 1972 starring an animated Cantinflas. The show was targeted for children and was intended to be educational. The first animated version animated by Santiago Moro and his brother Jose Luis Moro for Televisa in the early 1970s (Cantinflas Show) which educated children by meeting such notable people such as Chopin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein and William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as well learning how important water and oil is and educational parodies of some of his famous movies like "Su Excelencia" [La Carta with incidental music from Aaron Copland's El Salón México] In the second version his character was known as ""Little Amigo"" and concentrated on a wide range of subjects intended to educate children, from the origin of soccer to the reasons behind the International Date Line. The second animated series animated in 1979 and dubbed in English in 1982 was a joint venture between Televisa and Hanna-Barbera and Mario Moreno voiced "Little Amigo"/Cantinflas in the Spanish version and Don Messick voiced "Little Amigo" and John Stephenson as the narrator in the English version. Both The Cantinflas Show and Amigos and Friends aired in the mid 1990s on Univision and Televisa re aired The Cantinflas Show in the mid 1990s.


title: Cantinflas

text: Although Cantinflas never achieved the same success in the United States as in Mexico, he was honored with a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6438 Hollywood Boulevard. He earned two Golden Globe nominations (winning one) for best actor and the Mexican Academy of Film Lifetime Achievement Award. His handprints have been imbedded onto the Paseo de las Luminarias for his work in motion pictures.


title: Cantinflas

text: The Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" Award is handed out annually for entertainers who "represent the Latino community with the same humor and distinction as the legendary Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" and who, like Cantinflas, utilizes his power to help those most in need".


title: Cantinflas

text: Moreno's life is the subject of the biographical film "Cantinflas" (2014, directed by Sebastian del Amo). It stars Óscar Jaenada, who portrays a young Mario Moreno attempting to gain respect and make a living as an actor, and award-winning actor Michael Imperioli as Mike Todd, an American film-producer struggling to film his masterpiece.


title: Cantinflas

text: The film is centered in Moreno's personal life, and in the development of Todd's Golden Globe Award-winning 1956 film "Around the World in 80 Days".


title: Cantinflas

text: Cantinflas is sometimes seen as a Mexican Groucho Marx character, one who uses his skill with words to puncture the pretensions of the wealthy and powerful, the police and the government, with the difference that he strongly supported democracy. Historian and author of "Cantinflas and the Chaos of Mexican Modernity", writes, "Cantinflas symbolized the underdog who triumphed through trickery over more powerful opponents" and presents Cantinflas as a self-image of a transitional Mexico. Gregorio Luke, executive director of the Museum of Latin American Art said, "To understand Cantinflas is to understand what happened in Mexico during the last century".


title: Cantinflas

text: Monsiváis interprets Moreno's portrayals in terms of the importance of the spoken word in the context of Mexico's "reigning illiteracy" (70% in 1930). Particularly in the film "El analfabeto", ("The Illiterate"), "Cantinflas is the illiterate who takes control of the language by whatever means he can".


title: Cantinflas

text: The journalist Salvador Novo interprets the role of Moreno's character entirely in terms of "Cantinflismo": ""En condensarlos: en entregar a la saludable carcajada del pueblo la esencia demagógica de su vacuo confusionismo, estriba el mérito y se asegura la gloria de este hijo cazurro de la ciudad ladina y burlona de México, que es 'Cantinflas"'". ("In condensing them [the leaders of the world and of Mexico], in returning to the healthy laughter of the people the demagogic essence of their empty confusion, merit is sustained and glory is ensured for the self-contained son of the Spanish-speaking mocker of Mexico, who Cantinflas portrays.")


title: Cantinflas

text: In his biography of the comic, scholar of Mexican culture Jeffrey M. Pilcher views Cantinflas as a metaphor for "the chaos of Mexican modernity", a modernity that was just out of reach for the majority of Mexicans: "His nonsense language eloquently expressed the contradictions of modernity as 'the palpitating moment of everything that wants to be that which it cannot be'." Likewise, "Social hierarchies, speech patterns, ethnic identities, and masculine forms of behavior all crumbled before his chaotic humor, to be reformulated in revolutionary new ways."


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The seventh season of "The Walking Dead", an American post-apocalyptic horror television series on AMC, premiered on October 23, 2016, and concluded on April 2, 2017, consisting of 16 episodes. Developed for television by Frank Darabont, the series is based on the eponymous series of comic books by Robert Kirkman, Tony Moore, and Charlie Adlard. The executive producers are Kirkman, David Alpert, Scott M. Gimple, Greg Nicotero, Tom Luse, and Gale Anne Hurd, with Gimple as showrunner for the fourth consecutive season. The seventh season received mixed reviews from critics. It was nominated for multiple awards and won three, including Best Horror Television Series for the second consecutive year, at the 43rd Saturn Awards.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: This season adapts material from issues #100–114 of the comic book series and focuses on the oppressive group of survivors known as the Saviors, led by the vindictive Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). He uses numbers, power and lethal brutality to coerce Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln), his group of survivors, and the Alexandria Safe-Zone to make regular offerings of supplies and weapons for the Saviors. Eventually, Rick and his group seek allies to help them confront Negan, including members of the survivor communities of the Hilltop, the Kingdom, Oceanside, and the Scavengers, who have had their own dealings with Negan and the Saviors.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The seventh season features twenty series regulars overall. For the season premiere, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Austin Amelio were promoted to series regular status, with Morgan added to the opening credits and Amelio listed under "Also starring". After the first episode aired, the cast faced numerous changes: Steven Yeun and Michael Cudlitz were removed from the opening credits, while Alanna Masterson, Josh McDermitt and Christian Serratos were added to the opening credits, respectively, after previously being credited as "Also starring", in the second episode onwards. Tom Payne and Xander Berkeley were also promoted to series regulars in the second episode and beyond.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: "The Walking Dead" was renewed by AMC for a 16-episode seventh season on October 30, 2015. Filming for season 7 began in Georgia on May 2, 2016 and concluded on November 18, 2016. Actors Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Xander Berkeley, Tom Payne, and Austin Amelio were all promoted to series regulars for the seventh season, after having recurring roles in the sixth season. The seventh season has featured several extended episodes, running longer than its usual 43-minute running time (without commercials). Extended episodes have ranged from 46 to 62 minutes in length.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The finale was dedicated in memory of American comic artist Bernie Wrightson, who died on March 18, 2017.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The seventh season of "The Walking Dead" has received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds a score of 66% with an average rating of 6.85 out of 10 based on 18 reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: "Increased character depth and effective world-building helps "The Walking Dead" overcome a tiresome reliance on excessive, gratuitous violence."


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The first episode of the season, "The Day Will Come When You Won't Be", received criticism for the amount of violence depicted in the episode, with one writer calling it the equivalent of "torture porn". Subsequently, the first half of the seventh season has seen some of the show's lowest critical ratings. The show's executive producer Gale Anne Hurd claimed that in light of the negative feedback, they tamed some of the more gruesome scenes that were in episodes being filmed for the second half of the season. Hurd said that "this is not a show that's torture porn... Let's make sure we don't cross that line". However, this claim was countered by executive producers Scott M. Gimple and Greg Nicotero. Gimple said that the violence used in the episode was "pronounced for a reason", specifically that "there was a purpose of traumatizing these characters to a point where maybe they would have been docile for the rest of their lives", but noted that he felt that this episode shouldn't represent "the base level of violence that necessarily should be on the show". On Rotten Tomatoes, it holds a 67% with an average rating of 7 out of 10, based on 54 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "The flashback-laden 'The Day Will Come When You Won't Be' is slow to deliver the payoff from last season's finale—but ultimately delivers with sadistic acts of gut-wrenching violence that will push "Walking Dead" fans to their limit."


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The series won two awards at the 43rd Saturn Awards: Best Actor on Television (Andrew Lincoln), and Best Guest Starring Role on Television (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). Additional nominations were for Best Supporting Actor on Television (Norman Reedus), Best Supporting Actress on Television (Danai Gurira and Melissa McBride), and Best Performance by a Younger Actor in a Television Series (Chandler Riggs).


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The first half of the season was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Stunt Ensemble in a Television Series at the 23rd Screen Actors Guild Awards. Additionally, for his portrayal of Negan, Jeffrey Dean Morgan earned himself a nomination and win for Best Guest Performer in a Drama Series at the 7th Critics' Choice Television Awards for the first half of the season, in addition to his guest appearance in the season six finale, "Last Day on Earth". Morgan was also nominated at the 26th MTV Movie & TV Awards for Best Actor in a TV Show and Best Villain, winning the latter.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: "The Walking Dead"s seventh-season premiere ("The Day Will Come When You Won't Be") received 17.03 million viewers in its initial broadcast on AMC in the United States. The viewership steadily declined every week after the premiere, until the seventh episode ("Sing Me a Song"), with the sixth episode ("Swear") of the season dropping to 10.40 million viewers, the lowest rating the show has had since season three. Viewing increased to 12 million viewers in the ninth episode ("Rock in the Road"), following this viewing decreased with the twelfth episode ("Say Yes") reaching a season low with 10.16 million viewers.


title: The Walking Dead (season 7)

text: The season was released on Blu-ray and DVD in region 1 on August 22, 2017, in region 2 on September 25, 2017, and in region 4 on September 27, 2017. The "Limited Edition Spike Walker Statue" set, which is exclusive to Amazon.com was released on October 24, 2017, and was created by McFarlane Toys to pay homage to the zombie character featured in the "New Best Friends" episode in season 7.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The first-generation iPad ( ) (retrospectively referred to unofficially as the iPad 1, or original iPad) is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. as the first device in the iPad lineup of tablet computers. The device features an Apple A4 SoC, a 9.7" touchscreen display, and, on certain variants, the capability of accessing cellular networks. Using the iOS operating system, the iPad can play music, send and receive email and browse the web. Other functions, which include the ability to play games and access references, GPS navigation software and social network services can be enabled by downloading apps.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The device was announced and unveiled on January 27, 2010, by Steve Jobs at an Apple press event. On April 3, 2010, the Wi-Fi variant of the device was released in the USA, followed by the release of the "Wi-Fi + 3G" variant on April 30. On May 28, 2010, it was released in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, Italy, Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The device received positive reviews from various technology blogs and publications. Reviewers praised the device for its wide range of capabilities and labeled it as a competitor to laptops and netbooks. Some aspects were criticized, including the closed nature of the operating system and the lack of support for the Adobe Flash multimedia format. During the first 80 days, 3 million iPads were sold. By the launch of the iPad 2, Apple had sold more than 15 million iPads.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: On March 2, 2011, the first generation iPad was discontinued following Apple's announcement of the IPad 2. Remaining stock of the first iPad were temporarily available from Apple at reduced price.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Apple's first tablet computer was the Newton MessagePad 100, introduced in 1993, which led to the creation of the ARM6 processor core with Acorn Computers. Apple also developed a prototype PowerBook Duo-based tablet, the PenLite, but decided not to sell it in order to avoid hurting MessagePad sales. Apple released several more Newton-based PDAs; the final one, the MessagePad 2100, was discontinued in 1998.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Apple reentered the mobile-computing market in 2007 with the iPhone. Smaller than the (not yet announced) iPad and featuring a camera and mobile capabilities, it pioneered the multitouch finger-sensitive touchscreen interface of Apple's iOS mobile operating system.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: By late 2009, the iPad's release had been rumored for several years. Such speculation mostly talked about "Apple's tablet"; specific names included "iTablet" and "iSlate". The actual name is reportedly an homage to the Star Trek PADD, a fictional device very similar in appearance to the iPad.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad was announced on January 27, 2010, by Jobs at an Apple press conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Jobs later said that Apple began developing the iPad before the iPhone, but temporarily shelved the effort upon realizing that its ideas would work just as well in a mobile phone. The iPad's internal codename was K48, which was revealed in the court case surrounding leaking of iPad information before launch.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Apple began taking pre-orders for the iPad from US customers on March 12, 2010. The only major change to the device between its announcement and being available to pre-order was the change of the behavior of the side switch from sound muting to that of a screen rotation lock. The Wi-Fi version of the iPad went on sale in the United States on April 3, 2010. The Wi-Fi + 3G version was released on April 30. 3G service for the iPad in the United States is provided by AT&T and was initially sold with 2 prepaid contract-free data plan options: 1 for unlimited data and the other for 250 MB per month at 1/2 the price. On June 2, 2010, AT&T announced that, effective June 7, the unlimited plan would be replaced for new customers with a 2 GB plan at slightly lower cost; existing customers would have the option to keep the unlimited plan. The plans are activated on the iPad itself and can be cancelled at any time.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad was initially only available for purchase on Apple's online store and its retail locations; it has since become available through retailers including Amazon, Walmart, and network operators. The iPad was launched in countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom on May 28. Online pre-orders in those countries began on May 10. Apple released the iPad in Hong Kong, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore on July 23, 2010. Israel briefly prohibited importation of the iPad because of concerns that its Wi-Fi might interfere with other devices. On September 17, 2010, the iPad was officially launched in Mainland China.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad originally shipped with IPhone OS 3.2. On September 1, 2010, it was announced the iPad would get iOS 4.2 by November 2010; to fulfill this, Apple released IOS 4.2.1 to the public on November 22. It comes with several applications, including Safari, Mail, Photos, Video, IPod, iTunes Store, App Store, Maps, Notes, Calendar, and Contacts. Several are improved versions of applications developed for the iPhone or Mac.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad syncs with iTunes on a Mac or Windows PC. Apple ported its iWork suite from the Mac to the iPad, and sells pared-down versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps in the App Store. Although the iPad isn't designed to replace a mobile phone, a user can use a wired headset or the built-in speaker and microphone to place phone calls over Wi-Fi or 3G using a VoIP application.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: On October 12, 2011, iOS 5 was released to various iOS devices, including the first-generation iPad, and was downloadable through iTunes. The update was reported to contain hundreds of new features and tweaks, including Twitter integration, Notification Center and iMessage, which is a feature that allows users to send messages or multimedia files to other users on iOS or OS X, the operating system for Apple computers. iCloud, an iOS app and Apple-provided internet storage service which allows users to sync and backup their user data and settings to/from other devices, was also made available through this update. On June 11, 2012, it was announced that iOS 6 would not be available for the first-generation iPad, making IOS 5.1.1 the final operating system officially available for the device.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The first-generation iPad features an Apple A4 SoC, which comprises a 1 GHz processor, 256 MB of RAM and a PowerVR SGX535 GPU. There are four physical switches on the iPad, including a home button near the display that returns the user to the main menu, and three plastic physical switches on the sides: "wake/sleep" and "volume up/down", plus a software-controlled switch whose function has changed with software updates. Originally the switch locked the screen to its current orientation, but iOS 4.2 changed it to a mute switch, moving the rotation lock function to an onscreen menu. In the iOS 4.3 update, a setting was added to allow the user to specify whether the side switch was used for rotation lock or mute. Unlike its successors, the first-generation iPad has no cameras.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad's touchscreen display is a 1,024 by 768 pixel, liquid crystal display (diagonal ), with fingerprint- and scratch-resistant glass. As a result of the device's screen dimensions and resolution, the screen has a pixel density of 132 ppi. The display responds to other sensors: an ambient light sensor to adjust screen brightness and a 3-axis accelerometer to sense the iPad's orientation and switch between portrait and landscape modes. Unlike the iPhone and iPod Touch's built-in applications, which work in 3 orientations (portrait, landscape-left and landscape-right), the iPad's built-in applications support screen rotation in all four orientations, including upside-down. Consequently, the device has no intrinsic "native" orientation; only the relative position of the home button changes.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad was equipped with 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB (1 GB = 1 billion bytes) of solid-state (flash) storage for program and data storage. Furthermore, the device was available with two connectivity options: Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi and 3G. Unlike its successors, the Wi-Fi + 3G variant of the first-generation iPad could only support carriers that utilized GSM/UMTS standards and was not compatible with CDMA networks; however, like its successors, assisted GPS services are supported. Bluetooth was also available on all models.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The weight of the first-generation iPad varied, dependent upon the connectivity options chosen. The Wi-Fi only variant weighs whereas the variant with Wi-Fi + 3G weighs . Its dimensions, however, are identical across the entire range of variants, measuring 9.56×7.47×0.5 in (243×190×13 mm).


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Apple offers several iPad accessories, most of which are adapters for the proprietary 30-pin dock connector, the iPad's only port besides the headphone jack. A dock holds the iPad upright at an angle, and has a dock connector and audio line-out port. Each generation of iPad requires a corresponding dock. A dock that included a physical keyboard was only supported for the original iPad, but all generations are compatible with Bluetooth keyboards that also work with Macs and PCs. The iPad can be charged with a 10 W standalone power adapter, which is also compatible with iPods and iPhones.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Media reaction to the announcement of the device and the device itself was mixed. The media noted that thousands of people queued on the first day of sale in a number of countries with many of those who waited claiming that "it was worth it."


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Walt Mossberg (of "The Wall Street Journal") wrote, "It's about the software, stupid", meaning hardware features and build are less important to the iPad's success than software and user interface, his first impressions of which were largely positive. Mossberg also called the price "modest" for a device of its capabilities, and praised the ten-hour battery life. Others, including PC Advisor and the Sydney Morning Herald, wrote that the iPad would also compete with proliferating netbooks, most of which use Microsoft Windows. The base model's price of US$499 () was lower than pre-release estimates by Wall Street analysts, and Apple's competitors, all of whom were expecting a much higher entry price point.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The media also praised the quantity of applications, as well as the bookstore and other media applications. In contrast, some sources, including the BBC, criticized the iPad for being a closed system and mentioned that the iPad faces competition from Android-based tablets. However, at the time of the first-generation iPad's launch, "Yahoo! News" noted that the Android tablet OS, known as "Honeycomb", was not open source and has fewer apps available for it than for the iPad,; although later Google released the source code for Honeycomb. "The Independent" criticized the iPad for not being as readable in bright light as paper but praised it for being able to store large quantities of books. After its UK release, "The Daily Telegraph" said the iPad's lack of Adobe Flash support was "annoying".


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The iPad was selected by "Time" magazine as one of the 50 Best Inventions of the Year 2010, while Popular Science chose it as the top gadget behind the overall "Best of What's New 2010" winner Groasis Waterboxx.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: 300,000 iPads were sold on their first day of availability. By May 3, 2010, Apple had sold a million iPads; this was just half the time it took Apple to sell the same number of original iPhones. After passing the one million mark, they continued selling rapidly, reaching 3 million sales after 80 days. During the financial conference call on October 18, 2010, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had sold more iPads than Macs for the fiscal quarter. In total, Apple sold more than 15 million first-generation iPads prior to the launch of the iPad 2 – more than all other tablet PCs combined since the iPad's release, and reaching 75% of tablet PC sales at the end of 2010.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: CNET criticized the iPad for its apparent lack of wireless sync, which other portable devices such as Microsoft's Zune have had for a number of years.


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: Walt Mossberg called it a "pretty close" laptop killer. David Pogue of "The New York Times" wrote a "dual" review, one part for technology-minded people, and the other part for non-technology-minded people. In the former section, he notes that a laptop offers more features for a cheaper price than the iPad. In his review for the latter audience, however, he claims that if his readers like the concept of the device and can understand what its intended uses are, then they will enjoy using the device. PC Magazine's Tim Gideon wrote, "you have yourself a winner" that "will undoubtedly be a driving force in shaping the emerging tablet landscape." Michael Arrington of TechCrunch said, "the iPad beats even my most optimistic expectations. This is a new category of device. But it also will replace laptops for many people." PC World criticized the iPad's file sharing and printing abilities, and ArsTechnica critically noted that sharing files with a computer is "one of our least favorite parts of the iPad experience."


title: IPad (1st generation)

text: The lack of Adobe Flash support was criticized with "The Daily Telegraph" saying that the iPad's lack of Adobe Flash support was "annoying."


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The War of the Third Coalition was a European conflict spanning the years 1805 to 1806. During the war, France and its client states under Napoleon I opposed an alliance, the Third Coalition, made up of the United Kingdom, the Holy Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, Naples, Sicily and Sweden. Prussia remained neutral during the war.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Britain had already been at war with France following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens and remained the only country still at war with France after the Treaty of Pressburg. From 1803 to 1805, Britain stood under constant threat of a French invasion. The Royal Navy, however, secured mastery of the seas and decisively destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The Third Coalition itself came to full fruition in 1804–05 as Napoleon's actions in Italy and Germany (notably the arrest and execution of the Duc d'Enghien) spurred Austria and Russia into joining Britain against France. The war would be determined on the continent, and the major land operations that sealed the swift French victory involved the Ulm Campaign, a large wheeling manoeuvre by the Grande Armée lasting from late August to mid-October 1805 that captured an entire Austrian army, and the decisive French victory over a combined Austro-Russian force under Tsar Alexander I at the Battle of Austerlitz in early December. Austerlitz effectively brought the Third Coalition to an end, although later there was a small side campaign against Naples, which also resulted in a decisive French victory at the Battle of Campo Tenese.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: On 26 December 1805, Austria and France signed the Treaty of Pressburg, which took Austria out of both the war and the Coalition, while it reinforced the earlier treaties of Campo Formio and of Lunéville between the two powers. The treaty confirmed the Austrian cession of lands in Italy and Bavaria to France and in Germany to Napoleon's German allies, imposed an indemnity of 40 million francs on the defeated Habsburgs, and allowed the defeated Russian troops free passage, with their arms and equipment, through hostile territories and back to their home soil. Victory at Austerlitz also prompted Napoleon to create the Confederation of the Rhine, a collection of German client states which pledged themselves to raise an army of 63,000 men. As a direct consequence of these events, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist when, in 1806, Francis II abdicated the Imperial throne, emerging as Francis I, Emperor of Austria. These achievements, however, did not establish a lasting peace on the continent. Austerlitz had driven neither Russia nor Britain, whose armies protected Sicily from a French invasion, to cease fighting. Meanwhile, Prussian worries about the growing French influence in Central Europe sparked the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Historiographers differ on when the War of the Third Coalition began and when it ended. From the British perspective, the war started when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803, but it was still on its own. It was not until December 1804 when Sweden entered into an alliance with the United Kingdom, not until 11 April 1805 when Russia joined the alliance, not until 16 July when Britain and Russia ratified their treaty of alliance, and only thereafter Austria (9 August) and Naples–Sicily (11 September) completed the fully-fledged coalition.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Meanwhile, Bavaria sided with France on 25 August, and Württemberg joined Napoleon on 5 September. No major hostilities between France and any member of the coalition other than Britain (Trafalgar campaign March–November 1805) occurred until the Ulm Campaign (25 September – 20 October 1805). This was in part because Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom was not called off until 27 August 1805, when he decided to use his invasion force camped at Boulogne against Austria instead.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Likewise, no major battles occurred after the Battle of Austerlitz and the signing of the Peace of Pressburg on 26 December 1805, which forced Austria to leave the Third Coalition and cease hostilities against France. Some historiographers conclude that Austria's departure "shattered the fragile Third Coalition" and "ended the War of the Third Coalition".


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: This narrative leaves out the subsequent French invasion of Naples (February–July 1806), which the occupying Anglo-Russian troops hastily evacuated and the remaining Neapolitan forces relatively quickly surrendered. Other scholars argue the southern Italian campaign should be included into the War of the Second Coalition, and criticise ignoring the Mediterranean front by only focusing on land battles in Central Europe and the Trafalgar campaign.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Europe had been embroiled in the French Revolutionary Wars since 1792. After five years of war, the French Republic subdued the armies of the First Coalition in 1797. A Second Coalition was formed in 1798, but this too was defeated by 1801, leaving Britain the only opponent of the new French Consulate.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: In March 1802, France and Britain agreed to cease hostilities under the Treaty of Amiens. For the first time in ten years, all of Europe was at peace. However, many problems persisted between the two sides making the implementation of the treaty increasingly difficult. Bonaparte was angry that British troops had not evacuated the island of Malta. The tension only worsened when Bonaparte sent an expeditionary force to re-establish control over Haiti. Prolonged intransigence on these issues led Britain to declare war on France on 18 May 1803 despite the fact that Bonaparte finally accepted the occupation of Malta by the British.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Bonaparte's expeditionary army was destroyed by disease in Haiti and subsequently swayed the First Consul to abandon his plans to rebuild France's New World empire. Without sufficient revenues from sugar colonies in the Caribbean, the vast territory of Louisiana in North America had little value to him. Though Spain had not yet completed the transfer of Louisiana to France per the Third Treaty of San Ildefonso, a war between France and Britain was imminent. Out of anger against Spain and having the unique opportunity to sell something that was useless and not truly his yet, Bonaparte decided to sell the entire territory to the United States for a sum total of 68 million francs ($15 million). The Louisiana Purchase Treaty was signed on 30 April 1803.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Despite issuing orders that the over 60 million francs were to be spent on the construction of five new canals in France, Bonaparte spent the whole amount on his planned invasion of England.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The nascent Third Coalition came into being in December 1804 when, in exchange for payment, an Anglo-Swedish agreement was signed allowing the British to use Swedish Pomerania as a military base against France (explicitly, the nearby French-occupied Electorate of Hanover, the homeland of the British monarch). The Swedish government had broken diplomatic ties with France in early 1804 after the arrest and execution of Louis Antoine, Duke of Enghien, a royalist émigré who had been implicated (on dubious evidence) in an assassination plot against First Consul Bonaparte. The execution of Enghien shocked the aristocrats of Europe, who still remembered the bloodletting of the Revolution and thus lost whatever conditional respect they may have entertained for Bonaparte.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Fanning the flames of the outcry resulting from d'Enghien's death and the growing fear over increasing French power, British Prime Minister William Pitt spent 1804 and 1805 in a flurry of diplomatic activity geared towards forming a new coalition against France. Pitt scored a significant coup by securing a burgeoning rival as an ally. The Baltic was dominated by Russia, something Britain had been uncomfortable with since the area provided valuable commodities like timber, tar, and hemp, crucial supplies to its Royal Navy.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Additionally, Britain had supported the Ottoman Empire in resisting Russian incursions towards the Mediterranean. Mutual suspicion between the British and the Russians eased in the face of several French political mistakes, and on 11 April 1805 the two signed a treaty of alliance in Saint Petersburg. The stated goal of the Anglo-Russian alliance was to reduce France to its 1792 borders. Austria, Sweden, and Naples would eventually join this alliance, whilst Prussia again remained neutral.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Meantime, the lull in participating in active military campaigning from 1801 to 1804 permitted Bonaparte to consolidate his political power base in France. 1802 saw him proclaimed Consul for Life, his reward for having made peace with Britain, albeit briefly, as well as the establishment of a meritorious order, the Legion of Honour. Then, in May 1804, Bonaparte was proclaimed Napoleon, Emperor of the French, and crowned at Notre Dame on 2 December 1804. He created eighteen "Marshals of the Empire" from among his top generals, securing the allegiance of the army. Napoleon added the crown of (Northern) Italy to his mantle in May 1805, thereby placing a traditional Austrian sphere of influence under his rule (eventually through a viceroy, his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais). Keen on revenge and having been defeated twice in recent memory by France, Austria joined the Third Coalition a few months later.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Prior to the formation of the Third Coalition, Napoleon had assembled the "Army of England", an invasion force meant to strike at England, from around six camps at Boulogne in Northern France. Although they never set foot on British soil, Napoleon's troops received careful and invaluable training for any possible military operation. Boredom among the troops occasionally set in, but Napoleon paid many visits and conducted lavish parades in order to boost the morale of the soldiers.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The men at Boulogne formed the core for what Napoleon would later call "La Grande Armée" ("The Great Army"). At the start, this French army had about 200,000 men organized into seven corps, each capable of independent action or in concert with other corps. Corps were large combined arms field units typically containing 2-4 infantry divisions, a cavalry division, and about 36 to 40 cannon


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: On top of these forces, Napoleon created a cavalry reserve of 22,000 organized into two cuirassier divisions, four mounted dragoon divisions, and two divisions of dismounted dragoons and light cavalry, all supported by 24 artillery pieces. By 1805, the "Grande Armée" had grown to a force of 350,000, was well equipped, adequately trained, and possessed a skilled officer class.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The Russian army in 1805 had many characteristics of ancien régime military organization: there was no permanent formation above the regimental level, senior officers were largely recruited from aristocratic circles (including foreigners), and the Russian soldier, in line with 18th-century practice, was regularly beaten and punished to instill discipline. Furthermore, many lower-level officers were poorly trained and had difficulty getting their men to perform the sometimes complex manoeuvres required in a battle. Nevertheless, the Russians did have a fine artillery arm manned by soldiers who regularly fought hard to prevent their pieces from falling into enemy hands.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Archduke Charles, brother of the Austrian Emperor, had started to reform the Austrian army in 1801 by taking away power from the Hofkriegsrat, the military-political council responsible for decision-making in the Austrian armed forces. Charles was Austria's best field commander, but he was unpopular with the royal court and lost much influence when, against his advice, Austria decided to go to war with France. Karl Mack became the new main commander in Austria's army, instituting reforms on the infantry on the eve of war that called for a regiment to be composed of four battalions of four companies rather than the older three battalions of six companies. The sudden change came with no corresponding officer training, and as a result, these new units were not led as well as they could have been. Austrian cavalry forces were regarded as the best in Europe, but the detachment of many cavalry units to various infantry formations precluded the hitting power of their massed French counterparts.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Finally, a significant divergence between these two nominal allies is often cited as a cause for disastrous consequences. The Russians were still using the old style Julian calendar, while the Austrians had adopted the new style Gregorian calendar, and by 1805 a difference of 12 days existed between the two systems. Confusion is purported to have ensued from the differing timetables regarding when the Allied forces should combine, leading to an inevitable breakdown in mutual coordination. However, this tale is not supported in a contemporary account from a major-general of the Austrian army, who tells of a joint advance of the Russian and Austrian forces (in which he himself took part) five days before the battle of Austerlitz,


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: In August 1805, Napoleon, Emperor of the French since May of the previous year, turned his army's sights from the English Channel to the Rhine in order to deal with the new Austrian and Russian threats. The War of the Third Coalition began with the Ulm Campaign, a series of French and Bavarian military manoeuvres and battles designed to outflank an Austrian army under General Mack.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: General Mack thought that Austrian security relied on sealing off the gaps through the mountainous Black Forest area in Southern Germany that had witnessed much fighting during the campaigns of the French Revolutionary Wars. Mack believed that there would be no action in Central Germany. Mack decided to make the city of Ulm the centrepiece of his defensive strategy, which called for containment of the French until the Russians under Kutuzov could arrive and alter the odds against Napoleon. Ulm was protected by the heavily fortified Michelsberg heights, giving Mack the impression that the city was virtually impregnable from outside attack.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Fatally, the Aulic Council decided to make Northern Italy the main theatre of operations for the Habsburgs. Archduke Charles was assigned 95,000 troops and directed to cross the Adige River with Mantua, Peschiera, and Milan as the initial objectives. Archduke John was given 23,000 troops and commanded to secure Tyrol while serving as a link between his brother, Charles, and his cousin, Ferdinand; the latter's force of 72,000, which was to invade Bavaria and hold the defensive line at Ulm, was effectively controlled by Mack. The Austrians also detached individual corps to serve with the Swedish in Pomerania and the British in Naples, though these were designed to obfuscate the French and divert their resources.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: In both the campaigns of 1796 and 1800, Napoleon had envisaged the Danube theatre as the central focus of French efforts, but in both instances, the Italian theatre became the most important. The Aulic Council thought Napoleon would strike in Italy again. Napoleon had other intentions: 210,000 French troops would be launched eastwards from the camps of Boulogne and would envelop General Mack's exposed Austrian army if it kept marching towards the Black Forest.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Meanwhile, Marshal Murat would conduct cavalry screens across the Black Forest to fool the Austrians into thinking that the French were advancing on a direct west–east axis. The main attack in Germany would be supported by French assaults in other theatres: Masséna would confront Charles in Italy with 50,000 men, St. Cyr would march to Naples with 20,000 men, and Brune would patrol Boulogne with 30,000 troops against a possible British invasion.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Murat and Bertrand conducted reconnaissance between the area bordering the Tyrol and the Main as Savary, chief of the planning staff, drew up detailed road surveys of the areas between the Rhine and the Danube. The left-wing of the Grande Armée would move from Hanover and Utrecht to fall on Württemberg; the right and centre, troops from the Channel coast, would concentrate along the Middle Rhine around cities like Mannheim and Strasbourg. While Murat was making demonstrations across the Black Forest, other French forces would then invade the German heartland and swing towards the southeast by capturing Augsburg, a move that was supposed to isolate Mack and interrupt the Austrian lines of communication.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: On 22 September, Mack decided to hold the Iller line anchored on Ulm. In the last three days of September, the French began the furious marches that would find them at the Austrian rear. Mack believed that the French would not violate Prussian territory, but when he heard that Bernadotte's I Corps had marched through Prussian Ansbach, he made the critical decision to stay and defend Ulm rather than retreat to the south, which would have offered a reasonable opportunity at saving the bulk of his forces. Napoleon had little accurate information about Mack's intentions or manoeuvres. He knew that Kienmayer's Corps was sent to Ingolstadt east of the French positions, but his agents greatly exaggerated its size.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: On 5 October, Napoleon ordered Ney to join Lannes, Soult, and Murat in concentrating and crossing the Danube at Donauwörth. The French encirclement was not deep enough to prevent Kienmayer's escape: the French corps did not all arrive at the same place – they instead deployed on a long west–east axis – and the early arrival of Soult and Davout at Donauwörth incited Kienmayer to exercise caution and evasion. Napoleon gradually became more convinced that the Austrians were massed at Ulm and ordered sizeable portions of the French army to concentrate around Donauwörth; on 6 October, three French infantry and cavalry corps headed to Donauwörth to seal off Mack's escape route.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Realizing the danger of his position, Mack decided to go on the offensive. On 8 October, he commanded the army to concentrate around Günzburg and hoped to strike at Napoleon's lines of communication. Mack instructed Kienmayer to draw Napoleon further east towards Munich and Augsburg. Napoleon did not seriously consider the possibility that Mack would cross the Danube and move away from his central base, but he did realize that seizing the bridges at Günzburg would yield a large strategic advantage. To accomplish this objective, Napoleon sent Ney's Corps to Günzburg, completely unaware that the bulk of the Austrian army was heading to the same destination. On 8 October, however, the campaign witnessed its first serious battle at Wertingen between Auffenburg's troops and those of Murat and Lannes.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: For reasons not entirely clear, Mack ordered Auffenburg on 7 October to take his division of 5,000 infantry and 400 cavalry from Günzburg to Wertingen in preparation for the main Austrian advance out of Ulm. Uncertain of what to do and having little hope for reinforcements, Auffenburg was in a dangerous position. The first French forces to arrive were Murat's cavalry divisions – Klein's 1st Dragoons, Beaumont 3rd Dragoons, and Nansouty's cuirassiers. They began to assault the Austrian positions and were soon joined by Oudinot's grenadiers, who were hoping to outflank the Austrians from the north and west. Auffenburg attempted a retreat to the southwest, but he was not quick enough: the Austrians were decimated, losing nearly their entire force, 1,000 to 2,000 of which were prisoners. The Battle of Wertingen had been an easy French victory.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The actions at Wertingen convinced Mack to operate on the left bank of the Danube instead of making a direct eastwards retreat on the right bank. This would require the Austrian army to cross at Günzburg. On 8 October, Ney was operating under Berthier's directions that called for a direct attack on Ulm the following day. Ney sent in Malher's 3rd Division to capture the Günzburg bridges over the Danube. A column of this division ran into some Tyrolean jaegers and captured 200 of them, including their commander General d'Apsré, along with two cannons.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: The Austrians noticed these developments and reinforced their positions around Günzburg with three infantry battalions and 20 cannons. Malher's division conducted several heroic attacks against the Austrian positions, but all failed. Mack then sent in Gyulai with seven infantry battalions and fourteen cavalry squadrons to repair the destroyed bridges, but this force was charged and swept away by the delayed French 59th Infantry Regiment.


title: War of the Third Coalition

text: Fierce fighting ensued and the French finally managed to establish a foothold on the right bank of the Danube. While the Battle of Günzburg was being fought, Ney sent General Loison's 2nd Division to capture the Danube bridges at Elchingen, which were lightly defended by the Austrians. Having lost most of the Danube bridges, Mack marched his army back to Ulm. By 10 October, Ney's corps had made significant progress: Malher's division had crossed to the right bank, Loison's division held Elchingen, and Dupont's division was heading towards Ulm.