Here's a post from December 29, 2003 about meeting Carlotta Monti, who lived for years with W.C. Fields. Reading it over now, I'm surprised I didn't include one line from her boy friend that she related to me. It was at a time when Fields was having trouble getting work and his agent told him one day he had to play the Hollywood game more. "Go play golf with Jack L. Warner," the agent advised. Fields fired back — and you have to imagine this in his voice and cadence — "When I want to play with a prick, I'll play with my own!" I don't know why I left that out but here's what I put in…
I mentioned meeting Carlotta Monti the other day and a reader made me promise I'd tell how that happened and all that I recalled. It was around 1974, a period when I often found myself in Westwood Village, right outside the U.C.L.A. campus. My Aunt Dot was donating two days a week as a saleslady at the United Nations Gift Shop, which was a charity enterprise that sold globes and flags and little sculptures that you'd never want in your house. When I was in the area, I'd drop in and say howdy to Aunt Dot and one day, she introduced me to another of the women who volunteered their time in the store. When she said, "This is Carlotta Monti," little bells went off in my head and I thought, "Hey, I think this is the lady who was W.C. Fields' mistress." She seemed about the right age (just shy of 70) but I wasn't sure enough to say anything other than, "Oh, I certainly know of you." Matter of fact, I think I changed the subject swiftly and awkwardly and hurried off. Once home, I consulted her autobiography, W.C. Fields and Me and, sure enough, it was the same lady.
I checked with Aunt Dot to find out when Ms. Monti would be there again and took the book up to get it signed. We wound up going to a shop down the street for cola and coffee, and I could see that Ms. Monti was thrilled to have a new audience for her tales of "Woody," as she called him. The way she pronounced it, it rhymed with "moody" and no, I have no idea where the nickname came from. She was proud of the book and upset that "certain people" who knew Fields or defended his memory felt she'd exploited her relationship with him. These "certain people" (unnamed) were also upset that she had sold or was about to sell the film rights…and I recall thinking to myself, "That's one movie that will never get made." Two years later, it was. Filmdom would have been much better off if I'd been right.
She kept coming back to the fact that she was being criticized for writing about her life. Her side of it, which did not surprise me and which I am not suggesting was at all wrong, was that she'd given "the best years" of her life to Fields and received precious little. So selling her life story was her inheritance, and "Woody" would have wanted her to be comfortable in her old age. She said she had plenty more stories…enough to fill several more books, but would have to wait a few years before embarking on one.
I asked her to tell me one of these stories and she mulled several possibilities before telling of an aging prostitute Fields knew. She wasn't sure if "Woody" had ever been a patron but they were friends, and Fields was always trying to find a way to throw her a few bucks since she was too old to get much work in her main occupation. There's a tale that makes the rounds about some guy who's in the hospital, attended by nurses and/or nuns and one day, one comes in, locks the door and begins ripping off her clothes and performing sex acts on his person. This of course shocks the patient who is unaware the nun (or nurse) is a hooker that his friends have hired for this treat/trick. Well, according to Ms. Monti, Fields's friend specialized in such missions and owned all the necessary costuming. Now that she was older, he occasionally hired her for non-carnal nun impersonation. He'd arrange for her to be in some restaurant or other public place when he was with some pals and he'd start verbally abusing this nun and saying foul, vulgar things to her. This would horrify Fields' friends who would try to shut him up but he would persist…until finally, the "nun" would start firing back with even better obscenities, and Fields' cronies would realize they'd been had. According to Ms. Monti, "Woody" loved the reactions.
The other main thing I recall beyond the talk about him wanting to play Scrooge was that she felt Fields's last few years had been squandered by Hollywood. He'd had a bad check-up and from that point on, no studio wanted to start a movie with him in the lead. He was in constant demand for short cameos but many offers fell through and some of what he did film was never released. She made the comment that he might have lived longer if the business hadn't decided prematurely that he was dying.
She didn't have a lot of time that day so we agreed to get together again for a longer chat but never did. And though she lived almost two decades after our chat, she never wrote that second book. I'm sorry I didn't spend more time with her because…well, how often do you get to talk to someone who slept with W.C. Fields? These days, hardly ever.