
Image

W.C. Fields Juggling Top Hats, 1900.
Credit: Image Donated by Corbis-Bettmann
After dropping out of school by the age of eight, William Claude Dukenfeld worked as a stock boy, shill for a shell game, pool hustler, petty thief, and professional drowner in Atlantic City before landing his first full-time job as a juggler in a traveling show.