W. C. Fields by Himself", it was shown that Fields was married (and subsequently estranged from his wife), and financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania, the oldest child of a working-class family. His father, James Lydon Dukenfield (1840–1913), was from an English family that emigrated from Sheffield, England in 1854. James Dukenfield served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War and was wounded in 1863. Fields' mother, Kate Spangler Felton (1854–1925), was a Protestant of British ancestry. The 1876 "Philadelphia City Directory "lists James Dukenfield
Stage name sound of it to the less glamorous-sounding "Maurice". He chose the name "Caine" reputedly because at the precise instant he needed to decide upon his new stage name, he saw a cinema marquee for the then-current movie "The Caine Mutiny" and thought that it would make a good last name in conjunction with "Michael." ("Had I looked the other direction," he would later quip, "I'd be known as Michael The One Hundred and One Dalmatians.") Similarly, actor Pete Postlethwaite was advised to adopt a different surname by peers who quipped that his "would never be put up in lights outside