Totie Fields started singing in Boston clubs while still in high school, taking the stage name of Totie Fields.
13 Facts About Totie Fields
2.
Totie Fields made multiple appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Mike Douglas Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
3.
Totie Fields appeared in a 1971 episode of The Carol Burnett Show and a 1972 episode of Here's Lucy starring Lucille Ball.
4.
Totie Fields appeared on various television game shows in the late 1960s and 1970s, including multiple episodes of both Hollywood Squares and Tattletales with her husband George Johnston.
5.
Totie Fields was plagued with health problems in the last years of her life.
6.
Totie Fields suffered from diabetes and in March 1976 she had surgery to remove a blood clot but it failed and she developed phlebitis.
7.
In that episode, "Life, Death, and Mrs Armbruster", Totie Fields played Phoebe Armbruster, a hospital janitor plagued by heart problems.
8.
In June 1977 a much-thinner Totie Fields starred in the Home Box Office special series Standing Room Only, beginning her show seated in a wheelchair.
9.
Rather than avoid the subject of her amputation, Totie Fields used it as material in her touring comedy act at theaters around the country.
10.
In October 1977, Totie Fields was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy to remove her right breast and had an eye operation.
11.
However, Totie Fields continued to perform, incorporating her health problems into her act.
12.
Nevertheless, in 1978, during the last year of her life, Totie Fields was voted "Entertainer of the Year" and "Female Comedy Star of the Year" by the American Guild of Variety Artists.
13.
Totie Fields's ashes were interred in Las Vegas; however, after her husband George Johnston's death in January 1995, her remains were moved to the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles to be interred with his.