lucky duck who ran the bakery down the street, a Hebe named Greenberg, even developed a blueberry-and-paste pie that didn't fall apart midair. For longdistance throwing.
Greenberg retired at 35, bought a mansion near Santa Barbara, and hung a sign over the front door that said THE HOUSE THAT PIES BUILT. All thanks to a poor little chest case who made me feel so bad I wanted to fling something at my wife. That daddy-scared boy with Greek TB.
But look at me, I'm tearing up!
Zipper Money
Mabel used to toodle over to the Durfees' and visit after a day shooting in Echo Park. Then Mack gave me a raise. From $5 to $18 a week, and from there to $25. Eventually it would hit $150. Even before I got that much, I was able to buy a car. An Alco. We arrived in Echo Park homeless vagabonds and moved out in a spanking-new coupe to a beach house in Santa Monica. Praise Jesus, Hollywood be thy name.
No more living with the in-laws, uplifting as that can be. I even suggested we get a butler. At first we had a Brit, named Mackens, but he spoke better English than I did, and I always felt like he thought I should be picking up his socks. So we found a Japanese. His name was something like Oka Lima Beana. So we called him Okie. I don't think he knew five words of English, which was fine. We communicated in pantomime. Minta bought me a pair of pants with a zipper—the new rage in men's fashion—and that's when I knew I was making money.
I taught Minta to drive, but after two weeks there was a permanent indentation in the driver's seat— from the driver's seat—and when poor Minta sat behind the wheel, she said it was like sitting in a pothole. So I had to get her one of her own. Which I swore not to sit in and ruin.
Across the globe, world war was breaking out. Nobody got too fussed about it in California. Mabel thought Archduke Ferdinand's wife had peculiar taste in hats, but otherwise we were a merry band—or at least a busy one—working 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. The biggest problem for the writers was finding new ways to keep Mabel and me in hot water in front of the camera. But it didn't seem to matter. We could make a two-reeler about doing laundry— Mabel and Fatty's Wash Day —and it would turn into gold. The trick was to keep coming up with new places for Mabel and me to mix it up. Airplanes, autos, motorcycles; opera house, outhouse, a mother-in-law's house flooded with water and floating down the street. Et cetera. And that's when I wasn't dressing up like some tarty woman and showing my knickers.
When ideas ran low, Mack was always ready to throw us in some public event and film whatever happened. "Okay, kiddies," he'd say, with that greasy-radish grin of his, "let's go drop the piranha in the goldfish bowl."
One time we all went down to the San Diego Exposition. Sennett pretended to set up a demonstration of how movies were made. But our cameras were empty. What Mack was really doing was filming us cut up in front of the crowds. Same thing at the World's Fair in San Francisco. The films we made from crashing parades or gallivanting through collapsed water mains were no different than the ones we shot normally. They just had different extras. At public functions—or calamities, as we used to call them—half the action was made up. More than once, we had firemen stop to wave at the camera, much to the consternation of families waiting for them to rush in and save Grandma's knitting basket. Basically you could get killed any minute.
What started to amaze me on these outings was how many people felt the urge to approach us. How excited they were. It never stopped being a surprise, having total strangers skittle over and talk to you like you were old friends. Course, I still hated it when folks called me Fatty. If it was a little tyke, I'd grin and tell 'em my real friends call me Roscoe. If it was an adult, and I'd had a couple of nips in me, I'd say something really classy, like "How'd you like it if I
Greenberg retired at 35, bought a mansion near Santa Barbara, and hung a sign over the front door that said THE HOUSE THAT PIES BUILT. All thanks to a poor little chest case who made me feel so bad I wanted to fling something at my wife. That daddy-scared boy with Greek TB.
But look at me, I'm tearing up!
Zipper Money
Mabel used to toodle over to the Durfees' and visit after a day shooting in Echo Park. Then Mack gave me a raise. From $5 to $18 a week, and from there to $25. Eventually it would hit $150. Even before I got that much, I was able to buy a car. An Alco. We arrived in Echo Park homeless vagabonds and moved out in a spanking-new coupe to a beach house in Santa Monica. Praise Jesus, Hollywood be thy name.
No more living with the in-laws, uplifting as that can be. I even suggested we get a butler. At first we had a Brit, named Mackens, but he spoke better English than I did, and I always felt like he thought I should be picking up his socks. So we found a Japanese. His name was something like Oka Lima Beana. So we called him Okie. I don't think he knew five words of English, which was fine. We communicated in pantomime. Minta bought me a pair of pants with a zipper—the new rage in men's fashion—and that's when I knew I was making money.
I taught Minta to drive, but after two weeks there was a permanent indentation in the driver's seat— from the driver's seat—and when poor Minta sat behind the wheel, she said it was like sitting in a pothole. So I had to get her one of her own. Which I swore not to sit in and ruin.
Across the globe, world war was breaking out. Nobody got too fussed about it in California. Mabel thought Archduke Ferdinand's wife had peculiar taste in hats, but otherwise we were a merry band—or at least a busy one—working 12 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week. The biggest problem for the writers was finding new ways to keep Mabel and me in hot water in front of the camera. But it didn't seem to matter. We could make a two-reeler about doing laundry— Mabel and Fatty's Wash Day —and it would turn into gold. The trick was to keep coming up with new places for Mabel and me to mix it up. Airplanes, autos, motorcycles; opera house, outhouse, a mother-in-law's house flooded with water and floating down the street. Et cetera. And that's when I wasn't dressing up like some tarty woman and showing my knickers.
When ideas ran low, Mack was always ready to throw us in some public event and film whatever happened. "Okay, kiddies," he'd say, with that greasy-radish grin of his, "let's go drop the piranha in the goldfish bowl."
One time we all went down to the San Diego Exposition. Sennett pretended to set up a demonstration of how movies were made. But our cameras were empty. What Mack was really doing was filming us cut up in front of the crowds. Same thing at the World's Fair in San Francisco. The films we made from crashing parades or gallivanting through collapsed water mains were no different than the ones we shot normally. They just had different extras. At public functions—or calamities, as we used to call them—half the action was made up. More than once, we had firemen stop to wave at the camera, much to the consternation of families waiting for them to rush in and save Grandma's knitting basket. Basically you could get killed any minute.
What started to amaze me on these outings was how many people felt the urge to approach us. How excited they were. It never stopped being a surprise, having total strangers skittle over and talk to you like you were old friends. Course, I still hated it when folks called me Fatty. If it was a little tyke, I'd grin and tell 'em my real friends call me Roscoe. If it was an adult, and I'd had a couple of nips in me, I'd say something really classy, like "How'd you like it if I
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