The Photo-Play Journal (Jul 1919-Feb 1921)

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October, 1920 41 FATTY'S FLIVVERS "T TOU can't break 'em, they'll go Y anywhere — and, best of all, M they're always good for a laugh. A comedy without a Ford would be like cider minus the raisin." Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle is a great booster of the flivver as one of the most reliable assets of film comedy. "In the old two-reel days," says the rotund fun-maker, "we used to say, 'When in doubt — stick in a Ford.' Everybody knows the little stub-nosed plugger, and nine people out of ten have had -more or less funny experiences with flivvers that are recalled to their minds when they see a Ford on the screen. "The Ford is really the comedian among cars. It's so rough and ready that, like a good-humored man, you feel you can take liberties with it that you wouldn't think of in connection with some carefully polished, dignified-lookingcar of six or eight cylinders. "And, believe me," said Arbuckle, laughing, "in my time the old flivver has done everything but jump through a hoop and roll over. I've run them into telephone poles and over embankments— and the old engine still purred along! In 'The Garage,' especially, I tested the car to the limit. I'm not much of a mechanic— but when the script said, 'Tear the car to pieces' — I did it. And then I put it together again. No one was more surprised than myself when the reconstructed affair actually ran ! "Seriously speaking," continued the comedian, "I have the greatest possible admiration for the Ford. A car that will srand the knocking it has and does is the poor man's friend. A cat may have nine lives, but a Ford has twenty. Believe me, I know !" Mr. Arbuckle halted scenes in "The Round-Up," which he is filming for Famous Players-Lasky, long enough to inspect one of the old flivvers which he used in the comedy days. "It's sure been over the bumps," said Fatty, as he compared the battered wreck with one of the new series Fords brought out by a representative of the branch, "but it still goes." When Fatty goes ariding in his own particular touring car, however, the studio sits up and takes notice. Fatty is Bebc Daniels. Lila Lee and Fatty Arbuckle with Roscoe's new car a connoisseur of automobiles. He says he gets enough of Fords around the lot to last him all day, and he has at various times floated around Los Angeles and its environs — meaning Hollywood — in Mercers, Rolls-Royces, Packards, and Simplexes. Unlike his speedy friend, Wally Reid, who has a reputation for being the speed king of the western world, Fatty is a careful driver. It is estimated that Wally has decapitated at least seven hundred and forty-two chickens per annum since he arrived at the west coast, a smiling clean-cut lad. Fatty's record goes to cows, of which there are only a few on Hollywood Boulevard, most of them being confined to cow garages in back of the various studios, to be brought forth whenever anyone starts filming something like "The Old Homestead," or "Homespun Folks." It is a fact, however, that Fatty, whether because of his ponderous bulk, which precludes any rapid locomotion on foot, or because he simply has a speed bug,' is one of the crackiest of the crack motor drivers of the coast. He declares he could easily get a job as an automobile racer should the screen producers ever decide to boycott him. As a mechanic, too, he is a bird, having once assembled a Ford in twenty-two minutes, using only one hand, the other being tied behind his back. Seriously, however, it is to be doubted whether anything in this story is true, for it is hard to conceive how Fatty could squeeze himself into the average Ford, much less drive it. The pictures show Fatty as far away from the Ford as the hood, and the illustration at the head of the page, Fatty's own car, is built for capacity, as well as speed. The Ford may be the "comedian among cars," as Roscoe says, but it probably wouldn't have done half so well in pictures without Roscoe as a "foil"