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THE UNIVERSAL WEEKLY
9
Funny Billie Ritchie The Man Who Made Laughter Famous
BB^HAY — folks — a fellow asked me the other w^Jsa da) how I straightened my face alter that camera pest got through shooting
RK^dl "I use a glove-stretcher and live a straight life", I said — just like that.
But what happens to those dear, dear people who •don't know my secret? Listen. All they do is to •come back for more, 'cause they wouldn't straighten their faces on a bet.
Laughing is contagious when Billie Ritchie — that's me — is on the screen, and folks would rather
catch a hopeless, chronic case of laughteritis from me than to get even a mild attack of grouch in their cranium-craniorum — commonly known as bean.
You see I work fast — so the laughs are as thick as huckleberries in June.
Every move I make — sixteen to the second — is funny, and a laugh to every move. It's a gay life for the movie fans, but —
For me it's as funny as a hearse, because, while you sit in front and get the laughs, I work makin' 'em.
But I'm not kickin'. I'm a member of Local Lafter Makers' Union, No. 1915, and I am drawing union wages — and I am as contented as a first-prize bull pup at a dog show.
It isn't as though I had to depend on my mug, N-tirely. No, indeed ! My face isn't just funny — it's a collection of jokes — it's the foundation — if it is on top.
But, say, my feet are kweer kurves — my clothes are komically kut — my hands are huge hawhaws — my hat is hilarious.
But don't go — yet.
It doesn't matter a whoop how much I think of myself — the fact remains (so Universal Exhibitors tell me) that just because I'm the funniest thing on the screen today I jam their houses with people that pay good coin for a laugh, and go away satisfied, and come back for more.
Get me, Stephano?
Billie Ritchie to you means the kale, the cush, the popular theatre, the b-a-n-k account. S'nuff.
Play Billie Ritchie double for profit — in real money — in your own pocket — to buy your wife's hats with. (That means a lot of coin.)
This is business — real, sober earnest. I'm not even screen-drunk. Billie Ritchie gets the business.
Book me !
P. S. — I think so much of myself that I've gone without my beauty sleep to pose for special photos, slides, posters, and a lot of other real advertising matter that the Universal is simply tickled to death to send you. When the folks see me in your lobby they shove in for a good laugh and their money's worth. Write your Exchange, and if they can't supply you, write or wire the Universal Film Manufacturing Company, 1600 Broadway, New York, for all the dope you can use.