We were out the other night making whoopee and you'd never guess who was there. The party was what might be called an orgy and we'll have to admit most of it was aided and abetted by the Leverich Towers Hotel. They threw the party in their dining room.
It was an orgy of eating and packing in "vittles" performed by no less an aggregation than "Our Gang."
There was Joe Cobb, fat, funny and 11 years old; Farina, dusky, devilish, and 8; Jean Darling, blonde beautiful and 6½; Mary Ann Jackson, pert, pretty and 5; Harry Spear, freckled, fastidious and 6; Wheezer, comical, cuddly and 2½, and even Pete, the dog, who is 6½.
* * *
The kids hadn't had time to eat much since breakfast, so when waiters began to place in front of the youngsters dishes of food that was all their own to do with as they saw fit, they just gorged themsevles in ecstacy.
We sat right smack next to Wheezer, who fought off all efforts to lift him into his chair. He could get into his chair all by himself - and he did. He's a sweet bundle of young America who is mentally as bright as a dollar. What he didn't do to the fruit salad was nobody's business and we were informed after each bite whether it tasted like appuh, orritch or warmellin. Olives didn't stump this youngster, who ate them in approved Epicurean fashion along with sellerwee, bwed and butter. He did favor the French fried potatoes over the meat and showed us the muscle he got from his chiefly vegetarian diet.
* * *
Joe Cobb had been told after breakfast not to eat much all day because he was going to a banquet that evening. "Bankwet?" snorted Joe, "I don't wanna go to no bankwet, I want something to eat." And how he enjoyed the ice cream.
Farina's chief complaint was that everybody takes him for a girl. He made no bones about demanding that we tell the cock-eyed world that he is a "hundid pussent man."
We turned to Ray Coffin, who is conducting the kids on a personal appearance tour and asked him the ages of the youngsters. When he got to Wheezer on the list he said, "Wheezer - let me see, I think he's three years old."
The young gentleman on our right burst right out in the middle of a spoonful of ice cream to inform us that "I not free years - I two anna haff."
* * *
We asked Harry Spear, "Who is your favorite movie actor?" And Harry never batted an eyelash as he shouted, "Joe Cobb." We explained we meant grown-up actor and Harry said it was a toss-up between Buck Jones and Tom Mix. Harry even admitted he was 'ngaged to Mary Ann Jackson.
Joe Cobb, now, has no such weakness for the women. He is one of the world's champion woman-haters, and if possible there is only one thing he likes less than girls and that is to have women or girls kiss him.
* * *
They tell a story of Robert F. McGowan, the man who started the Gang eight years ago, introducing Joe to a "nice lady" at the studio. She wanted to give Joe "a nice big kiss" as some women will. Joe said there was no chance. The lady coaxed and coaxed. Finally McGowan, afraid the lady's feelings might be hurt, said, "Go on Joe, kiss the lady." Joe gave him a scornful look and said, "If she wants to have a kiss so bad why don't you kiss her?"
The Gang loves to go to movies, especially a pre-view of their own pictures. They laugh uproariously at themselves and one another and the theatre is usually in an uproar at the giggles and remarks as they see their picture on the screen. Farina saw himself in a sad scene, not long ago, and cried as though his heart would break, he was so sorry for himself.
* * *
Joe Cobb likes the "King of Kings" best of any picture he ever saw. Farina likes Douglas Fairbanks in "The Gaucho."
The rest of the Gang is not so particular. Any movie suits them.
We asked them what they were going to be when they grew up and Joe Cobb stopped long enough between bites of the dinner to say he was going to be a retied business man and "I ain't gonna do nuthin'." He does, however, admit to a mania for helping the electrician back-stage pull the big switches in and out to light the effects on the stage.
Farina is going to be a lawyer even if he does love music and plays the fiddle.
* * *
Wheezer is going to be an aviator. When his pretty young mother said she didn't want him to do anything so dangerous, he calmed her fears by telling her he would only fly around the house where she could watch him from the window.
Mary Ann Jackson loves to sew and she is going to be a seamstress when she grows up to be a "big lady." Jean Darling fooled us all by stating without hesitation that she would be an actress.
Harry Spear had no doubts about his future. Harry, like Wheezer, is in for the dizzy heights business. He wants to be an elevator man in a big high building.
* * *
Pete, the dog, is already grown-up, and his manager, Harry Lucenay, acting as spokesman, explained that Pete just wanted to spend his old days as a retired actor. In a big, high-walled back yard full of cats. Pete, by the way, lay perfectly still under the table during the dinner with the odor of delicious food right over his head. He is the best behaved dog we have ever seen. The banquet to him was just so much chance to lie still for a change and sleep. With not even a bone to chew on. That ring around his right eye is a real, natural hair streak and not grease-paint make-up, as we and many others have always believed.
All the kids love baseball and football, but they have a marble game of their own that they play. It has the most intricate set of rules in the world and grown-ups who have mastered bridge cannot learn this one. Where they got the name for it, nobody knows. They call it "Purgatory."
Special note: Wheezer was indeed three years old at this point. Is it possible he really didn't know this? Perhaps his parents wanted to pass him off as being younger than he really was, and figured it was easier to do this if Wheezer himself believed it - something that Darla Hood's parents later did. It's also worth pointing out that his mother's concern over his wish to be an aviator turned out to be well-founded, as he died in a mid-air collision at the age of twenty.