THOSE SWANKY PARTIES

 

Transcribed by

Marilyn Slater

Looking for Mabel

September 15, 2009

  

Oh, those swanky Saturday-night Hinman Hotel (1) parties, held in a real ballroom, where everybody used to chip in for orchestra and refreshments – principally sandwiches and beer – and where the orchestra was sometimes shifted.

I mean that every once in a while those jovial souls, Wallace Reid, Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle, Victor Schertzinger and Roy Bush, would take the instruments away from the hired orchestra and play themselves!  Even Mabel Normand would

sometimes join in, she having learned somewhere to tootle a saxophone and to play the piano.  Speaking of Schertzinger, that ubiquitous orchestra of his was always on the job.  Those boys didn’t worry in the least if they weren’t invited to a party.  They’d just go anyway, as the orchestra!   Grace Kingsley, Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1934.

 

 

 

(1) 650 S Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, California