Ben Turpin — A Playful Interview at Cross Purposes (1924) 🇺🇸
The Cast:
Ben Turpin… A Farsighted Comedian
We… Gwenn Goop and Angela Whittlemore
The Scene is the Automat at noon. Mr. Turpin had asked We where We wished to eat and We had said the Ritz. He called for us in a handsome beaver-collared coat and a derby and said, "Hello, girls, how's your appetite?"
Angela (eagerly): "We can't complain."
Mr. Turpin (resignedly): "Well, what'll you have?"
Angela (dreamily): "It really doesn't matter…"
Gwenn (nudging her): "After all, it's food, is it not?"
Angela: "It's food for thought."
Gwenn: "That's a good one. Food for thought. Ha ha…"
Mr. Turpin puts a coin in the clot for a cup of coffee and comes back with a glass of milk.
Gwenn: "After all, it's life, is it not? Glamorous silences mystic tintinnabulations…"
Angela: "Is it true, Mr. Turpin, that in your early days on the screen you played 'William Tell' and in the great scene when you shoot the apple off your little boy's head with your how and arrow you killed your director instead?"
Mr. Turpin: "I have worked hard all my life and my wife richly deserves my success, Miss Stretcher."
Angela (frostily): "Whittlemore, please."
Gwenn: "Do you believe in marriage, Mr. Turpin?"
Mr. Turpin: "It's all right for some people, Miss Vestibule."
Gwenn (coldly): "Goop is our name.
Angela: "Ah… there is a thought behind that… we shall find it and fathom it… we love to fathom things… Life is like that…"
Mr. Turpin: "Have a cup of coffee?"
Angela (sighing): "We suppose we might as well."
Mr. Turpin (returning with a bowl of soup): "What I always says to the little woman, to some people it would be an afflication but with me it's a fortune."
Gwenn: "Do you believe in marriage?"
Mr. Turpin: "Some people prefer a mandolin to pick on."
Angela: "Ah now we have it… the thought… a marriage of minds… of souls…"
Mr. Turpin (crossly): "Oh, have a roll."
Angela: "We don't mind if we do."
She clears away chairs and tables and rolls along the floor and out the door.
Gwenn (facetiously): "I suppose you'll be asking me if I want a Rolls Royce."
Mr. Turpin: "Oh no, I won't."
Gwenn: "Well, then, what is your hobby?"
Mr. Turpin: "My work. But I am almost as well known to my friends as the inventor of the cross-word puzzle."
Gwenn (hysterically): "Aye aye sir… Ha… ha… ha…"
Mr. Turpin: "Waiter! Separate checks."
Gwenn swoons.
Finis.
As a golfer, Mr. Turpin has an unusual optical advantage. As to marriage, he declares some people prefer a mandolin to pick on.
Collection: Screenland Magazine, March 1924