Joe Weber & Lew Fields — Partners and Pals (1925) 🇺🇸

“Forty-Eight years friends, and never a quarrel,” muses Weber.

“How do we do it? Y’see,” chortles Fields, “we’re wise to each other. He doesn’t know any more than I do, and I don’t know any more than he does. So why fight?”

A record of professional partnership and of personal friendship unrivaled in the annals of the theater is that of the famous team of Joe Weber and Lew Fields, pals since boyhood.

And now they have come, arm-in-arm as always, arguing good-naturedly but never quarreling, to the movies, to play in “Friendly Enemies.”

“Sure, we made some movies ten years ago,” chuckles Weber.

“But we don’t talk about it,” adds Fields. “They were that bad.”

“I’m the little one,” Weber reminds insistently.

“Sure — and the sassy one.”

“Argue? All the time. Differences of opinion. But never a fight. We lock the door and talk each other down. Or else our wives tell us both to shut up. Twenty-eight years married, Weber, and thirty-two years wed, Fields. And our wives share apartments or bungalows, be it New York or Hollywood that we’re in, and never a cross word. Turtle-doves, that’s us.”

When they were kids of eight and nine, they joined forces, doing clog dances and singing ditties. Eight dollars a week. By the middle ‘80s they had made their way through cheap burlesque shows, dime museums and other entertainments of the kind then in vogue, to Gus Hill’s traveling show, where their weekly honorarium totaled thirty dollars.

Through many vicissitudes, as the American theater grew from cheapness into lavish investiture, the two little products of New York’s East Side made their way to musical comedy and vaudeville, eventually managing their own burlesque theater at which many stars now famous in the theater or on the screen were, given their first try-outs.

“Sure, we know everybody,” Weber reminisces urbanely. “Phone rings all day. Can’t walk down the street without being hailed by somebody we gave a job to in the old days. “It’s great to have friends!”

The little man puffs out his chest, and his face beams.

“And no enemies!” adds Fields, echoing his partner’s complete satisfaction.

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Photo by: Straus-Payton [Strauss-Peyton]

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, May 1925