A Peachy Pear of Gags

In an increasingly corporate, HR-department world, maybe the practical joke has become a thing of a past. It was common at animation studios back in the theatrical days, and some of them got quite elaborate.

We have the tale of something that happened at the Warner Bros. studio. It’s a shame the participant’s name isn’t known at this late date. But first, a gag pulled on someone in the live action film world. This was related in the National Enterprise Association’s Hollywood column starting around April 3, 1940.

Englishman Baffled by Labels
Canned Goods Never Turn Our as Named, His Pals Make Sure
By PAUL HARRISON
HOLLYWOOD — The entertainment factories have come out of their taxation doldrums and things are beginning to hum again. The mood of the town is chipper. And one of the most encouraging things is that people are beginning to play jokes.
The joke I like best involves a methodical little Britisher who works in the technical lab at United Artists. A thrifty man he has been in the habit of bringing two sandwiches to the studio each day. He supplements these with a pint of milk and a can of fruit bought at a grocery across the street and he lunches at his desk, in which he keeps a can opener, paper napkins, a glass and a spoon.
One day some of the other technicians called him out of the buildings just before he began his lunch. During his absence, another joker took the label off his can of plums and put it on a can of beans which he left on the desk. When the Englishman was ready to eat plums and found beans, he went to the store and got his money back. The grocer said such things can happen, but that they were very rare.
Decides to Share Story With England
But they weren’t rare. It went on like that. The next day the Englishman opened a can of peaches and found tomatoes inside. When he was drooling in anticipation of nice crisp pineapple, he got spinach. After buying apricots, he came up with a spoonful of salmon.
The jokers had visited the grocer, explained the gag, and promised to pay for all rectified “mistakes.” The Englishman wasn’t angry, though; he was amused and amazed at what he considered an example of American carelessness and inefficiency. After a week of encountering misbranded merchandise, he decided to write a humorous article about it for a London magazine. He rather fancied the result, and read it to his pals in the lab before mailing it.
Next day he went to the grocery and bought a can of peaches, wryly remarking that it was probably soup. By the time the boys had switched the label to another can, he actually did have soup. But floating in the soup was something else— a little glass tube. Inside the tube was a note, and the note was signed (presumeably) by the editor of the London magazine. It read:
“I don’t believe a word of it.”
The little technician goes around telling people about this astonishing experience, but of course nobody will believe him.
Boy Is Kidded, Gets Better Job
At Leon Schlesinger’s cartoon studio, some of the boys thought up a rib that lasted two weeks. A youngster there handled thousands of sheets of celluloid, the “cells” on which animations are painted. He had to dust and stack them, and on dry days the dusting caused small sparks of static such as you can generate from a cat.
So somebody told him that this was very dangerous work, because the celluloid might ignite and explode and blow the whole studio to Kingdom Come. The only precaution said the gagster was to ground himself.
They got a long piece of wire and wrapped one end around the youngster’s bare right leg, under his trousers. The other end was tossed out the window and connected to a water pipe that came from the ground. The fellow worked that way dragging the wire around, carefully reconnecting himself whenever he came in. People from other departments would drop in to watch him and comment on his bravery. In that way everybody, got to know the kid and like him, and the other day he was given a better job.