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| Soupy Sales Plans to Pie the Man in Black, 1969 |
Once while visiting tony Middleburg, Virginia, I saw a gentleman who'd received a parking ticket stroll into a gourmet bakery, buy an expensive Boston Cream, return with it to his car, remove it from the box, and pie the meter.
Sic semper tyrannis.
Who was the first man to settle an injustice with a pie?
Culinary and entertainment historians agree it was British music-hall comedian Fred Karno, mentor to, among other pie-pitchers, Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel.
It was a short step from the British music halls to Vaudeville, and then to motion pictures. But controversy surrounds which picture first portrayed pies as projectiles. Some historians claim it was Ben Turpin's "Mr. Flip" (1909); others insist it was Chaplin's "Behind the Screen" (1916).
Regardless, pelting adversaries with pies quickly became a Hollywood trope. Fatty Arbuckle used so many as missiles, his studio had to build a bakery on premises. Laurel & Hardy threw over 3,000 pies in "The Battle of the Century," and Buster Keaton perfected proprietary recipes to ensure his ordnance would land with maximum effect.
Pie-fights also punctuated films featuring The Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Blake Edwards' "The Great Race" depicted the largest pie-fight in cinematic history, taking five days to shoot; and Mel Brooks tossed one into "Blazing Saddles." Stanley Kubrick even shot a pie-fight for the ending of "Dr. Strangelove," but cut it from the film.
