The daily independent., 1937-07-19
Ritz Brothers
Say Everybody
Crazy As They
But They Find 1t Pays Well
to Advertise the Fact
Continually
BY THE RITZ BROTHERS
written for the United PresS)

II " i y " " " ", July io'
We're not crazy. We're not crazy
We're not crazy!
Everybody says we are, Even
Daryl zanuck, our boss, has init
mated a sanity test wouldn't be
a bad thing for us.
But we still say we aren't. And
if you could see the figures in the
new starring contract he just gave
us, you probably would agree that
Zanuck is the one who should
face the test.
And with that point in our ia
vor, we'll proceed to prove we are
not crazy. You see, that's the pur-
pose of this column. Otherwise
there would be no sense in writ
ing it. We're not getting paid for
it. And we certainly aren't crazy
enough to go around writing gra-
tbs columns unless we have some
point to prove.
AS a matter of fact, 90 per cent
Of the people in this country arc
just as crazy as we are. The diff
ference between them and us is
that they restrain them selves,
whereas we give way to our i'm
pluses-and get paid for it.
For instance, did you ever
know a man or woman who didn't
get the urge to take off their
shoes while at a very formal par
ty? But how many people have
you known who gave in to that
urge? We took off our shoes at a
formal party here a short time
ago and everyone else started
talking about those crazy Ritz
brothers. Yet half of them prob
ably would have liked to do the
same thing.
We thought it would be a fun
ny gag to dress in kits for the
opening of Wee Willie Winkie'
at the Carthay Circle theatre. So
we did, and had ten times as
much fun as if we had attended
in the conventional manner. But
again there were a lot of cracks
about those crazy Ritz brothers. u
Did you ever know anyone who
didn't get a laugh out of seeing a
man slip on a banana peel?
That's supposed to be funny, de-
spite the fact the poor guy might
have broken his leg when he fell
You're considered perfectly nor
NAL if you laugh at a thing like
that. But if you drove down the
street yelling your lungs out over
some good fortune-people would
say you were crazy, even though
lot of them probably would like
to be doing the same thing.
Everybody likes to do things
that are unusual and will attract
attention or shock someone. How
ever, few of them get beyond the
point of thinking how much fun
it would be. They haven't the
courage to 60 ahead and follow
their Impulses. But still they call
us crazy for doing the very thing
they're longing to do.
For instance, we caused quite a
commotion once simply because
we were passing the Beverly Hills
municipal fountain on a hot day
and walked into the water to cool
off. In five minutes time you'd
have thought there was a three
alarm fire from they way people
flocked around. They all said we
were nuts and all stood there
wishing they were nutty enough
to do the same thing.
Don't get us wrong. We like
people to call us crazy. 1t pays
good dividends. In fact if they
would scream it from the house
tops we'd like it even better. The
dividends would be larger. But if
you want our private opinion, the
real crazy people are those who
are afraid to do the things they
long to do.
There shouldn't be anything so
very unusual about doing what
you want to do. But that's all we
do. And people claim we're crazy.