The Wilmington morning star., 1946-08-22
Fair Enough
BY WESTBROOK PEGLER
Copyright 1916, by King Features Syndicate
Inc

barn for some crackers at the corner OF the
porch. This is an ordinary custom OF his since
the fox got his hens, Eeenie, Meenie and
Miney, and broke his leg and twisted a wing,
last fall.
Jimmy thought this was extraordinary pre-
cocity in a duck, although a little more
thought should have reminded him that all
creatures, even actors, can be trained to 90
very amusing tricks by the promise of deli
cacies and applause. For several years, over
on the ridge, back of Stamford, Ruth Hale
entertained a pet blacksnake in summer and
1 knew a man named Taggart, who worked
with Ditmars in the reptile house at the Bronx
ZOO, who put his trust in a hen, or would
you call It a doe Or soW-anyway, a female
copperhead, and thought he had discovered
friendship until he got careless in trying to
relieve her of a tumor on her head and she
fanged him on the thumb.
Mr.. Powers wrote a little note in his column
about this remarkable fowl of mine and a
newsreel man called up and wanted to make
a short take of Moe waddling down the gravel
path for his crackers and pecking me in the
legs and chasing the little white mutt when
he tried to horn in. l said nothing doing
because l suspected that after the fellow got
his traps set up, Moe would get tempera-
mental and, strictly in a manner OF speaking,
lay an egg. I never thought this a very re-
markab.e performance, anyway. You feed
him and make a fuss for his empty vanity
and he gets accustomed to it at a certain
place and makes certain sounds which are
natural to him and puts on a certain ex-
preston by arching his silver crest, some
thing like Paul McNutt's, and does something
with his eyes which looks like a glare of
righteousness.
That is all there is to it. Just a duck,
bereft of his hens by a COX, who has learned
to keep out of the high grass on the way
to the pond and so hangs around the porch
to be fed. But we people are always imputing
human qualities to animal life, and so there
he is, a Hollywood ham who has suddenly
and unexpectedly won his Oscar, as it were.
And now you can't do a thing with him.
1 don't need to be told that he can't read
and had no idea in the world that he had
had an offer from the movies, but it was a
coincidence anyway that the next morning he
wouldn't come down for his crackers and
wouldn't even eat them when I took them
up to him, or chase the little white mutt
when the mutt ate them right under his bill.
You find your Imagination taking over in
such cases and here was Moe, holding out
for certain extravagances in the production,
advantages in the billing, big scenes, a big
ger dog to chase instead Of the little white
mutt and his own pet social and political
significance in the story. Lionel Barrymore
was out as the one to call come on, you
Moe and get your breakfast because he
voted for Dewey and Moe wouldn't be found
dead in the same production with such a
eactionary as me-.
He had suddenly realized that the corner
of the porch, which he had been frequenting,
was the Colony restaurant, where you some
times find notorious isolationists, such as
Adolph Menjou, and, probably, Barrymore,
when he is in town, and had taken to hang
ing around the first box stall with a dumb,
dirty little eve lamb and a stupid mongrel
steer. These had feelings, social feeling for
the unoerprivileged and this was their club
room and the next box stall, their TWENTY
One. They don't do so badly there, either.
Oats and corn Of the very best and very
good service and, the greatest advantage of
all, a congenial social and political atmos-
phere.
Some people who know little eve lambs
only by hearsay, through poetry and Christ
mas cards, have a mistaken idea. 1t says in
the poem that it was against the rule for
Mary's little lamb to follow her to school
that day but by a convenient omission, typical
of new deal and Hollywood propaganda, it
doesn's say why it was. If you know lambs
at all by experience, you won't blame the
teacher. No brains, no manners, no decency.
On the sci, in the press interviews, in the
productions, they are so sweet. You want to
cuddle them and take them to Mike Roman
offs restaurant in Hollywood and be seen
with them at the Stork but, on closer &C.
quaintance, you realize that they are unspeak-
ably stupid and self-centered and that the
beautiful illusion that people have is just the
result of prolonged publicity and deliberate
washing and combing and prepared script and
resolute cuts in the film where they are not
acting and really are themselves. From the
standpoint Of morals, they are little tramps.
Buns. They can sirmper and ba-a-a and
gambol SO prettily and, cast in spiritual pro-
auctions, they can melt you down but don't
go inquiring into their private lives if you
want to preserve that beautiful illusion.
Pigeons, too, especially white ones. In
stained glass windows, on affairs, on Easter
cards, they share equal billing and oppor-
%tunltles with the lambs but don't let them
have the run of the place, all they are or
ten into the script which is made up out of
somebody's head and nothing but a tissue Of
lies. Ba-a-a and coo-coo-coo! 1t beats me what
people by the generations see so pretty in
ba-a-a and coo-coocoo, especially about eco
nomics and foreign relations.
Moe, in his act, is always rearing that
silver crest and c~lapping his bill and narrow
ing those yellow eyes in that glare, like a
professional new dealer making a set speech
to a gang of underworld war profiteers in
denunciation of Quislings among us, for So
600 and expenses. You can see how convinc-
ing he is when he took in Jimmy Powers
but I have seen his like around Washington
and HOLLYWOOD and the expensive places in
New York and I wasn't forgetting, when he