The (Pie) Fight of the Century

From NYTimes.com:

"Ah, the thrown pie. Among the sweetest delights in life is the sight of an airborne cream-and-crust concoction finding purchase. It is the great leveler, a puncturing of pretension, and those who find pie throwing beneath their refined comic sensibility deserve nothing more than a lemon meringue treat, smack in the kisser.

So it is with unrestrained glee that we share the news of the recovery of a long-missing portion of the greatest pie-throwing fight ever recorded, far superior to the pastry melee of “In the Sweet Pie and Pie,” a 1941 Three Stooges short, or the baked-goods battle in “The Great Race,” a 1965 comedy with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon.

That, of course, would be the epic custard conflagration in “The Battle of the Century,” a 1927 Laurel and Hardy short that dispensed with 3,000 pies, thrown not with abandon but with slow-burn precision, heightening the comedic effect.

For several decades, the 20-minute, two-reel classic has been missing its second reel, which provided most of the logic for why dozens of people were pelting one another with pastries. Film historians have puttied the gaps in “Battle” with explanatory title cards, but these could never replicate Laurel’s look of thought-free innocence, Hardy’s frown of eternal exasperation.

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