Laurel said that because throwing a single pie would be a dreadful cliché, “Let’s give them so many pies that there never will be room for any more pie pictures in the whole history of the movies.”- “Mr. Laurel & Mr. Hardy: An Affectionate Biography,” by John McCabe.
Actually, a writer suggested ending “Battle of the Century” with a pie fight, and was shouted down that is was old hat (in 1927!). Stan offered that if we’re going to do that, let’s make it the biggest one ever, so no one will want to do another one.
Late to the party, I know, but when this first came out, I wrote an Excel spreadsheet to solve by trying every digit in the dividend, the divisor, and the quotient. Once I had the program debugged, it took a whopping 49 seconds to solve. In a way, I’ m as big a math geek as Jason. :)
At first, I thought they were standing behind a weird desk. Then I read your comment.