T. Roy Barnes

A vaudeville headliner from England, T. Roy Barnes toured with his wife Bessie in an act billed as A Package of Smiles. Barnes made his screen debut in a Christie comedy with Colleen Moore, So Long, Letty (1920), and went on to play brash young go-getters in scores of pleasant comedies; The Go-Getter (1921) from Peter B. Kyne's Cappy Ricks stories being a perfectly titled example. Barnes played a fast-talking salesman in that and he was a salesman again in perhaps his best remembered performance, bothering a sleep deprived W.C. Fields in a classic sequence from It's a Gift (1934). Arriving on the scene at daybreak, Barnes is inquiring about the whereabouts of: "LaFong? Carl LaFong? Capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g." Fields: "No, I don't know Carl LaFong -- capital L, small a, capital F, small o, small n, small g. And if I did know Carl LaFong, I wouldn't admit it!" ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide