124Vaudeville, With Extra Cheese
Garage-door bear painted by Tony Bryant · the comedy-character murals across the rest of the Poppa Rollo’s Pizza compound, 703 N Valley Mills Dr, est. 1969, are not on record · know who painted them? Tell us.MURAL
A pizza parlor has spent half a century wrapping itself in the Three Stooges, Laurel & Hardy, and a bear stealing a Dr Pepper. All of it painted. None of it subtle.
In 1964 a Baylor student named Roland Duty took a part-time job at a Waco pizza place. By 1969 he'd bought it. The sign out front has claimed BEST PIZZA ON EARTH more or less ever since, and the buildings — there are several, connected by actual secret passages — have slowly disappeared under the greatest hits of black-and-white comedy: the Three Stooges shoulder to shoulder over one enormous pizza; Laurel & Hardy headlining a PIZZA EATING CONTEST that is always, eternally, TODAY; Abbott & Costello picketing for FREE PIZZA FOR LIFE; the Little Rascals rolling past with a goat; Sylvester dangling from a wire while Tweety, holding a slice, advises him to say cheese.
This is where Waco watched the Staubach Cowboys on what was supposedly the city's first big-screen TV, where generations had first dates and first jobs — and where, one post-holiday evening, Hollywood A-listers Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons chose to take the family for pizza. On the drive-thru door, a grizzly bursts through the metal with a Dr Pepper, signed by painter Tony Bryant — phone number included, which is the most Waco way an artist has ever signed a wall. And yes: the plywood tower over the parking lot has giant googly eyes. It has always had googly eyes.
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