He Didn't Want to Be Discovered

Frank Fontaine wasn’t discovered by Jack Benny, but his career zoomed forward thanks his first exposure on the Benny radio show.

You can say the same thing about Joe Besser.

Besser only appeared on radio three times with Benny over a 12-year period, as well as a number of TV episodes. But his debut routine on the January 17, 1943 radio show got him noticed. It couldn’t be helped. Besser wailed and screamed his catchphrases. The audience busted up.

It’s surprising to read that the ear-ringing Besser on the radio was petrified in real life. He didn’t want to go on the air. Here’s an article about him from the St Louis Star, December 16, 1943.

Besser went on to star in short films for Columbia (including the later Three Stooges shorts), supported Joey Bishop on a sitcom, and voiced animated cartoons for Hanna-Barbera. He was 80 when he died in 1988.

St. Louisan In 'Sons O' Fun' Swings Words
Comedian Besser Clicks But, 'Not So Fa-a-a-st, You'
BY WILLIAM INGE.
ONE Sunday night last winter a new character was introduced by a radio comedian on his weekly program. That character, and he is a character, had only a half dozen lines to say during the half-hour program, but the next morning he awoke to find himself the radio hit of the year. His telephone was ringing every five minutes with contract offers from New York and Hollywood, and so confused was he, that he could only crawl back to bed, hide his head under the pillow, and cry out the words that made him famous, "Not so faaaast."
The character, of course, is Joe Besser, one of the star performers with Olsen and Johnson in "Sons O' Fun," currently playing at the American Theater, This is the first visit Joe has made to his home here in eight years, and one of the few visits he has made since 1922 when he became assistant to Thurston the magician. Joe couldn't resist coloring the act with his own coy personality. Thurston's dignity at first may have been outraged by Joe's whimsy, but the audiences approved, so the magician finally dropped his own objections.
Joe's fame fall [fell] on him a little late, but he's reconciled by the old proverb, "Better late than never." He was widely known in vaudeville but when that institution died most of its famous reputations died with it. Before "Sons O' Fun" he had been in only one other Broadway production. That was the Shubert's "Passing Show of 1932," which passed in two weeks and didn't go anywhere.

It was in "Sons o' Fun" that Jack Benny discovered him, and in a way that was a sad day for Joe, for the last thing he wanted in this world was to be discovered, especially for a radio program. He's scared to death of mikes and always has avoided them like plagues, but Benny wouldn't listen to him. Joe said "No" and went home, but there, waiting for him, was his wife, who, although she didn't say anything, says Joe, "looked at me like I was an oyster." So he called Benny and said "Yes." But when it came time to go on, he changed his mind again and said "No." Finally Benny went to his dressing room and dragged him bodily into a cab and took him to the broadcasting station. "Look, Mr. Benny," says Besser, "I gotta bad throat. See, I can't talk. Honest, I can't speak above a whisper, See?" So Benny, who understands mike fright in all forms, pampered him and agreed to cut his part down so he could stick his head into the studio several times, say his line and then run. Joe felt a little better about it then, but he would have preferred to run before saying his line, and he almost did.
AFTER making several appearances with Benny, Joe went over to Fred Allen's program. He had got over a little of his mike fright, but not all of it, and Fred had to continue coddling him. Now Joe doesn't mind it much, but he still wouldn't go on alone. "I know if I'm with a big comic like Jack or Fred that they'll ad lib something clever if I muff a line. But I wouldn't want the responsibility of a show of my own."
Joe's radio success surprised no one more than it did Joe. "Most of my humor is visual," he says, "and I didn't see how it could possibly click on the air." What he perhaps does not realize about himself is that his voice is so full of inflection that it manages to convey the entire man. Hearing him on the radio, one can visualize pretty accurately Joe's jelly-mold physique, his slightly bald head, his cheery smile and blue eyes. When he says, "Shut up, you old cra-zee yieou," one can see the look of pouting indignance come over his face; and when he murmurs "You're cuooet," he obviously has his eyes rolled upward, is wearing his most fetching smile, and is rolling his shoulder against some curvaceous blonde.
What one does miss by not seeing him in the flesh is when, dressed as a buck private, he runs across the stage trailing his gun after him as if it were a scooter, and confronts the top sergeant as though he were the neighborhood bully, slaps his hands and says, "You old cra-zee, I've had enough of your meanness"; and when the sergeant bawls him out for not carrying his gun on his shoulder, he complains, "But it's so hea-vy." Military training has suddenly become just a game among a bunch of big, bad boys ...
Just a few weeks ago, Joe returned from Hollywood, where he made a picture for Columbia called "Hey Rookie." He likes doing films and thinks it's the ideal life for him, so he's going to return in a year or so and maybe settle down in Hollywood. There he can take it a little easier and there's no mike fright or stage fright to upset him. Offstage he is a quiet little fellow who likes to take his time about things and to avoid excitement. He denies having stage fright now, but opening night in St. Louis, just before he went on, he was worrying about his cold. "My throat is sore; my ears are stopped up; I won't hear my cues," he complained. But the other performers paid little attention. One got the idea, somehow, that they had been through this before.
"Not so fa-a-a-st. I can't do tha-a-a-t," he drawls. In other words, that's Joe Besser.