Radio was vastly different. Once an act went on the air, everyone heard it. The comedian had to come up with something new, week after week. In Jack Benny’s case, it was twice a week at the beginning of his radio career. And there was no summer break until later in the 1930s.
It’s no wonder comedians didn’t have as much time to hang out together like they did in vaudeville. They had to concentrate on next week’s show. Every week.
Yowza Ben Bernie griped his buddies were being “high hat” by not socialising. No-za, Ben. They were plain old too busy, especially when Hollywood came calling and started putting radio stars in the movies. Here’s an article about it from the Santa Cruz Evening News of May 16, 1936.
Ben Bernie Moans "My Old Pals Are Going High Hat!"
His Former Friends Hide Behind Bland Secretaries While They Look For Gags
By RICHARD POWELL
THEY used to call each other Sadie and Eddie and Joe and Jack, back in their vaudeville days. They used to gather around cafeteria tables and discuss their joys and troubles after their five-a-day performances were finished. But now they call each other hard names and will only talk about how much money they make. For radio came in the door and love flew out the window. Ben Bernie, the Old Maestro, sighs as he gives the lowdown on the airways. He puffs a little faster on his cigar and smooths his thinning hair.
"Radio is screwy, he grumbles. My old pals of vaudeville are wearing the high hat. The money they make, the fan letters they get, have given them the old inflation of the cerebellum — or whatever they use instead of heads. It's like that gag about Boston society, only in this case the Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots only speak over the radio.
"Take one radio comedian who sells gasoline over the air. If any of his old friends want to see him, they have to consult his secretary. Maybe they're important, so the secretary makes an appointment for them to see this comedian from 5 o'clock to four minutes after 5 two weeks from Sunday. He's too busy looking up jokes in his filing cabinets to be bothered by a pal."
MOST of radio's top comedians are products of vaudeville. Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn went to the musical-comedy stage from vaudeville, and from there to radio. Others went directly from vaudeville to the air — Burns and Allen, Amos and Andy (Correll and Gosden), Phil Baker, Jack Benny and Joe Penner. Ben Bernie was in vaudeville long before he formed his band.
Back in 1920 a few people were tickling a bit of crystal with a wire and yelling with joy when they picked up the time signals from Arlington. Most of the present top-notchers in radio humor were touring the vaudeville circuits. Maybe friends wouldn't see each other for months, but when they got together they celebrated. They dreamed of the day when they might play the Palace in New York vaudeville's show shop and perhaps get a contract for $200 or $250 a week. Few earned anything like that. Between $40 and $80 a week for a single was good money. Out in Hollywood, they knew, a little fellow named Chaplin had graduated from vaudeville into the big money, thousands a week. But that was a one-in-a-million shot and they didn't spend much time dreaming about it. Their biggest worries were the immediate ones of paying their bills and getting a couple of bows at each show, so that the house manager wouldn't write the booking office that they were terrible. If these vaudeville comedians had any pet hates, they were for the acrobats who opened the shows and the trained-seal act that sometimes got too much applause.
Now when they get together they don't celebrate. They bore each other with tales of how they are wowing the radio audience.
BACK in the old days the boys used to lend each other a helping hand. They all knew what a tough job it was to make a cold audience unlimber its applause. Sometimes their jokes became stale and they couldn't invent any new ones. Often they couldn't afford to pay a professional gag man to map out a new act.
"I was in a bad spot once during the war," Bernie said. "I had just changed my act from a straight violin number to a comedy number. Then one night the tough munitions workers of Bridgeport razzed me off the stage. It cost me my contract and I had no money to pay for a new act. My friends rallied around. A bunch of them, including Frank Fay and Joe Laurie, Jr., each contributed one of their best jokes to me. With that material I built a new act and got started again. If you think radio headliners now would give up a swell joke to help a pal, you can trade In your car for a horse and buggy."
SUCH a joke as the following, which was used by several radio comedians, is an example of the type that starts broadcasting wars.
Just as the boys started accusing each other of stealing that joke, it was found that it had been used quite a few years ago, about the second Dempsey-Tunney fight, about the Dempsey-Willard fight and probably for as many years as Marquis of Queensbury rules have governed the fight game.
One headliner is very funny over the microphone, but has lost whatever personal sense of humor he once had. He is air sales man for a tasty dessert.
"One night," the Old Maestro states, "Walter Winchell and I decided to drop into the studio while this fellow was giving his weekly program. Our names impressed the page boys and got us into the room. We made funny faces at this radio comedian, thinking that he would turn the joke back on us by ad-libbing something about us to his audience. Instead, he got huffy and motioned us out angrily. The next day he tried to have the page boys fired for letting us in."
The vaudeville performers who once hoped to get $200 a week now think in terms of thousands and talk in millions. As much as $5000 was paid to Ed Wynn for a half-hour program once a week. Most of radio's aces get between $2000 and $5000 weekly from their sponsors. Hollywood money has been offered and taken by almost every radio star. Personal appearances and night-club engagements increase the weekly total. Eddie Cantor often makes $15,000 a week on theatre appearances. Cantor, Burns and Allen, Benny, Bernie and Joe Penner have clicked in the movies.
And so the ex-vaudeville performers have had their ideas turned topsy-turvy. They have been knocked dizzy by the strange power of the microphone. Bernie points to one man who has been successful on the radio, stage and screen. "He's a nice guy in many ways," Bernie says, "but he's a little screwy. For years he has made little jokes about politics. Now he thinks he can turn the course of any election by his radio chatter. I guess he believes he could blast the career of any political candidate whom he didn't like."
Ben Bernie was a vaudeville fiddler, teaming with Phil Baker, who played an accordion, in a musical act. Bernie never said a word onstage. Then one night a violin string broke in the middle of the act.
Bernie drawled, without thinking: "There must be a critic in the house."
Patrons howled with glee at the unexpected joke, and Bernie decided to become a comedian. Later he formed his own orchestra for a new metropolitan hotel and went on the air with his music and dry humor. It started the comedy master-of-ceremonies rage on the air.
JACK BENNY'S experience was much like Bernie's. Jack was a violinist until the war, when he entered the army and started joking while playing to soldier assemblies.
Gracie Allen was just a schoolgirl when George Burns met her. He thought she would make a good "stooge" for his vaudeville act. Their first engagement was for $5. Naturally Burns had written the act so that he would get all the laughs. Strangely, Gracie's dumb questions brought more merriment than George's bright answers. So George decided to give her the answers.
"In the old days, radio's top-notchers had time to enjoy everything," Bernie recalled. "Now many of them sleep, eat and think radio, to the exclusion of everything else. An earthquake might bother them, but only if it sets up enough static.
Copyright, 1936.
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