What Are Those Comedians Really Like

You’ve probably heard stories about comedians who are always “on.” It’s a trait seemingly limited to entertainers. I don’t hear of people who work in a car wash who obsessively wash everyone’s cars after they get home from work.

The New York World-Telegram was famous for its annual nation-wide poll of radio editors of the top programmes and people on the air. Who better, then, than the paper’s radio editor to ask what the radio comedians were really like. That’s the subject of his column on January 10, 1942.

The neat little drawings accompanied the article.

COOK’S TOUR of RADIO
By ALTON COOK
Someone asked the other day whether the offstage humor of the comedians ran in any proportion to their radio popularity. The answer is a strange paradox.
With a single exception, the wittiest among the comedians are the ones who have had indifferent success with their radio programs. The exception is Fred Allen.
Comedians in general, like most actors, are ready conversationalists and because of their background of dealing in jokes as staple merchandise they more than hold up their end of the talk in any gathering. But few of the real great ones spontaneously spout humor.



Among the comedians themselves Jack Benny probably has greater personal popularity than any of the others. The reason is easy. Jack is a great listener and an easy laugher. The only disadvantage about Jack’s company, his friends say, is that sometimes he falls asleep in the midst of a merry gathering he has assembled.
Edgar Bergen has occasional flashes of a sly, subdued wit. It he gets out in a party Charlie McCarthy is likely to appear on his knee and punctuate the conversation with boisterous sallies that the quiet-spoken Bergen never would undertake himself. Off-stage Charlie serves as a release to strip away the shyness that Bergen has to a much greater degree than most actors.
Fibber McGee and Molly are quiet, homey people. Their straightforward simplicity is likable and makes them pleasant companions, but no one ever comes away quoting cracks these two have made. Bob Hope sheds his jumping-jack jubilance as soon as he steps away from the microphone. He is soberly intent on his business, and much of his conversation runs to how he can maintain the great peak he has hit.
Bob Burns never loses his air of leisurely drollery, and it is equally effective off the air. He makes homely complaints about his expenses seem very funny at the moment, but if you try to repeat them later your usual climax is a dull thud of silence. The unwary raconteur realizes then that it was the artfulness of the telling more than the wit that drew so much laughter in the first place.



Eddie Cantor is another good story teller if you get him sitting in a quiet concer. Revealing an unsuspected skill at mimicry, he might tell stories about Will Rogers, W.C. Fields and other great ones he has known in his wanderings through all branches of show business. He knows the value of all his animated gestures and leaps around the place crazily, if the point calls for it. He is a funny man to have around because probably better than any of the others he understands the mechanics of funny business.
Stoopnagle is a strange combination of pixie and sobersides. He may go into a long and tediously details account of a movie he has just seen and the switch into a complete hysterical story about the conduct of some men he watched digging a hole near his house the other day.
Gracie Allen is a guiet little body, more interested in her home and children and new hats than in jokes. George Burns has a glib memory that has him ready with quip whenever conversation calls for it, but he doesn’t pose as any great creator, frequently punctuating his jokes with such remarks as, “There’s that old story” . . .
Milton Berle is likely to be the life of the party, spouting more or less familiar gags all over the place. Ed Wynn seems to be happiest when he can go into a sad mood about the troubles that beset a man who has become rich and famous.



They are good conversationalists, these comedians, but not great wits. After all, they don’t need to be—any more than Toscanini and Stokowski must go around whistling original music all the time. Like the conductors, these comedians are interpreters.
All of them have something to do with the writing of their programs, but, again, with the single exception of Fred Allen, the bulk of the work is done by a writing staff. Fred has writers, but he leans on them less and changes their pieces around more.
In comedy, as in concert music, the main rewards go to the interpreters, not to the composers and creators.