The Senator, I Say, The Senator

Fred Allen returned to the airwaves on October 7, 1945 after a year away for health reasons. He changed networks (NBC from CBS), sponsors (Standard Brands from the Texas Co.), and supporting players. Newspaper stories and ads (like the one to the right) mentioned a change in Allen’s Alley, but omitted the most significant change of all.

Listeners were told Parker Fennelly (Titus Moody) and Irving Kaufman (one half of the songwriting team of McGee and McGee) would be replacing Alan Reed (Falstaff Openshaw) and Charlie Cantor (who had left the show before it went off the air and was replaced by Greek dialectician Pat C. Flick as Pablo Itthepitches). There was no mention of the character that would outshine all of them.

Scott Smart had been at the first door in the Alley as Senator Bloat. Smart left the show when it signed off in June 1944. Allen found another politician, one he could hang a “Southern superiority” routine on. That was actor Kenny Delmar, whose Senator Claghorn became an instant hit. Delmar doubled as the show’s announcer and tripled for a while as one of the other singing/songwriting McGees. The pair didn’t last long and Reed returned at the start of 1945.

Claghorn wasn’t altogether an Allen or Delmar invention. He had a different name, and without the Dixie gimmick, on The Alan Young Show. The sponsor, in an incredible display of stupidity, ordered Delmar’s Councillor Cartenbranch taken off the show.

Here are a couple of stories giving some background. This is an unbylined feature piece from the Port Clinton Herald and Republican, Jan. 4, 1946.

The Senator Is Really Announcer Ken Delmar on Fred Allen Program
NEW YORK, N.Y.— Our loudest, most articulate legislator, “Senator Claghorn”, is otherwise known as Ken Delmar, announcer on the Fred Allen show, and although he sounds mighty southern he was born in the land of the bean and the cod.
“That’s Massachusetts, son, that’s Massachusetts."
The "Senator”, called by admiring columnists "that pro-Confederate windbag”, is fast becoming a national figure. His manner of interrupt himself constantly to ejaculate “I say," and then repeating what he said before to drive home his gags, is being copied the country over.

It was Fred Allen who named him "Senator Claghorn" after he heard him talk like that.
Born in Boston, Kenneth Delmar was brought to New York City with his family as an infant. He toured the country as a child-prodigy, vaudeville performer, and did blackface, drama, comedy, anything.
During the depression he abandoned the stage and went into the importing business mostly olives and other foodstuffs, with his step father for a number of years.
But Ken was always the "life of the party” and liked to make people laugh. He broke away from the olive business by opening a dancing school where he met his wife who was the ballet teacher.
Finally a radio audition at a local New York station netted him a $20 a week job. Soon after that he was asked to make a network audition for a commercial show and was so nervous that he couldn’t read the script.
So Ken told jokes in dialect. He even imitated W. C. Fields whom he’d seen in a movie the night before — and that was exactly what the director wanted. Ken got the job and held it for seven years.
Curley-haired, spectacled 33-year-old Ken was first called to Fred Allen’s attention by Minerva Pious (Mrs. Nussbaum) who thought he was so clever that Allen ought to know him. Allen, who knows a good thing when he hears it, caught right on.
He doesn’t even care when "Senator Claghorn” yells at him, "that was a joke son, that was a joke. Don’t let them get by you, son.”

Delmar explains Claghorn’s origin in Marvel Ings’ radio column of The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, March 24, 1946.

A PICTURE STORY of Allen’s Alley appears in the April issue of Pic magazine. It features the newest Alley resident, Senator Claghorn, portrayed by Ken Delmar. There are also sketches of

Minerva Pious, Parker Fennelly, Alan Reed, Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa. The picture story includes interesting quotes from all the characters on, NBC-WIBA’s Fred Allen show.
The bombastic Senator Claghorn may sound more southern than shortnin’ bread, but he was born in Boston 34 years ago. His family came to New York City when he was an infant, and he picked up that repetitious talk from a Texas farmer.
The Texan gave Ken Delmar a lift in his rickety car once when the then undiscovered senator hitch-hiked to California. Hour after hour, the rancher spouted about his ranch: “I’ve got 500 acres, 500 that is, of the best grazing land in the country. I say, son, the best in the country, you understand." Ken never forgot it.
He entered radio in 1936 on a local New York station, the same year that he married Alice Cochran, with whom he opened and closed a dancing school. Prior to that he worked for a short time with his step-father in the importing business. As a child, he played in the D. W. Griffith motion picture, “Orphans of the Storm."
Versatile is a word applied to Delmar, who, in addition to being Claghorn and announcer on the Fred Allen show, is also protagonist for jazz as emcee of the RCA Victor show also heard Sundays over WIBA. He’s also announcer on at least four other important network programs.
The Delmars live in Manhattan and have a son, Kenneth, Jr., age four, who likes to imitate his father.

Delmar was a fine actor, appearing on The Cavalcade of America, The Columbia Workshop and other dramatic shows, but Claghorn was his best-known role. It vaulted him into a starring role (as the Senator) in Eagle-Lion’s “It’s a Joke, Son,” and resulted in Mel Blanc modifying his voice for Foghorn Leghorn (it originally was based on a sheriff that appeared on Blue Monday Jamboree and other West Coast-based radio programmes of the early ‘30s).

Allen apparently felt Claghorn had run his course and gave Delmar a Russian character to make fun of Soviet braggadocio and lack of freedoms. Sergei Stroganoff never caught on with the audience (his name was changed after a $50,000 lawsuit was filed by a real person with the same name) and the Senator continued to appear off and on until Allen went off the air in 1949 (the real Sergei N. Stroganoff was an accountant who died in Cedar Grove, N.J. in 1965).

There was life in the Senator afterward. Delmar appeared as a Claghorn knock-off on Broadway in Texas Li’l Darlin’ and then again as a Texas oil man on the CBS radio quiz show Funny Side Up. Into the 1960s, Delmar gave motivational talks and appeared at sales conferences as the Senator. And there was a re-creation of the Alley with Min Pious, Parker Fennelly and Peter Donald on Les Crane’s Nightlife late night show in 1965, again on PBS in 1972, when Delmar had retired to West Palm Beach, and again on WBZ Boston in 1975 (Delmar’s appearances in the Alley would not have heard on that station as it was a CBS affiliate).

The Senator was a Dixiecrat, but Allen was no partisan political humourist—he had Delmar take cracks at President Truman now and then. These days, jokes involving American politics bring out an extreme nastiness and cruelty in far too many people (especially on “social” media). I’d like to think audiences can still laugh about Senator Glass being “broken up,” Senator Byrd “ravin” and Senator Aiken “back,” spoken by a character so loyal to his part of the country, he only drank from Dixie Cups and refused to wear a Union suit.

Kenny Delmar, who brought the Senator to life, would tell you it was all a joke, son. And he told them very well.