Radio's Dix Davis

Someone in Hollywood once warned about the perils for actors of working with children or animals, as they will steal any scene.

Jack Benny ignored that. He knew that it didn’t matter who got the laughs on his radio show, it was still HIS radio show, and he’d get the credit for the hilarity.

He employed a number of boys and girls on his show—toward the 1950s, he and his writers came up with a Scouts-like boys club—and Jack trusted their talents enough to give them whole scenes on their own. They were a success.

Jack tried another boy character before that in 1941. For me, it didn’t work. “Belly Laugh Barton” was supposed to be a child prodigy comedy writer. Precocious boys were a staple of radio comedy, but Barton behaved like a complete jerk to Benny for absolutely no reason. The character was soon dropped.

It was no fault of the actor, a young man who turned in fine performances on radio as Randolph on A Date With Judy starting in June 1942, the bellhop on The Ransom Sherman Show and Pinky on One Man’s Family, and appeared in the 1940 movie version of Our Town. His name was Dix Davis.

Word has come from people specialising in the old-time radio field that Dix passed away earlier this month at the age of 97 in Dorset, Vermont.

Davis had begun his acting career a few years before being tapped by Benny. A blurb in the May 26, 1938 Hollywood Reporter mentions his casting in “Breaking the Ice” for a company called Principal, followed a year later with “Singing Cowgirl” for Grand National. But he found a home in radio, starting on a broadcast with Rudy Vallee in 1939, not only in comedy, but performing on Lux Radio Theatre and in the 1942 version of Lionel Barrymore’s acclaimed “A Christmas Carol” on NBC.

Like seemingly every kid actor, Dix’s age was fudged to make him younger and, therefore, more employable. He was born September 12, 1926. His profile in the July 1940 edition of Radio and Television Mirror declares he was “not quite ten.” The arithmetic doesn’t add up in this story from the Sacramento Bee of June 27, 1942.

DIX DAVIS, boy actor on the Ransom Sherman show, is doing his own homework from now on. And there’s a lively story behind that action.
It was only a few weeks ago that the 13 year old actor brought his grammar and mathematics assignments to work on between his radio rehearsals. Immediately, Ransom Sherman, Actress Shirley Mitchell and Songstress Martha Tilton volunteered to assist Dix. The next time Dix came to rehearsal with another batch of homework, the three again offered to assist him.
Dix thanked them politely this time, and firmly refused their offer. Pressed for his reasons for refusing, Dix finally admitted that when they helped him the first time, his assignments were returned to him mostly graded less than fifty. It turned out the adult touches were too apparent to the teacher.

The March 1, 1942 edition of Radio Life reported on an unusual occupational hazard:

Dix Davis, who played little Alvin Fuddle on the "Blondie" show, created a problem when he showed up wearing a pair of squeaking huaraches which amplified to proportions of a forest fire over the mike. He had to act in stocking feet and hope the cold bugs wouldn't see him.

He had attended the Mar-Ken farm in Van Nuys, which also included Jimmy Lydon and Gloria De Haven among its student body. Virginia Vale’s syndicated column on June 2, 1944 stated that Davis was a freshman at USC—and had “just turned 16”!

Dix’s acting career went into hiatus. The Valley Times of March 28, 1946 reported he had been inducted into the army that day at Fort MacArthur. He returned to radio acting when he was discharged but, like many child actors, he was at an age where he moved on to other things. The time to play an obnoxious pre-teen comedy writer was over. The July 1948 Radio and Television Mirror informed readers:

Dix Davis, who plays Randolph Foster on the Date With Judy show, has sadly turned down a summer stock bid. He'll be graduated from the University of Southern California this June and is going to get to work on winning his master's degree with some courses during the summer session. He's majoring in foreign trade, which sounds like a forward looking idea.

Regular acting jobs more-or-less ended for him the following year, as the Reporter mentioned Dix had taken a year’s leave of absence from One Man’s Family to tour Europe.

In November 1942, Davis began a role as the son on CBS’s replacement series Today at the Duncans, which starred long-time supporting actor, “Mr. Yeeeeeeees,” Frank Nelson. The show was written by Fred Runyon, who later became a columnist for the Pasadena Independent. He has a sad tale in the paper’s edition of August 4, 1954:

SOME years ago the writer did a radio show for the Columbia Broadcasting system which featured the travails of a young married couple with a precocious 10-year-old son. The kid’s name was Dix Davis. He was a teriffic [sic] little actor and during rehearsal breaks or before going on the air he would regale me with tales of all the things he wanted to do and be when he grew up. “I wanna be in the foreign service and travel all around the world,” he would say, following it up with a prodigious recitation of geographical knowledge highly uncommon for a small squirt.
Yesterday he dropped in the office. Didn’t recognize him. The moppet had turned into a grown man.
“Where’ve you been?” I asked. “Around the world.”
“You mean you . . . ”
“Sure. Remember I used to tell you some day I wanted to enter the foreign service? Well, I did. And I’ve sure been around.”
WHEN I was 10 years old I knew what I wanted to be but a kindly fate intervened. I wanted to be the fellow who fearlessly swept out the lion cage in the Golden Gate Park zoo. While still handling a more or less related product the contact is figurative rather than literal.
Recalling the poet who mused: “A boy’s will is the wind’s will and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,” I marveled that this former youngster had been able to fulfill a childhood dream.
“Very few are fortunate enough to pilot such ambitious determinations through puberty,” I reminded my visitor.
I looked for a confirming smile to light his face but a frown appeared instead. He waited some time before he spoke.
“I quit,” he blurted.
“You what?” I couldn’t believe what I had heard.
“I quit, the foreign service. Resigned. Couldn’t take it.”
“Too strenuous?”
“No. Too disappointing.”
LITTLE by little it came out. This young man’s disillusion. He has just returned from his last tour of duty with the United States Information Office in Pakistan.
For me his revelations were particularly significant because they bore out what I have been trying to say in this column for some time—that we are NOT telling the story of the real America to the people of foreign lands. We, the people, are not getting through to the human beings we would like to help. Only we, the politicians, are getting through. Only we, the careerists, are speaking. In other words, the real story, the convincing story, the true story upon which peace could securely stand, is being muffed not told.
SO a young man, who dreamed from the age of 10 of a chance to do a job, has picked up his homburg and walked out of government service.
“I think the real job for me is not there,” he confessed, “but here. Here, telling Americans the size of the opportunities we are missing. The big job to be done right now is not in foreign countries but on our own soil.” THE child I once knew, while not an embittered man, is far from a happy one. I, too, probably would have gotten tired sweeping up after lions.

There’s a little happier post-script, provided by Oakland Tribune columnist Robin Orr in the Dec. 30, 1970 issue, who did a “Where are they now” piece on the cast of One Man’s Family.

Dix Davis, who played Pinky, one of Hazel’s twin sons on the show, speaks Russian, French, Pakastani [sic] “and maybe Chinese by the this time,” travels the world over for the State Department and has just returned from two years in Paris with the Vietnam peace talks.

Child actors from the Golden Days of Radio are still out there—Harry Shearer of Jack Benny’s show comes to mind—but when it comes to those who were on the air in the 1930s, Dix Davis must have been one of the last.

Here is his debut with Jack Benny, October 19, 1941.