Good Evening, Mr. Benny, Profiling a Writer, I See

Emergency! Crisis in radio’s top-ranked show!

In 1936, Jack Benny was number one in radio listener opinion polls. That satisfied just about everyone except Harry W. Conn. He was Jack’s writer, and publicly beefed he was hugely responsible for Benny’s success and demanded equal pay with the star.

It eventually became a case of I quit/No, you’re fired. Jack tried putting together some scripts on his own, but it was clear he needed help. To the rescue before the end of the 1936 season came a pair of scribes named Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin. Jack remained on top. Harry who??

The two evidently had AFRA cards as they occasionally appeared on the show. Beloin was on more than Morrow. I liked him as Radcliffe the diner counter man (paired with Frank Nelson as Gilroy), but he may be best known as Jack’s boarder, Mr. Billingsley, full of nonsense and non-sequiturs (and alcohol on occasion).

A few years after pairing with Jack, Beloin added a side-career. He co-owned an inn in Maine. The Portland Press Herald caught up with Beloin in a feature story published July 23, 1939. He talks about himself, Benny and the Benny show. The photos (sorry for the poor scans) are publicity shots from Hollywood supplied to the paper.

Script Writer For Jack Benny Tells What Makes Famous Comedy Program Click; Now in Maine Visiting Camden Shore Property
By Betty Foxwell
Special Despatch to Sunday Telegram
Camden, July 22.—Running over to Maine from California for the week-end is more than a gag in the life of Eddie Beloin, ace script writer for Jack Benny,—for Eddie recently became the owner of attractive shore property on Route 1 in this town, and has just arrived here from California for a few day to supervise the finishing touches on the Inn which his father built and opened this month. Speed and Eddie are practically synonymous.
From College To Top Rank
From college, in one jump, he landed in “Best Short Stories of 1933” with the first short story he had ever written, entitled “Baby.” Next he became script writer for radio comedian Fred Allen, and shortly after, at the age of 24, found himself at the top of the list of script writers with his partner, Bill Morrow, working with Jack Benny on his program, where he has remained for four years. (It would be interesting to hear those two wise-cracking gentlemen on the subject of whether Eddie’s jump from Fred Allen to Jack Benny was forward or backward!)
Speaking of speed, last Summer Eddie drove a stock car from New York to Hollywood in three and a half days, driving 16 hours a day. Figure out for yourself what his speed was.
But Maine’s winding roads were too much even for him this morning, this Interview being carried on at an average rate of 30 miles an hour with Eddie at the wheel, sight-seeing Camden and vicinity. Sandwiched in between comments on the Snow Bowl, Turnpike Drive and other scenic points the following data was gathered.
Seventy-five laughs to 18 minutes of continuity is the average for the Benny Sunday night radio program. But the funniest sketch of all the drama of the way the program is put together, has not yet been put on the air.
This “Rhapsody In Everything Except Blue,” starts “lento” on Monday morning when Beloin and Morrow, who usually live in adjoining apartments, get together and discuss the general idea for next Sunday’s program; whether it will be a stooge spot, sketch or continuity. About Wednesday, the pace is “allegro con moto” with Beloin and Morrow taking turns at the typewriter and striding back and forth about the room, writing seven or eight pages of script. (Incidentally gags are written backwards, the answer coming first and the “first line is the hard line.”
Thursday or Friday the tempo becomes accelerando and the volume “crescendo,” when, with much animation and enthusiasm, Beloin and Morrow take the script to Jack Benny and try to “sell” it to him. Benny is a great editor of humor. Instinctively he knows what will get over to the audience.
Now it is “presto” and “appassionato” as Jack Benny, Eddie, Bill Morrow and Jack’s secretary, Harry Baldwin, pull out the stops for the climax. Harry Baldwin, incidentally, seems to be something of a phychic [sic] phenomenon, writing down the script from the amazing repartee which goes on between the other three men, knowing instinctively which of the three has the line in its final polished form.
Benny, Eddie and Bill are now too keyed up Lo remain still, they must keep in motion physically, Ba1dwin and his notebook keeping up them.
Work In Different Place
Each week they work in a different place. At Ensenada, Mex., the natives were once startled to see four men in sun helmets and shorts, riding bicycles around and around the village, three of them shouting gags at each other, while the fourth man took them down in a notebook.
Sometimes they do roadwork to keep Benny’s waistline within specified limits, and then to the tour gentlemen in motion in added a fifth, Harvey Cooper, Benny’s trainer. Harvey is a great Charlie McCarthy fan and practices imitating Charlie’s laugh, so the wisecracks of the Benny troupe are followed by the derisive McCarthy laughter.
Occasionally the script is written while they are swimming, with Harry Baldwin, in bathing suit, with notebook, sitting on the edge of the pool. Here Jack Benny’s line is “Dive down for a gag, boys.” Out of this slightly insane symphony a program emerges, for which by 10 o’clock Saturday morning there is an informal rehearsal.
The Benny programs are tops because of their spontaneity and sparkle. One reason for this la the way they are fashioned, as outlined above. Another reason is that there is no rehearsal. Except for this informal rehearsal Saturday morning, none of the cast has seen the script till it goes on the air Sunday night.
When the radio audience hears Mary, or Don Wilson, or Kenny Baker or members of the orchestra laugh, it is because the gag is as new and funny to them as to the audience. Jack, Eddie and Bill are the only ones who know exactly what the script is to be.
Inspects Snow Bowl
Time was taken out here in the interview, while the summer quarters of the Snow Bowl were inspected. Back in the car more information about Eddie was requested.
Eddie met his partner, Bill Morrow, by chance, in a Detroit hotel room. They tried out a script together, found they synchronized, and have teamed together ever since.
His hobbies are collecting wood carvings, reading and playing badminton. He is unmarried, but Winchell predicted that he would be married on his arrival in New York last week, and Winchell usually hits it pretty close.
Among the movies he and his partner have written are “This Way Please,” “Artists and Models” “Artists and Models Abroad, “College Holiday,” and “Man About Town.”
The movie title “Buck Benny Rides Again” has been sold to Paramount and work starts on it Oct. 15. Eddie and his partner work best under pressure, and write on the set, sometimes hammering out additional lines while a scene is actually being shot. They are known as “additional dialogue writers” and work very closely with the director on the picture, polishing up the lines and giving them sparkle.
Turning the questions from the subject of Eddie to Jack Benny, it was interesting to this Benny fan to learn that Jack, who is always being kidded on the radio about pinching pennies, is in actual life extremely generous and pays double the salaries to his staff that other radio headliners pay.
Likes Hot Weather
Benny, who likes his weather hot, is taking a cruise through the Panama Canal this Summer. Later he wi1l probably take an auto tour through the United States, indulging in his pet hobby of stopping at hot dog stands. In contrast to Eddie who gets [to] places quickly, Jack is an extremely cautious driver, having been known to wait five minutes for another car to approach before making a left turn.
On Sept. 1, Jack goes on a vaudeville tour, appearing at the San Francisco World’s Fair and large Eastern cities.
Jack, Eddie and Bill are taking turns this Summer listening to tenors, as Kenny Baker is leaving to go on another program this Fall.
In June, Eddie and Phil Harris attended the wedding of ‘Rochester,’ who plays the part on the radio of Jack’s colored valet and is in real life a gentleman of color, named Eddie Anderson. The wedding for which the cream of Los Angeles colored society turned out, was a very formal affair, with receiving line, until the gin was served, when all formality was dropped!
What makes the Benny program click? For one thing, because it is original and spontaneous. And one guesses, too, that here is a team of four brilliant and keenly humorous men. Benny, Beloin, Morrow and Baldwin, who physically speaking, are so sensitive to each other’s thoughts that they automatically work together as one personality. Such teamwork, plus the Benny slant on the radio, is what is responsible for the program’s winning for five years the “Radio Guide” fan poll, and for six years the World-Telegram national radio editors poll.

Variety announced on June 9, 1943 that Beloin was leaving Benny to write for the movies. He and Morrow moved on before American Tobacco took over sponsorship of the Benny show but, occasionally, broadcasts they had written in the General Foods days were lifted in part, or reworked, by the new writers.

Beloin wrote and produced films and television until he retired almost three decades later. He died in Florida on May 26, 1992 at age 82.