Jerry Colonna will always be associated with Bob Hope, but another comedian gave him his big break.
Colonna was a mainstay on Hope’s radio show starting in fall 1938, along with Vera Vague (actress Barbara Jo Allen), Brenda and Cobina (Elvia Allman and Blanche Stewart) and Pepsodent plugger Wendell Niles. Colonna would end up in silly, impossible situations that everyone accepted and turn them into a routine that ran during the broadcast. Hope dismantled his show in fall 1948 when ratings fell. Colonna was sent packing, though Hope brought him back periodically.
But it was on May 27, 1936, that Colonna almost became known to radio audiences. “Almost” because he wasn’t billed other than “Boris,” speaking unintelligibly in a Russian accent and then bellowing “The Road to Mandalay.” The show was Town Hall Tonight, and the comedian was Fred Allen. Colonna made a return engagement Feb. 24, 1937 and at least one more afterward.
How was it he ended up on the other coast and working with old Ski Nose? He reminisced in a column in the North American Newspaper Alliance, published Jan. 27, 1964. There’s nary a mention of Allen.
Jerry Colonna Credits Crosby for Success
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
Hollywood (NANA) — Jerry Colonna has been picking up regular checks for a longer time than most Hollywood personalities. So a tip from him isn't to be taken lightly.
Says the stony-faced comic with the popped eyes and walrus mustache: "It isn't necessarily what you know but who you know, if you want to get along in this business."
Jerry was reflecting on his career, pointing back more than 25 years to a meeting with Bing Crosby and a friendship that has continued ever since.
He was taping a string of toothpaste commercials to be delivered on the Crosby A. B. C.-T. V. special on February 15. He doesn't go in for ad plugging as a regular bit but is happy to be a part of anything his old helpmate does. We went on to trace their association:
IN TROTTER ORCHESTRA "We met in Spokane where I was playing trombone with John Scott Trotter's orchestra and Bing was doing his radio show. It all started there, and shortly afterwards when my wife and I were house guests at Bing's home near San Diego — that's when he was running the Del Mar Race Track with Pat O'Brien — he introduced me to Bob Hope. That was the turning point. Bob wrote a spot for me on one of his radio programs, and our palship has gone on from there."
Colonna has never made the big time in the publicly accepted sense, but his bank account shows a much fatter balance than those of most Hollywood figures rated as stars. He's never hired a publicity agent, is invariably in the background—even is proud of a criticism written about him early in his career by a New York reviewer — "He sounds like a Harvard professor who hasn't quite made it."
The point is, Colonna has made it. It consists of a couple of dozen movies with Hope and Crosby; and a successful night club act of his own which keeps him on the road 36 weeks every year.
"After all those overseas tours with Bob, I'm used to packing; can't stand the dust on my suitcases when it starts to accumulate," he grins.
"I like this deal with Crosby's T. V. operation. Some people say it's beneath an actor's dignity to do commercials, but I don't agree. I figure if a company is smart enough to hire an actor or a comic like me to help sell the product, he should be flattered.
"Besides," he said carefully smoothing that thick trademark (he hasn't shaved it since the 1925 sprouting year), "I don't have the temperament to be a dramatic actor. Far as I'm concerned. 'Hamlet' is a miniature Piglet."
My first experience with Colonna wasn’t with the human Colonna at all. It was with Warner Bros. cartoons. Whenever a character said “Greetings, gate!” Or “I don’t ask questions, I just have FUN!” or “Monotonous (or another word), isn’t it?” that was Jerry Colonna. Friz Freleng made a short in 1941 called The Wacky Worm, with the title character suspiciously resembling Colonna. The worm made a return appearance in Freleng’s 1943 short Greetings, Bait.
I’ll spare you a list of Colonna stand-in appearances, but will mention he’s caricatured in Tex Avery’s Hollywood Steps Out (1941) and there’s a funny performance of a vulture singing a la Colonna in Bob Clampett’s Prehistoric Porky (1940), played by Mel Blanc.
The first time I saw Colonna was as a guest star on McHale’s Navy. I didn’t know Colonna was an actual person. I thought it was a character invented for the episode, not having listened to any old Bob Hope radio shows at the age of eight.
This story appeared in newspapers on April 10, 1965. I suspect it was from the ABC promotion department.
Jerry Colonna Visits Only GI Island He Missed
Jerry Colonna has finally dropped down on the only island he missed in 23 years of entertaining U.S. troops abroad. It's the one in possession of "McHale's Navy."
Guest starring in "Hello, McHale?—Colonna!", the episode of the TV series to be televised at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, Colonna said he felt right at home.
"Hope (Bob) and I used to travel from island to island in PT boats," he recalls. "Our skipper was usually George Halas, owner-coach of the Chicago Bears. Reminds me a lot of Ernie Borgnine."
Jerry, who looks about three weeks older than he did in 1944, professes to be alarmed by the way some servicemen greet him at overseas base. "Hey, Jerry," they say, "I remember when I was a kid, my dad told me about a show you and Bob Hope put on at Kwajalein."
Colonna adds, "It's a new generation, but one thing stays at the same. They still laugh at the same jokes. They're the best audiences in the world." Reminiscing about those audiences, which at times numbered as high as 50,000, Colonna chuckled as he recalled one of the Bob Hope troupe's most memorable performances.
"It was in Alaska, a hundred miles from anywhere. Our plane was in trouble, and we set down, at an emergency landing field. A GI rushed over, saw Hope and me, some pretty girls and musicians, and almost passed out. Then he asked, very timidly, if we could do a few songs and jokes for the troops. We said sure. So in a minute he came back with the troops—both of them.
"While the pilot worked on the plane, we went through every joke, song and dance we know for two and a half hours. Finally, Hope told the three boys, 'Well, fellas, that's the show. We've run out of material.' " 'Oh, that's okay,' one of them piped up. 'Just do it again. '"
Colonna continued: "That's the answer to the question we're often asked—'How long are you tottering old geezers going to run around the world putting on shows for the servicemen?" "For as long as the boys say, 'Just do it again.' "
In this McHale’s Navy chapter, arrangements for Colonna’s visit hit a snag. It develops that Colonna’s plane only touches down at bases with at least a 50-bed hospital. McHale’s island hospital has only 28. So McHale’s men take steps to change the situation.
Colonna entertained troops with Bob Hope during World War Two. He wrote a book in 1945 about his overseas escapades with Hope called “Who Threw That Coconut!” (We can only imagine what he couldn't print).
"Professor" Colonna made 15 annual appearances with old sickle-snoot at military bases, ending with a second tour of Vietnam in 1965. He missed 1966 because of a stroke that partly paralysed him. Hope was loyal. Before making his 1966 Christmas appearances in Vietnam, he presented Colonna with a plaque from Los Angeles City Council honouring his 15 hundred shows for soldiers, and the four million miles he travelled to entertain.
Hope found a place for him in a 1970 TV special, despite not looking well. Colonna continued to have heart problems, though he died of kidney failure in 1986 at age 82.
Many of us grew up watching Hope TV specials where he read old-hat routines off cue cards. His Pepsodent radio show was far different. Hope was quick, ad-libbing and fairly entertaining. But to me, the best part was the ridiculous nonsense spouted by the energetic Jerry Colonna.
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