Gisele's Benny Boost

Is it possible to count the number of people Jack Benny helped over his lifetime?

His violin concerts raised money for pension funds for musicians and saved theatres for people to continue enjoying.

Others thanked Jack for their careers. Dennis Day was one. Wayne Newton was another. And so was Gisele MacKenzie.

Gisele and her family were singers/musicians in Winnipeg and appeared on the CBC; her brother Georges was later in charge of the network’s French-language operations in Vancouver. Like quite a number of Canadian performers, she moved to the U.S. to further her career and landed a spot on Bob Crosby’s “Club Fifteen.” It was through Crosby, who later fronted the band on the Benny radio show, that she met Jack Benny.

Here’s a brief column from June 1, 1957/

Gisele Gets Own Show Thanks to Jack Benny
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD (UP) – After four years of singing 300-plus songs on "Your Hit Parade," Gisele MacKenzie finally gets her own show, thanks to a fellow violin player named Jack Benny.
When the pretty French-Canadian brunette adds up her life she gives credit for her success to the veteran comedian. Performers seldom take the time or trouble to sponsor another entertainer, but Jack has been largely responsible for Gisele's expanding career.
Next fall he unveils his protegee in her own live half-hour TV program on NBC, "The Gisele MacKenzie Show," produced here by the 39-year-old violinist himself.
"I met Jack five years ago when he saw me sing with Bob Crosby in Las Vegas," Gisele explained between rehearsals here for her last guest appearance of the season, on Sunday's "Chevy Show" on NBC.
Went On Tour
"He asked me to go on tour with him. Then I guested several times on his TV show. He's been such a great help."
Gisele's appearances with Benny showed she had other talents than singing upside down, sideways, in those zippy production numbers on "Your Hit Parade." With Benny she displayed a flair for comedy and a talent for the violin.
As a result she wound up guesting on other shows and playing dramatic roles. This spring she quit "Your Hit Parade" and was signed by Benny for the new fall series.
Many fans wonder why Gisele didn't have her own show long ago, but she insists, "I'm glad this didn't happen before. I wasn't ready for it."
"But this spring I decided I'd been on the 'Hit Parade' long enough," she continued. "I felt it was time to do something else. I didn't want to wait until the audience tired of me.
Lot Of Fun
"The show was a lot of fun and an easy schedule. But there just comes a time when you want to do something else. It was invaluable experience as the show is like a stock company—you learn to do everything. Of course, I still think the real stars of the show are the producer, director, cameramen and writers who dream up the ideas."
Whether her move sparked a general cast change she doesn't know, but Dorothy Collins and the other singers on the popular program will not appear on it next fall, either.
Gisele is "very excited and scared about her series" "because the responsibility is all mine." Benny set the format for her Saturday night show—"a loose one. One week I'll sing, another week I'll do skits with regular characters or have guest stars."
"Jack phones once a week with plans," she smiled. "He says he thinks he knows what to advise for a few people and I'm one of them. He knows what's right for me."

Jack seemed to find his way into stories about MacKenzie’s career. Here’s another one from the McClure Newspaper Syndicate (which distributed the “TV Key” column) that appeared in papers around Dec. 15, 1957. Lucky Strike had been Jack’s sponsor on radio and then television, so it’s no coincidence that American Tobacco would listen to his recommendations.

Gisele’s Show is Work; Fun
By STEVEN H. SCHEUER
“I’m having my ninth baby,” said Gisele MacKenzie in Hollywood, referring to her ninth Saturday night soiree. This is Gisele’s way of explaining the ordeal she goes through starring in her own show. She isn't as relaxed and easy-going as she appears to be on TV. She's been on since September and that seems years ago to her.
On the Hit Parade, Gisele looked carefree and relaxed, too, but it was a lot different. The pressure was off, she wasn't the star, just part of the company. "I learned a lot," said Gisele, "but the Hit Parade was a breeze compared to carrying your own show."
Gisele looks fit. She's even gained a few pounds, but on Mondays a rash breaks out on her white Canadian skin from nerves, not smog, and she has to cover it up with make-up.
"Listen, you have to be nervous to be any good. I'm nervous singing before two people and I always will be," she explained. "It's part of the business. I know I wouldn't be in any other. I couldn't go into advertising, for instance."
Having her own weekly show, something she's looked forward to for a long time, is half fun and half chore and that's all Gisele wants. She's had good times on some programs, but the most fun was a recent one with Jack Benny when the two dropped the script and began ad-libbing.
"I stepped on one of Jack's lines," Gisele said, "by accident. And he fired back, "Now that you have your own show you can't stop talkin.’ We carried on from there. The critics thought it was part of the show."
Jack Benny has been a big factor in Gisele's success. He originally saw Gisele working with Bob Crosby in Las Vegas. Jack needed a girl vocalist for his touring vaudeville show and could get Gisele cheaply. After the show ran for while, Jack heard that the Hit Parade was searching for a new female vocalist. So Jack had Gisele guest on his TV show and made sure the Hit Parade sponsors were watching.
Gisele got the job and spent the next four years polishing her talents, singing the "big seven" hits and those extras Jack has a big interest in Gisele's Saturday nighter and was instrumental in setting up the format of light, casual humor.
With the format set, the big problem is guests—those available and in the right price range, and who would fit working with Gisele. "I would like to sing to Gregory Peck," said Gisele, pretending to look wistful, "Ty Power, Clark Gable, Aly Khan—but they're not available. So I'll settle for the Curfew Kids—Greg, Ty, Mike and Butch. They're a little young but awful cute."

The patronage of Jack Benny couldn’t bring one thing—viewers. Gisele’s show on NBC began on Sept. 28, 1957 and was replaced with reruns from Schlitz Playhouse and General Electric Theater on March 29, 1958. It didn’t stop her career. She was a regular with Sid Caesar on ABC-TV in 1963. My first exposure to her was on the original version of The Match Game in June 1966 (the other celebrity panellist was fellow Canadian Paul Anka). And, of course, she continued to appear with Jack Benny.

More of the Wit of Fred Allen, Would-Be TV Star

Fred Allen wasn’t finished with radio in 1949 when his show for Ford went off the air. In 1950, there were guest appearances on other NBC shows—and even Jack Benny’s over on CBS. He stayed out of radio “to get a taste of oblivion. I shall be the only radio comic with a preview of oblivion when television really takes over,” he was quoted in a Louisville newspaper that January.

Allen still exercised his wit and opinions in the popular press that year. Here’s a column from UP from Feb. 18th.

Fred Allen Doesn’t Like Radio, Video or Anything Else
By ALINE MOSBY
(United Press Hollywood Correspondent)
Fred Allen yesterday said he’s very happy to be temporarily retired because: Radio’s dying, television isn’t grown up yet and the movies never have made a funny man out of him.
The sourpuss comedian quit radio last year because of illness. He says he has little intention of working again, either.
“Television won’t kill radio. Radio’s doing a pretty good job of killing itself,” cracked Allen. “It’s half dead, but rigor mortis hasn’t set in.
“And I’m not sure I’ll want to get into television even when it’s perfected. People tire of you more quickly when they see you every week.
“Besides, it’s anti-social. It won’t ruin sex but it’s ruining small talk. It’s getting smaller and smaller. Instead of talking you sit and watch some second-rate television show that you wouldn’t go out of your home to see.” “Besides,” he groused, “it doesn’t pay him to work, anyway.
“With taxes what they are, there’s no incentive to do anything. The only thing that keeps a lot of performers going is their ego. Well, my ego is under control.
“Therefore I see only futility in any temporary adulation I would get on TV by the portion of the unwashed public that hasn’t seen me before.”
Allen trekked to California, “which is founded on one objective, sunny,” to star in the radio version of his latest movie, “It’s In the Bag,” on NBC’s Screen Directors’ Playhouse, last night.
“I’ve made five movies, the latest in 1945, all of them bad. Every few years somebody comes around and says nobody knows how to handle me in pictures so he wants to try. So I make a movie with him—and it’s bad.
“In Hollywood acting ability or talent doesn’t count. You have to be photogenic.”
Allen furthermore th1nk he’s doing the public a favor by staying jobless for a while.| ‘An actor is like a cinder in the public eye,” he went on. “People need relief from him. The public should be very grateful to me. Everybody else is boring the hell out of them in pictures and radio. The tax boys are getting a rest, too. They don’t have to bother counting all my money.
“Next year I’ll write a book. The year after that I’ll read it and the next year I’ll tear it up. That’ll take up three years.
“Meantime I’m out here getting movie stars to donate their swimming pool to New York to help the water shortage.”

He began his television career that fall as one of the hosts appearing on a rotational basis on The Colgate Comedy Hour (he was gone by December to Florida for health reasons). He also wrote two books, though he died before completing the one about his vaudeville/stage life before radio. As for taxes, he beat the state of Massachusetts over a $90 tax bill, proving before a judge he no longer lived in Boston.

Allen used some of the same lines when he returned to New York and spoke with Earl Wilson. The column showed up March 3rd or 10th, depending on the paper.

Fred Allen Busy Doing ‘Nothing’
It’s Tougher Than Working, ‘Retired’ Comedian Finds
By EARL WILSON
NEW YORK—"In California," said Fred Allen, who's just back from there, "people don't know the meaning of the word ‘happen’ because nothing ever does.
"It's so crowded that all the oranges are on the ground because people are living in all the trees.
"They say Los Angeles is booming—just because the streets are full of people all the time.
"But those people in the streets are people moving from one house to another house. Naturally, when anybody moves into one of those California houses, he moves out of it and into another one right away."
Fred, you can see, had a good time in California. I met him at the Plaza Oak Room where his agent was trying to persuade him to go back to work.
Fred isn't very eager, however.
"You used to save your money for a rainy day. With taxes the way they are now, you save your money and when it rains all you've got to hold over your head is an income tax receipt."
I suggested that anybody with his talent must also be ambitious to have a vast audience every week.
"Nowadays," Fred replied, "You keep your nose to the grindstone and you wind up with your nostrils full of emery dust."
"So you have no plans?"
"I've got no more plans than a dead architect."
"Don't you like to be busy?"
"Why, I'm busier doing nothing than I was when I was working. In Hollywood I was on the Bob Hope show and on the way from the dressing room to the microphone, I did two benefits.
"Everybody in Los Angeles was trying to invent something. One guy was making his own Sanka. He put sleeping pills in his coffee.
"I saw trailers with television aerials on them. Guys that hadn't got homes yet had TV sets out in their yards. It got so cold while I was there, they put smudge pots under people.
"California is a state made famous by an adjective. Without that adjective ‘sunny,’ California would be another Nebraska.
"I like San Francisco. I don't know why they should build all those bridges. The people are so nice, no one would ever want to leave there."
"Don't you miss being on the air?" I asked.
"Those other guys are treadmill comedians, quantity comedians. They think they have to be on all day, and after they are, you can't remember a thing they say."
"Now that you've commented about California, what have you to say about New York?" I said.
"New York! The hotels have no water. The clerk gives you a bath towel and a divining rod."
Fred got up to go. "I have to see my dentist," he said. "Want to come along and have a tooth pulled on me?"

Wilson was one of few critics who liked Allen’s TV debut. Most the rest of the reviews I’ve seen, with the exception of Sid Shalit’s rave in the New York Daily News, rated it, as they say in baseball, “swing and a miss.” Wilson’s column of September 27, 1950 opened with:

NEW YORK—Fred Allen’s first TV show was for intelligent people—but I liked it anyway.
It had “class.” Fred discussed big NBC executives. He said one was so big he had a wastebasket to throw people in. He also said, “There is more to television than meets the nose.”
Backstage, Fred and guest Star Monte Wooley [sic] talked about the unbelievable amount of work that goes into a show. They had rehearsed for more than a wek. “Do you think you’ll do much television,” I asked Wooley.
Tossing his heard in the air, he snorted, “I shouldn’t think so.”

The Herald Tribune’s John Crosby pointed out Allen “seemed ill at ease in front of all those cameras.” I don’t think Allen lost that. Even on What’s My Line? he never really appeared comfortable. He once said he liked the panel show because it left him plenty of time to write. As he showed again and again, the place where he was most at ease was a place with words.

Criswell

You are not reading this.

You are dead.

Why? Criswell says so.

Well, he predicted the Earth would be gone on August 18, 1999.

Criswell’s book of prognostications published in 1968 is full of howlers. He’s even more hilarious than his appearance to bookend that great late-‘50s cinema epic, Plan 9 From Outer Space. He’s obsessed with aliens, gays, "filth" and End Times.

I suspect Charles Jeron Criswell King didn’t care so long as it sold books.

Criswell was around long before Ed Wood, Jr.’s film masterwork. An ad in the Hollywood Reporter of July 29, 1947 advertises him on a radio show on KHJ. Wizard of Odds was hosted by Leo Guild on KFI, dropped after 20 weeks, then picked up for airing on 85 Mutual stations twice a week starting June 24, 1947¹ and Criswell made regular appearances. “Odds” is an apt description of the Ed Wood-esque Guild, as you can read here. The funny this is, Guild also had a column in the Hollywood Reporter and basically outed Criswell as a phoney (“Seers are no more than amusing,” he wrote)².

One wonders whether Criswell predicted his life path when he was an ambitious playwright. In 1930, he managed a production about a stock company called “The Semicentennial” in New York³. Six years later, he concocted “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for Broadway. “Closely borders on burlesque,” reviewed Danton Walker of the Daily News, who revealed the producer was the improbably-named Groves Quigley⁴. Criswell likely didn’t see that Equity would pull its unknown actors because of dispute with non-union stage-hands and was denied the starring role after a re-write of his adaptation⁵. Undaunted, he and Louise Howard (Mrs. Criswell) mounted Ladies and How in 1938⁶, a musical set in a bordello⁷. It wasn’t on the boards for long. Criswell and Howard decided to revive “Loves of Dorian Gray” and in 1940 had brought the play to the Footlights Theater at Sunset and Laurel in Los Angeles⁸.

Exaggeration? The Hollywood Reporter of February 4, 1943 repeated the claim: “Jeron Criswell is starting his 20th year in the character of ‘Dorian Gray,’ the play now at the Troupers theatre. Criswell hope to beat his great grand-uncle, Joseph Jefferson’s ‘Rip Van Winkle’ record of 35 years.” The only thing is Criswell’s name was not in the cast of either New York versions of the play.

Then things started getting squirrely. Suddenly, Criswell acquired a doctorate. Listed in the City Directory of 1942 with no occupation, the Los Angeles Times of September 26 that year announced: “Dr. Jeron King Criswell, pastor of the Church of the Inner Voice, will conduct ‘all message’ services at Hollywood Hotel at 8 p.m., Wednesday and Friday.”

He had special powers now, too. The Reporter revealed: “Dr. Jeron Criswell, former pastor of the Fifth Avenue Spiritualist church, New York City, arrives today to serve as technical consultant on RKO’s spook film, ‘The Ghost Ship.’ Dr. Criswell is an authority on psychic phenomena and extra sensory perception, and will apply his theories to members of the cast. Criswell played a stage run in Picture of Dorian Grey here recently.”⁹ And in 1948, he got mixed up with a yellow-robed, unshaved “Buddhist missionary from Burma” named “Venerable Lokantha” who walked to a lecture over the tresses of 12 long-haired women. “Venerable is not permitted to walk on ordinary pavement,” insisted Criswell, after the Associated Press snapped a photo for posterity¹⁰.

By now, you’re wondering when we’ll get to his goofy predictions. Let’s do that now. His “Accurate Glimpse of the Future” was published by Atlas Features in the late ‘40s/early ‘50s. He rooked in people with an offer: “Criswell has agreed to predict for you in a personal letter FREE if you will purchase his lecture ‘The Secret Science of Being Lucky’ for $1” (along with a stamped, self-addressed envelope)¹¹. Among his predictions for 1952:

● Socialized medicine established in spite of AMA protests (still waiting).
● The death of college football and intercollegiate sports (yeah, sure).
● Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner will divorce (he was a few years off).
● $50 TV sets would be made (a rerun prediction, see below).
● Over 100 Hollywood Communists will be jailed on charges of treason by October 15th (nope).

He claimed something like 86% accuracy. The United Press looked ahead and behind in this column of October 18, 1948. Vaguely “predicting” divorces in Hollywood is like predicting the sun rise.

Seer Gives ’49 Cinema Headlines
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Oct. 17 (UP)—Today you can read the headlines that Hollywood is predicted to make in 1949, which ought to save you the trouble of poring over 365 newspapers next year. This time-saving service comes courtesy of the seer of the cinema city, Jeron Criswell. Mr. C. lectures and writes about the future, from the price of string beans to the next guy to sit on the White House balcony (he says Dewey).
Criswell also has predicted what the headline makers in town will be up to next year; he says movie bigwigs often consult him on this. Now if Hollywood follows through, you'll be ahead on the news and we can take the year off.
Prediction No. 1: Mitchum's marijuana is a warmup to a dope scandal that will sear 100 Hollywood names in '49!
He further foresees Rita Hayworth with another spouse. And a new California marriage law will turn packs of stars into bigamists, he says.
More future headlines: Famous actor lands in court on paternity charge. Character actor kills self. Head of big studio dies. Crooner and actress divorce.
On Hollywood's working side, Criswell predicts movie business will flop towards the end of next year because a $50 television set will flood the market. Theater tickets thus will nosedive, he says. Hollywood is predicted to grind out technicolor musicals and psychological, pardon the expression, thrillers. Jennifer Jones will win an Oscar for "Portrait of Jenny," for which David O. Selznick thanks Mr. Criswell. The prophet also says Hollywood will have a new Latin American star, and Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Marion Davies, Mae Murray, Pola Negri, Greta Garbo and Gloria Swanson will try comebacks.
"The era of child stars will end," Criswell added, with satisfaction.
Criswell bases his predictions on “trends, precedents of habit and cycles.” Last year his batting average was amazing.
For 1948 he predicted, in a magazine, a star's suicide around a holiday (Carole Landis' July 5 death), an explosion with fatalities in or near a studio (Hillcrest Country Club blowup), and the deaths of two stars in a May plane crash (Earl Carroll and Beryl Wallace crashed June 17).
He also figured a star would have a nervous breakdown in 1948 (Judy Garland did) and that William Powell would win an Oscar (well, he was nominated).
So far, he missed a couple of '48 predictions. Two top stars are supposed to elope to Mexico, a star was predicted to be deported on smuggling charges and he thought a child actress would file morals charges against a producer. The year isn’t up yet.



Let’s jump up to his January 4, 1978 column. Yes, he was still in print, courtesy of the McNaught Syndicate. He was big on Hollywood suicides and hated sports, it seems.

YOUR INCREDIBLE 1978 -- While December 31, 1978 is the last day on your calendar, you can be assured that the following events will take place. Events always seem more drastic when they are in cold type . . . The complete destruction of a Middle East nation by an atomic bomb! . . . I predict the stirring up of the dregs from the bottom of the oceans, wolving many of the nautical mysteries of the past. Historians will be delighted over the refuse, which will give them a clear and concise truth of the advancement of navigation.
OIL BOOM -- I predict Indiana will have an oil boom second to none along the Ohio-White-Wabash River banks. This long sleeping oil deposit will awaken like a hungry giant and change the history of the Hoosier State.
HEAVY RAINS -- I predict that the heavy rains in the far west will make deserts bloom like the green bay tree and will be the arrow that points to a new salvation.
The parched earth will be oozing with the rains and will give good crops.
FUTURE FRONT PAGE NEWS -- I predict the No. 1 crime in the future will be arson . . . I predict that America will face a revolution in entertainment, wait and see. Outdoor sports will include swim contests and water shows, circus acts and high wire attractions. Human-fly antics on buildings will draw the attention of thousands . . . I predict that brutality in sports will be the most sought-after virtue, and if many of the players can be taken off the field, diamond, court or ring on stretchers, the greater the enjoyment of the crowd. We will hark back to the "bread and circuses" of the Roman Empire.
FROM SCRATCH . . I predict that we will break away from the already-prepared foods and return to the kitchen where everything will be prepared from scratch . . . I predict that there will be a turn to the Conservative vs. the Liberal, and this will reach down to the very heart of politics.
WHAT PEOPLE WILL DO -- I predict Billy Carter will be the number one important man in the life of America, due to his exploits and his open honesty. His battle with the tax officials will endear him to all, plus his beer products will be found in every watering place in the nation. You can expect a "Brave Billy" club in your area soon . . . The CIA will be reorganized from top to bottom soon. This will not be a catch-all, but a new organization of Conservatives . . . I predict a new gossip columnist out of Canada will set the Fourth Estate on fire with her wild gossip similar to Louella Parsons or Hedda Hopper of the gossip heyday . . . I predict that the Africans and Cubans will come to a parting of the ways . . . I regret to predict a series of suicides of famous personalities through overdosage of narcotics.

How serious was all this? Criswell admitted there was a show biz element. “People aren’t interested in hearing about the future unless it’s more exciting than the present,” Newsweek once quoted Criswell as saying. “You’ve got to jazz it up a little.”¹²

Criswell Predicts From Now to the Year 2000 was not his first book. He and his wife wrote How to Crash Broadway in 1939 with 36 plot ideas to get your play on the Great White Way. The book was copyrighted and in stores in April 1968. We’ll link to the prediction book below, but among the many duds:

● (Robert F.) Kennedy will be elected president in 1972.
● Denver will be destroyed from outer space on June 9, 1989.
● Fidel Castro will be assassinated by a woman on August 9, 1970.
● The Lady of Light will build a capital on Borneo.
● People will be able to walk from Britain to France.
● The Prince of Darkness will rule from 1975 to 1988 and remove the name of God from books.
● Mexico City will sink into a lake and be extinct by 1985.
● London will be destroyed by a meteor in 1988.

On the other hand, even if you consider the era making this one probable, Criswell stated: “I predict that before October, 1968, one of the leaders of the Negro Civil Rights Movement in the United States will be assassinated.

Martin Luther King, Jr. died April 4, 1968.

As for Criswell’s reaction to his botchery that the world would end on August 18, 1999? There was none. He died in 1982. But you’re not dead. No matter what Criswell said.

---

1 Hollywood Reporter, June 17, 1947^↩
2 Hollywood Reporter, April 12, 1954^↩
3 New York Herald Tribune, June 14, 1930^↩
4 Daily News, July 21, 1936^↩
5 Billboard, August 29, 1936^↩
6 Daily News, Feb. 10, 1938^↩
7 N.Y. Herald Tribune, Feb. 27, 1938^↩
8 Hollywood Reporter, May 14, 1940^↩
9 Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 16, 1943^↩
10 Rochester Democrat, April 29, 1948^↩
11 Erie County Herald, March 6, 1952^↩
12 Newsweek, July 15, 1963^↩

Eve Arden on Teachers and Peepers

Today, if there was an America’s Prettiest Teacher contest, it would reviled and denounced on social media as sexist and objectifying. In the early 1950s, it was welcomed because it broke the stereotype of teachers as old sourpuss crones.

Such a contest was staged in conjunction with the TV/radio show Our Miss Brooks, in which Eve Arden played an independent woman who taught high school. The old sourpuss on the show was a man. Principal Osgood Conklin was played by someone who went on to a career as a bellowing grump—Gale Gordon.

Another career woman was Aline Mosby of the United Press, who was the wire service’s Moscow correspondent but spent time before that on the entertainment beat. She interviewed Arden a number of times and Arden filled in for her twice when he was on holidays.

In the first story, July 12, 1952, Arden talks about the appreciation teachers had for her humanising of their profession. In the second story, June 15, 1954, Arden talks about another teacher—Wally Cox’s Mr. Peepers—and opines about gimmick plots not working (Peepers was cancelled after the 1954-55 season). In the third story, June 24, 1956, she puts her spin on the cancellation of the TV version of Our Miss Brooks (it remained on radio until 1957 with old scripts reused). Arden talks about returning to TV. She did after a year off, but The Eve Arden Show only lasted a season.

Arden’s last series was The Mothers-in-Law, which lasted two lacklustre seasons. She then went on to fame for the post-Brooks generation in the movie Grease and its sequel.

Eve Arden Is School Teacher Idol of Today
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Writer
Hollywood (UP)—Today’s idol of the nation’s school-teachers is a gal who's rescued them from the horn-rimmed glasses-and-frown legend and given them a shot of sex appeal.
Movies usually caricature teachers as gray-haired monsters who go in for wrist-slapping with a ruler and never give a thought to romance.
But nowadays schoolmarms are voting thanks to Eve Arden and her "Our Miss Brooks” radio and television shows. Eve plays a pretty teacher who has romances, gets into scrapes and spouts bright lines for the pupils.

"I try to show a schoolteacher as a human being,” says Eve. "Too many youngsters think of a teacher as an instrument of discipline instead of as a person.”
The teachers let her know they’re grateful for glamourizing them, too. She recently accepted a gold plaque from the Alumni Association of Teachers’ College in Connecticut "for the best contribution to education by her human characterization of a schoolteacher.”
Thirty more plaques and scrolls from PTA’s, Educational groups and schools hang in the trophy room of her Brentwood home.
Twice she’s been invited to speak at National Teachers’ Conventions in Los Angeles. One group presented her with a golden apple. A community in the East wrote her their new school would be named the "Our Miss Brooks schoolhouse.”
A Hermansville, Mich., high school principal asked her to "please make Miss Brooks play principal for a while. I’d love to see what she'd do in Old Marblehead’s shoes.”
A Stewart, Nev., high school wanted a script of the program to use as a senior class play. And a Gauleybridge, W. V., teacher wrote that her principal suggested she spend her summer vacation in Hollywood in order to see the show.
"I can always tell when there are teachers in the audience at the broadcasting studio," grins Eve. ‘‘Once I had a script about higher pay for teachers, and several in the audience let out a whoop.
“I pattern the part somewhat after a teacher I had when I went to Tamalpals high school in Mill Valley, Calif. She was a lot of fun.
“Too bad more students don’t get to know their teachers socially."

‘Miss Brooks’ to Remain Single on TV Show
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—Eve Arden said today she thinks Mr. Peepers made a mistake by getting married on television, and she’s one single TV character who intends to stay that way.
Wally Cox, who portrays the timid Peepers, recently revolutionized his show by at last catching his lady love in the script. In the lives of citizens who follow such doings on the home screens, this was a major event.
But the “Our Miss Brooks” of television was among those Peeper fans who didn't approve of the video match.
“I think he made a mistake," she said. “Now it’ll be another husband-and-wife show.

“I get many letters from fans who want to see Miss Brooks catch Mr. Boyington [sic] on my program. Oh, we give 'em a teaser now and then, like the time they had a fling but it turned out to be a dream. I’m quite sure Miss Brooks will stay single.
“She’s a schoolteacher, and that's the show. If she got married, it would be a different program.”
Expecting First Baby
Off-screen, the red-haired TV star is very much married. Her last few filmed shows for CBS were harried because she is expecting her first baby in two months. Lucille Ball incorporated her own pregnancy into “I Love Lucy,” but as a spinster schoolteacher Miss Arden could not.
“The last program was rough,” she smiled. “They had to write a script that would allow me to wear an artist’s smock. That show will be on next fall and everyone will think I just didn’t lose weight after the baby was born.”
Turns Farmer
As her second season as Miss Brooks ended, Eve has turned lady farmer. She and her husband, actor Brooks West, and their three adopted children recently moved to a 38-acre ranch 52 miles from the cinema city.
She proudly claims she planted the vegetable garden herself. She and West plan to buy a small herd of sheep and some chickens and plant alfalfa and hay on the land.
“We hope the place will pay for itself eventually,” she said. “The alfalfa will be winter feed for the sheep, which we will raise to sell.
“It's quite a business. Alan Ladd, our neighbor, got his ranch for horses. They cost so much to feed he had to raise chickens and sell the eggs to pay for the horses!
“I love the land,” she added. “Other gals can have their minks and diamonds. I'll take that dirt.”

Eve Arden Explains Why TV Serials Get the Chop
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.)—A platoon of television serials is biting the dust this fall, but one of the departing stars, Eve (“Our Miss Brooks”) Arden, admits she's in favor of the cancellation because serials get “stagnant” after a few years.
Several faces familiar to you armchair viewers won't decorate the TV screens come September. Eve will continue “Our Miss Brooks” on CBS Radio but the television series is finished except for syndication of the reruns.
Off CBS-TV also will be “Navy Log,” “Brave Eagle,” “Four Star Playhouse,” “I Remember Mama,” “It's Always Jan” (Janis Paige) and “Life With Father.”
"Medic" Among Failures
NBC has laid more serial shows to rest: “Medic” (although it may return next spring), “Big Town,” “Frontier" and “It's A Great Life.” (The Jimmy Durante, Milton Berle, Pinky Lee, Gordon MacRae and “Truth or Consequences” programs also will not return this fall).

But, fortunately or unfortunately depending on what you like on TV both networks are rushing in replacements in the serial ranks. CBS new entries are “Oh, Susanna,” (Gale Storm); “Buccaneer,” “The West Point Story” and “Hey, Jeannie” (Jeannie Carson). NBC will try to get ratings with “On Trial” (a “Medic” for lawyers), “Hiram Holliday” (Wally Cox) and “Circus Boy.”
Some Serials Survive
The durable serials which have braved all storms are “I Love Lucy,” “Dragnet,” “The Loretta Young Show,” “Father Knows Best,” “Private Secretary” and “Make Room For Daddy.”
Miss Arden now is thumbing
through offers for other acting roles. She plans to take a year off to accept parts in movies and TV plays. Then, although some stars tire of serials, she’d like to start another one in the fall of 1957.
“For a year I can do just what feel like doing — including travel,” said the wise-cracking redhead.
“Then I’d like to do a fairly different serial, but still a comedy. The problem is to pick a character that will last. We did four years of Brooks on television, and this will be our eighth year on radio I'm glad to be doing something else. You can get in too deep a rut, kinda stagnant, doing the same character year after year.
“Lots of people have written indignant letters about Brooks leaving TV. But the syndication of the episodes will keep it on some stations for years, anyway.”

Muriel Landers

Muriel Landers was nicknamed “the fastest ton in the West.” People weren’t too subtle back then. (Though considering the rudeness and crudeness on social media, things may actually be worse today).

“Plump” seems to have been the preferred word in the media to describe her, as she found her way into supporting roles on television. Her nickname in the San Francisco papers in the early ‘50s was “Lannie.”

Landers was a graduate of Northwestern University who moved to the Bay Area by 1949. There she opened a TV training school and soon married Bill Sweeney of KFRC, then got a job on the air at KYA in 1951. Sniffed Herb Caen in his column of April 12, 1951: “One Muriel Landers, who starts a midnight disc jockey show from the Papagayo Room Sunday, is ballyhooing herself as "Your Glamour Gal With a Brain." Such conceit. All other "glamour gals" (ich) are glamorons?” She was also part of an experimental colour TV broadcast in San Francisco in January 1950 by a company hoping to sell its technology.

The big-time came unexpectedly. Walter Winchell wrote in his column of November 16, 1951: “JACK BENNY laughed so much watching Muriel Landers when he appeared on Sinatra's program that he invited her to join him in his next Palladium (London) show. What a break.” Benny used Landers on radio and TV.

The big time meant “big” jokes. Perhaps Landers didn’t mind. Here’s a United Press story of March 11, 1952.

Plumpness Pays Off for This Gal in Hollywood
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Mar. 11. —(UP)— Beautiful girls are signed for pictures because of their slender shapes but Muriel Landers, a well-fed tourist from New York, was rushed into pictures today — because she's a perfect 42.
Twentieth Century-Fox studio's been scouring the cinema city for a caloried cutie to play 287-pound Thomas Gomez' Indian wife in "Pony Soldier." But the Hollywood dolls are too busy dieting. So when Miss Landers happened to visit the town and lunch with a friend in the Fox commissary, bedlam busted loose.
Whirled Through Routine
She was, to be exact, discovered over a piece of banana cream pie. The casting director leaped to her table and begged her to take a movie test.
The pretty brunette was whirled through the wardrobe department . . . tested in technicolor . . . and signed for the leading, role before her hefty lunch had a chance to settle.
"The studio claims I'm 225 but I'm only 201. Don't make it any worse," she chuckled, all over.
She's only 5 foot, 1 inch tall, too, just like two Marilyn Monroes.
Directors Happy

"When the casting director saw me he grinned as though a light had gone on," she said, "He called the director of the picture and they all were smiling broadly.
"After the test everybody around the studio looked at me and grinned and I thought maybe my slip was showing.
"Finally this big gentleman comes along and shouts 'How!' I said, 'Why?' He was Thomas Gomez, very big, and I knew why they were laughing. He says wait until I see the eight chubby papooses we have in the picture."
TV Character Roles
Miss Five-by-Five started out to be an opera singer in Chicago but ate her way out of that career. So she crashed into New York television to play character roles with Frank Sinatra, Ed Wynn and Jack Benny.
"I kept putting on weight, in layers," she smiled.
"My name isn't too well known, but anybody with a TV set can't forget my figure."
Always a Job
"I've never had to look for jobs," she shrugged. "In New York every time I eat in a restaurant some TV producer offers me a part. They welcomed me with open arms. Not being a glamour girl hasn't hindered me.
"I find audiences like me, too. After all, half the women in the audience are more like me than Lana Turner."

Earl Wilson wrote about Landers in his syndicated column of May 17, 1957. By then she had made a bunch of TV guest appearances, played Rosa in the TV version of Life With Luigi and was cast in that Duke Mitchell/Sammy Petrillo classic, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952).

Television's fat girl, Muriel Landers —height 5 feet, weight 200 plus—feels sorry for you skinny women.
And especially for bony fashion models.
"They have such a pained expression!" says Muriel, shaking with plumpish laughter. "They're miserable from hunger."
MURIEL, WHOM YOU'VE seen with Ray Bolger, Jack Benny, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, Jack Carter and others, is a comic herself.
"I get paid by the pound," she'll be glad to tell you. "When I was on Frank Sinatra's show, I lifted him. Yeah, that's when I started picking up men."
Muriel, a Chicagoan who started as a concert singer, was told when she arrived in New York hunting acting jobs. "They'll take one look and throw you out of the office."
"Now I'm afraid to diet too much because I'm doing so well," she says. "I took off 40 pounds, though."
"So what is your actual weight now?" I asked her.
"Two hundred is sexier than 250 isn't it?" she flung back.
"A LOT OF MEN like us heavy women," she rippled on. "I've never had any problem getting one."
Her wardrobe's full of expensive size 20's dresses, and at 28 she goes laughing through life.
LONDON AUDIENCES howled when she did pratfalls in Jack Benny's act at the Palladium.
"Most women in the audiences everywhere are more like me than they are like Marilyn Monroe," she says. "They say, 'She's got a glamour kind of a job, maybe there's a chance for me.'"
"Do you have any plans for marriage?" I asked her.
"Yes, I do have some plans for marriage," she retorted, "and hope it has some plans for me!"

One of the people on Laugh-In early in the first season was Muriel Landers. I thought she was supposed to be part of the regular cast but it looks like she only appeared on two shows.

A stroke claimed Landers at age 55. She died in the Motion Picture Country Home on February 19, 1977.

He's Walking

It’s a bit of an overstatement to say everything Jack Benny touched turned to ratings, but there was a time when he sure helped. And we’re not talking about his own show.

Jack made guest appearances on a number of radio shows—Fred Allen’s may be the most memorable—but his presence on one particular programme helped a widow and the American Heart Fund. That’s when Jack was the Walking Man on Truth or Consequences (to the right you see host Ralph Edwards and Benny).

Benny was revealed as the Walking Man after a correct answer on the March 6, 1948 edition of Edwards’ stunt show. You can read a very excellent time frame on Martin Grams’ blog. Two days before a widow from Chicago named Florence Hubbard blurted out Benny’s name to Edwards, speculation ran through a newspaper column in the United Press.

HEY, JACK BENNY! DON'T SAY YOU'RE THE WALKING MAN
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, March 4. — The suspicion that he might be "the Walking Man" dawned upon Jack Benny today. It isn't anything definite... but, uh, he's been thinking about it and, well, there have been a few things.
Benny has something in common with 2,000,000 Americans. They've been thinking "the Walking Man" over, too, since he began to clop his feet and make noises on Ralph Edwards' "Truth or Consequences?' NBC radio show. [Mr. Edwards' show is heard at 8:30 P.M. Saturdays and Benny is heard on the same station at 7 P. M. Sunday.]
Guess who the feet belong to, and you collect $22,000 worth of loot. This includes the usual car trailer, houseful of furniture, trip to Sun Valley, diamond watch, coat, etc.
Every Saturday night Edwards phones three people who've written the best letters on why they sent in money for the American Heart Association.
Heifitz, Fidler or Devine
To date the show has collected than 2,000,000 letters and than a million bucks—an all-time radio record.
For seven weeks unhappy guessers have made wild stabs at names like Louis B. Mayer and President Truman. Folks were in the lying-awake-nights stage—until last Saturday's noise clue. A squeaky violin.
We called up a guy who owns such a violin. Who, we inquired, did he figure 'the Walking Man' might be?
Bing Bong Bell
"It might be me," he reflected.
"No!" we said.
"Yeah," said Benny. "You know, people have been stopping me on the street and writing letters asking me if I'm the Walking Man. The boys on my show have mentioned it, too.
"Oh, and Mary said something about it. I suppose we should have put the clues together, but we never listen to the program. We're usually out on Saturday nights. We haven't paid much attention to it, frankly."

If Benny had, he might've figured out the riddle Edwards repeats like this:
"Bing bong bell church bells (Benny's program is on Sunday).
"It's ten and only one can tell" (tenth alphabet letter J is for Jack).
"The master of the metropolis fits his name quite well" (Benny is the master of his radio-show valet, Rochester. That's the name of a metropolis in New York).
Are You Or Aren't You
Benny might also discover the horse-and-gunfire sounds on "the Walking Man" show could indicate his motto "Buck Benny Rides Again!" The Walking Man played Auld Lang Syne on the trumpet, too. Jack's last movie, he might recall, was "The Horn Blows at Midnight."
The mysterious gent also whistled "Annie Laurie" which begins, "Maxwellton Braes Are Bonnie." Benny's jalopy is a Maxwell. And the cat's wail could signify what violin strings are made of.
"Come to think of it, I have been doing a lot of walking on my program lately. Mentioned 'The Horn Blows st Midnight,' too," said Benny.
We said: "Well, are you or aren't you the walking man?
"Hmmmmmmm," said Benny.

The One, The Only, Fenneman

George Fenneman was more important to the success of You Bet Your Life than people realise and his absence may explain why revivals of the show have failed.

Groucho Marx was wonderfully caustic and insulting to contestants, but his show needed to have a bit of a balance. It couldn’t look like the naïve people coming onto the set were being unmercifully picked on. On You Bet Your Life, Fenneman helped soften the blow. He came across as someone at kin with the contestants because he’d get insulted, too. It was like he was on their side and, because he was involved in the show, he gave the viewer the impression he’d speak up for, and defend, the contestants if Groucho went too far.

Fenneman’s fame came with Groucho. He wasn’t one of the big name announcers, a guy like Jimmy Wallington or Ken Carpenter, when he was hired in 1948 for the second season of the radio version of You Bet Your Life. He was an ABC staff announcer in Los Angeles who had done a couple of network shows, Hilltop House and (briefly) I Deal in Crime. The way he put it, he ran into Groucho’s director, someone he had worked with in San Francisco, who urged him to audition for the job and got the job. That’s not quite it. He replaced Jack Slattery, who left the show after the first year for some reason. Fenneman stayed it until the end, and used it as a springboard for his own hosting and producing career.

How did Fenneman cope on You Bet Your Life? Let’s find out. Here’s a story from November 19, 1953. The show had jumped from ABC to CBS to NBC and then to television in 1950 where it prospered.

Acid Ribbing Defended By Groucho Announcer
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD (U.P.)—Groucho Marx should not be cited for cruelty to contestants, his announcer insisted today, because any amateur felled by Groucho's barbs "is somebody who deserves them."
Some television and radio fans Groucho's top NBC shows mourn while the master of sharp wit breaks up an audience with laughter at a hapless contestant's expense.
But George Fenneman, the handsome announcer on the program who is mercilessly ribbed himself by Groucho, defended the mustached comedian.
"Most people he gives a bad deserve it," said Fenneman as relaxed at home out of reach the eyebrow-wiggling Marx.
Stuffed Shirts
"Sometimes he's tough on a person who doesn't deserve it, because opportunity for good gags is there, but usually it's some stuffed shirt who's out of relation with the world—somebody who takes himself too seriously."
One of Fenneman's pre-show duties is to calm contestants who tremble over what Groucho may to them. But not one contestant has ever stomped home after the program in anger or embarrassment, he said.
Fenneman himself is one of the "Patsies" who is squelched by Groucho's piercing humor, and the announcer humbly thinks he deserves it, too.
In Category
"Groucho's wit takes apart things that at are supposed to be dignified and sacred, and an announcer of commercials is in that category," he admitted.
"The whole show for me is a nightmare. When I start to introduce a contestant, Groucho will say, 'Smile, smile, this is a fun show, look idiotic, Fenneman. Show them your teeth.'
"I smile so much Groucho calls me Laughing Boy. Now when I go into service stations and barber shops people say, 'Hello, Laughing Boy,' and howl."
Fenneman for years tried to deliver his commercials under Groucho's heckling. Now he has learned the only way to keep the sponsor from ulcers is to film the blurbs in advance when Marx isn't around to blow cigar smoke in his face.
Job Is Fun
Now I used to be flustered on the show, but now it's fun," George said. "I'm the underdog, which is wonderful. The fans have sympathy for me."
Once a contestant, name of Gonzales Gonzales, was so hilarious he was signed to a movie contract. "Believe me, he got the better of Groucho only because Groucho let him," said the announcer, nodding wisely. "You don't have the last word with Groucho if he doesn't want you to."

You Bet Your Life went off the air in 1961. Groucho came back without Fenneman in 1962. A success it wasn’t. Fenneman was still busy, though. Here’s a story that’s cobbled together from a couple of papers that subscribed to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner’s syndicate. It appeared in 1961. Yes, the woman in the photo accompanying the article later went on to work on Let’s Make a Deal.

George Fenneman Isn’t a Softie Anymore
Life With Groucho Did It
By CHARLES DENTON
THE commercial announcer is to television what the plate umpire is to baseball—a guy everyone loves to hate. The only difference is that the announcer is spared direct physical contact with his multitudes of detractors. The beer bottles toned at him crash harmlessly through the picture tubes of irate viewers instead of bouncing off his noggin.
Still, it isn't the sort of career many parents would pick for their offspring, which may be a grave mistake when you consider what electronic salesmanship has done for George Fenneman, as slick a hand with a jug of hair tonic or a new brand of canned eels as you're apt to find.
Not only has the dapper Fenneman managed to slap out a better than average living for quite a spell—14 years on Groucho Marx's radio and TV shows alone —spreading sponsorial messages, but he has become host of his own daytime show. Your Surprise Package and has a panel show, Take My Advice, in the works.
• • •
AND WHILE GEORGE is far too honest a gent to say that he's never had a twinge of conscience over some of his spiel-binding, he doesn't feel that his psyche has been permanently damaged by it.
"I've been lucky, I guess,” he conceded. "With a few exceptions I've been associated with sponsors and products I could believe in.
"Oh, I've done a few things I've been ashamed of, sure, but the grand average has been pretty good. Anyway, I feel that if people watch me do a bad commercial, they shouldn't be watching."
Fenneman admitted that he's had his share of beefs from the buying public about video huckstering. "And by now they're pretty unfunny, too." he said grimly, "because I've heard them all. My rejoinder is that if the complainers exercise restraint, if they stop buying the products, sponsors will change their commercials. You can always turn that set off, you know?"
• • •
AS A MATTER OF fact, Fenneman detects an upswing in the quality of TV commercials.
"At least now I can negotiate with sponsors," he explained. "Maybe it's just because I'm better known, but I can get things changed in commercials if I feel uncomfortable about them. And I don't have to yell any more, either. I just tell them to get another boy.
"Of course," he shrugged, "you can do that when you don't need the money. When you need it, you yell."
One development in parlor playhouse pitching that disturbs George is the increasing use of actors to deliver the commercials on their own shows.
"I'm always glad when they fall flat," he said gleefully. "Not only because they're taking a job away, but also because they don't do commercials well. Just as I'm no actor, actors should realize there's more to selling than holding up the pack of cigarets."
• • •
FOURTEEN YEARS (including radio) of taking rapier insults from Groucho have toughened Fenneman, yet left him sad with memories.
"I actually, in the beginning, went home and cried in my pillow every night over the insults from Groucho, and then I suddenly realized that this was Groucho's work, and that all I needed was 'this show.' And now look at me," says George, the biggest quiz show winner of all time.
George recalls the time on Groucho's show when a weight-lifter picked him up like a rag doll and perched George on his shoulder and how Groucho laughed that maniacal laugh and how George would have liked to kill both of them.
• • •
THEN THERE were the LeGarde twins, a pair of bullwhip artists. George was just recovering from a double hernia operation, and Groucho knew his quiz helper was walking around very gingerly. But when the LeGardes needed a sucker to pose with a cigarette and have it whipped from his lips, Groucho offered up George. At the last second Groucho relented, and George was let off the hook—but not before he had sweat off two pounds and nearly another hernia.
George relived, too, that thrilling moment when his hero, Gen. Omar Bradley, came on the show as a contestant. It was the only time he ever asked any of Groucho's guests for an autograph.
Remember the dame that brought 65 of her 159 cats to the show? George does, because he is allergic to cat hair and becomes an asthmatic case if a cat brushes him.
That was the night he flatly told Groucho he would not appear on stage with the cats. He did, though, and didn't sneeze once.
George was more afraid of Groucho than his allergy, apparently.
• • •
THE ONE TIME Groucho advised George was after the latter hired his own press agent, the high powered pressure artist, Russell Birdwell.
"Fire him," Groucho told George. "All you need is the show."
George decided Groucho was right, but before he could shake off Birdwell, he had cost George $16,000, and George says all he has to show for it is some mentions of his name in the tradepapers and two lunches at Romanoff's.
Besides hosting his own weekday show, Your Surprise Package. George has become "the Lipton Tea man." The Lipton people snapped up George last summer to do their commercials at the political conventions, after actor Eddie Albert had failed to cast the right image.

Groucho was not in the best of shape, physically or mentally, in 1977 when he died. Fenneman went to see him, hugged him, and Groucho’s mind clicked and came up with “Fenneman, you were always a lousy dancer.” It seems their on-camera relationship wasn’t Hollywood phoniness at all.

Don't Miss It!...Unless You Want To

Henry Morgan hated hyperbole.

Morgan infuriated ad agencies or/and sponsors by making his commercials anything but hyper sales pitches. If he praised a product, it was lukewarm or backhanded praise at best. It was his hit back at the outrageous and eye-rolling claims made in the advertising world, especially in broadcasting.

He took this concept even further. In 1948, Morgan starred with Arnold Stang and Bill Goodwin in a movie called “So This is New York.” Movies have trailers. So Morgan decided to satirise trailers with the one that was supposed to be plugging his own film. A really great concept.

Here’s a wire story about it from April 6, 1948.

Henry Morgan's 'Trailer' Violates All the Rules
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD
Well, sir, Henry Morgan's gone and made a two minute movie.
For you guys who have time just for a quick one, you can see this miniature masterpiece standing in the theater aisle. You won't have to even sit down.
Some people might get technical and call this movie a "trailer." That is, it's actually the thing which will show up in the theaters a couple of days before Morgan's full-length movie, So This Is New York.
But when the rules for making trailers were passed around, Morgan definitely was out having a beer. Any resemblance his two-minute movie has to a trailer certainly wasn't his fault.
Morgan's midget movie does not advertise his big picture as (1) supercolossal (2) the greatest since, etc. etc., and those other superlatives that make you wonder why the "coming attraction" always sounds better than the movie you paid cash to look at.
This "trailer" doesn't even say you have to see So This is New York. Most trailers scream "don't miss it. . . ." Morgan philosophically remarks that if you want to see the movie, okay, and if you don't well, drop around and we'll recommend one you'll like.
Morgan's in New York now. He left a couple of guys behind to finish up the "trailer." They did. Now they're sitting around congratulating themselves. The way they act you'd think they care more about that trailer than the full-length movie it advertises.
The big picture? Sure, that's great, but come on over to see the trailer, they said.
Usually a trailer is patched together from scenes the director didn't use. Then a narration is scribbled out in a couple of days. It promises you're gonna see the hottest love, the gorgiest [sic] murders, the loveliest toenails, etc.
Morgan and Screenplays, Inc., which made the movie for Enterprise Studio, went about their trailer in a slightly different way.

"Morgan pokes fun at movie trailers in a slightly different way.
"Morgan pokes fun at movie trailers on his radio show, so we did the same," explained the producer, Stanley Kramer.
This turned out to be a full-sized project. Kramer & Co. spent almost as much time making the trailer as the full-length picture.
The writers who wrote So This Is New York wrote a script for the trailer, too. Quite unorthodox. It has a sort of plot, which they polished to perfection. From last October until last week the studio slaved on Morgan's two-minute movie.
The studio big-wigs paraded to a projection room where they gravely okayed the shortie. Next week it'll be shown in a suburban theater—the first "sneak" preview of a trailer. If the audience likes it, the mighty two-minuter will be unleashed on the nation.
Mr. Morgan's movie-before-the-movie is narrated by Henry himself. He tells about the big picture and at the end he says:
"So if you're not doing anything when my movie comes around, and you want to see a movie, come on in. . .You might like it.
"And if you don't see what you like, ask for it. We might be able to recommend some other picture."

The trailer isn’t on-line but the movie is HERE (unless this is a dead link by the time you read this). The poster doesn’t want it embedded. One can guess what Morgan might say about that.

Plug Plug Plug

Plugola on radio comedy shows was good for everyone, it seems. A company got a free plug. Audiences got laughs. Writers got freebie gifts in return.

For a period of a few years, no comedian seemed to take advantage of this more than Jack Benny. He had a sure-fire laugh formula based on his character being cheap. Someone on his show would mention a product, then Benny would joke that the mention would result in him getting the product for nothing. One show topped it by turning it into one of Benny’s great running gags that always came out of nowhere—Frank Nelson played a man who interrupted a scene later in the show by delivering the product.

Script writer Milt Josefsberg explained in his book about the Benny show that situation wasn’t quite as it played out on radio. Benny would rarely take advantage of the plug, he said; the company getting the freebie would generally send alcohol to the writers.

It seems the idea of inserting plug-gags on a radio show didn’t always originate with its writer. Witness this interesting column that appeared April 8, 1948:

Radio Full of Ad Plugs Sugar-Coated as Gags
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD
The radio shows are getting so shot full of sneaked-in ads, disguised as gags, that you wonder how they have time for the commercial the sponsor is paying for. These plugs most listeners don't know about.
They hear Jack Benny make a crack about which end of a Studebaker you get into. Or Bob Hope spiel about somebody who combs his hair with a Mixmaster. They yak at the gags and figure the trademarks got there by accident.
Not in this bright commercial age. . . . The plugs are out-and-out ads. But neither Benny and Hope, their writers, nor the networks get paid for 'em. The only guy who does is the "script plugger." He takes dough from companies to get their names mentioned in a gag on a radio show.
Gift-Sending Part Of Ad Plugging
Script pluggers, we always thought, were mole-like characters who pulled slick deals with customers in the back booths of dim bars on Vine St. We found one sprinting around in broad daylight.
"This is strictly on the up-and-up," says Joe Gardner.
"We do not," he added indignantly, "pay writers to plug our clients in their scripts. Of course, we send them gifts, but that's just to cultivate their good will . . ."
He operates this way: He takes a script-writer for the Benny show, say, to lunch.
"Got a great gag on a Studebaker," he barks to the writer, and tells it to him. The gag's good. The writer says thanks, he'll use it.
"Everybody's happy," beams Mr. Gardiner. "My client gets a plug on a radio show that would cost him thousands if he bought it as a sponsor. He gets the plug for practically nothing—just the few hundred he pays me.
"The writer's happy. He has a good gag and a bottle of scotch I send him. Benny likes the gag, too."
Free Merchandise Helps Get Plugs
Hey, what about the networks, we said. After all, they're in business to get paid for the ads they broadcast, aren't they?
"Sure, the radio boys raised a fuss for a while," grinned Mr. G.
They shut up, he whispered, after the "script pluggers" began furnishing free merchandise for give-away shows. If the radio folks had to buy all the prizes they hand out to giggling contestants, they'd be out a few million bucks a year.
The give-away show is where Gardiner operates best. He loads 'em down with prizes like ball-bearing lipstick (for making-up under water), things to bake potatoes in atop a stove, egg beaters with low and high gears, shoulder pads for coat hangers, etc., etc.
Each time the master of ceremonies gives one of these treasures away, he lovingly describes it. The lady gets her prize that the show didn't have to pay for, the company gets a cheap plug, and Gardiner collects his commission.
There's only one guy who doesn't profit by this neat arrangement—the sponsor who pays for the show. Why he hasn't kicked up a storm yet, we don't know. Once the sponsor of a give-away show took a test. The ladies in the studio audience were asked to tell what the show advertised. Each carefully listed the brand names of all the fantastic prizes. Not one remembered the company that only shells out several thousand dollars a week so the housewives can win those things!

The most famous plug on the Benny show likely occurred on November 27, 1949:

JACK: And Rochester, the evenings are getting chilly so don't forget to plug in my General Electric blanket.
ROCH: Boss, boss, we haven't got a General Electric blanket.
JACK: We've got one now. (laughter and applause) I'm (ad-libs) oh, brother, will my home be full of General Electric blankets. (resumes script) I'm going into the den and read now.
ROCH: Are you gonna walk or shall I drive you in a Cadillac?
JACK: Let's not over-do it.

How To Be a Star

George O’Hanlon is known today only as George Jetson and it’s a shame. O’Hanlon’s original fame came from a series of funny one-reelers released by Warner Bros. in the 1940s and ‘50s which deserve wider exposure.

The Joe McDoakes shorts weren’t really rerun much on television (unlike one-reel animated cartoons or the Three Stooges two-reelers) and attempts to put together a McDoakes sitcom failed. It’s too bad, because the few shorts in the series I’ve seen are enjoyable. They benefit not only from good comic acting but the direction and writing of Richard Bare. The best of the McDoakes have some gentle spoofing and, at times, they get surreal, similar in a way to Bare’s great TV series “Green Acres,” where the bizarre was accepted as a normal way of living.

O’Hanlon and Bare talk a bit about their light pokes in this United Press interview from 1947. O’Hanlon died in 1989 after a stroke (he had just finished a recording session as George Jetson). Bare is still with us at age 101.

Advice on How to Be a Movie Star By a Couple of Gents Who Are Not
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, Feb. 18 (UP)—The brothers Warner would have fallen right out of their gold-trimmed swivel chairs if they had seen two of the 2,504 hirelings today. These two characters, ignoring their bosses’ blood pressure, were handing out advice. On how to be a movie star.
Yet they’re quite a stretch from being in that category themselves.
Well, except in a way. They look like movie stars. George O’Hanlon resembles Burgess Meredith a bit and Richard Bare might pass for Cary Grant in the dusk. O’Hanlon and Bare grind out those 10-minute comedies that flash on the screen while you’re out in the lobby having a smoke, waiting for Burgess Meredith and Cary Grant to come on in the main event.
So how come these fellows know so much about being movie stars?
“We look so much like ‘em,” explained O’Hanlon, “that movie stars are always mistaking us for movie stars. We’re on the inside, see?”
Besides, he added, if a movie-towner wants to know something he should ask some yokel who’s not suppose to know. Then he’ll find out.
They gathered their advice by eavesdropping under tables at the Brown Derby and loafing, disguised as lampposts, at Hollywood and Vine.
Then they rolled it into a comedy short, “So you wants be a movie star.” This neatly fits into their “so you wanta” series, which points a stern finger at cringing movie patrons. Things like “so you want quit smoking,” and “so you wanta have a nervous breakdown.”
“We’ll tell you some things about stars that you won’t find in our picture,” hissed Bare.
Here’s their formula. If you wanta be a star, turn bald, elope with your best friend’s wife and report your house robbed once a year.
“A man can’t have more than 10 hairs on his noggin,” explained Bare, parking his number 10’s on somebody else’s desk while we prayed Mssrs. Warner & Warner weren’t peeking. “Haven’t you heard of the hairdressers’ union—Jack Benny, Bing Crosby, Charles Boyer?”
A star should also have a face that takes two hours to paint and four hours to light, our experts continued. Gives the makeup men and electricians something to do.
And when an actor is told to choose a script, they said, he rips the title page from a best-seller and writes new insides. That’ll make him a star, says Profs. O’Hanlon and Bare.
Now we come to a star’s social life.
Our hero, they said, must get married only one (whazzis?) Otherwise he’ll be broke coughing up alimony. His one wife, they said, should have been his best friend’s.
“It’s being done, you know,” said O’Hanlon, glancing at a picture of Van Johnson.
“And for publicity,” said O’Hanlon, “what’s better than having your house robbed?” Or giving advice on how to be movie stars?
An actor also can have himself paged at a nitery for only two bucks a month, Bare pointed out. Of course, the star never answers the page at first. He waits until everyone is looking at him.
Now if you’re not a star in two weeks under this formula, said Bare and O’Hanlon, tactfully examining their nails, better leave town. They are.

My favourite of the McDoakes shorts is “So You Want To Be A Detective,” a brilliant spoof where the killer turns out to be narrator Art Gilmore. I spotted another short the other day so watch it before the inevitable corporate take-down order. The mechanical sight gags are ingenious and Bill Lava cooked up a nice little score. The short was released on June 27, 1955, which seems late to be parodying the John J. Anthony radio show (complete with “Don’t touch the microphone”), but the people watching this at the time would be familiar with it. And you should be familiar with the uncredited actor who plays Mr. Agony. He’s Arthur Q. Bryan, the voice of Elmer Fudd. He’s a lot thinner in this than he was in the early ‘40s.

The Lousy Violinist and Great Humanitarian

Jack Benny, Comedian was also Jack Benny, Patron of the Arts. He and his violin appeared at countless benefit concerts and it’d probably be next to impossible to determine how much money he raised to save orchestras and grand old buildings. One was Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre which, incidentally, was not the same house where Jack played in vaudeville in the early ‘20s. The Orpheum you see in the 1928 picture to the right still stands (the Commodore Rooms and J.T. Wilson house do not), thanks in part to Jack Benny.

Let’s turn the clock to 1957, when the Benny jaunts to concert halls around North America were still relatively new. He talks about them in this United Press story that appeared in newspapers on April 18th.

Hollywood Fiddler Benny Graduates
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD (UP)—The newest rage of the concert world will bow to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra Tuesday night, tuck his violin under his white tie and play, he hopes.
Everybody used to laugh when Jack Benny dragged out his violin on his radio and TV shows, but now he's graduated into longhair music halls and gained a new "career."
A year ago Benny made his concert debut in Oklahoma City, followed by concerts in New York's Carnegie Hall and Philadelphia. Orchestras in other cities were so stunned they flooded Benny with offers. His 1957 benefit concert tour begins here and moves to Washington, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco and London.
BUT THE NEW concert star is taking it all very humbly. "Actually, I'm pretty lousy," confessed Jack. "I don't play at all. But I get through numbers and I try to play as well as I can.
"People who think I can't play are surprised. Some figure I'll just tell jokes and try 'Love in Bloom." But I do these as legit as any concert.
"Mary can't stand my playing," he added sadly. "She says I should be billed, 'Jack Benny and His Frightful Fiddle'".
At the April 23rd concert for the benefit of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Jack will play the first movement of Mendelssohn's Concerto plus other classical numbers. He's been practicing daily and unfortunately always plays better while practicing than on the stage, he says. "I get stage fright, I guess because I'm playing in front of great musicians," he said.
"It's odd—I'm not nervous about my TV shows, which I should be, as that is my real business. But I'm always nervous at concerts, which I shouldn't be because the public really doesn't expect anything.
Benny has been wielding a bow since the age of 6. His first paying violin job was with a vaudeville orchestra. Before long he was playing on the stage. Finally the fiddle became a comedy prop, until today it is as much a part of the Benny legend as gags about his stinginess, Maxwell car and perennial 39-year-old age.
ONLY BY becoming a world-famous comedian has Jack been able to attain the concert stage. But, on the other hand, if he had only practiced harder when he was a youngster—
"I was like a golfer, who likes to play more than he likes to practice," he said, "If I had really practiced, I might have been very good. As a concert violinist I would have kept my real name—Kubelsky. I would have used just that one name—"
Then he returned to his familiar Benny tone with, "Well, I might have been very lousy, too, so it's just as well."

I suppose one would have to be a psychologist to figure out why Jack Benny took up the violin in earnest so many years after dropping it in childhood. But it doesn’t really matter. In the end, even his playing—good, bad or indifferent—entertained audiences, and helped innumerable orchestras stave off almost certain death.

Screw-ups and Sportsmen

Inside jokes got on the air periodically on the Jack Benny radio show. Some are decipherable; laughter from the band greeted Jack reading a fairy tale featuring a character named “Bertram Scott,” who was Jack’s business secretary. But others are a little more arcane.

On the April 16, 1950 show, one of Jack’s jokes bombed. He then ad-libbed “My writers own an oil well. I can’t do anything with them.” Jack ad-libbed the oil well reference a few more times when the show started dying.

I’ve tried in vain to find a contemporary reference to any of the writers owning an oil well. But I did find a newspaper column that mentioned the Sportsmen Quartet owned one.

The Sportsmen had been around since the 1930s. They had their own 15-minute show for a time, appeared on Rudy Vallee’s and Judy Canova’s programmes and even provided songs for animated cartoons. They had even done some anonymous work on The Jack Benny Program before “officially” becoming part of it in the 1946-47 season, originally playing off the notorious Benny cheapness. Eventually, the Quartet did an excellent and memorable job crooning parody versions of songs that incorporated sales pitches and stock phrases for Lucky Strike cigarettes, cleverly arranged by Mahlon Merrick.

Little was written about the Quartet during their heyday, but the United Press came out with this story in 1953. About the time it was published, the Quartet were touring with Bob Crosby and had stopped in Vancouver with Canadian-born Gisele Mackenzie to raise money to pay for the British Empire Games the following year.

Singers of Commercials Branch Into Own Show
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Hollywood Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, May 27. — The “Four Sportsmen” quartet which parlayed a “Hmm” into fame and fortune on Jack Benny’s radio program, said today they're branching into their own show so they can really sing.
The four male crooners thank Benny hourly for giving them overnight success on his CBS program. But, they sighed, they can only give out with a cigaret commercial and “hmmm” that's a running joke on the show.
Like Phil Harris, Dennis Day and other Benny alumni, they’re taking the plunge on their own.
Two Singers
“Bob Crosby sings on the show and so does Dennis Day, so they don’t need us for regular songs,” explained Gurney Bell, Bill Days, Jay Meyer and Marty Sperzel—only not all at once.
“We’ll still stay with Benny, but we have our own transcribed radio show now so we can really sing songs.”
The hit they made as Benny’s foils have brought them a string of other sideline businesses, too.
The Sportsmen incorporated themselves and invested in a housing project, an oil well, a company in the Philippines, a helicopter and a play that flopped.
They’ve scored success on personal appearance tours, after a battle to convince booking agents they could do something besides a musical “hmmmm.” They also plan a series of television films.
“We went into these businesses together on our motto, ‘United we sing, divided we fall,’” quipped Days.
The “Hmm” on the Benny show started a joke.
“Don Wilson, the announcer, was to do the commercial and rather than make it a stereotyped thing, they decided to have a quartet do a hum. Then Benny could say, ‘For this I pay $500?’ and faint,” said Meyer.
Backing
The Sportsmen already were singing as “backing” for such name chirpers as Ginny Sims and Dinah Shore. The unknown quartet was hired for the Benny show. They were such a hit that Benny kept them on. On one program Benny threatened to sell them to rival Fred Allen, and CBS was flooded with irate letters defending the quartet.
One member of the combination has a pitchpipe to give the quartet their cue for the “Hmmm.”
“Once we missed the note, so on the next show Benny locked us in the closet and made us say the commercial 500 times,” grinned Sperzel.

Sperzel’s reference is well-known to fans of the Benny radio show. The broadcast of January 8, 1950 was a complete shambles—except to the audience, who love the spontaneity of mistakes. It started when award-winning announcer Don Wilson spoonerised columnist Drew Pearson’s name into “Drear Pooson.” The sketch which took up the second half of the show had Mary bollix a line. And then the Sportsmen missed a singing cue, with only a couple of them (sounding off-mike) delivering their lyrics. The following weeks, Jack used it as a running gag which Sperzel explained the interview.

For whatever reason, Sperzel became less talkative years later. Non-talkative is, perhaps, a better term. He flatly told people he didn’t want to talk about his career. He died in 2011 at 98, the last surviving member of the post-1943 version of the Quartet.