Colonna Entertains Troops, Real and Fake

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.

The Happy Professor

Once upon a time, Bob Hope had a radio show. It was a good radio show. My favourite part of the Bob Hope Show isn’t Hope. It’s a wonderfully eccentric man named Jerry Colonna.

Colonna started out as a musician but somehow ended up spouting non sequiturs and using peculiar logic during dialogues with Old Ski Nose. He had several catchphrases, some of them you’ll hear if you watch old Warner Bros. cartoons with Colonna-like characters.

He lasted through the ‘40s with Hope. By then, Colonna wanted to do his own show and Hope wanted to freshen his with new people.

Let’s look at 20 years of Colonna’s career. First up is a 1941 column.

Hollywood Screen Life
BY ROBBIN COONS
HOLLYWOOD, Mar. 6—Even after sitting across a table from Jerry Colonna, you find it hard to believe in the reality of his most treasured possession, his moustache.
Even close-up, that gallant, larruping, upstanding decoration loons like something fabricated in a wild moment by a make-up artist. It's real, though, and Jerry hasn't been without it for 16 of his 36 years.
All those years, many of them before the moustache became an ingredient of his comic front, he has been receiving "double-takes" from incredulous passers-by.
Jerry (real name Gerard) credits the wonderful item to the inspiration of his late grandfather, who had a really prodigious pair of handle-bars that reached half-way down his chest and curled up at the ends. Jerry started early and to this day hasn't parted with one of the original hairs. He has become expert at resisting the blandishments of yearning barbers, and does his own trimming.
• • •
Once Jerry joined an orchestra as a trombonist when he couldn't play the trombone, a deficiency he quickly remedied by hasty study For several years he made his living at music—in vaudeville (both on stage and in pit), in concert orchestras, on the air. The trombone further justified the moustache, he says. A moustache helps to cushion the lips for performers on any wind instrument, for which reason he still shaves his under-lip sparingly, even though for three or four years he has played the trombone infrequently.
Jerry came into picture via "52nd Street" after a guest aired with Fred Allen. He was under contract briefly at Warner's, where his bulging, rolling eyes and his fabulous moustachios appeared in a couple of bits—nobody, apparently knowing what to do with them.
He did better at Paramount, and with Bob Hope on the air. His latest film is "You're the One," his current job the "romantic lead opposite Judy Canova in "Sis Hopkins." (If Republic hasn't picked Judy's next story, they can have this tip free: Why not a burlesque musical of "Trilby," with hypnotic-eyed Colonna as Svengali—singing in his own distinctive "grand opera" style?)
• • •
Jerry's comedy springs—aside from his eyes, singing volce (?), and moustache—from dialogue. He borrows a couple of Bob Hope's writers to go over the scripts, looking for ways to twist straight lines into Colonna gags without hurting the sense or the story.
He turned down a chance to play a role in "Marie Antoinette" because it would have required him to shave. For "You're the One," Producer Gene Markey wanted him to shave for one scene, but Colonna won the argument. He says has no wish to be an actor of other roles than Jerry Colonna—with, possibly, some alterations. In person he is quiet, almost shy.
He has been married foe 10 years. Mrs. Colonna, he says, has never objected to his moustache—in fact, never has seen him out it. Sometimes he himself wonders what he looks like underneath the shrubbery.

Now, to July 11, 1950. Colonna talked with NBC but ended up spending the rest of the year appearing at clubs.

Jerry Colonna Latest Of Top Radio Comics To Get Own TV Show
By BOB THOMAS
Associated Press Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD—Jerry Colonna, the man with monstrous mustache and the steam-whistle voice, is the latest to get into the television picture.
The comic is shaping up his own show, which he hopes to have ready for the fall that should help enliven the coming season, which promises to be the most competitive in the young industry's history. Such stars as Fred Allen, Eddie Cantor, Martin and Lewis and Groucho Marx have been mentioned as definite or probable starters in the TV field.
Colonna severed his professional life with his old sidekick, Bob Hope, two years ago and has been doing mostly theatre dates since. The split was a friendly one and arose over Jerry's desire to have a show of his own. Hope's sponsor wouldn't go for it and so Jerry took a walk.
"I SPENT $9,000 whipping up an audition," Jerry recalled, "but I hit the market just when the bottom was dropping out of radio."
He declared he had no regrets over the secession from Hope, he gained a chance to try something different. But Jerry admitted the working conditions were ideal. He arrived two hours before the show and sometimes didn't go over the show until an hour before the broadcast. For reading about five gags he was paid $1,750 per week!

And finally Let’s stop in 1961. Colonna had pretty well given up on TV and settled in at casino resorts.

Jerry Colonna, Masterful Madcap of Radio and Movies, Has Night Club Act
By JANET FERRIS
STATELINE, May 7 (AP) — Almost two decades since the Road to Rio and the Road to Singapore, comedian Jerry Colonna, 56, now is hitting tho road to Reno, Lake Tahoe and Las Vegas.
His gay nineties mustache as black and bristling as ever, the whites of his great Barney Google eyes prominent against his dark-skinned face. Colonna now plays Nevada night clubs with his group of seven musicians.
Colonna arranges and writes all the music, including his satire on popular songs. His group puts on four 45-minute shows five nights a week, 46 weeks a year. After working almost until dawn, Jerry gets up early enough in the afternoon to take a sunbath to preserve his tan.
"We sometimes ad lib our way out of routines," he said in an interview, "Not out of boredom but from trying to see if we can top ourselves."
How can anyone be funny 46 weeks of the year?
"When the lights go on and the curtain goes up, the old firehorse in me comes out," he explained.
In World War II days, "The Professor" was called one of the leading experts on doubletalk. He still uses these famed patter routines.
"I like to do the pattern piece phonetically," he explained. "Mine is the iambic pentameter type. I like to watch the expressions on their faces. I like to do it so they're sitting up on their chairs trying to grasp it."
How does playing against the rattle of dice and clanking slot machines of the gambling casinos compare with playing in a quiet studio to radio end television audiences?
"This is a lot more confining and a lot harder than radio," he acknowledged.
"On radio, we had time to rehearse. We also had a preview of each show to check it out for the big laughs, so we knew what we were doing. On the other hand in TV, there was never enough time to rehearse.
"People who come to a radio or a TV show come to be entertained," he said. "These night club people aren't a captive audience. They may stay through three shows, in which case you have to keep putting in fresh material. Or they can walk out in the middle of an act."
Entertainment seems to run in Colonna's family. One of his brothers had a comedy quartet in vaudeville.
"I didn't lean toward that side of the stage then," he said. "I was more interested in trombone and jazz."
Colonna got on the Fred Allen show when he was playing trombone with the Columbia Symphony orchestra. At CBS he did Dixieland mornings, dance music afternoons and symphony in the evenings.
"Radio was mostly sustaining then. There were hardly any commercials so we really worked, 15 hours a day."
His big comedy break came when the woman playing Mrs. Nusbaum, the gossip of Allen's Alley, told her boss: "Did you see that man with the mustache. He's an opera singer."
Colonna's closest contact with opera had been studying trombone with the first trombonist of tho Metropolitan Opera company, but he was willing to try.
"I broke out with a long, searing note, Fred went down on the floor. He said: "We're going to use this on our show next week."
In the ensuing performance, Colonna tried to sell Fred Allen on doing a concert.
When the roads opened up—a long connection with Bob Hope, motion pictures, radio, television and Nevada.
The roads haven't all been strewn with daffodils, but Colonna obviously has enjoyed traveling them. Married for 30 years, his wife, Florence, has traveled with him and set up housekeeping "wherever we are."

The first time I saw Colonna was on McHale’s Navy in 1965. I thought he was a character invented for the episode; I hadn’t heard the old Hope shows yet. Colonna had a stroke in 1966, but had recovered to appear on a Christmas special with Hope. He made a few more TV appearances, either with Hope or saluting his old boss. He had a heart attack in 1979 and Hope was at his bedside the following year when he had heart troubles. Bing Crosby’s former Road partner delivered his eulogy when Colonna died in 1986 at the age of 82. Referring to their dozen-plus tours of military bases, Hope said “Jerry would pop out of the audience wearing a uniform and I’d ask him, ‘What were you before you joined the Army?’ And he’d answer, ‘Happy.’ Well, I have a feeling that St. Peter's question might be, ‘What were you in life?’ And Jerry would have the same answer—‘Happy.’

Find an old Bob Hope show from the early ‘40s and listen to the crazy antics of Professor Colonna. You’ll be happy, too.