The Rise of Kenny Baker

At first, Kenny Baker was a shy young man who was grateful that he was given a huge break that practically made him an overnight national success. That’s if the publicity is accurate. But something happened between November 3, 1935 when he made his debut on the Jack Benny radio show and less than four years later when he didn’t show up for the final show of the season. He later declared he left because the character he was given on the show was grating on him and he didn’t want to be typecast. Baker hung around radio for another decade, even landing a starring sitcom, but he basically kissed the pinnacle of his career goodbye when quit Benny.

It would appear there were no hard feelings; perhaps Benny felt that Baker was bettering himself by sticking exclusively as the vocalist on The Texaco Star Theatre (he had worked on that show and Benny’s simultaneously in 1939). Jokes about Kenny Baker made periodic appearances on the Benny show for the next dozen or so years, and Baker returned for the Christmas show in 1946.

Here’s a syndicated feature story published in the Rochester Democrat of December 20, 1936 that gives a nice summary of Baker’s career up to that date.

A Timid Tenor
The Story of a Chap Named Kenny Baker, Who Really Is Very Modest
By Frances Morrin
KENNY BAKER is the Horatio Alger, Jr. of the networks; the answer to the success story writer's prayer. Unknown a year ago, today he is one of the big names in radio. In the year that he been the timid tenor on Jack Benny's hour, he has won his way into the hearts of the radio fans. Stacks of fan mall testify to that. And now he is act for a career in motion pictures with Mervyn LeRoy, Warner Bros.' ace director, as his sponsor.
His story has all the ingredients that go to make up the popular Horatio Alger, Jr., rags-to-riches story formula. Struggling young tenor playing tag with jobs runs away with high school sweetheart whose parents object to son-in-law who sings for a living. Terrific struggle ensues to keep their heads above water financially and then practically overnight comes fame and fortune.
Kenny, however, is inclined to discount his success and put it down to luck, as I discovered when I attempted to pry the story of his life from him one afternoon recently. We had made arrangements to meet at the reception room of the Hollywood NBC studios, and I admit I was curious about this young man whom I had -heard only over the radio.
When he came in in white ducks and a sweater he looked more like a six-foot college football player than a leading light of radioland. And he is not handsome; rather he belongs to the homely-but-cute school with his befreckled nose, generous mouth and shy but friendly manner.
AND definitely he is very modest about his arrival. The details he gives are very sketchy. When 1 asked him to tell me something about himself he said: “Well, I sang around here for several years and then, I won the Texaco Radio Open contest and that led to my engagement with Jack Benny. Now there’s a grand fellow, Jack.”
The first thing you know you’re talking about Jack Benny instead of about Kenny Baker. But by dint of much questioning of the young man himself and members of the Benny cast I finally pieced together his story. Kenny, who was christened Kenneth Lawrence Baker, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Baker. He is one of those rare specimens, a native Californian, for he was born in the little town of Monrovia, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, 24 years ago.
We skip over the tender years of his life except to say that Mr. and Mrs. Baker had ambitions for their son to be a great violinist. Kenny admits that he wanted to play the violin, but not enough to practice very much.
The Baker family moved to Long Beach and it was while going to the Polytechnic High School there that he first began to take any great interest in singing. After graduation he decided definitely that he would follow a musical career and studied music theory at the Long Beach Junior College. While he was studying he entered the Atwater Kent radio contest but nothing happened.
THE next year, 1933, was an eventful year in Kenny's life. That was the year of the Long Beach earthquake. After the quake he quit school and went back to work. Just what the earthquake had to do with his leaving school and going to work I don’t know, unless it was that he had fallen very much in love with his high school sweetheart, Geraldine Churchill, and promised to show her parents, who objected to a crooner as a son-in-law, that he could make a living.
Or perhaps the earthquake convinced young Baker that life was short at best and that he should set about living in earnest. At any rate, he went to work in a furniture store. There followed a series of jobs including one as a day laborer on the Boulder Dam project.
Finally he managed to get steady work singing in a church in one of the small suburban towns. With a regular income assured Kenny decided to risk matrimony, so he and Geraldine, who had waited patiently for him, eloped. Then, as Kenny puts it, the fight started.
The church job vanished and the youthful Benedict found that there were many more tenors than there were jobs for them. He got a coach, Edward Novis, brother of Donald of radio fame, and worked with his voice, studied and practiced. He sang at night clubs, at churches, filled occasional radio engagements. Anything to keep the wolf from the Baker doorstep. Gradually he began to get local recognition, and finally became a member of the staff quartet on Los Angeles station KFWB.

IT WAS while he was singing there that he decided to enter the Texaco Radio Open contest held in Los Angeles last year. Much to his own amazement, he won it over the other 1,100 contestants.
“Boy, you don’t know how good $100 in cash looked to me. That was the prize and also an engagement to sing with Eddy Duchin’s orchestra at the Cocoanut Grove,” Kenny beamed as he told me this.
“It was while I was singing at the Grove that Mervyn LeRoy, the director, heard me. He came backstage after my act and told me he thought I had moving picture possibilities. I thought at first be was kidding, because I know I’m no Romeo. Then when he offered me a contract I signed it so fast I splattered ink all over the paper.”
Another famous personality caught Kenny’s act at the Grove. Jack Benny heard him, liked him, but did nothing about it. For Benny’s program was all set. He had Mary Livingstone, Johnny Green, Don Wilson, and Michael Bartlett was to take Frank Parker’s spot. But Bartlett failed to click as a radio personality. His voice, which thrilled the motion picture audiences, lost something over the air waves. So Bartlett withdrew from the cast.
Agents for the program called a number of singers for auditions to fill Bartlett’s place. Kenny says he didn’t know it was an audition for the Benny program when he was called or he would have been too scared to sing. And whether Benny asked for him Kenny says he doesn’t know. At any rate, before Kenny had finished his first song, one of Benny’s men tells me, Benny himself stepped from the control and said, “There’s the boy I want.”
CAME the first Sunday and time for rehearsal. (This part of the story was told me by one of the cast.) Jack and his cast were assembled when Kenny walked in. In his usual bashful manner he went over to a corner and sat down by himself. When they started to rehearse their lines, the young tenor was so nervous he fumbled his.
Jack, smart showman that he is, decided to capitalize on Kenny’s real personality, so they wrote his lines to portray him as the timid tenor. And the audience loved it. After Parker’s heckling of Benny for two seasons, the listeners liked a sympathetic character.
So after his first appearance he was signed for the season and proved so popular with radio audiences that he was contracted for the program again this year. This national recognition as a featured artist on Benny’s program has not increased Kenny’s hat size the fraction of an inch. If anything, he errs on the side of modesty, and I told him so.
He shook his head. “I’ve been very lucky,” Kenny says. “I have been fortunate enough to get the breaks and I know it. I haven’t had any pull and I have worked hard, but so have lots of others. So why should I get a swelled head? Look at Jack Benny.
“There is a fellow who has about everything anyone could want and yet he is the grandest guy you’d ever want to meet. Nothing high hat about him. And what a showman. He has a mind that works like lightning and can always turn a mistake into a laugh.
“SOMETIMES in rehearsing, someone will make a mistake and if Jack thinks it will get a laugh we put it in. For instance, when we were rehearsing for our first program this season, Jack’s line to introduce Phil Harris was ‘He’s the tall handsome, romantic type.’ Jack in reading it said ‘romantic tripe’ instead and it proved to be such a laugh we kept it in.”
When Kenny isn’t rehearsing for the show or trying out new songs, he likes to play handball, golf or go fishing. But soon, as he told me this morning over the phone, that will be a thing of the past. For just recently Mervyn LeRoy nought the Clarence Bodington Kelland story, “The Great Crooner,” for Kenny and will star him in it. It is a tailor-made story for the timid tenor of the airlanes, for it concerns a bashful young man who makes a tremendous hit as a radio singer, and was written by the author of “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.”
If tins story does for young Baker what Mr. Deeds did for Gary Cooper, he’ll be able to write his own ticket. But whatever happens, I’m gambling he’ll still be wearing the same size hat.

Baker’s entertainment career pretty much petered out at the same time as network radio did. He had a show on Mutual in the ‘50s and made some religious recordings. But it would seem he had enough money to walk away and spend time with his family and Christian Science endeavours. If he had any regrets, he never made them public.

J-e-l-l....Well, You Know What It Is

Here’s a Sunday night “Benny Bonus” on the Tralfaz blog.



The picture is from the June 1936 edition of Radio Mirror. There was no article about Jack Benny or his cast in that edition. It was published just for the sake of it, I guess. The caption pretty much tells it all, other than the dish they’ve made is tempting and economical and comes in six delicious flavours (we hope this one doesn’t have the added flavour of pipe tobacco ash). So look for the big red letters on the box!

Incidentally, June 1936 marked Green’s last month on the Benny show. While Phil Harris may not have been Benny’s first choice as a replacement for Green, time proved him to be the best one.

Jack Benny's Shy New Singer

It was not an enviable task for Kenny Baker.

He was hired as the vocalist on the Jack Benny radio show and made his debut a week after Michael Bartlett walked out to grasp at a movie career. There wasn’t much time for Baker, Benny or writer Harry W. Conn to invent a schtick for him to use on the show when he wasn’t singing. But they came up with a naïve, at times ignorant, character that stuck with Baker—and eventually gnawed at him—until he quit the show after the episode of June 18, 1939.

Baker’s first show was on March 11, 1935. His character was a hit, so much so that the “dumb” aspect of Mary Livingstone’s character was written out—two dummies weren’t needed—and the snarky, sarcastic part was left behind, which made the show even better.

Here’s a Brooklyn Daily Eagle profile of Baker published January 19, 1936.

Out of a Blue Sky
Radiography of Kenny Baker, Benny’s Singing Stooge, on WJZ These Sunday Nights—Baker Is Apology Personified
By Jo Ranson
WE HAVE with us today (ahem, ahem) Kenny Baker, Jack Benny’s shy tenor-stooge and beyond the shadow of any doubt radio’s most timid soul . . . so hurry, hurry, hurry . . . when a featured performer steps on the stage the conductor in the pit usually marks the occasion by calling for a brassy fanfare and crash of the cymbals . . . but when young Kenny walks to the footlights—if they intend to keep the ballyhoo in character with him—they will have nothing noisier than the waving of an ostrich feather fan . . . he is a great big boy—somewhat over six feet tall and built in proportion . . . but the moment someone shoves him in front of a microphone, sticks a script into his hands and tells him to read, he is practically tongue-tied . . . if the microphone were new to him, we would not bring this up . . . but he has been singing for the movies a couple of seasons now . . . however, being a radio actor is something new to him . . . the characterization Benny worked up for him came as the result of an accident . . . just the same it is a “natural” . . . the first day he came to rehearsal, he was late . . . the gang was sitting around going through their initial reading . . . “Pardon me,” he stammered, “am I intruding?” Of course, he wasn’t, Jack assured him, and told him to make himself at home . . . Kenny took a seat in the corner of the studio . . . in a moment the jester introduced him to the cast . . . “What do you do?” cracked Mary Livingstone, instead of the traditional, “How do you do?” . . . “Excuse me, I’m a tenor singer,” countered Baker, in a loud voice that could be heard two feet away . . . Jack saw the humor of the situation, and almost verbatim it went into the first program... most of Benny’s former singing stooges have been wise guys, who knew the answers even before the questions are asked . . . Kenny doesn’t realize that he has the answer . . . he’s apology personified . . . “Gosh, you’ve got a funny face,” Mary told him one Sunday night . . . “Gee, I’m awful sorry, but what can I do about it,” replied Kenny politely . . . “You can stay home, can’t you?” flipped the Seattle poetess . . . “I know. I’ve tried that already,” came back the tenoring Milquetoast... and when hearty laughter greets his remark, he is genuinely surprised . . . Jack Benny is one of the most affable people in show business and the easiest person in the world to talk to . . . but Kenny is so shy he kept calling him “Mr. Benny” until Jack finally took him aside and told him that sort of formality would have to stop . . . one night after the show Johnny Green invited Kenny to join him at one of Hollywood’s bars for a nightcap . . . after giving his order, the music master turned to his guest with “What’s yours, Kenny?”. . . “Oh, a fudge sundae, as usual,” the timid soul said . . . Johnny told Jack the story a few days later and the next Sunday (no pun intended) the comic worked it into his “Barbary Toast” parody . . . Kenny is getting over his shyness slowly under the tutelage of Benny, who seems to be able to make good actors out of all kinds of singers and orchestra leaders . . . he admits he doesn’t have to work on Baker much . . . he is afraid if he gets any better, he’ll be worse, if you see what we mean . . . in other words, his naturally reticent manner is so disarming and comes over the mike so well, that Jack doesn't want to spoil him.. despite his timid-soul voice, Kenny is a pretty determined sort of a young man . . . among his accomplishments, he lists having acquired a wife at the age of 20 and a musical education paid for out of his own earnings . . . both are interesting stories.. Kenny and his wife were high school sweethearts and gave each other their wedding rings as graduation presents . . . after finishing school, Kenny’s father tried to interest him in the furniture business . . . he went out as a salesman and came back with no orders for three months . . . then he decided to work as a day laborer on the Boulder Dam project and saved money to take vocal lessons . . . like most everybody else, he has a secret ambition . . . he wants to be a violinist, but he has kept pretty quiet about it what with that other would-be Heifetz, the world’s foremost interpreter of “Love in Bloom” on the program.

Arguably, Baker’s tenure on the Benny show was the apex of his career. He was already on two shows when he departed and carried on with the “Texaco Star Theatre,” where he felt he’d get better songs, more air time and—most important to him—not have to act like a dummy. A format revision a few years later cost him his job. He had at least two shows of his own (one syndicated on disc by Ziv) but never attained the heights he reached when Jack Benny plucked him out of obscurity. You can read more about Baker’s departure HERE, his daytime variety show HERE and his later reflections HERE.

Kenny Baker's Farewell to Footlights

Kenny Baker was supposed to appear on the final Jack Benny Show of the season on June 25, 1939. He never made it. His name was mentioned but his absence was never explained. Within three weeks, Baker had signed an exclusive contract with his other radio show, The Texaco Star Theatre. He revealed several years later he didn’t like playing the role of a dope on the show, though some newspaper columnists of the day out-and-out said Baker was a prima donna who wanted more air time and something other than pop standards to sing.

There was certainly no hard feelings on Jack’s part to Baker’s departure; by all accounts, Jack Benny was never the kind of man to have a grudge, let alone hold one. References to Baker kept popping up on the show over the next dozen-or-so years. During that time, Baker bounced around a bit (and had his own starring show in “Glamour Manor”) but finally retired as television was taking over from radio.

The question of “Whatever happened to Kenny Baker?” was answered in the January 1955 edition of TV Radio Mirror. Baker penned a story himself, or at least got the byline, focusing on his family (the Mirror doted on stories of the family lives of the stars) and his spirituality. Oh, and he got in a plug for his records and his show on the Mutual Network. The only puzzling thing is—if Baker was forlorn about the strain touring was putting on his family, why didn’t he simply get a TV show in California? He would have been able to see his family when he came home at night, just like countless other stars with children (Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, for example). It could have been, for whatever reason, television didn’t come looking for Kenny Baker. Or, like Phil Harris, he may simply have had enough money where he didn’t need to work and therefore the luxury of enjoying life instead.

We're Really LIVING!
We've found the things that mean so much more than bright lights and applause . . . our own fireside, love, understanding—and faith
By KENNY BAKER
You've heard the saying, "He's really living!" But have you ever asked yourself what really living means?
Well, I did, one day about six years ago. I was standing under a flashing red neon sign which was blinking out the message, "Kenny Baker—appearing nightly!" I asked myself, then and there: "Kenny, boy, you call this living!"
My answer was: "Hardly—hardly living at all."
Sure, I was making thousands a week. My name was up in letters two feet tall. And every night I was bathed in the glow of the footlights, had my ego buoyed up as it rode the crowd's warm wave of applause.
But what was there to look forward to when the theater lights went off? What did I do then? For months at a time I was three thousand miles away from my wife, children, and home; after the show, I had nothing except bare hotel room walls, a lonely dinner in a restaurant—and, the next night, another taxi to the theater.
That was the routine for years. There was Reno, New Orleans, Washington, New York; each a lonely carbon copy of the other city. True, every so many months, I might be lucky enough to find myself playing in Hollywood, my own home town—or I might just find two weeks between shows to race to the West Coast, laugh and play with my family for ten short days, and race back to the show again.
But was this living? No, it wasn't. It wasn't even existing. I might as well have been dead; and in the eyes of my family I was dead—for, in the days and months I was away from home, they had learned to live without me! That flashing neon sign may have announced to the world in general that here was a real, live and kicking Kenny Baker. But the time came when I realized it was simply a blinking, animated, neon headstone. Following me from city to city, that sign had become my ambulating epitaph.
So that night, about six years ago, I decided to make it read: "Kenny Baker, Appearing Nightly Where He Belongs—in his own living room with his wife and three growing kids."
And, if someone were to ask me today what living really is, I think I could tell them: It's a trailer vacation in the great North Woods; it's being a father to your sons—yes, and even being a boy again with them; it's evenings with a living room full of family; afternoons encouraging both sons and daughter with their problems; and it's a morning hymn around the breakfast table. That's really living.



But all wasn't sweetness and light when I gave up the roadshow footlights for my family. When I came home to play the role of father to my children, I received a shock: Since they were my children, I thought I could give them all kinds of advice and direction and, just by putting in the time, everything would turn out okay.
Unfortunately, I was wrong. When my son, Kenny, Jr., was in high school, I tried to point him in a certain direction. He was taking language courses, for example, such as Latin and French, and I thought he was capable of getting better grades than he showed.
Poor Kenny, Jr. was as unhappy as we were. He wasn't interested in Latin or French, and hence didn't put any time in on them. But, when it came to automobile mechanics, working on his car, or playing on the football field or in the swimming pool, that was something else again.
So what did we do with Kenny, Jr.'s problem? We did the only thing we knew how: We waited and we prayed—no pressure, nothing. We simply recognized that Kenny was a capable boy, that we weren't anything superior in the way of parents and that, if we gave our problem over to the Power from which all intelligence stems, the answer would be forthcoming.
And the answer did come: Somehow, someone suggested that Kenny take a series of aptitude and interest tests. I'd never heard of them but, in our experience, they have proven themselves both scientific and worthwhile. The tests give a series of scores in different learning areas —for example, in language, mechanical, mathematical and reasoning abilities. We learned that Kenny was a capable boy (as we had confidently expected all along) , but his best area was the mechanical-engineering field, not in languages!
What we had been doing was to force our young man into an area that didn't fit him. As a result, this force was destructive to his happiness—it made him feel inferior, a little rebellious.
But, as a result of the abilities tests, today he is doing well as an engineering student at the University of Southern California. He has been selecting his own courses, he has been happier doing it, and has been getting good grades. He's even in the Naval ROTC—a decision he made.
Fortunately for our younger children—Susie, 16, and Johnny, 12—we learned about our mistakes through our older boy, Kenny, Jr. We have discovered, for instance, that, while both youngsters enjoy music, they don't have the inclinations toward it that I had at their age. So there has been no urging on our part for one of them to "carry on the family name" in music.
They like music, yes. But they like other things better. Johnny, for example, has already shown the same aptitude and abilities toward structural engineering in which Kenney, Jr. had won his success Sure, he plays the accordion and he studies it, too. But this is more of a joyful escape for him, something he likes to do once in a while. It's not the thing he wants for a vocation, and we are not foolish enough to push him in that direction.
We learn from experience, and both Geraldyne and I learned from Kenny, Jr. that children can't be pushed. This has helped us with Susie and Johnny. As a result, Johnny is a happy twelve-year-old —actually, a happy young man. It's a pleasure to watch him grow, to develop. He has his studies, and they are at such a level that I can help him with them. We sing duets together; we go to ball games; we fish and travel in the trailer. In short, we have a close father-son relationship—again, this is really living!
And Susie, at sixteen, is quite a young lady now. She enjoys music, too, plays the piano well, but she has no wish to become an entertainer. Her main ambition is to be a successful mother and housewife. She's learning to cook and keep house. She and Geraldyne are like two sisters with the chores around this place, and Susie is doing a good job learning the household skills. So this is the family I came home to, six years ago. In that time I've watched the boys grow into young manhood, and my daughter become a young woman. Every summer of those six years we spent traveling together in our trailer to the national parks on our West Coast. Believe me, the time we've spent in Sequoia or the Big Sur, surrounded by the giant redwood trees, listening to the peaceful songs of the forest, have been moments when we knew we were near our God. And when a family shares this experience, I call that really living.
But some may ask the question: Did I retire from the entertainment world when I came back to Hollywood and my family? Of course not. I had worked in and around Hollywood for years before taking to the road—in fact, the first several years of my professional career were spent making auditions in the Los Angeles area.



I was born in California; so was my wife, Geraldyne. We went to Long Beach Junior College together; she sat across the aisle from me in class. I went on a blind date one night with a pal of mine, and Geraldyne, the pretty girl I'd been watching for weeks, showed up as my date!
I remember that first date: My pal and I were in a school minstrel show, and our girls were to come along to help us put on make-up. Geraldyne spent the early part of the evening putting black cork on my face, so I could go out and sing, "Look down, look down, that lonesome road . . ." which, I might add, we've gone down together now for twenty-one years—not all of them "lonesome"!
Those audition years were finally topped with my first big break around 1932. I won a contest sponsored by Texaco which gave me a guest spot with Eddie Duchin at the Cocoanut Grove. This led to the Jack Benny Jello show (I still have a box with the signatures of all the cast on it), then the Texaco Star Theater and more radio shows, then motion pictures—"The Mikado," "Hit Parade," "The Harvey Girls" —and, finally, the Broadway production of "One Touch of Venus," with Mary Martin and John Boles.
For some time, while doing the road shows, I had been harboring the desire to record an album of sacred music—hymns that people loved. So, when I came back to Hollywood, this was the first thing I turned to.
The results of these recordings were beyond all expectations: I heard from people all over the world—Saudi Arabia, New Guinea, Africa and Iceland. One woman sent some of the records to a deaf friend of hers in Indonesia. Later, that woman came to this country and visited us here at home. She hadn't heard a sound in years; but she went into the den, put her hands on the record machine, and nodding her head she said, "Beautiful—most beautiful music I've ever heard."
That was one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had.
(Editor's note: It is only fair to mention that eight albums of sacred songs have been made under Kenny Baker's Ken-Art label. Most of the material has been turned over to the Christian Science Publishing Society for distribution. It was most rewarding to Kenny to hear that Army generals, chaplains throughout the Armed Services, and hospitals all over, have requested records of his sacred songs. And it is gratifying, too, for him to hear—as he does daily—from these organizations expressing their appreciation for having Kenny Baker as their church soloist, in cases where groups could not afford to have a soloist as part of their church services.)
My experience with the sacred records had a sobering influence on my thinking —especially in regard to the field of entertainment.
You know, with as much practice as I've had, it was easy to go out on a stage, to put on a show that would make people laugh. And this is definitely one important aspect of entertainment. But the records have helped show me that there is something more than mere entertainment. It's from this idea that our Mutual radio program, The Kenny Baker Show, arose. Besides the songs, the wit, wisdom, and helpful hints, we've hoped that there would also be something to encourage and inspire you, our listeners. That's the "little more" we'd like to leave with you.
Having left the roadshow footlights, I'd like to think now I've been a successful father in those six years. I know I've been a much happier man. I'd also like to think I've been successful in this final stage of my career. So, if you find you enjoy our program whenever you hear it, we hope you'll let us know. Your reply will certainly assure us that we are really living!

A boy in the ROTC. A girl who wants to be a housewife. How can you tell it’s America 1955?

Kenny Baker died of a heart attack on August 10, 1985, age 72.

Unglamorous Glamour Manor

Jack Benny had a fruitful symbiotic relationship with members of his cast, even the secondary members. They made fun of Benny and made Benny’s show funnier. That, in turn, increased their fame so they were able to parlay it into their own shows, all in 1946. Phil Harris was one. Dennis Day was another. Mel Blanc was another. But a former member of Benny’s cast also launched an attempt at radio stardom that year.

Time proved Benny and Kenny Baker didn’t have much of a symbiotic relationship. Benny carried on for years after Baker walked out on his show, replacing him with someone who had far more talents. Baker’s career began an irreversible decline, slow at first before wearing out his welcome on Fred Allen’s Texaco show. “Glamour Manor” was Baker’s last hurrah on radio and the odds were against him from the start.

“Glamour Manor” debuted in June 1944 with Cliff Arquette in a dual starring role (one being an old woman). The show was tinkered with several times with new casts, vocalists, announcers (one was Robert C. Bruce of Warner Bros. cartoon narrator fame) and even locations. Arquette apparently finally had enough and quit in June 1946. That resulted in another reshuffling. Baker was brought in with a brand-new cast, though some were familiar to listeners as he played on his old connection with Benny. Don Wilson was his announcer and Sam Hearn reprised his role of Schlepperman. In fact, Benny showed up for a guest shot on October 3, 1946. But it simply didn’t work and the show signed off June 27, 1947.

What was wrong with the show? In fairness to Kenny Baker, you can’t blame him. You can blame the writers for coming up with jokes that would be at home in small-time vaudeville and clichéd, one-dimensional characters (and, frankly, this describes most of the sitcoms in the Golden Days). The types had been around radio so long that if someone described the character to you, you could probably guess who played the role. If you read the description of Miss Biddle in the review below, you can’t help but think of Elvia Allman. But dour critic John Crosby of The New York Herald-Tribune didn’t blame the writers, either. This is from December 20, 1946.

Radio Review
Such Young, Young Men
By JOHN CROSBY
The fascination of naive and extremely literal young men has so thoroughly gripped the people who produce and sponsor radio programs that it deserves, I think, some looking into. I’m not quite sure who started it all but I suspect Jack Benny must shoulder much of the responsibility and it’s a heavy responsibility.
A good many years ago Benny employed on his program a young tenor named Kenny Baker. Besides singing, it was also Baker’s task to be dumb, timid, excessively innocent and a sort of permanent butt of a lot of good-natured jokes. Above all, he provided an excellent foil for the aging, grasping, cocky Benny. Baker was then replaced by a young man named Dennis Day. The advantages of this substitution remain, at least to me, obscure. Both young men (though Baker can’t be so young any more) are tenors with identical qualities. Both react precisely alike to the same stimuli. Both have the same dewy personality. In fact, if any one can distinguish between the two, he has a sharper ear than mine.
Although he still appears on the Benny program, Day has a new program of his own called “A Day in the Life of Dennis Day,” (NBC, 6:30 p.m. Thursday). Baker has HIS own program “Glamour Manor,” which appears, God save the mark, five times a week (ABC, 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays). This makes a total of seven programs a week of fresh young male innocence or enough to keep Hollywood gainfully employed for a couple of years.
TYPICAL YOUTH?
If it hadn’t been going on so long, I’d call it a trend. The way things are, you might call it a sort of fast-frozen belief in radio circles that Baker and Day epitomize young American manhood. On the basis of five years in the Army, I find this belief difficult to share. The young men I met were considerably more hep than either Baker or Day and I met only one young man who fainted dead away when a pretty girl spoke to him. This custom made him rather more of a curiosity than a typical American male.
All the above is a rather circuitous introduction to “Glamour Manor,” one of the heaviest daytime shows on the air. In addition to Baker’s tenor voice and girlish innocence, the program boasts Harry Lubin’s orchestra, a competent cast, and Don Wilson, an announcer who has provoked more, though not necessarily better, jokes about fat men than Falstaff. About one-third of the program is devoted to Baker’s singing in his pleasant tenor to Lubin’s music.
The rest of the proceedings revolve around the goings-on at “Glamour Manor,” a hotel which Baker runs and in which his girl-friend, Barbara, is employed.
OTHERS ON BILL
Barbara is the Great American Girl Friend as opposed to, let us say, the Great American Kid Sister, who is Judy Foster, somebody else entirely. In addition to these two, there is a Jewish dialect comedian named Schlepperman and a Miss Biddle, one of those elderly snobbish ladies who chases men and never catches them and who says at one point: “I’d like to have a neck like a giraffe and a head like Charles Boyer. I’ve always wanted to have a long neck with Charles Boyer.”
To give you the smallest possible example of the proceedings at “Glamour Manor,” the other day an old college friend of Kenny’s named Russel Green, a conceited, handsome mug, showed up at the hotel and threw everyone into an uproar by making a pass at Barbara. Every thing worked out all right when this character came down with lead poisoning from one of Miss Biddle’s pies.
TIMOROUS KENNY
More important than the plot in these programs is Baker’s character. To give you some idea just how arrested is Baker’s development, I offer the following samples of his dialogue. At one point he says to Barbara: “Look, there’s a mouse!” Then KB runs. At another point when Schlepperman tries to reason with him as he picks up a gun and looks desperate. Baker says: “Don’t worry; there isn't any water in it.” Now, just one more: “Gee, I didn’t know he’d tell his father I broke his yo-yo.”
The other jokes are almost uniformly awful but I’m afraid most of them will have to be forgiven. After all, this is a half-hour show, five days a week. The jokesmiths must be suffering from a severe case of combat fatigue. I have only one suitable for exhibit.
“I became a singer,” says Kenny.
“I didn’t know that. I thought you were a tenor.”
Copyright 1946, for The Tribune

Why Kenny Baker Quit Jack Benny

On June 18, 1939, singer Kenny Baker appeared on ‘The Jack Benny Program’ and to all the world it sounded like he would be with the rest of the cast the following week broadcasting from Waukegan, Illinois. He never made it. He was never part of Benny cast again (though he later made two guest appearances).

So what happened?

Benny fans have debated for years whether Baker was fired, whether he quit, whether he left on good terms or bad.

It took Baker more than five years before he talked about it. And, even then, it seems pieces of the story are missing. Here’s a syndicated news article from 1944, at a time he was on Broadway and had shot a couple of films, including ‘Silver Skates.’

Kenny Baker Tired of Being Just a Jerk
Walks Out of Job Paying Him $150,000 a Year
By Art Cohn
NEW YORK, Nov. 1 (INS)—Kenny Baker was tired of being a jerk, even a $150,000 per year jerk.
The world knew him only as the high-voiced dope on Jack Benny’s program who made such incredibly yappy remarks everyone else on the show sounded like an intellectual by comparison, even Phil Harris. Kenny was the all-American oaf and everyone wanted him to remain that way.
He had become a jerk unconsciously. Most jerks do. He stopped being one intentionally. Most jerks don’t.
“It wasn’t easy walking away from $150,000 a year,” he said last night in his dressing room at the Imperial theatre, “but I realized if I didn’t kill the jerk character it would kill me.”
Kenny had to make his choice: To remain A. Jerk at $3000 a week or to be K. Baker with no offers in sight. It was a big gamble but he took it. He quit Fred Allen’s program more than a year ago and rejected dozens of movie, stage and radio offers—each one wanted him only as a 21-karat Stoopnagle.
“I was doing concerts,” he recalls, “sang with symphonies, went to England and made ‘The Mikado’ but nobody would take me seriously, they thought of me only as a jerk. I couldn't get a straight part to save my soul. That made me mad.”
The fact he has a boyish face and does not look a day over 22, although he is 10 years older, did not help either.
Father of Three
“It’s awfully embarrassing,” he growled. “When I bought a ranch in California last year, the man who sold it to me insisted that my father sign the papers; he didn’t think I was old enough.”
Rather ironical, considering that Baker is, the father of three children—Kenny, Jr., 7; Susan, 4 ½, and Johnny, the 8-month-old baby.
The “jerk,” as he always refers to the character he portrayed on the radio, was an accident.
“Mr. Benny originally hired me only as a soloist,” he says, “after I won a national audition conducted by Eddie Duchin. I was a genuine hayseed when I started on the program. I had lived in Long Beach, California, all my life and had never been on a train, let alone out of the state.
“I was 24, but shaved only once a week. I wore a $22 tuxedo, had the darndest mop of bushy hair and two buck teeth. The first night I stumbled over three chairs and when I was introduced to Mary Livingston I said, ‘How do you do, I am sure.’ It was on the level; that was the way I looked and talked.
A Sap Is Born
“Harry Conn, who was Mr. Benny’s chief script writer at the time, nearly split a gut laughing at me that first night. Then he got together with Mr. Benny and they began giving me hick lines to read...”.
And a new national symbol for a sap was born.
Baker is a revelation as the leading juvenile in “A Touch of Genius,” Broadway’s latest musical hit. The critics gave him rave notices and, as a result, he has received special offers to return to radio—in a serious drama. He is about to sign for a weekly half-hour show over a national network, one combining his talents as a singer and narrator.

The story is incorrect to claim Baker had no offers in sight when he quit the Benny show. He was under contract to Mervyn LeRoy Productions, as each Benny broadcast reminded listeners, and LeRoy certainly wouldn’t let him sit idle. Not only was he on screens in ‘The Mikado’ in an unjerk-like performance praised by critics, he was also pulling down good cash every Wednesday night as the vocalist on ‘The Texaco Star Theatre,’ starring Ken Murray. He was already doing the show when he was on with Benny. In fact, one syndicated newspaper columnist suggested on the day he missed the Benny show in Waukegan that “Texaco would like to have Kenny Baker’s services exclusively.” And that’s exactly what happened. By July 15, newspapers reported Baker’s exclusive contract and that Jack was looking for a new vocalist, though he made an unsuccessful move to try to keep him.

Fans who prefer not to do research have suggested Fred Allen somehow enticed his phoney feuder’s singer away, but Allen didn’t join the ‘Texaco Star Theatre’ until 1940. In a way, Fred joined Kenny’s show.

The article claims Baker quit Allen’s show, but Billboard magazine of August 22, 1942 tells a quite different story. The show was being cut from 60 minutes to a half hour in the fall, which was a perfect opportunity to dump Baker. Reported Billboard:

Baker, who drew $2,000 weekly for singing two songs, proved to be a constant headache to producers because of his alleged prima donna attitude.
The singer, because of the stipulation in his contract giving him the right to choose his own selections, was allegedly difficult to handle. This might have been worked out, according to an Allen spokesman, but he kept picking slow numbers which consumed anywhere from three to four minutes and which caused Allen a good deal of concern because they slowed the program. Christmas Eve he insisted on doing the Ave Maria in German instead of the customary Latin, an incident which cause Texaco much embarrassment because the mail man brought in loads of protests from irate listeners [remember, the U.S. was fighting Hitler at the time]. This was not the entire reason for X-ing him off the spot, but it helped.

In other words, in an exhibition of irony (if Billboard was correct), Baker was being a jerk.

The character that Baker found so objectionable to play on the Benny show was a continuation and modification of the one singer Frank Parker had played on the show. After Baker left, the character was tweaked a little bit more and was handed to Eugene McNulty, along with the name of Dennis Day. If Dennis had a problem playing a daft young man, he never told anyone. It led to a long and lucrative career with Jack, and on his own. In addition, along the way, it was discovered Dennis had a very good ear for mimicry and that was incorporated into the show. And, though all these characters were silly (though not truly moronic like, say, Charlie Cantor’s Finnegan on ‘Duffy’s Tavern’), people weren’t really laughing at them. They had been given comedy lines by Jack Benny, who was the real fall guy on his own programme.

Baker’s hopes of a skyrocketing career after walking away from the Benny show never really materialised, even when compared to Dennis Day. The “weekly half-hour show” mentioned in the newspaper article lasted eight weeks after the story was written and was replaced with Danny Kaye and Harry James. Baker took over ‘Glamour Manor’ (later named ‘The Kenny Baker Show’) in 1946 for a season. He never had a starring radio show after that, let alone one on television. With few prospects, he retired in the early 1950s to record a few gospel albums and, perhaps, mull over whether quitting ‘The Jack Benny Program’ was really the best thing to do.