Jack Benny Vs Fred Allen, June 1, 1947

Jack Benny and Fred Allen managed to carry on their phoney radio feud from late 1936 past the time Allen’s show left the air in 1949. The two of them exchanged visits on each other’s shows, usually when Benny was in New York City as Allen lived there.

There’s plenty of old-time radio available on the internet for your free listening pleasure, but not all the Allen shows featuring Benny are in circulation. One of them was broadcast June 1, 1947. However, scripts for the Allen shows are in the Boston Public Library. Hurray to historian Kathy Fuller Seeley, who headed to the aforementioned educational edifice and managed to get a copy for that particular show. Actually, she’s missing several pages due to a photographic error but all the pages involving Jack’s dialogue are intact.

The first half of Allen’s show in those days involved an introduction by announcer Kenny Delmar, dialogue between Allen and Portland Hoffa, followed by the Allen’s Alley segment, a song by the DeMarco Sisters, then the middle commercial. The second half consisted of Fred and Portland setting up a sketch with the guest star, then the sketch, a final commercial and Allen’s farewell (if he wasn’t cut off by the NBC staff announcer).

What you see below is the transcribed script for the second half of the show; the page numbers are indicated. Allen’s regular cast was involved and is noted in the script as to which characters they played. They were Delmar, Minerva Pious and Peter Donald. The other regular, Parker Fennelly, didn’t generally take on any other parts except the dour New Englander, Titus Moody, in the Allen’s Alley portion of the show.

Just a few notes in case there are readers unfamiliar with the background:

● Jack Eigen had a radio all-night show where he interviewed celebrities at a club in New York. The bulk of his career was in Chicago.
● The major radio networks required programmes to be broadcast live, with a second live version several hours later to accommodate the west coast time zone (recording off the line was permitted by local stations in certain exceptional circumstances). Bing Crosby was the first person to break the rule, convincing ABC in fall 1946 to allow him to pre-record his show on transcription discs. This created a huge controversy in the industry as well as Crosby/wax jokes.
● Bernarr MacFadden (1868-1955) was a health, bodybuilding and diet expert, one of the first.
● “Small boy”? New one on me.

● There was a Cecil Theatre in Mason City. It opened June 3, 1912 with a seating of 859. It was later named the Park 70. It ended its days run down and boarded up before collapsing in 1988.
● Kenny Delmar’s Russian accent is a takeoff on actor/director Gregory Ratoff, who appeared on radio periodically.
● The name of “Mr. Weaver” was borrowed from Pat Weaver (1908-2002), who was president of NBC in the 1950s. He produced Allen’s radio show some years earlier as the representative of ad agency Young & Rubicam.
● A number of comedy/variety radio shows in the ‘40s—whether by network edict, I don’t know—reserved time before the final commercial for a public service announcement.

-13-
ALLEN: That was just a blueprint of My Adobe Hacienda played by Maestro Al Goodman and 25 members who were honorary pallbearers at Seabiscuit’s funeral. And now – Yes, Portland.
PORT: Do you mind if I go home early tonight?
ALLEN: No.
PORT: The antique man is bringing Mama a new coffee table.
ALLEN: What happened to your Mother’s old coffee table?
PORT: Termites got in it.
ALLEN: No kidding.
PORT: The termites ate the coffee table down to a demi-tasse table.
ALLEN: We had an end-table at home. Termites got into the end-table. And now we have an end-table no end.
PORT: An end table with no end is a what-not.
ALLEN: I know. I went out yesterday to look around the antique shops and I saw the oldest antique.
PORT: Where?
ALLEN: Well, yesterday afternoon I left home and started up Third Avenue.
(MUSIC: BRIDGE . . . ORCHESTRA)
ALLEN: I stopped to read a sign in a window of an empty store. The sign said – Jack Eigen slept here. Suddenly, the door of a thrift shop next door opened –
(DOOR OPENS)
A: And I heard the saleslady say –
MIN: (OLD LADY) I’m sorry mister. We won’t have those high button shoes until next week.
JACK: Save me two pairs and a button hook.
ALLEN: Jack Benny!
(APPLAUSE)
-14-A
ALLEN: Jack what are you doing in a thrift shop?
JACK: I have the darndest time getting shoes.
ALLEN: You get your shoes in a thrift shop?
JACK: I like those high-buttoned shows – nobody else carried them. I get the vici-kid with the bulldog toes.
ALLEN: oh.
JACK: They were all out today. They only had those Congress shoes with the elastic in the side. They looked too dressy.
ALLEN: Gosh, Jack. You look wonderful.
-15-
JACK: And, Fred, you look wonderful, too.
ALLEN: Those rumors. People have been saying you’re a shriveled up, infirm, doddering old man.
JACK: And people have been saying you’re a flabby, wrinkled, baggy-eyed old sour puss. They told me you were wearing a veil.
ALLEN: People have been saying that’s what we are? Ha! Ha!
JACK: Yes. Ha! Ha! Say, Fred –
ALLEN: Yes, Jack?
JACK: We are, aren’t we?
ALLEN: Jack. I’ve never seen you looking better.
JACK: Thanks, Fred.
ALLEN: That beautiful wavy hair –
JACK: Well - -
ALLEN: Those sparkling white teeth –
JACK: Gee - -
ALLEN: And those long eye-lashes –
JACK: uh-huh. What about my nose?
ALLEN: Your nose?
JACK: Yes. At least that’s mine.
ALLEN: Jack, all I hope is that when I’m your age I look as good as you do.
JACK: Wait a minute, Fred. Did you say when you’re my age?
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: You had a birthday yesterday, didn’t you?
ALLEN: That’s right.
JACK: Well, I heard that if all the candles on your birthday cake were melted down, there’d be enough wax to record Bing Crosby’s program for all of next season, and enough left over to wax the floor at Roseland.
-16-
ALLEN: I heard last year when they lit the candles on your cake two guests who got near the cake were barbecued.
JACK: Now wait a minute, Allen, if you want –
ALLEN: Jack, Jack, what are we fighting for? We’re old friends.
JACK: You’re right, Fred.
ALLEN: Gosh, I wouldn’t know you from Barnarr MacFadden. How do you keep yourself in such wonderful condition?
JACK: It’s the life I’ve been leading.
ALLEN: Oh.
JACK: I get up every morning at seven, pry my nostrils open, take a deep breath and I’m ready for breakfast.
ALLEN: What do you have for breakfast?
JACK: A glass of orange juice and a small boy long loaf of French bread.
ALLEN: A small boy? A long loaf?
JACK: Yes. I lean on the small boy French bread while I drink the orange juice.
ALLEN: Oh. After breakfast –
JACK: I’m off to the golf course.
ALLEN: You play golf?
-17-

JACK: If I happen to find a ball, yes. Otherwise I caddy.
ALLEN: After a hard day of retrieving on the links you must be ready for dinner.
JACK: Yes. For dinner I have one jumbo raisin and a heaping bowl of spinach.
ALLEN: One raisin and spinach. That must give you plenty of iron.
JACK: You said it. I don’t know what they do in Rio on a rainy night, but at my house I sit around and get rusty.
ALLEN: You’re certainly double crossing old Father Time. You haven’t a wrinkle in your face.
JACK: Confidentially, Fred, I wouldn’t want to get this around but I’ve been having a little plastic surgery done.
ALLEN: Plastic surgery?
JACK: Yes. Every week or so I have this plastic surgeon take up the slack skin on my face and tie it in a knot at the back of my neck.
ALLEN: The back of your neck? Doesn’t it bother you?
JACK: No. The only thing is, I have to wear a size 27 collar.
ALLEN: I noticed that your Adam’s Apple was pulled around your left ear. But with it all, Jack, you still look the same as the first day we met.
JACK: Gosh, that was a long time ago.
ALLEN: It sure was. The first time we met – remember . . . . .
(“MEMORIES” . . . . (SNEAKS IN) . . . (VIOLINS)
ALLEN: I was in vaudeville – a star. I was headlining at the Cecil Theatre in Mason City, Iowa. After the first show I was sitting in my dressing room. I heard an argument in the hall. I opened the door.
(DOOR OPENS)
-18-
PETE: I’m Krakauer, the manager of this theatre. Your act is putrid. You’re canned.
JACK: But everything went wrong. When I came on the orchestra forgot to play Pony Boy. At the finish when I play Glow Worm my violin is supposed to light up. The electrician forgot to plug it in.
PETE: Even if you lit up you couldn’t save your act. Start packing!
JACK: But, Mr. Krakauer.
PETE: You’re through! Get out!
(DOOR SLAMS)
JACK: I wish I was dead.
ALLEN: What’s the matter, Son?
JACK: Say aren’t you Fred Allen, the big star – The head-liner?
ALLEN: Yes. Stop trembling, lad. Aren’t you the opening act?
JACK: Yes. I’m Gypsy Jack and his vagabond violin.
ALLEN: Gypsy Jack.
JACK: This is my first date in vaudeville. The manager just canned me. I haven’t any money. How will I get home?
ALLEN: Where do you live?
JACK: In Waukegan.
ALLEN: What is the fare to Waukegan?
JACK: Thirty dollars.
-19-
ALLEN: Here is thirty dollars, Gypsy Jack. Go back to Waukegan.
(“MEMORIES” . . (FADES) . . . VIOLINS)
ALLEN: Gosh, Jack, when I saw you leaving the theatre that day in your gypsy suit with the long silk stockings and your satin pants little did I think I would ever see you again. What happened?
JACK: When I finally got home to Waukegan, I went back to pressing pants in my Uncle Tyler’s tailor shop.
ALLEN: Mason City had left no scars?
JACK: No. But show business was still in my blood. At heart I was still Gypsy Jack, and his vagabond violin.
ALLEN: I see.
JACK: One day, I was pressing a traveling salesman’s pants, when my iron ran into a lump in one of the pockets. The lump turned out to be a ticket to Hollywood.
ALLEN: Hollywood! That was the second time we met. Remember.
(“MEMORIES” . . . (FADES) . . VIOLINS)
ALLEN: Hollywood. . It was on the 20th Century Fox lot. I was starring in my first picture “Thanks A Million”. I remember that morning I walked on the set.
(WHISTLE)
PETER: (YELLS) Quiet on the Set! Quiet on the set! Mr. Allen is ready.
ALLEN: Where’s the director?
KENNY: (RUSSIAN) Right here, Mr. Allen.
ALLEN: What is my first scene, Gregory?
KENNY: It is the Bowery. You do that big comedy bit with a bum.
ALLEN: Oh, yes. Let’s run it through. Who’s playing the bum?
-20-
KENNY: Central Casting sent us a real bum. Here he is. You with the filthy wind-breaker and the baggy beret. Come here.
JACK: Yes, sir.
ALLEN: Just a minute, Unsanitary One. I seem to know your face. Didn’t we meet in vaudeville? Aren’t you Gypsy Jack?
JACK: Formerly Gypsy Jack, Mr. Allen. Here in Hollywood I’m using the name, Dexter Strongheart.
ALLEN: I hardly knew you with that beard.
JACK: I’m Gabby Hayes stand-in. But this is my big break, Mr. Allen. Gosh, doing a scene with a star like you. It’s like a dream.
KENNY: All right. Let’s gat going with the scene. Here’s the pie, Mr. Allen.
(HANDS FRED LEMON PIE)
ALLEN: Thank you.
JACK: Oh, there’s a pie in the scene.
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: Do we eat the pie?
ALLEN: Not exactly. I hit you in the face with it.
JACK: Let me understand this. You throw the pie at me?
ALLEN: Yes.
JACK: What do I do?
ALLEN: You do nothing. I throw the pie at you. You get it in the face. Are you ready.
JACK: Just a minute.
ALLEN: What is it?
JACK: You throw the pie, don’t I duck or anything?
ALLEN: No. You just hold your face still and “Whap” you get it.
JACK: “Whap” I get it.
ALLEN: Yes, are you ready.
-21-
JACK: Could I ask one more question?
ALLEN: What is it now?
JACK: What kind of pie is it?
ALLEN: I don’t really know.
JACK: Do you mind if I taste it?
ALLEN: No. Go right ahead.
(JACK PUTS FINGER IN PIE AND TASTES IT)

ALLEN: What flavor is it?
JACK: Lemon Meringue. Oh shoot.
ALLEN: What’s wrong?
JACK: Couldn’t you make it banana cream? I like banana cream better.
ALLEN: It’s too late now. We’re holding up the picture. Get set. I’ll throw the pie.
JACK: Hold it!
ALLEN: Now what?
JACK: What part of my face are you going to hit?
ALLEN: What difference does it make?
JACK: I’d like to get it right. I’m anxious to make good.
ALLEN: I plan to hit you between the eyes. It will be quite funny when the goo runs down your cheeks.
JACK: That will be funny. Ha! Ha!
ALLEN: Good. Well, here we go.
JACK: Wait! Wouldn’t it be funnier if you hit me with a loaf of bread?
ALLEN: A loaf of bread?
JACK: Sliced.
KENNY: Stop! Stop! I am the director! This bum is trying to direct the picture.
JACK: But, sir.
-22-
KENNY: I couldn’t shoot this scene today. The company is dismissed. Put away the pie. Get that bum out of here. He’s fired.
JACK: Gosh, Mr. Allen. I’m fired again.
ALLEN: Look, Dexter. It told you ten years ago in Mason City - -
JACK: You’re right, Mr. Allen. I guess I’m just not meant for show business. How will I get home?
ALLEN: Do you still live in Waukegan?
JACK: Yes, Mr. Allen. It’s thirty dollars by bus.
ALLEN: Okay. Here is thirty dollars, Dexter Strongheart, go back to Waukegan.
(“MEMORIES” . . . (SNEAK IN) . . STRINGS)
ALLEN: I’ll never forget, Jack, before they threw you out of the studio I gave you the lemon meringue pie.
JACK: It lasted me all the way to Green Bay.
ALLEN: What happened when you got back to Waukegan this time?
JACK: I went back to work in my Uncle Tyler’s tailor shop. But show business was still in my blood.
ALLEN: You were unhappy at your ironing board, eh?
JACK: I was desperate to getaway. Whenever I got a pair of pants to press, the first thing I did was feel for lumps. And then one day - -
ALLEN: Another lump?
JACK: A big one.
ALLEN: A railroad ticket?
JACK: This time it was money. I could go where I wanted. I went to New York.
ALLEN: New York. That was the third time we met. Remember?
(“MEMORIES” . .. (FADES) . . VIOLINS)
-23-
ALLEN: New York. That’s where you got your start in radio.
JACK: Thanks to you, Fred.
ALLEN: Oh, it was nothing. I remember, that day I got the call from a man named Weaver. A big-shot with the American Tobacco Company. I entered Mr. Weaver’s office.
(DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES)
PETE: Gad! Fred Allen! We’ve been waiting all afternoon.
ALLEN: What’s on your mind, Mr. Weaver.
PETE: We’ve got a big radio program for Lucky Strike Cigarettes – We want you to be the star.
ALLEN: I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver. I’ve just signed with Tender Leaf Tea and Shefford Cheese.
PETE: Well, that does it. Without you Allen we might as well pull Lucky Strikes off the market. We’ll close the plantations, and send old F.E. back to Lexington, Kentucky.
ALLEN: I’m sorry, Mr. Weaver.
PETE: Gad what a program this would have been. We had this singing quintette.
ALLEN: A quintette?
PETE: Yeah. Show him, boys.
CAST: Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
ALLEN: Wait! That hairless soprano on the end – aren’t you Dexter Strongheart?
JACK: Yes, Mr. Allen. (WHISPERS) But for radio my name is Jack Benny.
-24-
ALLEN: Jack, you in a quintette?
JACK: Before Mary Livingston would sign up for the show she made them find a job for me.
ALLEN: Oh, a tie-in deal!
JACK: Please, Mr. Allen, take over the program, it’s my last chance.
ALLEN: Jack, that gives me an idea. Mr. Weaver, the star of the Lucky Strike show – does he have to be funny?
PETE: No. We’ve got Rochester, Dennis Day, Phil Harris – plenty of comedians.
ALLEN: I see?
PETE: All we need is a slob the others can bounce jokes off of.
ALLEN: Then here’s your man – Jack Benny!
PETE: Okay, Benny – If Mr. Allen says so, you’re hired!
JACK: Gee, thank you, Fred.
(“MEMORIES” . . . SNEAK IN . . ORCHESTRA)
ALLEN: So Jack that’s how you got into radio.
JACK: Yes, Fred, if it wasn’t for you who know what I’d be today.
FRED: Oh, it’s nothing, Jack.
JACK: Well, Fred, it’s been swell talking over old times.
ALLEN: It sure has, Jack. I haven’t seen you since that day in Weaver’s office. Tell me, what are you doing now?
JACK: My program finished last Sunday. Right now I’m doing nothing.
FRED: You’re out of work again, eh?
JACK: Yes, Fred.
ALLEN: What are you going to do?
JACK: I guess I’ll go back to Waukegan. But, Fred.
-24-A-
ALLEN: You don’t have to ask me, Jack. Here’s the thirty dollars.
JACK: But, Fred - -
ALLEN: And this time stay in Waukegan!
(“DOWN IN MAC CONNACHY SQUARE” . . . (FADE) . . ORCHESTRA)
(APPLAUSE)
-25-
ALLEN: Ladies and Gentlemen, during the last half hour more than 120 people in the United States were injured in automobile accidents. Accidents are increasing at an alarming rate. This last year 33,500 American drivers and pedestrians died as a result of carelessness and violation of the laws. Whether driving a car of crossing the street, be alert - - be careful. And remember that the life you save may be your own.
Before we remind you to remember Tender Leaf Tea and Shefford Cheese on your shopping days, I want to thank the Neanderthal Man, Jack Benny, for sneaking out of the Roxy to join us tonight. Next week, our guest will be Rochester. Thank you. And good night!
(APPLAUSE)
(THEME: TO FINISH . . . ORCHESTRA)
?-sk
5/31/47PM

A Writer Gets in on the Feud

It was supposed to last for the first 2½ months of 1937, but nobody wanted to let it go. That included Paramount Pictures, which put the Jack Benny/Fred Allen feud on the big screen in the feature Love Thy Neighbor three years later. And to promote it, James F. Scheer wrote this feature story in the December 1940 edition of Hollywood magazine.

Benny made for good copy for the magazine; earlier in the year, it did a pictorial on Buck Benny Rides Again, and published a few stock pictures of Jack, including one with his daughter Joan.

Scheer’s story is pure fan-rag baloney. It treats the feud as serious though, in reality, the two former vaudevillians had hung out together when Jack’s show was still based in New York. The “insults” are the product of someone’s imagination, either Scheer or maybe some Paramount publicity writers. I doubt Jack Benny would use “olfactory” in a sentence. The story ignores all of Jack’s vaudeville career prior to enlisting in the service in 1917. It is true Benny chain-smoked cigars in the ‘30s and Allen chewed on chaw. And Fred and Portland really did have a very modest apartment in New York City.

This Can’t Be Love
By JAMES F. SCHEER
■ This is the saga of two residents of glass houses who have been throwing stones, fists, half-Nelsons, slurs, and, among other sundry properties, the well-known Bull at one another.
It is the saga of Fred (Two-Fist) Allen and, as Fred says, "Jack (Two-Face) Benny," anti-one-another stars of Paramount's musicomedy Love Thy Neighbor, whose other entries on the asset side include Mary Martin and that colored duo, Rochester and Theresa Harris.
The actual enmity, friendship, or whatever-it-is-ship of Benny Kubelsky, as Jack Benny was christened on the day the Waukegan, Illinois, stork airmailed him to Mom Benny, and John F. Sullivan, alias Fred Allen, cannot be packed into a few words.
Not even in a few paragraphs. Some say Buck Benny feels mildly nauseous toward Allen. Others say Fred feels the same way toward Benny. But unless you prod one with slurring barbs from the other, you are likely to find them as eloquent about one another as Geronimo.
Take a walk down Paramount's Avenue D. But walk on the wide whitewashed line in the center — that is, if you don't want to become a participant in the Allen-Benny feud, which has been raging since '36.
The right half is painted "Fred Allen's Side"; the left half, "Jack Benny's Side." Their dressing rooms face one another a hand-grenade distance across Avenue D.
A black-lettered sign on Sound Stage A warns: DANGER— FLYING QUIPS! And gals and guys, once you're in there, you're on your own.
Among those who find Benny and Allen not exactly Damon and Pythias is George McCall, radio commentator, who does not dare visit the set since he joined Captain Allen's Slur-Slingers, Company 1492 1/2, by saying, "When they put Benny's footprints in the lobby of Grauman's Chinese Theater, Fred Allen's footprints walked away."
Sources close to the scene say Captain Buck Benny's Company is "too reserved and gentlemanly to point out that neither combatant has yet dropped an oxford in Sid Grauman's wet cement."
But the Bennyites won't refuse to admit that the script of Love Thy Neighbor calls for wrestling and fistcuffing for Neighbors Fred Allen and Jack Benny, respectively. They want the best man to win, knowing it is Benny, despite the pugilistic, Cambridge, Massachusetts, name of Fred Allen — John F. Sullivan. He is, however, no relative of boxing's John L.
On the set of Love Thy Neighbor, the boys either let their barbs fly at one another in person or deliver them by word or note through third parties. "So Allen is taking boxing lessons?" Benny laughed and plopped into his canvas-backed chair. Slicked up in a black overcoat, top hat, knitted white silk scarf, mirror-shine patent leather shoes, and a New Year's Eve whoopee horn in his pocket, he flexed a bicep menacingly. "No doubt he's preparing for things to come." Allen espionage agents reported this to their chief, who cracked bitingly, "It might be a tough battle, but Jack has the advantage. I'm only two-fisted. He's two-faced!"
Answered Benny, "The only things athletic about Fred are his feet. He's so afraid of pain that I suspect he takes a local anesthetic when he gets a manicure." Face screwed into a typical Allenesque grimace, Fred shot back, "Benny has so few red corpuscles that he can't even see red. He is so anemic that when he wheel-chaired past a dozen kennels of bloodhounds at a local prize dog show, not one of them lifted a nostril with an acknowledging sniff."
That should have put Jack in the hands of the receivers, but after a five-minute conference with gag-writers Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin, he preserved his dignity by sending only a stern note of reply to Allen:
"Despite Mr. Allen's physical culture campaign, it is doubtful whether he could go one round by himself. Strength is such an absent quality in Mr. Allen's makeup, which I hesitate to refer to as physical makeup, that if we put on the gloves together and began to spar, I would be shadow boxing inside three seconds."



■ Amid this verbal and written exchange of lefts and rights, the timorous bystander who wishes to preserve his neutrality wonders just how this Allen-Benny feud made its debut.
Well, to abbreviate it, the feud had its coming out in the New York winter season of 1936 — to be exact, the raw cold evening of December 30. Fred Allen customarily invited a handful of amateurs to participate in each week's broadcast, and on that night Stewart Canin, a ten-year-old violinist bowed his way through a tricky solo, The Bee.
"That should make Jack Benny mighty ashamed of himself," ad-libbed the ace ad-libber. "He's been trying to play that piece for forty years and hasn't succeeded yet."
It was just a quip that passed in the night — apparently.
Next Sunday Jack made a remark that "a certain reformed juggler" had done him an injustice and retorted, "When I was ten years old, I could play The Bee too."
Thus came love to Neighbors Benny and Allen, who have been swapping slams from Hollywood and New York ever since.

■ Jack was born on St. Valentine's Day — "and what a boon to the comic valentine industry," Fred dryly admits. Like most kids, Jack went to Junior and Senior High school with only a mild distaste for teachers. His distaste for working in his dad's haberdashery shop was anything but mild.
Helping customers select chapeaux for bald pates and orange neckties with barber-pole stripes to match a cerise suit went against the Benny artistic grain, which began to assert itself when Jack traded a Honus Wagner bat, a pair of clamp skates, a Hohner harmonica, and two bucks for his first fiddle.
Every exercise in the books and Rubinstein's Melody in F took an awful beating — as did neighbors who were not psychic enough to see a future in music for Jack.
Anyhow, as a high school student, he tried, to crash Waukegan's only theater with his own orchestra. He did, but his bandsmen didn't. After all, the manager could use only one ticket-taker. Later Jack established a non-stop talk record, convinced the manager he should be on the stage fiddling, and did until fire inspectors closed the theater because of old age.
Then it was vaudeville. During World War I, he played in The Great Lakes Review for sailors training at the Great Lakes Naval Station. Nobody threw him even a rusty penny. In desperation he began talking more and playing less. He passed the hat, got it filled with coins, jokingly asked for "a second helping," and got it.
On that day Buck Benny became a monologuist and began getting regular bookings. Fred Allen's name was just another item in Variety and Billboard to Jack. They hadn't actually met until six months before their feud started.
In rapid order Jack made his debut in The Hollywood Review at M-G-M, went to New York for a leading role in Earl Carroll's Vanities, and broadcast one night as guest of a columnist. Next week he was signed to a long-term radio contract. Every Sunday night listener knows the rest.

■ Fred Allen says his life really began at about half the age Walter Pitkin claims life begins.
As a young fellow who set "returned" books back in the proper stalls at the Boston Public Library for twenty cents an hour, Fred spied a tome on juggling. Eureka! He read it from frontispiece to rear cover, and when the librarian wasn't around, practiced juggling books.
He had Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, and Shelley up in the air all at once for the first time in their history when the head librarian walked into the room. Fred's animated hands froze. Shakespeare slapped the concrete floor. Shelley nose-dived. Milton ended up sprawled on Shakespeare, and Chaucer landed — kerplunk! — on the librarian's high forehead. End of act two!
An improved juggler, Fred went on the stage, copped a prize at a Boston theater one night, and was about to receive the award from the famous fighter, John L. Sullivan, master of ceremonies, when the great John L. asked him his name. Fred said it as it was written on his birth certificate — John F. Sullivan. "Sullivan?" barked John L. "That's no name for a juggler."
It wasn't. So when Fred — and a hundred others — wanted an audition for a vaudeville troupe, he changed his name to Allen, because the person in charge asked for applicants in alphabetical order.
Early in his career, he earned his reputation as the acme of ad-libbers. He dropped one of his circling ten-pins and a couple of tennis balls, and the loud m-cee asked, "Where did you learn how to start to try to juggle?"
Fred glanced out at the audience and retorted in his twangy, nasal best: "I studied a correspondence course in baggage smashing!"
Fred, whose mind is perpetual motion machinery on jokes and witticisms, hesitated in tackling radio, thinking he might not be funny unseen. It didn't take him long to learn he was wrong.
Since 1936, Allen and Benny have known each other — from a distance. Fred dislikes Hollywood. Jack likes Hollywood. Consequently, the boys have never really been together long enough to know each other well.
But what Fred started on that winter night's broadcast doesn't seem to stop.

■ When Fred and his party got off at the Union Station in Los Angeles to begin work in Love Thy Neighbor, Benny wasn't there. He was at NBC rehearsing that evening's program, but he had a committee of beauteous babes, carrying insulting signs, and a city official — a street sweeper — to greet Fred.
"Benny wouldn't dare meet me himself," rasped Allen. "He's afraid I'd pull his hair out — and he'd have to go home to get some more!"
Jack waived the remark and approached Fred the next day, extending the olive branch.
"I'm not one to bear a grudge," he explains. "We offered Allen and his party the chance to stay with us. But in his usual sour fashion he refused. Mary and I were very disappointed. We had gone to the trouble of cleaning out the whole cellar."
And, later, when Jack had returned from his Hawaiian trip, he broke into the conference of Producer-Director Mark Sandrich, Allen, and script writers, asking them to delay the picture.
"I'm in swell condition," said Jack, "but I think I should have a short rest before going to work with Allen, because I am somewhat weary mentally. I was met in Honolulu by 27,000 people, which is four fans and two Kanakas more than greeted Shirley Temple. They were lovely to me, but they all put leis around my neck. And carrying 27,000 leis — it is bad luck to take them off — sort of dulls the mind and the olfactory nerves after three weeks."
Allen, frowning his vinegar frown, disgust puckering his eyes, said dryly, "The only reason there weren't 27,000 people to greet Benny on his return here is that extras cost more in Los Angeles than they do in Honolulu — and Benny wouldn't put out that much dough!"
Before Love Thy Neighbor went into production, Producer-Director Mark Sandrich promised Fred that Jack would positively not play The Bee in the picture.
"He won't?" screamed Allen. "He can't!"
So history is becoming repetitious, and Benny feels the sting of The Bee.
And speaking of Jack, he was chatting through his teeth which were clenching the ever-present, roly-poly, brown cigar:
"You know, one of the most charming qualities is tolerance — tolerance for Allen. How many headlines have you ever read to this effect: 'Comedian Benny Tears Out Jugular Vein of Obscure Radio Performer?' None — yet!"
Allen was outside earshot. Allen espionage agents were out of sight, and the remark fell on ears but not the right ones.
The whole setup is crazy — this Love Thy Neighbor business. Benny and Allen have been slamming each other for years. And now attacks are more venomous than ever. Jack doesn't like Fred's habit of chewing tobacco. Fred doesn't like Jack's smoking so many cigars. Jack thinks Fred's boxing is done purely in the mind. Fred thinks Jack's vigorous "in the hills" hiking is something dreamed up in the minds of Benny's publicists.
Allen likes living in a two-by-nothing apartment with his wife, Portland, officiating at the range. Benny likes lavish surroundings — a dozen baths and a swimming pool. Allen is almost a Peter the Hermit.
Benny is a social-smoothy who loves company in quantity. There is one thing Jack likes about Fred — "His lovely middle name: Florence."

■ As tastes differ, so do Benny and Allen. They do not associate from lack of common interests, rather than from animosity. Let anyone outside the Benny circle toss a disparaging remark at Allen, and watch Jack blow a fuse. Let anyone disparage Benny, to Allen, and watch Allen come back with a slicing remark.
They are each other's common sadistic property, and let no man try to put in an oar. It's a case of brother abuse brother — but with a limited entry.
Neighbors Allen and Benny may dispute about who should get top billing in the picture; they may wrangle because Fred has seventeen changes of costume and Jack has but three; they may spar about which of them will cop the Oscar for 1940, but it is all good, wholesome, homecooked stuff.
In a philosophical mood, Fred often wonders whether he or Jack, whom he calls "the streamlined Joe Miller," will leave his humorist's footprints on the sands of time. He is not sure about this.
But there is one thing about which he is reasonably certain. It's the footprints in the lobby of Grauman's Chinese Theater, and he says, "If Sid Grauman ever stoops to inviting Jack Benny to put his footprints in the lobby of the theater, I'll keep my feet at home!"

Fred Allen 1, NBC 0

The next time Jay Leno or David Letterman make fun of their TV corporate homes, they might want to thank Fred Allen.

It seems astonishing that a network would pull a comedy broadcast off the air because it joked about an imaginary person at the network. But that’s what NBC did to Fred Allen in 1947. And then it made the situation even worse by doing it again and again. Finally, someone at the network saw it was foolhardy to believe a corporation could win a battle of public opinion against comedians loved by millions of their customers, the radio listeners. So it backed down and, to this day, comedians have been (for the most part) left alone to take jibes at the broadcasters that pay them big money.

In Allen’s time, shows on NBC were broadcast live. When a broadcast reached the :29:20 or :59:20 mark of the hour, the network announcer would come on and say “This is NBC, the National Broadcasting Company” and then play the network’s three-note chimes. If the programme was still going, too bad. It was faded out for the network identification. Allen hated it. He felt he should go as long as he wanted (no one seems to have asked Allen if he favoured the show before his being able to cut into his time). Allen’s show of April 13, 1947 was faded out. He decided to be sarcastic about it on the air the following week. Someone at NBC listening didn’t like that. Let’s open the scrapbook of newspaper clippings and see what happened.

Fred Allen Cut Off Air By NBC
NEW YORK, April 21.—(U.P.)—Fred Allen was cut off the air for more than a half a minute last night by the National Broadcasting Company to eliminate a jest about a mythical network official.
Allen was explaining to Portland Hoffa, his wife, why their program had been cut off the previous week. It had run overtime.
“There’s a little . . .” was as far as he got last night.
Cut by the network was the following dialogue:
“. . . man in the company we work for. He’s a vice president in charge of program ends. When our program runs over time he marks down how much time is saved.”
“What does he do with it?” Portland asked.
“He adds it all up,” Allen replied, “—10 seconds here, 20 seconds there—and when the vice president has saved up enough seconds, minutes and hours to make two weeks he uses the two weeks of our time for his vacation.”
The network said it had asked Allen to change the script before he went on the air, but that he had not complied. The gibe violated a network ruling prohibiting the broadcast of unkind remarks about anyone in radio or the network, NBC said.
When the program went back on the air after a 40-second break, Allen’s first joke laid a mild egg with the studio audience.
Apparently unaware that the control room had blotted out his earlier sequence, he cracked: “If they wanted to cut something, they should have cut that.”

Allen told the Associated Press in reaction:“It’s like walking into a pool room and plunking down your 60 cents for an hour’s play, and then you find the owner has hidden the cue on you.”

NBC evidently didn’t anticipate the storm this would cause. The story you just read made it to front pages of newspapers. Editoralists, never shy at taking shots at radio, wrote opinion columns bashing NBC over what one called “A tempest in a Tenderleaf tea pot,” after Allen’s sponsor. The sponsor weighed in, too.

NBC Billed For Lost Time
NEW YORK, April 21—(AP)—The National Broadcasting Company is going to be billed for the time Fred Allen was cut off the air in his Sunday night comedy program.
A representative of J. Walter Thompson, advertising agency for Allen’s sponsor, said Monday:
“We buy and pay for half an hour’s time from NBC for this program. And that's what we expect to get, Allen was cut off the air for about 35 seconds. So NBC is going to get a bill for the time we didn't get. And, oddly enough, on that Sunday night spot, it’s a nice little chunk of dough.”
NBC, in saying they cut the comedian off the air because he refused to make certain changes in his script, estimated the time at 25 seconds.
A spokesman for NBC said tonight the broadcasting company had “no comment, no comment at all” to make about the incident which prompted Allen to drop his usual comedy role long enough to say that the whole affair was the result of “sheer stupidity.”
The veteran radio comedian ascribed the cut-off to a new NBC rule “that says you can’t kid radio on the air.”
Allen’s script told of a “vice president in charge of program ends” who noted the time saved when programs ran overtime—such as Allen’s program did the preceding Sunday.
ALLEN WENT ON to say—but the radio audience did not hear it—that “when the vice president saves up enough seconds, minutes and hours to make two weeks, he uses the two weeks of our time for his vacation.”
Today radio station WOR, the Mutual Broadcasting Company’s outlet in New York City, invited Allen to deliver the lines over its station.
The comedian, however, was “spending the day quietly in bed—a custom he has followed on Mondays for years,” Allen's agent said.
George Carson Putnam, the WOR broadcaster who extended the invitation to Allen, related the incident on his program and quoted the part of Allen’s script which was not broadcast.
Putnam concluded by saying:
“Allen is still allergic to vice presidents. In fact, you might call them Allen’s allergy.”
Later, the American Civil Liberties union said it had protested to Niles Trammell, NBC president.
A statement by the union said “an issue of free speech” might be involved in the incident, and added that Clifford Forster, acting director of the union, had sent a letter of protest to Trammell.
“The material censored, as reported,” from Allen’s script, the statement said, “would not seem to violate either good taste, any state or federal law or any code of ethics ever promulgated by the National Association of Broadcasters.”
The union said it had asked to be referred “to any station or network rule under which the cut was made,” and said it would take no further action in the affair until a reply had been received from the NBC president.

Allen’s brothers in the radio comedy field were outraged. Allen garnered tremendous respect from them all for his satiric wit and ability to instantly pull beautifully-framed analogies out of his head on the air. They did something. So did NBC. And the network made the situation worse.

Briefly Silenced Radio Comics Carry On as NBC Keeps Mum
HOLLYWOOD, April 23 (AP)—Red Skelton, who chattered into a dead microphone for 12 seconds last night because he brought up the taboo Fred Allen matter, suggested today that NBC should learn to take a kidding, and added:
“And there are always other networks.”
He and Bob Hope were cut off the air by NBC engineers for brief periods when they referred to the now celebrated knob-twisting Sunday which silenced Allen on the air for 25 seconds while he panned a mythical vice-president of the network.
NBC, which has 14 vice-presidents—none of them, as Allen inferred, in charge of saving the moments programs run overtime—maintained a dignified silence.
Said Skelton, who was cut off the air in March when he left the word “diaper” in one of his jokes:
“The network must be able to take a kidding, just as the sponsors do. As long as the jokes are not off-color, there can be no objection. We have always endeavoured to steer clear of the off-color type. I feel that Allen and Hope were both right.”
His remark about “other networks” came in reply to a question of what he intended to do.
His script last night contained the line: “Be careful, we might ad lib something that will hurt the dignity of some NBC vice-president. Did you hear them cut Fred Allen off Sunday?”
That was when the engineer turned the knob. Red went on to say, for the benefit of his studio audience only: “You know what NBC means, don’t you? Nothing but cuts, nothing but confusion, nobody certain.”
He had the last word, anyway, because when they put him back on the air he commented “well, we have now joined the parade of stars.”
Network officials were silent beyond the brief statement that the censored material was “objectionable to NBC.” Edna Skelton, Red’s writer and former wife, said the deleted material in the script had been disapproved by the network but that “Red was determined to use it, anyway.”
Hope, who was off only about seven seconds, was sympathetic toward the censors, who not only listen for shady jokes but try to forestall, if possible, such slips as Bing Crosby’s use of “hell” on Jack Benny's broadcast recently.
Said Bob:
“It’s a tough racket, and they’ve always had my sympathy. But I’d hate to be the head censor this morning. He’s probably got a cauliflower head.”
Hope had referred to Las Vegas, Nevada’s wide-open gambling spot, as the only place in the world where you can get tanned and faded at the same time.” Then he added, “Of course, Fred Allen can be faded. . .”
“That,” he quipped today,” was when I faded.”
He said he ad libbed the remark and acknowledged that the program censor had advised him:
“I don’t think they’d like to hear anything about the Allen matter.”
Much of the conjecture today revolved around how, if at all, Benny would handle things next Sunday. He’s never kidded vice-presidents, but has spent years in a friendly feud with Allen. Benny declined to disclose his plans, but commented:
“I don’t see what the fuss is about. From the joke I read in the papers, I can’t see any objection.”
George Burns, mulling over the script for his broadcast tomorrow night with his wife, Gracie Allen, remarked:
“We’ll give ‘em the business, too. We’ll probably be faded, but we’re going ahead.”

Finally, NBC realised either it wasn’t going to win this one, or the whole thing was really something over nothing. It backed down.

One newspaper inserted a reference to an Associated Press story in its United Press version of the account. We’ll add in the lines from the A.P.

Fun's Over(?) NBC Bows To Comics
HOLLYWOOD, April 24.—(U.P.)—The four-day skirmish between the National Broadcasting Company and its radio comics was over today with the comedians planning an unopposed field day of jibes at the network.
But the fun was over. NBC turned its other cheek and invited the comics to say anything they wanted to about the network.
The controversy started Sunday night when the NBC cut Comedian Fred Allen off the air briefly during a wisecrack about a mythical network vice-president in charge of overtime, who gets his vacation by accumulating seconds from the ends of overtime broadcasts.
It ended when NBC last night lifted its order to “fade” any jokes directed at the network and appointed Allen and Comedians Bob Hope and Red Skelton, who also were cut off during NBC jokes, as honorary vice-presidents.
TURNS DOWN JOB
Allen turned down his vice-presidency, pleading “pressure of regular work” and poor health that “precluded strenuous outside activities.”
Allen was cut off for 25 seconds, and Hope and Skelton finished wisecracks about the network into dead air Tuesday night when the network clicked, the switch for about 15 seconds on each program.
Lifting of the NBC ban was regarded by the airlanes comics as a signal for open season on radio jokes.
Dennis Day was the first to have his fun last night without being shunted off .the air. His radio girl friend, Mildred, coming into the room, asked:
“What are you doing?”
“I’m listening to the radio,” Day replied.
“But I don’t hear anything,” she said.
“I know it,” Day answered. “I’m listening to the Fred Allen program.”
GAGS GO ON
Burns and Allen and Jack Benny, who like Day had threatened to go through with anti-network gags despite the ban, trot out their jokes today and Sunday.
Half a dozen others got in their cracks last night.
Ed “Archie” Gardner, of Duffy’s Tavern, presented a show based on a political campaign by Archie.
“I think I’ll get Fred Allen to make my campaign speeches for me during the times he is cut off the air,” Archie said at one point. “And then again—I don’t think I will. I might want to be a vice-president.”
Henry Morgan said he had been to see a movie—“Smash up, the Story of a Woman.” He said it had given him an idea—he’d like to make “Cut-off, the Story of Fred Allen.”
COMEDY OF ERRORS
Kay Kyser said the whole controversy was a build-up for his last night’s show, a new type quiz program, and wanted to thank Allen, Skelton and Hope for the big send-off.
“They were faded for their errors and that’s my new show—‘Comedy of Errors.’”
Information Please also got in a jibe on the rival Columbia Broadcasting System.
(But Jack Carson, who planned this gag over CBS, got orders to delete it 10 minutes before he went on the air:
Carson: “According to the papers, Fred Allen said a radio vice president saved up seconds till he had two weeks, then went on vacation.”
His company teammate Tugwell (Dave Willock): “Gee, Uncle Jack, we’re still on the air. How come we weren’t cut off?”
Carson: “Because this is the CBS, Columbia Broadcasting Company.”
(CBS gave no explanation for the deletion.)
The American Civil Liberties Union took a serious view of the matter. It protested that Allen’s constitutional rights were placed in jeopardy.
Neither comics nor network suffered from want of publicity during the squabble. It even made the front pages of foreign newspapers.

The flap being almost over, we’ll leave the final word on it to Leslie Townes Hope. There was a syndicated newspaper column under Bob’s byline. This appeared April 28. Bob (or his writer) gets in some final shots. “Mr. Hush” is a play on the “Miss Hush” contest on the audience participation show “Truth or Consequences.”

These days it’s no simple matter being a comedian. The radio networks insult so easily. You can’t even say “Vice president” on the air without being cut off.
Of course, in radio we call the process of cutting an actor off the air “fading” and the way the things are in radio today they fade you faster than the man with the green eye shade at Las Vegas.
The epidemic of cutting comedians off the air in the middle of jokes has started a new phenomenon in radio-sliced eggs. And it has brought forth a competitive spirit among comedians.
They fight to see who can be number one on the “cut parade.”
It’s also making it very tough on the listeners. They have to sit by their loud speakers with joke books so they can figure out the end of the gag.
And if this trend continues, the public’s listening habits will change. After supper the family will go into the living room, get comfortable, turn on the radio, and settle back for three hours of uninterrupted silence.
I hear the networks are initiating a new theme song—a special arrangement of “Silent Night.” I suppose the big star of the future be “Whispering” Jack Smith.
Of course, it all started with Fred Allen. He was discussing the way the network was run and he accidentally dropped a syllable which landed on a vice president’s toe.
Now you can’t even say “Fred Allen.” It's going to sound awfully silly to hear Portland come out and call “Oh Mister Hush.”
All the comedians are in this together. Last week on my show I had my little run-in with an antennae axemen.
I gave my small contribution of 12 seconds to the march of unused time.
But I take all this philosophically. After all, silence is golden. So Tuesday night tune in and hear the goose that lays the golden egg.

So what happened with Fred the following Sunday? What did he say? The newspapers don’t seem to have reported it. Instead, they wrote how Fred had checked into a hospital for a complete physical exam. Radio executives may have made things tough for him emotionally, but it was his physical problems that left him dead nine years later.

The Benny-Allen Feud Ends (For Now)

Two people born several months apart and worked, for much of the time, on opposite parts of the U.S. are together entwined in the minds of radio comedy fans.

Ex-vaudevillians Jack Benny and Fred Allen fell into a fake argument on the air, which carried through network radio years and into television, when Allen’s career had quite drastically fallen from his peak in the late ‘40s.

The feud began in late 1936 and was supposedly brought to an end a few months later. But radio knows a good thing when it sees one, and the feud was revived a couple of years later, and even transferred to the big screen in a tough-to-stomach movie called Love Thy Neighbor.

When Benny changed writers during the war, the feud improved tremendously. Jack’s barbs at Allen became far cleverer, Allen responded with the memorable “King For a Day” episode, and the radio side of the feud concluded with a 1953 Benny broadcast from San Francisco with a wonderful premise—instead of enemies, Benny and Allen were friends and vaudeville partners willing to undercut each other for a job.

The first round of the feud ended on March 14, 1937. Soon thereafter the Boston Post devoted three Sunday sections in a row to the Allen-Benny relationship. Below is the third part of the series, published April 11, 1937. Kathy Fuller Seeley, who is probably the best Benny historical scholar around today, went through the Allen archives at the Boston Public Library and is responsible for this post. The articles were taken with a cell phone camera in 2004 from a scrapbook shot at an angle, so the photos below aren’t the greatest.

I presume the fragment of the script comes from the East Coast version of the broadcast. The version of the programme in circulation has some differences in the script, even the song Abe Lyman plays is different, and ends with the NBC ID played on the old Deagan dinner chimes, which were still being used at KFI in Los Angeles at the time. The oddest thing in this version of the script is the concept of a Jew meeting St. Peter.

Here! Laugh Once Again at Radio’s Funniest Skit Broadcast
Experts Call Closing Episode of Jack Benny-Fred Allen Feud “Tops” in Humor—Why the Quarrel Was Terminated
BY JOHN F. COGGSWELL

“It must be easy for you and Fred Allen to work up funny situations that are good for laughs week after week,” I remarked to Jack Benny, all the time knowing that it isn’t.
“Huh? What’s that? How did you ever get that idea?” he demanded.
“Well, there you had your feud with Fred, going strong, laying your studio audience in the aisles and knocking the radio fans off their chairs, sure-fire, knockout stuff, good almost indefinitely and, suddenly, the two of you patch up the quarrel when it was good for laughs for at least three months longer.”
“I’ll tell you about that,” Jack offered. “I guess you’re right; the good old feud could have been made funny for a long time yet, probably would have been if I had stayed out in Hollywood and Fred in New York.
“But I had been planning and looking forward to this trip to the big town, too long to put it off. I was hungry to see a good show and dying for a good cup of coffee.”
“Coffee? If you couldn’t get a good cup of it at home, why didn’t you step out to a restaurant?” I wondered.
“Just can get coffee to suit me in Los Angeles, home or restaurant,” he insisted. “But you can get the best cup of coffee in the world in New York; never had a poor cup here.”
Why Feud Was Ended
Well, he ought to know. While he was talking he was sipping his third cup,taking it black. But that didn’t explain why the boys brought the feud to an end, when it had many more laughs left in it.
“Well, here I was in New York and the feud was still raging,” the man from Waukegan went ahead with the explanation. “Both of us knew we have to be in the same town when we ended the feud, if we wanted to develop the situation to the utmost.
“Here we were together and didn’t know exactly when Fred would be out in Hollywood to make his picture, or I’d be back in New York and whether or not the gag would hold up that long? So we decided to call the feud off.”
Maybe that was all for the best. Certainly, there was something of a bang to bringing the gag to a close while interest was at white heat; when the mere mention of “The Bee” was good for a laugh anywhere. Anyway, the scene that silenced the pistols of the Bennys and the Allens is rated by radio experts as the funniest that ever went out over the ether waves.
Remember? The Jello programme is in full swing. Jack is just finishing singing a song and Jack’s singing is funny by itself any time. There comes a loud knock on the studio door and Mary Livingstone calls “Come in!” The door bangs open and in strides Fred Allen, while all the members of the company—Mary, Kenny Baker, Abe Lyman, the orchestra leader; Sam Schlepperman, Don Wilson and the rest exclaim as though covered with consternation, “Fred Allen.”
Anyway, that was the way it sounded over the radio. For the benefit of listeners who have never had the fun of being in a studio and seeing a big programme put on, it should be noted that Fred was right there all the time, sitting on the stage awaiting his cue. He didn’t come in any door; simply stepped to the microphone at the proper moment. The sound effects man did the knocking and opened and closed a “prop” door.
“Hey, what’s going on here? What’s going on here?” Allen opened. “If it’s a fog horn, and I think it is, it should never have been given shore leave.” Let the script of radio’s acknowledged funniest scene take it from there:



“Boo” Allen Enters
JACK: Well, as I live and regret there are no locks on studio doors . . . if it isn’t Boo Allen! . . . Now listen Allen, what’s the idea of breaking in here in the middle of my singing?
ALLEN: Singing? Well, I didn’t mine when you scraped your violin and called it “The Bee” . . . but when you set that group to music and call it singing . . . Benny, you’ve gone too far.
JACK: Oh, so you don’t like it, huh?
ALLEN: Like it! . . . Why you make Andy Devine sound like Lawrence Tibbett.
JACK: Now look here, Allen. I don’t care what you say about my singing or my violin playing on your own programme, but when you come up here . . . be careful. After all, I’ve got listeners.
ALLEN: Keep your family out of this.
JACK: Well, my family likes my singing . . . and my violin playing.
ALLEN: Your violin playing! Why I just heard that a horse committed suicide when he found out your violin bow was made from his tail.
JACK: Hm! Well, listen to me, you Wednesday night Hawk . . . another crack like that and Town Hall will be looking for a new janitor.
ALLEN: Why, you fugitive from a Ripley cartoon . . . you lay a hand on me and you’ll be hollering strawberry, raspberry, cherry, orange, lemon and HELP.
JACK—Ho-ho, listen to that Smile of Beauty . . . Keep this up, Allen, and I’ll ask Don Wilson to FALL on you . . . And if Wilson falls on you, you know what that means.
MARY—OH BOY, PRESSED HAM!
JACK—Atta girl, Mary, that’s a honey.
MARY—Quiet, coward.
JACK—Coward!?
ALLEN—Yes, and she doesn’t mean that English entertainer.
Allen Makes Threat
JACK—Now listen Allen, I’m up here attending to my own business and this is no place to settle our private affairs. How did you get in here without a pass?
ALLEN—I made one at the doorman and YOU’RE next.
JACK—Oh I am, eh?
SAM SCHLEPPERMAN—Gentlemen, gentlemen, don’t fight here. Why don’t you go over to Madison Square Garden?
ALLEN—You keep out of this, you little squirt, or you’ll be getting your matzohs from Saint Peter.
SAM—Good-bye, Jackie-boy, take it heazy.
(DOOR SLAMS)
JACK—There goes Schlepperman, and I wish you’d follow him out.
ALLEN—Listen Cowboy, why didn’t you stay out in Hollywood where you don’t belong?
JACK—Because I heard you were coming out there to make a picture, that’s why. . . . You ought to do very well, Mr. Allen, now that Boris Karloff is in England.
ALLEN—Well I saw YOUR last picture. And maybe you didn’t start Bank Night but you certainly kept it going.
JACK—Oh yeah? Well three States are waiting for YOUR picture to be released. They’re going to use it instead of capital punishment. . . . Wow!
ABE LYMAN—That’s telling him, Jack.
ALLEN—Who’s that guy?
MARY—Sic ‘em, Lyman.
Allen, “the Great Lover”
JACK—Hm, look what’s going to make a picture . . . Fred Allen, the Great Lover! I suppose Gable and Taylor are losing a lot of sleep right now.
ALLEN—Not if they’re listening to this broadcast.
JACK—Oh, what a witty retort. . . . Where are you going to live in Hollywood, Mr. Allen . . . At the Ostrich Farm?
ALLEN—I may.
MARY—(STARTS TO LAUGH.)
JACK—What are you laughing at, Mary?
MARY—He’ll show those birds how to lay eggs.
JACK—Mary, that was marvelous. I’m gonna kiss you for that.
MARY—Then I take it back.
JACK—Oh, you do.
ALLEN—She’d RATHER kiss an ostrich.
JACK—Well, Allen, that’s going a little too far. I didn’t mind a little mud-slinging now and then but when you make those kind of remarks, it means FIGHT where I come from.

ALLEN—You mean your blood would boil if you had any?
JACK—Yea, and I’ve got just enough to resent that. . . . Mr. Allen, I come from the West. I’m a hard-ridin’, two-fisted he-man . . . and if you’ll step out into the hallway, I’m ready to settle this little affair man to man.
ALLEN-You are, eh?
JACK—Yeah.
ALLEN—(mimicking Jack)—This will be the last number of the last programme of any Jello series—
MARY—NEXT WEEEK THE JELLO PROGRAMME STARRING MARY LIVINGSTONE!
JACK—Come on, Allen, do you wanna go through with this?
ALLEN—I didn’t come here for your autograph.
Last Chance to Apologize
JACK—Now listen, Allen, I’ll give you just one more chance to apologize.
ALLEN—Apologize? Why I’ll knock you flatter than the first minutes of this programme.
MARY—Hold on there, Allen! Whoever touches a hair on Jack’s gray head has to find it first.
JACK—Who said that?
MARY—Barbara Livingstone.
JACK—Never mind that. . . . Come on, Allen, let us away. Play, Lyman! Hm, I’m sorry now I sold my rowing machine.
Over the radio we heard Fred and Jack stomping out of the studio as the orchestra started to play. Of course, they didn’t do anything of the sort. Jack, undoubtedly, sat down and took it easy, right beside his “mike.” But it Fred Allen comported himself as he does during his own programme, he didn’t sit; he wandered all over the stage. Back to the script:
At Each Other’s Throats
WILSON—That was “Love and Learn” played by the orchestra, with Abe Lyman at the baton, and Benny and Allen at each other’s throats in the hallway.
MARY—And the winner will tell his version on his own programme next Wednesday night.
WILSON—Oh, I don’t know. Jack can take care of himself.
ABE—It’s Allen he has to worry about.
MARY—Gee, I hope nothing’s happened to either one of them . . . especially Jack.
WILSON—They’re both pretty husky, although Jack looked kind of worried.
MARY—Oh, he doesn’t care whether he wins or not, he was going to take a vacation anyway.
(Very heavy footsteps approaching.)
MARY—Sh, here they come now.
(Door opens.)
JACK & ALLEN—(Enter, laughing to beat the band.)
JACK—Ha, ha, ha! Gosh, Freddie, those were the days, weren’t they?
ALLEN—Yes, sir! Remember that time in Toledo when you walked into the magician’s dressing-room and stole his pigeons?
JACK—Do I! They tasted pretty good, didn’t they, Freddie.
ALLEN—You said it, Jack.
JACK—And remember the guy in the show with us who used to take in washing on the side? You know, the guy that did our laundry?
ALLEN—Say, what’s Ben Bernie doing now?
JACK—He’s got a band. Ben Bernie and all the Suds.
BOTH—(LAUGH TO BEAT THE BAND).
JACK—We didn’t make much money in those days, Freddie, but we DID get a lot of laughs.
ALLEN—We certainly did . . . until we walked on the stage.
BOTH—(LAUGH AGAIN).
MARY—Say, Jack.
JACK—Yes, Mary.
MARY—What happened to the fight?
JACK—What fight? Say, Freddie, remember that time in South Bend, Indiana, when you were going with Portland and I—
Feud Never Serious
WILSON—Hey, no kidding fellows, what happened to that fight?
JACK—Why, Don, we were never serious about that.
MARY—Then how did you get that black eye?
JACK—Oh, this? Well, I was writing a letter.
ALLEN—And I dotted his eye.
JACK—Now wait a minute, Freddie. I slapped you more than you did me. Look at your wrist, it’s all red.
ALLEN—Well, I made you say uncle when I pulled your hair.
JACK—Uncle isn’t the word, but let it go.
WILSON—Say Fred, here’s a package you dropped on your way out to the hall.
ALLEN—Oh, yes, that’s a box of candy I was gonna give Jack.
ALLEN—Oh, Freddie!
MARY—Candy! Can I have a piece?
ALLEN—Sure, but take the SQUARE ONES, Mary, they’re not poison.
JACK—Hm, I see. . . . And by the way, Freddie, when you get home, if that box of flowers I sent you is still ticking . . . just put it in water.
ALLEN—I will, and thanks for the tip.
MARY—Gee, this candy is swell . . . have a piece, Jack?
JACK—Mmm! . . . Say, this is good chocolate, wonderful flavor. . . . What’s it filled with, Freddie?
ALLEN—Ipana.
JACK—Oh! Well, I was going to brush my teeth anyway.
ALLEN—Well, Jack, I’ve got to go now. I have a lot of work to do on my own programme.
Thanks for Apology
JACK—Okay, Freddie. Well, thanks for your kind visit and apology.
ALLEN—What apology?
JACK—Never mind, let’s not start that again. . . . Before you go, Fred, I want to tell you I didn’t mind one thing you said about me during our feud.
ALLEN—Well, I’ve gotta leave you now. . . . Oh, by the way, Mr. Lyman!
ABE—Yes, Fred.
ALLEN—You lay offa my pal, Jack Benny, that’s all. . . . Goodbye everybody.
CROWD—Goodbye.
JACK—So long, Freddie.
CROWD—(APPLAUD).
JACK—Play, Lyman! And watch your step, you heard what Freddie said.
ABE—Why you little sawed-off punk, I’ll take you and tear you limb from limb!
JACK—Oh Freddie! Freddie! FREDDIE! FREDDIE!
And so, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, with Jack Benny apparently rushing from the stage to bring back his new-found pal to protect him from the orchestra leader, ended the famour Jack Benny-Fred Allen feud.

Fred, Jack and the Feud

The Jack Benny-Fred Allen Feud was supposed to end after about 2½ months with a broadcast in New York in March 1937, but audiences liked it, Allen liked it, and Benny liked it, so it carried along, off-and-on into Jack’s television years in the 1950s.

NBC liked it, too. The Boston Post devoted pages to it, as the network tried to coax a columnist to write about it. The first story appeared March 28, 1937 and the second a week later. There was a third another week later.

In the first story, the “John” is John Brown (“Petrie” is the character’s name). “Charles” in the second story is the delightful Charlie Cantor.

My thanks to Kathy Fuller-Seeley, who went through Allen’s scrapbooks at the Boston Public Library. The cell phone pictures of the newspaper photos are poor, but better than nothing. Several are, unfortunately, unprintable, including several with Benny and his writers.

When Fred Allen Got the Hook on “Boston Stage”
Feudist Admits He Obtained Inspiration for Career as Book Boy in Public Library
How Benny Lad Reached Top
BY JOHN F. COGGSWELL
“Here’s one that’s right down the alley for you,” enthused the NBC publicity man—press relations representative to you.”
“Yeah?”
“Sure! Boston setting. Boston celebrities! What more do you want?”
Well, this story of the famous Jack Benny-Fred Allen feud wouldn’t be much of anything if we didn’t have a publicity man in it, would it, or would it? Anyway, the anecdote shows one of our feudin’ wildcats making a start in life, so let’s go!
“You know Fred Allen isn’t Fred Allen’s name at all, if you get what I mean. He was born right across the Charles River from Boston, in Cambridge, in 1894. That makes him home folks, eh? And he was christened John F. Sullivan, Sullivan being the correct family name. Pretty good stuff for you, eh?
“But it isn’t exactly news,” I objected.

“No, sure not. But the story’s a woe, for you, just the same. You see the first job he had was working in the Boston Public Library, for 20 cents an hour. His name was Sullivan, remember that and one day John L. Sullivan, the prize fighter, himself, came in to get a book.”
“For what?” I demanded. “Did he have some flowers to press or did he want to throw it at a cat?”
“Ha, Ha, That’s Good!”
“Huh! I get you. Ha, ha! That’s good,” the publicity man hit around as his mind groped for the way out; but, he was quick on the trigger, all right, this public relations guy.
“You see, it wasn’t exactly a book, the champ prize fighter was after,” he went on. “He’d heard about Charles Dana Gibson drawing a picture about him in “Life.” Took a long time for the news to get around to John L. Ha, ha! And he wanted to look up the magazine and this young John F. Sullivan was given the job of helping him find it.
“Well, the kid was pretty awe-struck, but finally got up his courage and ventured, ‘My name is John Sullivan, too.’
“ ‘Lots of kids have been named after me,” boomed John L. . . . .”
That’s enough of that story, but anyway it sets one of the principles on the way toward staging the world’s funniest feud. Besides, Fred Allen himself told me that is was in the Boston Public Library that he decided to become a stage celebrity. During one of his leisure moments he picked up a book about juggling and before he had read two chapters of it made up his mind to become a professional juggler.
His first appearance was on amateur night at a theatre in the South End. He hadn’t juggled more than one juggle, when the hook got him. He was back next week for more—and got it! In fact, young Johnny Sullivan got hooked off that stage so often that folks and the manager sort of got to know him. So one night the manager decided to have a bit of fun with his most persistent amateur.
Correspondence Course in Juggling
“Where did you learn to juggle?” he demanded, striding out upon the stage.
The kid was a little bit scared and as embarrassed as anyone who has been hooked off a stage 18 times actual count can be, but he didn’t forget to wise-crack. “I took a correspondence school course in baggage smashing,” was the best he could do on the spur of the moment.
It was good enough; came darn near to laying that audience in the aisles. The place rocked with laughter.
“Maybe the laugh was on me,” Allen remarked to me. “That make me believe I was a comedian.”
Anyway, the lad got up a string of patter to go with his juggling, got onto the vaudeville stage, quit juggling for monologue, played all over this country and filled an engagement on the Australian circuit. Back home, just in time to slip into khaki for the World war, he went to France and came back all right.
After the war, he teamed up with another Boston boy who became a top-notcher, Jack Donahue. For a time, Fred did the writing and Jack did the acting, but eventually the kid from Cambridge hit Broadway. Hammerstein’s “Polly,” the first “Little Show,” “Three’s a Crowd”; Allen wise-cracked his way through all of them.
And there you are. What could be more natural with his peculiar gifts that the step-off into radio? So that puts one of our feudists behind his tree, fully ammunitioned with quips, sallies and retorts, ready to shoot at the first wiggle in the underbrush. Seeing he’s there on the job, let’s allow Fred Allen to introduce the other half of the famous Benny-Allen embroglio.
Little Jackie Benny
“Town Hall News! Sees nothing, knows all! Waukegan, Ill., March 28, 1902. Town boys get orchestra craze. Nick dads for instruments. Town Hall News shows little Jack Benny getting violin from his father.
“ ‘Papa, did you bring me my violin?’
“ ‘Yes, Jackie, but that my son should want to be a fiddler!’
“ ‘Oh, daddy, I want to start practising right away.’
“ ‘Okeyedokey, my boy, here’s your fiddle. And Jackie . . .’
“ ‘Yes, papa.’
“ ‘Here’s a monkey wrench to go with it. Don’t forget that plumbing is a good business, too.’”

Skip the years; it’s just as well to leave out the noises that assailed residents’ ears in the vincinity [sic] of the Benny home from then on. It’s Saturday night in Waukegan. The youth and beauty of the town have gathered for a dance. Proudly, the young maestro of the youthful orchestra swings his outfit into action.
“How did we do?” Jack Benny asks the first of the dancers he meets the next day, eager to hear praise of his fiddling and direction.
“Well, your trap drummer wasn’t too bad,” the acquaintance replies and that’s that.
More years pass. Jack Benny and his violin are in the navy. Now, just let those gobs try to escape his playing. There’s to be an entertainment at the training station. The first volunteer is Jack—he plays his fiddle.
He does and gets hardly a police scattering of applause; several of the listeners make rude gestures, clasping their fingers over their noses. Jack gets mad; starts in to tell his audience what he thinks of them. Yah! This is good. First a titter, then loud laughter runs through the place. He slays them; they think his tirade is part of the act. Huh! Then as now—a comedian, not a violinist.
The war is over. Jack and his violin are in vaudeville. His patter goes over big; his fiddling makes no hit, save with the one small town critic who asks for more violin and less chatter.
Up and Coming
“Yeah, I often ran across another fellow about my same age, going by the name of Fred James, playing the same circuits, Jack Benny told me. “Sure, same guy who is Fred Allen, now. No, we never played the same show. We were both monologists so could hardly be billed together.”
With the advent of the talkies, Hollywood needs comedians and it gets Jack Benny. Small bits at first; then good parts. He’s not a star but he’s coming. Give him a break and he’ll be on top. And he gets the break. It’s Ed Sullivan, the Broadway columnist, who gives it to him in 1932. Sullivan is broadcasting a programme from New York. He runs across Jack Benny, who is visiting the big town, and asks him to appear as a guest artist at the next show.
Tucked away in his wallet, right beside that clipping of the small town critic who asked more fiddling, Jack Benny treasures a crumpled, dog-eared, faded single sheet of paper, covered with double-spaced typewriting. It’s the script of the minute talk he made on Ed Sullivan’s programme that night, only five years ago; his radio debut.
Here it is, just as I copied it from that old script. Look it over. Yeah. Here is the same self-kidding comedian, who in such a short space of time has climbed to the top, become radio’s highest-priced humorist.
“Ladies and gentlemen—This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares.’ I am here tonight as a scenario writer. There is a quite a lot of money writing scenarios for the pictures. Well, there would be if I could sell one.
“I am going back to pictures in about 10 weeks. I’m going to have a big part in a new film with Greta Garbo. They sent me the story last week. When the picture opens, I’m found dead in the bathroom. It’s sort of a mystery picture; I’m found in the bathtub on a Wednesday night.
“I should have been in Miss Garbo’s last picture, but they gave the part to Robert Montgomery. You know, studio politics. The funny part of it is that I’m really much younger than Montgomery. That is, I’m younger than Montgomery and Ward.
“You’d really like Garbo. She and I are great friends in Hollywood. She used to let me drive her car all over town. Of course, she paid me for it.
The Rest Is History
That was the start of it. Five short years ago and last week Jack Benny signed a three-year contract that makes him the highest-paid comedy star in the country. Fan mail poured in after that first brief broadcast. The public wanted more of Benny; radio moguls became interested.
The rest of it is too recent history to need recounting. There’s one interesting angle, though. Jack might have labored on indefinitely in Hollywood without attaining stardom, but goes out, makes a hit in radio and in almost the wink of an eye, he’s back in Hollywood a full-blown star.
Last week we sketched the beginning of the famous Jack Benny-Fred Allen feud; told about 10-year-old Stuart Kanin [sic] playing “The Bee,” on the Town Hall programme, of Fred Allen’s comment that Jack Benny ought to be ashamed of himself, and Benny’s comeback.
But even then the boys didn’t realize that they had something. It wasn’t until the fan mail started piling in that they found that, from that meagre start, they had what radio listeners thought was a major controversy. Jack Benny got on the long distance phone in Hollywood; called Fred Allen in New York.
“Fred,” he said, “we’d better bear down on ‘The Bee’ stuff. I think we’ve got something there.”
“You’re telling me,” Allen shot back. “Listen, guy, I was just reaching for the phone to call you when the bell rang. The old Allen luck, eh? This sticks you for the call. You’ll be hearing from me Wednesday night if you put your ear to the loudspeaker.”
“I suppose you had to keep in pretty close touch with each other all through the feud,” I remarked to Jack Benny.
Had a Lot of Fun

“Thunder, no! That would have taken all the fun out of it,” the top comedian answered. “That and one more call was all we made during the whole thing.”
That’s a fact. These two grown men had more fun than a couple of kids, each trying to put something over on the other; to spring an angle that would be hard to answer. Fun! Yes, and work, too. Usually Fred Allen has his script all but finished by Sunday night, ready for whipping into a broadcast.
Now he had to wait until after Sunday night before he could finish it. I have before me the script of the so-called “Benny Bit” from the Town Hall programme of Jan. 13. That’s quite a “bit.” Six pages of typewriting that had to be good. No, not even Fred Allen, with all of his love of writing humor and all his ability for hard concentrated work, could turn that out without many hours of hard labor.
But he had Jack Benny and his writers in the same boat; they couldn’t even start writing script until Thursday for the Sunday Show. There’s enough background for the present. Let’s listen to the bullets whining across the continent as the funniest feud gets to raging in earnest.
The scene is that same Studio 8-H, in the NBC edifice in New York. Fred Allen has just started to introduce the talent for the “Town Hall Varities,” when Portland Hoffa butts in with her well-known “Mister Allen!” Fred reminds her that she has already had her part; she must be getting absent minded.
“There’s a man here to see you; he says it’s important,” Portland insists.
He Was the One
“I’m busy, Portland,” Allen drawls. “If it’s somebody who wants a dime for a cup of coffee, tell him I’ve done away with the middleman. There’s a percolator in my overcoat pocket, he can help himself.”
But this is no panhandler; it’s the General Delivery man from the Waukegan postoffice, a part played by a fellow named John, John Petrie, a member of the Allen cast. Remember that episode? Funny, eh? Well, we might as well have a few of the laughs over again.
John—I heard Benny’s programme last Sunday night.
Allen—So-o-o, you’re the one.
John—No. There was another man with me. He heard it, too . . .
Allen—Now, Mr. Petrie, as man to man. . . . I’m giving it the best of it, perhaps. . . . But did you ever hear Jack Benny play “The Bee” on his violin? John—Well, I heard him play somethin’ in a theatre in Waukegan, one time.
Allen—Was it “The Bee?”
John—Couldn’t a been. When he finished playin’ his violin was covered with somethin’ but it wasn’t honey. Looked more like tomatoes to me.
Allen—I see. With all those tomatoes hanging on it, his E string must have looked like a vine.
John—I ain’t here to stool pigeon, Allen.
Allen—Well. . . .
John—You fellers ought to quit this arguin’, Allen. All Waukegan is agog.
Allen—Oh, are you from Waukegan, Mr. Petrie?
John—Yes. I’m in the postoffice there. At the general delivery window. Right across from the second spittoon as you come in the door. . . .
Allen—Well, you ought to be able to settle the whole thing in two seconds. Could Jack play the Bee on his violin when he was 10 years old?
John—No!
Allen—Can you prove it?
John—Prove it? I been runnin’ the general delivery window in the Waukegan postoffice for 40 years. Jack Benny started takin’ violin lessons though the mail.
PRACTISES IN POSTOFFICE
Allen—You mean he had his lesson come general delivery?
John—He had to. His family wouldn’t let him practise in the house.
I can see Jack now. He’s toddle into the postoffice draggin’ his violin. I’d give him his lesson and he’d practise right there in front of my general delivery window.
Too bad there isn’t enough space to reproduce all that side-splitting scene and the ones from that followed it on both programmes, too; they ought to be preserved for posterity, being, as they are acknowledged, the lead-up to the funniest joint broadcast that has ever ridden the air waves.
Fred asks the man from Waukegan to play the tune that he heard youthful Jack Benny wrest from the innards of his fiddle. The visitor takes a violin and played beginners’ exercises. Then. . . .
John—Well, I got to be goin’. Which way is Waukegan from here?
Allen—Just go out the first door . . . and keep left. Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing we can add to Mr. Petrie’s story. The Bee was played by a 10-year-old boy on this programme, but his name was not . . . Jack Benny.

The first photo from the Post below is missing the caption. The people depicted, left to right, are writers Al Boasberg, Ed Beloin, Bill Morrow, star Jack Benny and Jack's personal manager, Harry Baldwin.

Jack Benny Fiddlin' in the Bide-A-Wee Pawn Shops
That Was Gag Scene That Made Millions Laugh—Over in a Few Minutes It Took Hours to Write—Producing Funny Script Is Serious Business Until It Comes Roaring Out of Your Radio Set.
BY JOHN F. COGGSWELL
We were sitting in the hotel coffee shoppe. Jack Benny had promised to meet us there at 11:30, for breakfast, his, not ours.
Precisely at 11:30, he whirled in through the revolving door from the street. If you don’t know that that punctuality sets him aside from most of the people of the stage, you haven’t had much to do with actors—or actresses.
Jack ordered orange juice, cornflakes and milk, black coffee and didn’t eat all of the cornflakes.
“Got to watch the old waist-line, eh?” I remarked.
“And how!” he agreed. “But, man, I saw times in the old vaudeville days, when I didn’t have to hang back on the food. Sometimes we ate and sometimes we didn’t. Often, I lay abed hungry and told myself that if I ever got in the money, I was going to have everything in the world I wanted to eat.
“Well, I’m in the money, all right, but I’m getting just about the same things to eat that I did then, out on the circuits. Sure, I get in better places and pay more money for it, but I’m hungry just as often.”
Anyone, who has to watch his diet to keep from getting overweight, can understand how my remarks and his reply got him to thinking along lines that were anything but humorous. He had a few kicks in his system and he worked them off with intense enthusiasm. Suddenly, just when he was going good, he subsided. A sheepish grin spread over his face.
He’s No Kicker
“I’m a fine guy to be kicking about anything, eh?” he went on. “You boys will be thinking that I’m a grouch, getting too big for my clothes, too. But I can tell you honestly that I appreciate all that life is handing me.
“This is the truth. Every morning, when I get out of bed, I stand there and thank God for the break I’m getting. I don’t mean that I get down on my knees and put it into words, but I’m thanking Him, just the same, with every bit of my soul and body.”
It’s a fact that it doesn’t seem to be in the man, to play Benny the Great; he’s walking softly and keeping his fingers crossed. He doesn’t kid himself that he’ll be the darling of the entertainment-seeking ages.
“Some day,” he told me, “the public will say, ‘We’re sick of Jack Benny,’ and that will be that. But tell ‘em I’m enjoying myself now and thank them for me.”
Fred Allen is much of the same sort of fellow, underneath. True, I didn’t get so much of a chance to study Fred; Benny was busy but Fred was busier. But neither of them have any great amount of “side,” both of them speak as kindly to the lowliest stage hand as they do to their sponsors, and that’s speaking very, very nicely. Both of them wear the same size hats that they did in their vaudeville days.
They’re close friends; have been for years. Portland Hoffa and Mary Livingstone both told me that every time the boys get together, they, the wives, might just as well go out shopping. Allen and Benny always have a lot of things to talk over.

With His Iron Hat
We noticed that, the night we got them together in the little room behind the stage in Studio 8-H, for taking the pictures that accompany these stories. Jack and Mary came back stage just before Town Hall closed its doors for the night. Fred Allen, overcoat was over his arm, iron hat on his head, came in. He was tired; it showed in the droop of his body, the fatigue lines in his face. But he was game.
“All right, fellow, tell us what you want,” he invited as he tossed coat and hat on a table.
Yeah, that was a fine idea, but it took a little while to get going. Almost immediately, Benny had Fred backed into a corner of the room. Allen sagged against the wall, while Jack stood leaning toward him supported with one fist against the plaster.
Well, folks, we’ll have to admit that Benny and Allen are chummy enough now, but when they were feudin’, they feuded to a faretheewell. So let’s go ahead and get some re-laughs out of the script. Frankly, over the air, the quips came too fast for me; I’ve enjoyed reading them over in manuscript and very likely you will, too.
Those Famous Air Gags
Remember, at the end of last week’s article, Fred Allen had just finished interviewing the general delivery man from the Waukegan postoffice. That gave Jack Benny plenty to work on in his next broadcast; notice that he runs true to his usual style making himself the butt of the whole thing. Well, that’s the technique that has put him where he is.
DON WILSON—And now ladies and gentlemen, we bring you that violinist with the accent on vile . . . Jack Benny!
JACK—Hm! That was very funny, Don . . . very humorous. Evidently you’ve been listening to Fred Allen again.
WILSON—Yes, I have, Jack. Did you hear him last Wednesday?
JACK—Yes, Don, but only with my ears, my heart wasn’t in it. Any man that can stand before a microphone and say that I can’t play a violin, just isn’t normal . . . that’s all.
WILSON—But Jack, he didn’t say you couldn’t play the violin, all he said was you shouldn’t play it.
JACK—Oh!
MARY LIVINGSTONE—Say Jack.
JACK—Yes, Mary.
MARY—All I heard him say was, you couldn’t play the violin at the age of 10.
JACK—I’m glad you brought that up, Mary, because I’ve got a photograph of myself right here, taken when I was 10 years old, playing “The Bee” on my violin . . . a very difficult number. . . . Here, Mary, look.
MARY—Mmm!
JACK—What do you think of that.
MARY—I’m glad it’s not a sound picture.
JACK—They didn’t have ‘em in those days.
WILSON—But Jack, how can we tell what number you’re playing?
JACK—If you were a musician you’d know . . . Say, who are you working for anyway . . . Fred Allen or me?
WILSON—Jello.
JACK—Oh! . . . Well, let me tell you something: I played a violin in concert halls log before I knew anything about Strawberry, Cherry, Orange, Lemon and Lime. WILSON—You left out Raspberry.
MARY—I’ll bet the audience didn’t.
JACK—Hm! That’s right, give Allen more ammunition to work with.
PHIL HARRIS (orchestra leader)—Let’s see that picture a minute, will you, Mary?
JACK—Yeah, look at it Phil, you’re a musician . . . That proves conclusively that I’m an artist.
PHIL—Well Jack, anybody can have a picture taken with a violin.
JACK—Yes Phil, but can’t you tell from the way I’m holding it that I can play?
PHIL—You’re holding it upside down.
JACK—Well, it’s much harder that way . . . Anyway, I had a small chin and I couldn’t put the violin under it.
MARY—Now you can put a ‘CELLO under it.
JACK—Is that so.
KENNY BAKER—Can I see the picture too, Jack?
JACK—Why?
Calling it a Fiddle
KENNY—Well everybody else is getting laughs out of it.
JACK—Don’t get cute, Kenny . . . And another thing: Fred Allen said I only had TWO strings on my fiddle . . . Imagine . . . that’s what he called my Stradivarius, a fiddle.
KENNY—Is it a Stradivarius?
JACK—That’s not the point . . . Anyway, Mary, you count ‘em. How many strings to do see in this picture?
MARY—Four.
JACK—See?
MARY—Three on the violin and one around your waist.
JACK—Well, that was to hold my pants up. I was poor in those days. Hm, that’s what burns me up: Allen picking on a poor little kid.
Mary—(Laughs).
JACK—What are you laughing at, Mary?
MARY—Burns and Allen.
JACK—Hm! Well, I don’t want to discuss it any further. Let’s forget all the Allens, especially Fred. I should stoop to argue with a toothpaste salesman.
MARY—Well, you could use one.
JACK—I said toothpaste, not toupee.

Takes Lots of Writing
The probabilities are that the average radio fan has no idea of how much writing there is to even a short bit. Allen and a male member of his caste [sic], named Charlie, answered that sally of Benny’s in a very few minutes, but it took five full pages of script for the job. Script full of wit and punch; it must have taken hours to turn out.
Fred opened the “Benny bit” by styling Jack’s fiddling picture, “a new low in composite photographic skulduggery,” and what’s more said he could prove it. As a witness, he produces one, DeWitt Levee of Waukegan, Ill., impersonated by Charles.
“What do you do in Waukegan?” Allen asked the witness.
“I am running—strictly by appointment—the Bide-A-Wee combination pawnshop and photograph gallery,” asserts the man from the West.
Then Fred Allen goes after laughs, and gets them, by allowing himself to be kidded by the visitor. The script runs:
ALLEN—I’ve never heard of a combination pawnshop and photograph gallery.
CHARLES—Why not? It’s my own idea. So many people are hocking valuables and never coming back.
ALLEN—I know. But where does the photograph gallery come in?
CHARLES—By me, let us say for no reason, you are hocking something. I am taking your picture with the article. You are keeping the picture for a souvenir.
ALLEN—I see. Do you ever listen to Jack Benny on the radio?
CHARLES—Who else?
ALLEN—Don’t get personal, Mr. Levee. Just answer my questions.
CHARLES—Jack Benny! There’s a comedian. You should live to see the day you could hold a candle to Jack Benny.
ALLEN—Wait a minute! Don’t turn this into an arson case, Mr. Levee.
CHARLES—Last Sunday, Jack is slaying me. He is calling you a toothpaste salesman.
ALLEN—That’s only the half of it.
CHARLES—A toothpaste salesman. Hi! Yi!
ALLEN—Well. At least my samples don’t wobble around.
CHARLES—What’s the matter you couldn’t say Jello.
ALLEN—Did he say Ipana last Sunday.
Not to Eulogize
ALLEN—Now. . . . Listen . . . Mr. Levee. At long last you and I are not gathered here to eulogize Jack Benny.
CHARLES—Look! I’m giving Jack Benny a little plug. And he can’t take it.
ALLEN—You know what happens if you give Jack a little plug, don’t you?
CHARLES—So what happens? Buck Benny Rides Again
ALLEN—Buck Benny rides again!
CHARLES—Oy! Buck Benny. What a cowboy!
ALLEN—Now . . . Look, Mr. Levee. You were brought here tonight to tell our radio audience about a certain picture.
CHARLES—Could I get a word in endwise . . . Up to now?
ALLEN—Quiet please! Did you . . . or did you not . . . on the afternoon of July 7, 1904, take a picture of Jack Benny holding his violin?
CHARLES—I did.
ALLEN—And where was the picture taken?
CHARLES—In the Bide-A-Wee Paw Shop at Waukegan, Illinois, with a Brownie Number Two.
ALLEN—Fine. What was Jack Benny doing in the Bide-A-Wee Pawn Shop at the time?
CHARLES—He was practicing on the violin.
ALLEN—He practised his violin in your pawnshop?
CHARLES—Where else? You think I am letting the violin out of mine sight?
ALLEN—I see.
CHARLES—The violin was in hock, a technical term, but I was letting Jackie come into the pawnshop to practise.
ALLEN—Now, one vital question, Mr. Levee. Was Jack playing The Bee on this violin when you took the picture?
CHARLES—Is the right arm blurred?
ALLEN—No, the right arm isn’t blurred.
CHARLES—Then he wasn’t even playing.
Then the man from Waukegan borrows a violin from the orchestra leader and plays the music that little Jackie Benny played in the Bide-A-Wee pawn shop. Beginners’ exercises, nothing else.