Indestructible Benny

There may not have been a comedian who was analysed so much during his time as Jack Benny.

Over the years, we’ve posted a number of articles from columnists explaining the appeal of Benny and his show. Jack talked about it himself at the time as well.

This article is from Leon Gutterman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. What may be interesting is a great deal of credit was given to his irregular supporting cast. Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris and Mary Livingstone were the only people to be mentioned at the start of each radio show. Anyone else got credit for their performances only on rare occasion. An exception might have been Mel Blanc, whose name Jack mentioned as the show was unfolding on the air. Unlike other radio shows, you wouldn’t hear “Appearing tonight were…” though credits were given on the Benny television programmes.

The writer got Schlepperman’s catch-phrase wrong, but his column otherwise sums up the Jack Benny show that people remember today.

It was published Oct. 13, 1950.

OUR FILM FOLK
Why Jack Benny Is the Indestructible Comedian
Jack Benny has returned to the nation's air waves for the 19th season of his comedy career in radio. And he has come back, as always, in his familiar role of the balding, penny-pinching patsy, but his CBS program as in the past, will be replete during the coming year with new riotous laugh skits, new characterizations, new guest surprises. At least that's what Jack tells me.
This indestructible quality of the great wit's character creation and a show format flexible enough for a perennial infusion of fresh idea material and talent point to the secret of his enduring and inimitable success. As one newspaper editor once wrote: "Benny hasn't, as is so persistently rumored, been doing the same thing for 18 years. He wouldn't have lasted that long if he had."
Comedy situations in a Benny program season had, year after year, been marked by freshness and originality. New characterizations, his own and those of an odd assortment of fellow actors and actresses, have paraded across; the script in endless procession. His guests, too, have been spectacularly impressive, as witness the case of the Ronald Colmans, who appeared 16 times on the show.
But the program personalities, including the whimsical portrayals of regular cast members, are probably the most memorable highlights of the Benny saga. Among those who turned up last season was Frank Fontaine, a new comedian, playing a mentally retarded sweepstakes winner named John L. P. Sivony [sic]. Mel Blanc, a regular, (the voice of Bugs Bunny) did a week-by-week impersonation of Al Jolson. Jack himself added another facet to his characterization, that of the naive treasurer of the Beverly Hills Beavers, a boy's club.
Once, there was an ostrich in the script, and even a polar bear named Carmichael. Jack kept Carmichael in the cellar and Rochester was his keeper. At the time, the husky-voiced valet was in an endless search for a gas man to do some repairs. The versatile Mel Blanc played Carmichael. Blanc now is the voice of the Benny parrot, which keeps Rochester from delivering soliloquies while doing the household chores. Its screams drive him to distraction. Blanc is also Benny's French violin teacher. He is the coughing, sputtering voice of the rattletrap Maxwell auto as it tunes up, and he doubles as well as the rhythm-tongued train announcer calling out Azusa, Cucamonga and other weirdly-named stations.
Buck Benny Rides Again
Who doesn't remember the famous Buck Benny of the long-running "Buck Benny Rides Again" sequence? Andy Devine, whose entrance line was "Hiya, Buck" was the chief stooge of this comedy turn. The skit ceased with the release of the Paramount film "Buck Benny Rides Again." in which Jack and most his fibbers appeared.
Mr. Billingsley was a quaint character dreamed up and played by Ed Beloin, a former Benny writer. A subnormal, self-appointed house guest, Mr. Billingsley consistently made wry comments at the wrong time in a dry voice. Beloin, never an actor, always had Benny worried that he'd miss his cues or fluff his lines.
Another witty specimen knocked on the Benny door anouncing [sic] "A telegram for Mr. Benny." The role was played by Harry Baldwin, Benny's secretary, who would glow with Barrymore-like pride at the end of each performance, over his laconic line.
Mr. Kitzel, a current fabrication, is played by Artie Auerbach, former New York newspaper photographer. His "peekle in the meedle with the mustard on top" and his baseball stories are laugh toppers. Mable Flapsaddle and Gertrude Gershift, the Benny telephone opertors [sic], enacted by Sarah Berner [sic] and Bea Benadaret [sic], tie the program in knots with them saucy badgering of the boss.
Schelepperman’s "Howdy Stranger"
Off and on the show have been Sheldon Leonard, Sam Hearn, Frank Nelson and many other stooges. Leonard is the racetrack tout with the soft, patronizing voice. Hearn played Mr. Schlepperman, whose greeting, "Howdy, Stranger," stirred a ripple of chuckles. Nelson is often heard as the haughty floorwalker, the butler or some generally nasty type, with a mocking "Yeahus" when addressed.
Jack's main foils of course, have come in for equally hilarious typing. Tenor Dennis Day is the timid mama's boy who is always asking for his salary, and Phil Harris is ribbed as a lady-killer with a predilection for word-mangling and liquid refreshments. Rochester as the extrovert valet and chauffeur constantly befuddles the harassed Benny. Mary Livingstone, Jack's wife, is the heckling girl friend whom Benny constantly threatens to send back to the hosiery counter at the May Company department store.
Practically every important figure in show business has guested on the Benny funfest, but Fred Allen's visits have been among the most notable. Jack and Fred carried on a feud for years, on their own programs. Every once in a while they crossed over for mutual calls, letting the quips and sparks fly at close range. "If I had my writers here," Jack once exploded, "you wouldn't talk to me like this."
Benny at His Best
For years, the Benny comedy situations have run the gamut of thing that could possibly happen to Jack Benny has been satirized. Last season, for example, he did a takeoff on an actual operation on his nose, and in another skit he roved through the script for several weeks spending his money like a drunken sailor after a can of tomatoes fell on his head and put him out of his mind. It was Benny at his best.
To his sheer delight, the fabulous funnyman has taken the worst beating from his stooges of any comedian in radio history. Everything about him is mercilessly lampooned . . . his thinning hair, his baby blue eyes, his age (39 years), his romantic attractiveness, his Maxwell, his money vault, his thriftiness and his fiddle. A few years ago his writers even dreamed up a contest in which listeners were invited to send in letters of 25 words or less dwelling on the theme "I can't stand Jack Benny because . . ." More than 500,000 letters poured in. Benny revelled in the scheme.
That's why Jack Benny is the indestructible comedian, who never changes himself but keeps his show over fresh with funsters. That's the secret of his 19 years of radio success.

Like a Moose Jaw Needs a Hat Rack

Have you heard the one about Jack Benny showing up in a church in Moose Jaw?

No, this isn’t a joke. It actually happened.

Well, we should clarify that it wasn’t Jack himself but his voice.

May 1939 was an unusual month for Jack. It was a month after he was ordered to pay a fine in a jewellery smuggling case and columnists like Jimmy Fidler pointed out the charges had absolutely no effect on Benny’s career. In fact, radio newsman Tom Fizdale reported Jack’s management worked out a pay increase that month to $15,000 a week (and staved off an attempt by General Foods to change his sponsorship from Jell-O to Grape Nuts Flakes).

At the start of the month, he was a batter in a celebrity ball game during the opening of Gilmore Field, the new home of the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. His movie Artists and Models Abroad was still in theatres and Man About Town was set to open the following month.

His radio show, of course, was still on the air. But that isn’t what was heard at a United Church (still standing) in Saskatchewan.

Jack made guest shots on a number of radio shows. On May 16, he appeared on the Lifebuoy (Beeee-oh!!) Tuesday Night Party. Here’s what the Regina Leader-Post reported on page one the next day:

Jack Benny In Church
MOOSE JAW, May 17.—Ghosts of departed congregations of a less broad-minded era probably rolled over in their graves Tuesday night, as a musical festival program was in progress at Zion church.
A radio was set up on the stage to bring to the audience a talk to be given by Adjudicator Arthur Benjamin over the CBC. Officials, anxious lest they miss the opening remarks, turned the set on five minutes ahead of time.
They turned into the last hilarious five minutes of a comedy broadcast, with Jack Benny rowing violently with Dick Powell. The audience, momentarily startled, giggled a bit. But nobody moved to turn the radio off.
Set at full volume, the set blared forth wise-cracks and riotous laughter, a blurb that the United States had more bath tubs than any other country in the world.
Then, to cap it all off, wide-mouthed Martha Raye swung into it ditty about “Three Little Fishes” who swam to the dam. It was not festival music. It was rowdy-dowdy swing stuff, and it probably never blared forth in more peculiar surroundings.
The song ran its course with a hot orchestra background. There was no adjudication for Miss Raye's number.

You can hear part of the show below.



There was another unusual Benny appearance during the month, this one in person. In the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Jack raised millions of dollars through benefit concerts to save symphony orchestras, their theatres, even their pension plans. Things were a little different in the 1930s. On May 19, 1939, Jack agreed to preside over a charity dinner in Pasadena for poor kids. He brought along announcer Don Wilson and writers Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to add some shtick.

Here’s the pertinent part from next day’s Pasadena Star-News.

BOYS BENEFIT BY $10-PLATE BANQUET
Funds To Permit 220 To Enjoy Camp
JACK BENNY GIVES $50 DONATION
Radio Star Willing To Come Again
Approximately 220 underprivileged boys will enjoy vacations in the mountains this summer because 550 prominent Pasadena business men paid $10 a plate for their dinners last night in the Huntington Hotel.
Members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce today were jubilant over the success of last night's brilliant [sic] event. General Chairman W. H. Nicholas proudly displayed a $50 check signed by Jack Benny, who after serving as master of ceremonies declared himself completely “sold” on the Junior Chamber of Commerce plan for boys' camps.
"I've had the best time in 20 years, and if you ask me to come again next year, I'll drop everything and come over," he told Leon Kingsley to whom he presented the check. "I'll even bring my own violin."
Benny Humor Pleases
Virtually everyone attending last night's banquet got thrills from Mr. Benny's fine humor, the vaudeville entertainment provided, the "ribs" at the expense of prominent Pasadena officials and the sizzling steaks served as the main course of the dinner that cost $10 per plate.

I suspect one of the jokes at the Pasadena dinner did not include the phrase “like a moose needs a hat rack.” Morrow or Beloin were gone from his writing staff when it was heard on the air for the first time in 1947. Norman Krasna loved it, you know.

There might have been something about the feud with Fred Allen, which would reach another high point by tossing it into a movie in 1940 called Love Thy Neighbor. The photo to the right is also from May 1939 but I can’t find the source. The feud, in a way, continued after Allen’s death in 1956. Jack would reminisce about it to TV talk show audiences and even drag out his impression of Allen ridiculing him.

I’ve Heard That Joke Before

When comedians on radio got tired of jokes, they made jokes about jokes.

Fred Allen, Henry Morgan, even Boston’s Bob and Ray, pointed out radio was obsessed with making fun of Brooklyn or the La Brea Tar Pits. Morgan and the wonderful Arnold Stang had a routine, where Stang urged Morgan to jump on the overused joke bandwagon, saying Fred Allen had one about a pen that writes under water and, by procrastinating, Morgan didn’t have “one damp joke.” Morgan responded with a lovely pun that he did have a joke about a typewriter that wrote under wood.

Syndicated columnist John Crosby went further, making jokes about comedians making jokes about jokes in his missive of Friday, February 14, 1947.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
The All-American Joke
Peter Lind Hayes, who is developing into a very good comedian indeed, fell to complaining the other day about jokes. There were, he claimed, almost as many jokes about the Governors of Georgia as there are Governors of Georgia. Mr. Hayes, who is one of the brighter luminaries on the Dinah Shore show (C. B. S. 9:30 p. m., E. S. T. Wednesdays), explained that the Georgia Governors had moved to Number Four on the Hit Parade of jokes.
"What's Number One?” inquired Miss Shore.
"The most popular joke of the year was Kilroy was here. Number Two was the fountain pen that writes under water. In the third slot is a new entry which came up very fast."
"Bet I can guess—‘Open the Door, Richard.’ "
"Right," said Mr. Hayes some-what grimly. "Number Four was, of course, the Governors of Georgia. Numbers Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten were Artie Shaw's marriages. Eleven was President Truman's piano. Number Twelve was the joke about Leo Durocher saving up for a Larainey Day."
"Pete, what about Los Angeles pedestrians?" asked Miss Shore.
"Coming up—got the perfect number for them. Number Thirteen. Yes, Number Thirteen is Los Angeles pedestrians. Number Fourteen is Los Angeles smog, and Number Fifteen is Los Angeles."
Mr. Hayes then offered his version of the All-American Joke, a fool-proof number guaranteed to contain all the guaranteed laugh ingredients. Here it is:
"The other day the Governors of Georgia and the pedestrians of Los Angeles picked up a fountain pen that writes under water and wrote a letter to President Truman asking him to play the piano at Artie Shaw's and Leo Durocher's weddings and signed it Kilroy was here."
• • •
Well, it was a brave try, Mr. Hayes, but I feel vaguely dissatisfied with that All-American Joke. Some of the most brilliant running backs and four or five linesmen of indubitable All-American excellence have been omitted. No All-American team would be complete without a mention of Frank Sinatra. John L. Lewis, the Brooklyn Dodgers, portal-to-portal pay, Jack Benny's stinginess, Esther Williams's bathing suits, James C. Petrillo, Senator Claghorn, Don Wilson's waist line, Bob Hope's yo yo and the housing shortage.
Mr. Hayes's list calls attention to the flagrant favoritism the comedians pay to Los Angeles. President Truman's piano, Kilroy, "Open the Door, Richard," and the fountain pen that writes under water belong to the nation; the Governors of Georgia are the personal property of that state, but all the rest of the jokes have a distinctly local connotation. Hollywood and Vine is virtually the only street intersection in the world that ever gets mentioned on the radio. Hollywood's weather is more widely and unfavorably advertised than the weather any place else and Tommy Manville simply can't compete any longer with the Hollywood marriage and divorce mill. Nobody ever tells any regional jokes about the East, the Mid-West or—apart from the Georgia Governors and Senator Claghorn—the South, Chicago, which in my youth was the most prolific joke factory in the world, is hardly ever mentioned.
Also, it seems to me the joke-smiths have missed a couple of topics entirely. I don't hear all the jokes that are told on the air, Heaven forbid, so maybe I missed a few. Has any one told a joke about Staten Island's threat to secede from New York City, Admiral Byrd's expedition to Antarctica or Toots Shor's expedition to the White House? Any one who can't fashion a joke out of Toots Thor in the White House, to parephrase Mr. Shor, ain't tryin'.

Let’s look at the rest of Crosby’s columns for the week. As a side note, these columns had been banked as Crosby was on his honeymoon in Los Angeles when they were published.

Monday, February 10: Politicians and would-be politicians show up on Information Please. I’ll take Oscar Levant, thank you.
Tuesday, February 11: Jack Benny and Your Hit Parade were sponsored by Lucky Strike, which used a tobacco chant in its opening and closing commercials. Crosby delves into the cigarette spiel. We posted that column several years ago.
Wednesday, February 12: The BBC tries an intellectual programme, drama, poetry, plays and such.
Thursday, February 13: an odds-and-ends column, including Johnny Olson’s audience participation show and newsman Bob Trout on slang.

You can click on the stories to enlarge the copy. Cartoons are by Alan Ferber and Bob Moore of the Daily News in Los Angeles.

And the Michael Goes To...

How could Jack Benny win an award from a television academy before he ever appeared on TV?

Simple. He didn’t win an award for television.

In case you’re confused, we’ll sort it out.

The year was 1950. Jack’s award did not come from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which gave out the Emmys in January that year in a ceremony from Los Angeles. His honour was handed out in March by the Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences in New York. Benny’s radio show was still going strong, so the Academy feted him for his radio show.

From what I can tell, this was the first and only time this Academy mounted an awards ceremony. While the winners were announced in the national press, the ceremony itself was not broadcast on radio or TV, and it avoided the notice of the show biz bible, Variety.

The awards were called the “Michaels.” Who Michael was, I leave you to discover.

The International News Service wire wrote, in part, on March 22, 1950, the day after the awards.

GODFREY SHOW UP FRONT
Dinah, Bing top list for radio-TV ‘Oscars’
NEW YORK (INS)—The Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences made its first annual awards for the year's best performances in those fields last night to a host of celebrities including Walter Winchell, Jack Benny and Arthur Godfrey.
The radio and video awards were made at a reception and dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as the first annual designations in several radio and TV classifications in what is hoped will be the equivalent of the movie "Oscar."
The winners were chosen by a field of top experts in radio, newspaper, magazine, educational and sociological fields from throughout the country. [The AP reported there were more than 1,250 judges]
[...]
• • •
NOT ALL those honored could be present personally. Among the radio and television celebrities present were Tex and Jinx Falkenberg, singer Monica Lewis, Columnist “Bugs" Baer and Mrs. Baer, Mrs. Wendell Winkle, RCA president Frank Folsom and CBS vice president Hubbell Robinson.

Radio Daily had a full list in its story:

Award Winners Named At Dinner In Waldorf
Winners in 27 categories were named last night as recipients of the first annual "Michael" Awards, sponsored by the Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences. The awards were announced by Ed Sullivan at a $25-a-plate Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, which was co-sponsored by the New York Heart Fund.
Winners listed in one-two-three order were as follows:
News & Commentary (radio)—Walter Winchell, ABC; Edward R. Murrow, CBS; Lowell Thomas, CBS. Comedy & Variety (radio)—Jack Benny, CBS; Amos 'n' Andy, CBS; Godfrey's Talent Scouts, CBS.
Education, Forums, Etc. (radio)—American Town Meeting, ABC; People's Platform, CBS; Meet the Press, MBS.
Religions Programs (radio)—Greatest Story Ever Told, ABC; Eternal Light, NBC; Family Theater, MBS.
Drama (radio)—Theater Guild on the Air, NBC; Lux Radio Theater, CBS; Railroad Hour, NBC.
Educational Documentaries (radio)—You Are There, CBS; Living, NBC; United Nations Series, NBC.
Agricultural (radio)—Farm & Home, NBC; CBS Farm News, CBS: American Farmer, ABC.
Music (radio)—Telephone Hour, NBC; Voice of Firestone, NBC; NBC Symphony. NBC.
Children's Programs (radio)—Let's Pretend, CBS; Juvenile Jury, MBS; Greatest Story Ever Told, ABC.
Outstanding Comedian (radio)—Groucho Marx, CBS; Jack Benny, CBS; Bob Hope, NBC.
Outstanding Comedian (television)—Milton Berle, NBC; Ed Wynn, CBS; Sid Caesar, NBC.
Outstanding Dramatic Actor (radio)—Everett Sloane, House Jameson, Staats Cotsworth.
Outstanding Dramatic Actor (television)—Ralph Bellamy (Man Against Crime), Charles Heston (Studio One), Everett Sloane.
Drama (television)—Philco Playhouse, NBC; Studio One, CBS; Ford Theater, CBS.
News & Commentary (television)—Camel News Caravan, NBC; Headline Clues, DuMont; Leon Pearson & News, NBC.
Variety Programs (television)—Toast of the Town, CBS; Texaco Star Theater, NBC; Talent Scouts, CBS.
Children's Programs (television)—Kukla Fran & Ollie, NBC; Mr. I Magination, CBS; Singing Lady, ABC.
Sportscasters Mel Allen, Bill Stern, Harry Wismer, ABC.
Promising Stars—Dave Garroway, Abe Burrowsm Jack Carter, Fran Warren.
Special Citations — Lawrence Tibbett, Paul Winchell, Fred Waring.
Outstanding Dramatic Actress (radio)—Helen Hayes (Electric Theater); Agnes Moorhead (Suspense); Ann Sothern (in Theater Guild's "Burlesque").
Outstanding Dramatic Actress (television)—Gertrude Berg, CBS; Felicia Montealegre; Faye Emerson.
Top Feature Vocalist (radio & TV)—Dinah Shore, CBS; Jo Stafford, CBS; Monica Lewis.
Top Male Vocalist (radio & TV)—Bing Crosby, CBS; Frank Sinatra; Perry Como, NBC.
Outstanding Radio Writer Cy Howard for “My Friend Irma" and "Life with Luigi"; Norman Corwin; Morton Wishengrad.
Outstanding Producer Director (radio)—Homer Flickett for "Theater Guild on the Air"; Fletcher Markle; William Keighly.
Outstanding Producer Director (television)—Worthington Minor for "Studio One" and "The Goldbergs"; Mark Daniels; Burr Tillstram [sic].
Program of the Year (radio)—You Are There, CBS; "Could Be" by Norman Corwin, NBC; "Sister Carrie" (NBC University Theater).
Program of the Year (television)—Godfrey's Talent Scouts, CBS; Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, ABC; Kukla, Fran & Ollie, NBC.

The Michael wasn’t the only honour Benny got in March 1950. Radio Daily made this declaration on its front page of March 10.

BENNY ACCLAIMED TOP PERSONALITY
Crosby, Hope And Amos 'n' Andy Also Rate High With Radio Editors In Radio Daily Poll
Jack Benny has been acclaimed "the greatest radio personality during the last 25 years" in a questionnaire poll of 330 of the nation's radio editors completed yesterday by RADIO DAILY.
In naming Benny many of the radio editors supported their choice with comments about him as a master show-man who has consistently presented top comedy programming over the years. Second choice of the radio editors was Bing Crosby who ran close to Benny in the balloting while third place resulted in a tie between Bob Hope and Amos 'n Andy.
In selecting Benny most of the radio editors wrote in their non-commercial choice. This honor went to the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of whom one editor wrote: "He relied almost entirely on radio to instill confidence, faith and courage in this nation."
Comments were many and varied among the radio editors in awarding the honor to Benny. Among them were:
"Jack Benny for his personal accomplishments and those he has helped to stardom."—Nat Lund, Seattle Times, Seattle, Wash.
"Jack Benny is not necessarily the best or the greatest judged in terms of pure talent—but he deserves the title of 'greatest' in the sense that his radio characterization has not only become a national tradition, but has maintained itself as such in the top levels of public acclaim longer than any other." — Ben Gross New York Daily News.
"If by radio personality you mean entertaining personality, I'd say Jack Benny." — Peg White, San Diego Journal, San Diego, Calif.
"If F. D. R. is barred from competition, I'll throw my vote to Jack Benny who had led the way so many years."— John Crosby, New York Herald-Tribune.
In taking the poll RADIO DAILY asked radio editors one question: "Who Was the Greatest Radio Personality During the Last 25 Years?" Editors were invited to comment on their selection.
Among other personalities who received ballots in the poll were Walter Winchell, Arthur Godfrey, Lowell Thomas, Major Bowes, H. V. Kaltenbom, Alexander Woollcott and Will Rogers.
Jack Benny, currently starred in the "Jack Benny Show" on Columbia Broadcasting System Sundays from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m., EST, under sponsorship of the American Tobacco Company, first entered radio 18 years ago.
Started In 1932
Back in 1932, Benny bumped into columnist Ed Sullivan one night in a Broadway restaurant. Sullivan asked him to guest on his radio program the following evening. "But I don't know anything about radio," Jack protested. "Nobody does," Sullivan replied.
Benny offered to give it a whirl, gratis, and on this first broadcast of his life introduced himself with a line now immortal in radio, "This is Jack Benny talking. Now there will be a brief pause for everyone to say, 'Who cares'?"
First Commercial On NBC
Millions did care, as Benny soon found out. The same year, 1932, he had a sponsor and a network program on NBC. He was a sensation from the start, zooming to the top in rating sweepstakes and helping to put radio on its first real pants. He has remained at the top, or pretty much so, ever since, a national institution and trail-blazer in radio comedy.
The "Jack Benny Show" has remained virtually constant in basic pattern through the years, evidence of its tested value as a style of entertainment. As everybody knows, Jack doesn't tell the jokes himself, though he is a master wit. He is the "unhappy" target for the barbs of his radio gang.
As a master showman, Jack Benny's genius is universally recognized. His knack of building personalities into stars of their own right is well known. Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson, who plays Rochester, and Phil Harris are notable examples of his star system.
Benny and his company moved over to CBS from NBC in January, 1949, and since then his Lucky Strike broadcasts have been a Sunday night feature from Hollywood.

The day before the survey results came out, Radio Daily published the latest Pacific Hooperatings. Jack’s show was number one at 40.9, with Bergen and McCarthy next at 33.1. Incidentally, Dennis Day was 11th at 19.6, while Phil Harris and Alice Faye followed at 18.9.

Jack continued to popular. It took another 15 years before he succumbed to glum ratings. 1932 to 1965 is a pretty good run for anyone.

The Horn Blows

On a whim, I decided to flip through some newspaper clippings about Jack Benny in May 1945.

You could certainly get your fill of Benny then, on radio and on the big screen.

Jack’s last show before summer break was on the 27th, with Larry Adler as his special guest. The show also featured Prof. LeBlanc (Mel Blanc), a “typical American family” soap opera announcer (Bea Benaderet), Speedy Riggs’ mother (Elvia Allman), and a plug for Yhtapmys Soothing Syrup with Jack chuckling in the background over Frank Nelson’s delivery.

But he wasn’t through with radio yet. On the 29th, he and Keenan Wynn co-starred in “Please, Charley” on NBC’s This is My Best at 9:30 Eastern. It was based on Lawrence Riley’s humorous short story. Then the following night at 11:30 Eastern, he emceed the second half of a two-hour Seventh War Loan show on the network. His gang was there, as was Ronald Colman to lend some seriousness to the proceedings. On May 16, he appeared from Hollywood in a segment of the series for wounded servicemen, The Road Ahead, airing on the Blue network at 9 Eastern and hosted by Clifton Fadiman.

Among the clippings is a story by Tom Dammann in the May 11th edition of the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune. We quote part of it:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 11.—No gathering of people is complete without funny incidents. The United Nations Conference is no exception. [...]
The other evening, to show you what we mean, we were standing with a large crowd just outside the Opera House to watch the delegates arrive for a plenary session. [...]
Where’s Rochester?
Finally a long black limousine drove up and the crowed quieted, awed, because here perhaps was a Molotov or Stettinius. Out stepped a handsomely dressed man and three well gowned women. The crowed craned its neck, including us. Here was obviously a delegate of importance, but who was he? He walked hurriedly up the steps, followed by the three women. He got just inside the door when a sailor in the crowd recognized him.
“JACK BENNY!” the sailor hollered.
And it was Jack Benny, with Mary Livingston [sic] and two friends. He turned and shouted “Hiya, folks,” and went on to watch the proceedings. The crowd laughed.

It seems others got to meet Jack in the flesh during his trip to the Bay area. His May 20th show came from San Francisco. Before and after the broadcast, the cast took part in an “I Am An American Day” show at the Civic Auditorium. As for the show, it made the May 19 edition of the Fulton Daily Sun-Gazette of Missouri.

Dudley Payne, Hospital Attendant 2-c at the U. S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, Calif., and son of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Payne of Fulton, will play with a navy band on the Jack Benny radio program at 6 p. m. Sunday night.
Young Payne, who plays trombone, has written his family that he is a member of a band which has been judged the best at his base, and will make a guest appearance on the nation-wide radio show tomorrow night. In his letter he said, "If you hear an extra loud note on a trombone, that's me!"
He has been stationed in California almost two years and is movie projectionist and in charge of the sound equipment at the hospital. In this capacity, Payne has met and worked with many famous radio and motion picture stars and has written home often of his interesting and amusing experiences.

Jack stayed after the broadcast, as we learn from the Vallejo Times-Herald of May 22.

Comedian Jack Benny, accompanied by members of his radio troupe, entertained Mare Island Hospital patients at a program in the hospital garden yesterday. After the outdoor show, Benny toured wards to meet patients unable to leave their rooms.

Feature films and Benny didn’t mix, at least according to legend, but in May 1945 he could be seen in movie theatres across the country. Some theatres were playing It’s in the Bag, in which he had a cameo with Fred Allen. Others were advertising his appearance in Hollywood Canteen, released in late December the previous year.

And then there was The Horn Blows at Midnight.

Benny fans know he used this unusual film as a whipping boy, whipping up laughs on his radio show. At the time, it got mixed reviews, more so, I believe, than any other film he made in the ‘40s. The Oregonian’s Drama Editor wrote on May 16:

Benny Film Needs Help
Jack Benny came to the Orpheum screen Tuesday in “The Horn Blows at Midnight.” The film proves definitely that Mr. Benny should have stuck to his violin and “The Bee.”
However, died-in-the-wool Benny fans will pehaps gather joy from this production for it does hold a few laughs.
The story is one of those dream affairs with the comedian playing the role of a third-rate trumpet player on a radio program. He falls asleep as the program is about to go on the air. The picture is devoted from this point to the Benny dream.

The Louisville Courier-Journal of May 11 had a different take.

Not since the heyday of Harold Lloyd has a comedian created so much unalloyed hysteria in audiences as does Jack Benny in his roof-top escapades in “The Horn Blows at Midnight,” [...]
Mr. Benny, we might add, is very pleasantly cast in this film, playing with a droll sense of bewilderment and timidity.

Jack put his name to a column that was kind-of about the movie. The only version I can find is in the Charlotte News of May 26, 1945.

That There Benny Fellow Is A Card
(Editor's note: The following story by Jack Benny was apparently hidden away in an old show since the picture he refers to has long since been completed. Proceed at your own risk.)
By JACK BENNY
HOLLYWOOD — Oddly enough, my day starts in the morning. At 6 A. M., an alarm clock rings in my ear, so I take it out of my ear and go back to sleep. About half an hour later I hear a bell ringing again, but this time it's a telephone call from the Make-up Department of Warner Bros. Studio, urging me to hurry over — because putting enough make-up on my face so that I will look ten years younger, is equivalent to making a "Dogwood Sandwich". I would resent that if there weren't a clause in my contract telling me to "SHUT UP". So I inform them that I will rush over to the studio as soon as I comb my hair. But they tell me not to bother because they got it there and it’s combed already.
It is now 6:30 and still dark, so not wanting to wake up Mary or my daughter, Joanie, I tip-toe through the hall, slip out the front door, ease down the curb where my convertible is parked. Just as I open the car door, I hear a window being raised, and Mary's voice raised even higher yelling, "It's about time you got home." I would give her an argument but I recall that she had "that same certain clause" put in our marriage license: so I throw her a kiss and drive off.
COFFEE TIME
In no time I am at Schwab's Drug Store where I always stop in for my morning cup of coffee: 5 cents, plus doughnuts; 15 cents, plus sales tax $1.30. Finishing my breakfast, I jauntily flip a 10-cent tip on the counter. It comes down tails so I have to leave it there. This is the third time it's b[words missing] and I'm really becoming quite popular.
Anyway, I jump in my car, drive through Laurel Canyon to Burbank, and there in spite of yesterday's rain, stands Warner Bros. Studio. As I pass through the main entrance, I wave a cheery hello to the gateman, who waves back and yells, "STOP." So I back up, show him my studio pass which has my picture on it. He seems quite interested, and shows me a picture of his wife and son; so I show him a picture of Mary and Joanie. At this point we are even. Then he shows me a picture of his dog, so I show him a picture of a girl I used to go with in Waukegan. The competition being too tough for him, he lets me through, and I park my car right between Barbara Stanwyck's and Ann Sheridan's which keeps my motor from getting cold.
And so to work making love to Alexis Smith and Dolores Moran in "The Horn Blows at Midnight."
Editor's second note: Ho. Hum. And unquote.

Here’s the oddest Benny connection I found in newspapers of May 1945. I don’t know the background behind these panel cartoons, if some Hollywood war bond campaign organisers asked the stars for captions. But several of them have Jack’s name on them. The ones below were found together in the May 30th issue of the Goldsboro News-Argus. Goldsboro, coincidentally, is where L.A. Speed Riggs of the Benny opening/closing commercials worked as a tobacco auctioneer.

Five Years With Jack Benny

When the Jack Benny radio show hit the five-year mark in 1937, it wasn’t the show you may remember. There was no Rochester and Kenny Baker was still the singer. But it had evolved over that time (which included a rather acrimonious change of writers).

Jack got into some of the changes in this feature interview in the St. Louis Star and Times published May 10, 1937. He also explained how he felt comedy had changed in the U.S.

The first phrase of the story isn’t accurate. And Jack vacillated about his place of birth. The How-I-Met-Mary story changed over the years, too (the “seder” meeting, a late addition to the tale, never happened).

The writer quotes dialogue from the April 25, 1937 broadcast. St. Louis listeners would have heard the East Coast broadcast. I’ve never liked this show. I can understand it when the cast gangs up on Jack when they catch him in a lie, and he keeps building on it instead of admitting he’s BSing. In this one, Jack makes an honest mistake (that isn’t his fault; it’s the board operator’s) and even apologises but they keep bashing him throughout the show. This is one time where he doesn’t deserve it. And the Block and Sully routine seems shoehorned in.

When Jack Benny Talks, 27,200,000 Listen
By HARRY T. BRUNDIDGE
HOLLYWOOD, May 10.—His name is Benjamin Kirselsky—Jack Benny to you—and he is the world's number one radio entertainer. His radio sponsors pay him $12,500 a week (not stage money) and out of this he has only to pay the men who write his programs. Paramount Pictures pay him $125,000 in a lump sum for his every production and his 1937 income will top $1,000,000.
Under the system of rating radio stars, now accepted as authentic, he is on the top spot with 34 points; each point represents 800,000 listeners and according to this system some 27,200,000 persons hear Benny every Sunday. On a recent Sunday I went to the little theater in the NBC studio to watch him stage his program, which had been rehearsed for the first and only time an hour before. Benny hates rehearsals, says they take the punch out of a program. "My rehearsals are the worst in the world," he told me. "If they were good I'd be worried about the regular broadcast."
The little theater was packed to capacity. Tickets to broadcasts are not sold; all are given away to applicants, usually weeks in advance. (You apply in January and get a ticket for a May show.) Because tickets are hard to obtain, the visible audience is always one that is highly appreciative, ready to laugh at a joke they heard grandpa tell forty years ago. But the boys and girls on the stage at ALL broadcasts do NOT depend on the spontaneity of the audience. Someone on the stage at EVERY broadcast gives the audience the cue and laughter is turned on and off with a mere wave of the hand.

AS I settled down in the "wings," to watch the performance, Jack Benny, the star; Mary Livingston, his wife; Phil Harris, the orchestra leader; Don Wilson, the announcer, and others of the cast took their places on the stage. Michrophones [sic] were at strategic points. Each member of the cast has a copy of the script because nothing is memorized; everything is read from a script that has been prepared by professional writers, and approved by the advertising agency which represents the sponsor, and by officials of the broadcasting company. Now and then there is some extemporaneous joke or comment, but that is infrequent.
The stage manager, stop watch in hand, watches the seconds tick away. Then, with a long sweep of his arm he indicates that the program "is on the air." What follows — save for the scripts in the hands of the performers—looks exactly like a scene from a musical comedy.
Don Wilson, the announcer, introduces the program by naming it and saying it is starring Jack Benny, with Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris and his orchestra. The orchestra opens the program with "Hallelujah, Things Look Rosy Now."
The number is completed. Wilson steps close to the nearest mike.
WILSON: Spring's the time to wake up and live ... swing into the new tempo . . . go places and do things—"
As the announcement (or plug) is finished and the music fades, Benny reads from his script:
JACK: Hey, Mary, come here. Don't you love the way Phil wiggles around when he leads the orchestra? Look at him.
MARY: Yeah! If he could only see himself. (She giggles.) He sure is cute though, Isn't he?
JACK: Yes, but he doesn't have to show off so much. After all it isn't television.
WILSON: Jack, quiet, your microphone is open.
JACK: What?
WILSON: Everybody can hear you.
JACK: Oh, I'm sorry.
(MUSIC UP AND FINISH.)
CROWD: (Applause.)

THE foregoing is direct quotation from the script. Even the crowd's cue is written in! But why the applause at that point? Ask the script writers—I don't know!
With the broadcast at an end, there was a mad rush of musicians, spectators, electricians and others to gain the street; Benny, his secretary, Harry Baldwin, and I joined the milling mob, battled through the perennial autograph seekers and finally reached the seclusion of a booth in "The Grotto," next door to the Melrose avenue Studio.
"Maybe I ought to feel a little impressed with myself for within a few days—May 2—I will celebrate my fifth year on the air," Benny said. "But as a matter of truth I am far more impressed with radio than with myself. I've made some strides in those sixty months and may be a bit more polished on May 2 when I give my 287th broadcast, than I was on my first, but radio has moved ahead so rapidly that in the same period I feel my own progress has been that of a snail on a treadmill by comparison.
"In common with other so-called funny men on the radio five years ago, most of my stuff was made up as I went along. We didn't spend much time working over a script for we figured that if a joke was bad we could think of something on the spur of the moment that would make it a lot better.

THAT was a fallacy. Many times as we stood before the mike our brains wouldn't think up anything and many times the jokes we did think up were more feeble than those they replaced. That is one of the improvements comedians have made. Scripts are written by experts, far in advance of a program, read, revised, worked over and, usually, revised again after a rehearsal.
"Compare the picture of my first broadcast with the one we did this afternoon. In the first broadcast I had an audience of forty or fifty persons jammed into a small corner of a studio that wouldn't have held twenty in comfort—if everyone breathed right. Then I was in a glass cage, separated from the audience. While radio listeners could hear the suppressed giggles of my visible audience. I couldn't I had to watch the audience through the sheet of glass and wait until they closed their mouths so I could go ahead with the next joke. I got to be a great lip reader, but since I wanted to be a comedian and not an interpreter, I had the glass taken out and the sounds let in. When others found that this idea worked without blasting the microphone off its foundations, they did the same thing, and we haven't been bothered by glass partitions since."
"There were other odd little customs in broadcasting five years ago. The first time I stepped up to a mike I was told that if I so much as moved my head, the listeners would be unable to follow my words. I did a lot of broadcasts with my head glued to one spot in front of the microphone, and I suffered from chronic stiff neck. Today I can stroll all over the stage, virtually go out for a walk during a broadcast, and still be picked up by the small mikes now in use, for they have been made that flexible and sensitive. The NBC trademark letters would have to be made small enough to hang on a woman's charm bracelet to find the mikes we actually use today.
"My hope is that for the next five years radio will decide to amble along at the leisurely pace we comics have taken so that we comics can make the advances that radio has wide."

BENNY, five feet, eleven inches tall, well groomed, with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighing 160 pounds, has a far-away look in his eyes and goes off into day-dreaming trances. In one of these he elbowed me and returned to mere earth with, "I beg your pardon—what were you saying?"

WAUKEGAN, ILL., was my birthplace," said Benny," and the date was 1894. I was a St. Valentine's Day present. Father was a haberdasher in Waukegan and I grew up with a collar and shirt under one arm and a fiddle under the other. It's the same fiddle which Fred Allen has been discussing for weeks — discussing whether I can play it. Pop thought that as a haberdasher's clerk I would make a good fiddler, but orchestra leaders put that thought in reverse, so I decided to go into vaudeville with a monologue and a fiddle. Theater managers, listening to me, decided pop, the orchestra leaders and myself were all nuts because, as a monologist, I was a good fireman or deckhand on a boat. "We got into the war and I left vaudeville flat and joined the navy. I thank the navy. Were it not for the sailor suit they gave me at Great Lakes I still wouldn't have the nerve to try to get away with what I have been getting away with ever since. That sailor suit gave me a lot of confidence because people respected wartime sailors; they were supposed to be hard guys.
"The war ended and I went back into vaudeville. More and more I cheated on fiddling and leaned heavily on nonchalant chatter. It got so I was being paid good money just for idling through fifteen minutes of monologue.
"Eventually I worked up to $2,500 a week and I'm frank to say I was making almost as much or more at $2,500 a week than I'm making now—and that goes for everything I'm making. I do not pay off the stage show out of my income; I pay only my writers. But Uncle Sam with his income tax law is the guy I'm really working for.
"I told you before the broadcast about writers—the important thing is that a writer should know what is bad. If he can select the good from the bad he's a genius. You can take my word for it. The bad material is what hurts.

MOST writers try to be ultra-sophisticated and in the attempt, forget that with the coming of the automobile, the radio, and the motion picture, city limits were all but wiped out. The line between the urban and the sub-urban today is so fine as to be almost indistinguishable. There's no such thing as a 'hick' any more and the 'small' town has vanished. The Missouri Ozarks farmer demands an ever higher grade of entertainment—and a newer joke—than the New York City broker, because the Ozark fellow spends more time at the radio, listening, than does his city cousin and knows all the answers.

"Comedians used to say 'It will be great for the hicks in the sticks but Broadway will give you the horse laugh.' Now the comics assert: 'Broadway and Hollywood will giggle but toss it out—it won't get by in the sticks.' "No longer do the so-called horny-handed sons and daughters of the man with the hoe weep at such songs as ‘You Made Me What I Am Today;’ they're too busy singing Robin and Rainger love songs, and they're swinging about the barn to the tunes of Benny Goodman and Phil Harris and can't be bothered with 'Turkey in the Straw.'

I SHALL illustrate my point. We had a gag that laid them in the aisles in New York. Here it is:
“'Q. Who was the lady I seen you with last night?'
“'A. What were you doing in that part of town?'
"But you should have read the fan mail from the farms, villages, and small towns; letters that topped that gag in 100 different ways, and all old.
"The Burns and Allen program is one of the most popular on the air and it couldn't be that without the warm following of fans in the rural districts. I happen to know that their fan mail shows that one of their most rib-tickling gags was appreciated far more by their rural listeners, than by the so-called city folks. Here's the gag: Milton Watson was leaving the Burns and Allen program and after the usual build up, Gracie told Milton to kiss her goodby. There were a series of torrid kisses and then: GRACIE: Goodbye GEORGE. I'm going with Milty.
"Modern?
"To be successful on the air you have to write up to the small towns and rural districts, not down. The greatest mistake a comedian can make is underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Those who make that mistake don't last long. They're too lazy to dig up new material, or too dumb to understand that people in the 'sticks' also enjoy subtle humor."

MY BIGGEST thrill in radio was when a guy in the Ohio state penitentiary, about to be electrocuted, wrote and told me he was very much interested in my feud with Fred Allen, over the subject of whether I could really fiddle. He wrote that he wanted to know the outcome of that feud before sitting on the hot seat. Allen and I both wrote to him and told him how the feud would end. The next week the guy got a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment and wrote us the Ohio prison inmates had a hearty laugh on the two of us because they knew all along that our feud was bound to end that way.

MY LIFE has been mostly work. I never did anything last night that the world was crazy about the next day. Nothing I ever said tonight was commented on tomorrow. It has just been a procession of programs. I've spent twenty-five years climbing up the greasiest ladder that was ever greased and believe me, you can slide down a damned sight faster than you can climb up.
"My routine hasn't changed. I'm doing the same thing on the air today I did when I was a master of ceremonies at shows in the Orpheum Theater in St. Louis.
"My most exciting experience on the radio was the night of March 14, in New York. Fred Allen and I had been going after each other for three months and on that night we got together, threw away our scripts and went after each other, tonsil to tonsil."

BENNY, now making his eighth motion picture, was preparing to leave and I reminded him he had told me nothing of Mary Livingstone, his wife.
"Sorry," he said. "I met her in Los Angeles. She was a sales girl in a department store and was pinch hitting for a girl with whom an actor friend had made a date for me, but who failed to show. Mary kept the date and, although I didn't know it, I fell in love and that fact didn't dawn on me until I wrote to her sister and learned Mary was engaged to a guy in Vancouver, B. C. I suggested a trip to Chicago. Mary came to Chicago and I proposed and was accepted. We were married on Friday instead of Sunday because we both figured if we waited until Sunday the wedding probably would never take place.
"Would you believe it, we've been married ten years and six months and it only seems like ten years?"

Posters, Knights and Long-Johns

Here’s a buried self-reference in The Girl at the Ironing Board (1934). Check out the poster on the left side of the fence.



Poor Friz Freleng. He and the writing staff had to find a way to make this cartoon’s man-woman-love-villain-abduction-chase-(to the theme song in double time)-vanquish formula different than the others that infested Warners cartoons. And fit in a Warners-owned song. The title song comes from the feature Dames (1934) with Guy Kibbee, Zasu Pitts and Hugh (Woo-Hoo) Herbert. The film included a legitimate smash hit, “I Only Have Eyes For You.”

The staff took the song title and came up with a story about clothes being ironed (and whatever else happens in a laundry), and then married it with an 1890s stage melodrama parody, the same thing that Terrytoons ran into the ground.

But there are some contemporary references. One of the song lyrics features Mae West’s most famous misquote “Come up and see me some time.” The female clothes emulate Joe Penner by shouting “You naaasty man!” And this may be one of the most obscure radio references in a cartoon.



At the time this cartoon was made, Fred Allen was hosting the Sal Hepatica Revue. It, and his previous show, the Salad Bowl Revue, had sketches that were set in Bedlam University, the Bedlam Penitentiary, the Bedlam Department Store, and so on. This poster could be coincidental but I’d like to think not.

My favourite gag is a pun that Friz times perfectly. First, a title card.



Cut to the next scene. The card is accurate.



That’s it. It’s like a Tex Avery gag, incongruous and quick. Then it’s back to the plot.

The flaps of woolen underwear slap the tops of barrels. The gag is borrowed from We're in the Money (1933). Wasn't it re-used later in a colour cartoon?



The long johns return at the end of the cartoon. Unexpectedly, a head pops out of the top and gives us the familiar “So long, folks!” farewell.



Frank Tipper and Sandy Walker are the credited animators, with the score by Bernie Brown. The soundtrack includes “Dames” and “Shake Your Powder Puff.” Unlike the oft-heard “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” or “The Lady in Red,” this was the only Warners cartoon that used the title song.

I'll Have a Can of Laughs, Please

Have you read anyone defending laugh tracks?

You’re about to.

Anyone who watched filmed TV comedies in the 1960s (especially in daily reruns) came to recognise the same laughs over and over and over. Then there was the ridiculousness of laugh tracks on cartoons (ABC demanded one on The Flintstones over Hanna-Barbera’s objections).

On live shows, adding laughs could ruin the comedy, as the people on stage had to figure out how long to wait for their next line as the reactions didn’t exist until added in production after the show.

But no less a comedian than Jack Benny thought there was a place for a laugh machine. He explained his feelings to one of newspaperdom’s favourite Benny quoters. This was found in the Camden Courier-Post on Dec. 7, 1959 and later in other papers.

Benny’s Success Secret—Timing
By EARL WILSON
NEW YORK—Jack Benny would like to confess right now that he used canned laughter recently —with no less a guest star than Harry Truman.
When all that furor about “honesty" and "realism" in TV was raging, CBS president Frank Staunton said canned laughter would have to go—but Jack figures there was a misunderstanding because nobody from the CBS brass asked him to drop it.
"When you film a show, you almost have to have it," Jack remarked a few days ago at the Sherry-Netherland while relaxing late in the afternoon in a dressing gown.
"We filmed the Truman interview in the library in Independence. He was saying some very funny things.
"For him to have said these things without any laugh response would have been deadly. Furthermore, I know that when Harry Truman says something funny, an audience is going to scream more at him than at a comedian." Laughter Important
And so the canned laughter was inserted—with Jack personally doing the editing.
"Could this have been the canned laughter from some old Fred Allen show, the laughs being from people who are now dead?" I asked Jack.
"I don't know where we get them," Jack shrugged. "I just know that they're important."
"You have to know which joke is worth a tiny giggle, which one gets a shriek, and which one gets a roar that will lead to applause."
Probably Jack's attention to such details of laughter is responsible for his reputation for having such great timing.
"Nobody can explain timing," Jack said. Nevertheless, he has his ear carefully attuned to it during a show. And fearing that some guest star may not understand timing as thoroughly as he does, he will flash a cue to the guest. He'll tell the guest in advance, "Wait till the first laugh simmers down, and then when I look at you, but not until then, you read your next line."
Jack's "pauses," generally accepted as the secret of his timing, have had strange results. Playing the Palladium in London, he permitted Phil Harris to insult him onstage.
Phil had been pretty smart-alecky about his boss in the routine and had strutted off after saying, "I'll be back again, folks, because the old man needs me."
"I got a big laugh just standing there glaring at the audience," Jack said. "The audience could read my mind: 'I'm paying this so-and-so big money and all he does is insult me.' I could keep the laugh going as long as I wanted to. The laughing went on so long one night, that finally somebody up in the gallery yelled, 'For God's sake. Mr. Benny, say something!' That got the biggest laugh of all."
Jack thought of planting a spectator there to do it every night but decided against it because impromptu laughs generally are better than planned ones.

On radio, studio audiences provided the laughter. Fred Allen hated them because he felt they didn’t get the jokes, so there were no laughs and it screwed up his timing. Henry Morgan tried to do comedy without an audience for the same reason. The experiment lasted one show. Then there were Bob and Ray who never needed laughs on radio; they treated their show like a jock shift, not a studio comedy/variety.

Jack Benny, as you read above, had a fine sense of timing when it came to laughs. But changing to a transcribed radio show changed the laughs. Jack milked them. He waited until they died down before going on to the next line.

The transcribed shows are different. Some of the shows are overwritten so they tried to squeeze everything in by having dialogue jump in while the laughs are being heard (the show would have been mixed that way in production after recording). One bad example is the end of the “grass reek” show; Jack’s tail line has obviously been edited over top of the laughs.

Regardless, Jack got plenty of laughs from real people in real time over the years. It’s why his career lasted so long.

Join the Bath Club

Before walking on stage and making people laugh, Fred Allen was an employee of the Boston Public Library. That’s where his scrapbooks were willed after his death.

Time has not been too kind to them. Glue stains adorn the newspaper clippings. Some are torn. The print is faded. Some appear to be missing parts of stories. On top of that, Allen (or whoever) labelled almost none of them.

At one time, a library was the most accessible way of doing research. However, the internet has made discoveries almost miraculous.

Kathy Fuller-Seeley took the time to photograph Allen’s scrapbooks. There were two versions of one article, unsourced. Being scrapbooks, there is a gutter between pages and cannot be folded out flat, so copy is in the shadows. It would be almost impossible to transcribe, and that would be typing word-by-word.

However, we have the internet today. A web search of some of the text of the article revealed nothing. But a search of the author’s name revealed a story penned for a specific radio magazine with the same format as the Allen feature. There’s a wonderful site called worldradiohistory.com which has scans of old radio magazines. A search of Allen’s name through the particular publication resulted in finding a full copy of the story, sans glue, with accompanying photos.

With that lengthy preface, we bring you an article on Fred Allen’s show published in Radio Stars of February 1933. This is a look at Allen’s first shot at radio, The Linit Bath Club Revue, which aired on CBS from Oct. 23, 1932 to Apr. 16, 1933. This was a good ten years before Allen’s best-known work, Allen’s Alley with Senator Claghorn, Mrs. Nussbaum and so on.

The episode mentioned below is not available on the internet that I can find. Allen reused concepts, and this one re-appeared on the Sal Hepatica Revue in 1934.

BACKSTAGE AT BROADCAST
By OGDEN MAYER
WANT to join the Bath Club? Want to mingle with the mystic Inner Circle of Fred Allen's festive fraternity ? Would a laugh do you good? Then walk right in, ladeez and gents. There is no charge, no price of admission. Just three things do we ask. You must not talk, you must not smoke, and you must not leave the studio until the program is over.
The Linit Bath Club is easy to join. Just take a bath the Linit way and you're in. Have I? Sh-h-h-h! I haven't, but that won't keep us out. Come on!
We're in the CBS building on Manhattan's amazing Madison Avenue. The big reception room on the top floor is chock-ablock with visitors. Ladies in orchids and ermine, men in their most formal dds. It is just 8:45 p.m. E. S. T., Sunday. "Hey, page! Where's the Linit Bath Room?"
He leads us up a flght [sic] of stairs. A massive door swings open and a wave of sound rolls out. The orchestra is still rehearsing, actors are spieling their lines. This is the studio, jammed with chairs and music racks and mikes. Other people are coming in, chattering, surrendering their precious tickets to the boy in blue.
Two girls, sub-deb age, pop their great big, round eyes through the door.
"I'll die if I don't see Rudy Vallee."
"Sit-h-h, you scrunch. He works for the other network."
An imaginary line splits this biggest of CBS studios down the center. A grand piano sits squarely astride it. The musicians are ranked beyond. On this side is the crowd. To our left, in a corner cozily close to a picket fence of mikes, are a dozen chairs. Our chairs.
"These are for the press and special guests," a thin chap explains. "The others are for the hoi polloi." A PAGE looks at him and says, "Anybody who gets into this broadcast isn't any hoi polloi, mister. He's darn lucky." Grab a seat and cling to it. The other pews across the aisle are filling rapidly. Look! See the stocky man with the black mustache. That's Jack Smart, radio actor. We'll see him in action.
The clock says 9:50 p. m. Ten minutes to go. Who's the stout chap on the box leading the orchestra ? Name of Louis Katzman. Actually, the Louis Katzman. Can I help it if he looks like he's been in a wrestling match with Strangler Lewis? That's one of Louis' failings. You can dress him fresh from shirt to sox and press his pants ten times a day. Five minutes after he puts them on, they wilt. And look like a Heywood Broun suit. Katzman's a great guy, though.
"I'll never be the same," he shouts for no apparent reason. Fred Allen slides through, the door, sober-faced, looking a little like Cousin Ezra come to town for the Hog Fair. He carries a sheaf of papers.



The door of the control room opens and a half-dozen persons stride through. They all carry papers, too. Sit straight, you. They're the Inner Circle of this Bath Club. They put on the show.
The tall, slim chap with the pointed moustache is the director. Fred Allen collars him as he passes us. He says. "But what's the harm in those four words?"
We don't get the answer, but here is a hint. That plaintive query from Broadway's Mister Allen is a tip-off to the situation that is almost every radio performer's pain-in-the-neck. I mean air censorship. It's a harmless sort of restriction imposed by the broadcasters themselves but when some gagster sees his favorite pun blue-penciled, he usually burns. Just now, Allen isn't burning, but he isn't pleased either, I'll bet.
Time is sliding by. Performers are getting into their front row seats beyond the mikes. The loudspeaker brings din of music into the studio. It is the preceding program. Suddenly it stops. The director faces the control room and sings out, "Quiet, please.” The voice of the radio says a polite, "This is the Columbia Broadcasting System."
The director's arm is now held straight over his head as he watches the engineer through the control room window. Louis Katzman, whose back is to the window, watches the director. Seconds tick past. No one breathes. The director's arm cuts air. Katzman strokes violently. Music leaps from two dozen instruments.
A MAN at a mike begins to talk. Dark, saturnine Kenneth Roberts, the announcer . . . "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We welcome you to the Linit Bath Club. . . ." He fades back.
A swarm of violinists and clarinetists gather about a mike just below Katzman. He leads them into a lively tempo. But look yonder. The musician coming tip from the last orchestra row wears a battered, brown fedora on the end of his trumpet. He places it near a microphone and blows amazing, sugary notes.
At the end of the song, another tall dark chap steps forward. (Why are all these tall and dark fellows?) Fred Allen is the shortest of the lot—and he's not a small man by any means—except for Katzman. This is Master of Ceremonies Webster. [sic] Van Vorhees or Hugh Conrad. He plays the radio theatres under both names and you've probably heard him plenty. He's introducing Fred Allen, setting the scene for tonight's celebration to the water gods and the appointments of the bath.
Charles Carlile steps up and sings a solo. He is no crooner. You can hear his words clear to the back of the room. A skit. Then, more music until the clock hands stand at 9:12.
Katzman has earphones over his ears, red-rubber padded. The orchestra is quiet. The big room grows tense. Katzman's hands wave vaguely, indicating a tempo. His musicians watch but no one plays. Minutes pass. Through the closed, thick studio door, we hear faintest of faint organ strains from the loudspeaker in the reception room. Katzman suddenly gives a signal. The orchestra swings into a phrase, stops, starts anew and slows to Katzman's imperative signal. Do you get it ? This is Ann Leaf's selection. She is playing in the Paramount Building miles across town. Here, the orchestra is chiming in with incidental music, directed by Katzman's waving hands. He hears Ann through those earphones. Down there, she is wearing earphones, too, and she hears his orchestra as it swings in-to her song. In that wise though separated by half a city they are able to play together.
THE number is over and we have another introduction. We learn that Fred Allen is a warden in charge of a prison. We learn in an amazing fashion that his prison is the most popular in the country. Visitors come from all the world seeking admittance. One is an Englishman. There he is . . . see, there! The British yoke—the broad a, the pip-pip, toodle-oo accent.
But who is it ? The guy is that same Webster Van Vorhees or Hugh Conrad that acted as an honest American a moment ago. Now he makes arrangements for murdering his mater-in-law so he can secure the best room in the popular prison. As he leaves, he remembers that he hasn't a gun. So Warden Allen loans him his.
Notice how that dry, hay-in-his-hair voice of Allen's lends an added punch to everything he utters? Makes his lines doubly funny? But get this . . . look at those girls. They're actresses hired by Mr. Linit to represent club-women who are intent on investigating the horrors of the third degree.
"We don't maltreat our prisoners," Allen assures them. "We kill them with kindness."
To prove it, he brings in a prisoner who testifies. He is a dapper, brown-suited little fellow, the sort of chap you'd find in a Park Avenue salon. Bostonish looking with a Harvard accent, I'll bet. But he gives his answers in purest Bowery stumble-bum language. Tough talk, believe you me. Well, you've got to learn never to be surprised in this radio business.
Next, Warden Allen demonstrates his third degree. He orders in an extra hard-berled prisoner for the test. And the prisoner is roly-poly Jack Smart. He is forced to eat and eat and eat, things like chocolate sundaes and apple pies. That is Allen's kill-'em-with-kind-ness third degree. In imagination, Smart is stuffed until he is ready to burst.
"Tell where you hid them poils" demands Warden Allen. "No," says Smart. "Feed him another sundae," is the order.
Smart howls and protests. He stuffs his fingers into his mouth, the first three of his right hand. His talk flows around them into the mike. Try it on your own digits some time. It sounds exactly as if you're talking with your mouth full. But still he won't tell where he hid them poils.
"Then we'll give him the works," says Allen. The hardened trusty shudders. "You mean . . . tickle him?"
SO the trusty starts to tickle Jack Smart. And this is where Jack begins to act. Hold your chair if you're nervous. Jack is twisting, giggling, screaming, making funny faces, going through all the antics of a touchy fellow in the throes of his favorite torture. Yet, not a finger is touching him.
"Stop, he-he-he. I can't stand it, he-he-he. Stop . . . whoops!"
The whole studio is holding its sides. Everyone is gurgling and gushing, wiping tears front eyes. In a veritable paroxysm of tickling, Jack breaks.
"I'll tell, tee-hee, I'll confess every-thing if you'll stop. Hee, hee . . . hee-bee wheeee !"
So he tells all about them poils.
As he fades back from the mike, still laughing, still writhing from imaginary tickling, he staggers to an unused bench near us. Sweat bathes his face. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes it, and heaves a Golly-I’m-glad-that's-over sigh.



Music again. A quartet and Charles Carlile. As they sing, a man runs out of the control room, puts his hand over the shoulders of two of the quartet and shoves Carlile ten inches closer to the mike. Glancing hastily through the window at the engineer, he reaches for Carlile again and drags him back four inches. After that, his work well done evidently, he saunters off to a corner and chews his lips.
The hour is almost over. Funny, this sense of something impending. Everyone seems to be increasingly nervous. They look at watches and embrace like long lost brothers for the mere purpose of whispering to each other without the sound filtering to a nearby mike.
Fred takes his manuscript, looks at it, and reads, "Good night."
Ken Roberts leans his tall form over a black tube and states, "Your announcer, Kenneth Roberts." Charles Carlile comes on the run from his corner. Legs apart, hands in pockets, he steadies himself and sings. The Bath Club theme song is on the air.
Look at that minute marker on the studio clock. It is nearly at the half-hour mark. There! It passes. Katzman drops his hands. The program director waves to the crowd. A discordant blast blurts from every instrument in the orchestra. It grates, like a fingernail drawn along a tile. That's a trick those musicians have. At the end of every broadcast, when the "off the air" signal hits them, they blow the first note they can think off. It sounds like a lunatic's band. Seconds later, they are packing their instruments and going home.
And that's our next stop, too. So, good-night, all. You're now members of Fred Allen's Linit Bath Club. Don't forget next Sunday night.