Hollywood Holidays — 1946, 1947

Tralfaz note: Bob Thomas of the Associated Press was one of many wire service movie writers who put the tinsel in Tinseltown. We’ll be posting a number of his Christmas-themed columns until the 25th. For some reason, I cannot find a column dated Christmas Day for 1947.

The Peters story is full of hope, but her life remained sad with an unhappy, early end. See more HERE.

1946

Can’t Walk, But Actress Enjoys Yule
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 25—(AP)—It was a merry Christmas at Susan Peters’ today. The place rang with the laughter of children and the chuckles of grown folks. The fact that Susan cannot walk didn’t interfere with the fun.
Last night Susan and her husband, Richard Quine, entertained his family. Today was for her clan, the Carnahans. Their Beverly Hills apartment isn’t big enough to contain both groups, and besides—you know what happens when two-families of in-laws get together.
But both occasions were joyous even though the great dane, Butch, nosed into everything.
Two years ago New Year’s, Susan, a topflight MGM actress, was deprived of the use of her legs by a hunting accident. But after she pulled through it was apparent that no such handicap would hold her back. She had a variety of interests and activities that would exhaust a normal person.
DONE WRITING
She has done some magazine writing and performs on occasional dramatic radio shows. She and Dick adopted a child, Timmy. She has learned to drive a car by hand alone, and has even dabbled with flying. She often goes out to Birmingham Hospital where she and veteran Paraplegics bolster each other’s morale by discussing symptoms. And now she is getting ready for a return to the movies.
“Yes, the doctors say I will be able to make a picture soon,” she told me. Of course, I will have to arrange the schedule so it isn’t too tiring—perhaps work a five-day week. I’m terribly excited about it and a little bit frightened. It’s been so long.”
But her fear didn’t last long. Beautiful, long-haired Susan enthused as she described the part she has lined up “It’s a mean woman,” he explained, “and that’s the role I’d like to play. I couldn’t stand to play one of those starry-eyed, good little girls.”
Susan said she would like to do just one picture, or at the most, two or three and then quit and do radio work. “It would be hard to find roles for me—in my condition,” she said.
But what do you want to bet the movie public won’t let her quit? Her courage and pluck are gift enough for many people on this Christmas Day.

1947

HOLLYWOOD’S SANTA CLAUS HAS NO CHRISTMAS
By BOB THOMAS
HOLLWOOD, Dec. 24.—(AP)— Santa Claus leaned back folded his hands across his fat belly and said, “I won’t be having any Christmas; I’ll be working, you know.”
“Yes, I’ve got two radio shows this week,” he continued, “and that will keep me busy. Radio takes a lot more preparation than you’d think.
“Besides, I have no family here and in the past years I’ve lived mostly in hotels. What relatives I have left are in England, and my home in London was blitzed in the war.”
This was Edmund Gwenn, the bald, 70-year-old Briton whose performance as St. Nick in “Miracle on 34th Street” captured the nation’s fancy. He was in his small dressing room in the Featured Players’ Bldg. at MGM, thumbing through his mail.
“I must say that the Post Office Department has been very good about it,” he said. “I’ve received many, many letters addressed merely, ‘Santa Claus, Hollywood.’”
Gwenn said the nature of the letters varied with the age of the sender. Adults complimented him on his performance, while youngsters actually think of him as Santa.
“There are so many requests,” he sighed, “that one man can’t take care of them all.”
The actor finds the mail cheering. He has had a tough time of it this year, being laid up for the first nine months by a serious operation. Only recently did he return to film work, in “Master Of Lassie.”
A cautious man, he doesn’t say that his Santa role is his favorite, even though it brought him his greatest fame. “I think it’s a mistake to select one’s favorite role,” he said. “I always figure that the role I’m doing at the moment is my favorite.”
The interview over, Gwenn showed me to the door and wished a Merry Christmas. “I’m afraid I haven’t been much help to you,” he said. “I live alone and I don’t go out much. I’m rather a humdrum person.”



JACK BENNY CHRISTMAS SHOW, Dec. 21, 1947

Crazy Mixed Up Dog Fight

Of the four cartoons Tex Avery made at the Lantz studio, ‘The Legend of Rockabye Point’ is my favourite. Other Tex fans make a case for ‘Crazy Mixed Up Pup’ the second Avery cartoon released by the studio. It’s okay, but a couple of things spoil it for me. The character design is downright ugly in places. The facial features tend to be small and not helped by the thicker ink line at Lantz. And the crazy flag gag starts to become predictable.

Tex went for wild drawings like his team at MGM gave him and the most successful in ‘Pup’ is probably the fight between Sam (acting like a dog, thanks to a transfusion of dog plasma) and his pet Rover (who is acting like a dog again; the effects of human plasma having temporarily worn off). There is a cycle of 12 drawings on ones. Take a look at them in order.














Avery only had a team of three credited animators—Don Patterson, La Verne Harding and Ray Abrams—at Lantz. Reader M. Yorston informs me the scene is by Abrams.

After Avery left the studio, Walter Lantz brought back Alex Lovy to direct. Lovy was handed all of Avery’s characters, and there weren’t many. There was Chilly Willy and his dog/polar bear antagonist, and there were Sam and Maggie. Lantz wanted continuing characters so he could see them in merchandise, so Lovy turned Sam and Maggie into a series. It limped along with three uninteresting cartoons. Sam and Maggie, like almost all of Avery’s characters after leaving Warners, existed solely to accommodate Avery’s gags, which were the real stars of his cartoons. Without Tex Avery, there was no need for a Maggie or Sam.

An Old Time Radio Christmas

How well do you know your Old Time Radio?

John Crosby, radio columnist of The New York Herald Tribune crafted this lovely Christmas poem for 1947, rhyming the names (as best he could) of the network stars. Yet there are probably names that may leave even the most diehard OTR fan wondering who he’s talking about.

Maybe you’ve heard of Pegeen Fitzgerald (and her husband Ed) on WOR New York. But “R. Schmohopper”? And Syd Eiges? (Jack Eigen, yes, but ... who?)

Read along and see how many of these radio personalities, industry bosses and sponsor products you recognise. And consider how many managed to make the jump to television not long after.

Critic Hard
Turns Bard
In Yule Card
By JOHN CROSBY

Now Ivory! Now Lifebuoy! Now Lava and Veto!
On Toni! On Jergens! On Arrid and Rinso!
Away to the heavens! We’ve gifts to bestow
On Everyone in radio!

To all, good health and gifts galore!
We’ve nothing but hosannahs for
Ginny Simms and Dinah Shore,
The indestructible Barrymore,
All the clerks in The Village Store
And the FBI in Peace and War.
A great big bag of sponsored goodies
For Paley, Trammell, Kobak, Woodies.
Here’s a potent Christmas stogie
For Frankie, Perry, Andy, Hoagy.
A merry cap with all the felt on for
Eddie Cantor, Happy Felton,
Tiny Ruffner and Red Skelton,
Lassie, Hildegarde and Melton.

All the best, young Doc Malone! A
Little kiss for McElhone.
Hail to Candid Microphone and
How are you, Vic Damone!
Here’s a toast to put our heart in—
To Frances Langford, Tony Martin,
Lum ‘n’ Abner, Superman,
Dr. Christian, Charlie Chan,
The Thin, The Fat, The Answer Man.
To suffering Portia long, long life;
Same to you, Backstage Wife.
Lots of heartbreak, tears and strife.

Connubial bliss and all that’s merry
To the working wives—Portland, Mary.
Dorothy, Pegeen, Jinx McCrary.
Open a bottle, share a bird
With Jimmy Durante, Mortimer Snerd.
A handful of bellylaughs wild and hearty
For Allen and Benny and Charlie McCarthy.

A bottle of grog and long hay hay
for Duffy’s Tavern and Alice Faye,
For Gildersleeve and Dennis Day
For Kaltenborn and RCA,
For Breneman and Sammy Kaye
For Blanche and Moon and Dorothy Shay.
And while we’re running down the roster,
Don’t forget Judy Foster,
Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper,
Jimmy Fidler, R. Schmohopper,
Groucho Marx, Nancy Craig,
Don Ameche, Vera Vague,
Walter Winchell, Jessica Tandy,
Studio One, Amos ‘n’ Andy,
Blondie, Bergen, both McGees,
Jolson, Information Please,
Parkyakarkus, Tommy Nix.
Arthur Godfrey, Georgie Hicks
George and Gracie, Meet the Press,
And the Right to Happiness.
Naturally we mustn’t rob—
The other Crosbys, Bing and Bob.
Here’s to this Your FBI
And David Harding—Counterspy.
A Christmas Carol round the organ
For Robin, Frank and Henry Morgan,
A very hearty Christmas wessel
To perennial guest star, Georgie Jessel.
And we’ll pin a Christmas star on
Lucky Strike if it keeps Jack Paar on.
Big hello to March and Sweeney;
A reverent bow to Toscanini,
Cheerfuller news and headlines sweeter
To Edward Murrow and Gabriel Heatter.
Swing, Leseuer, Sevareid;
Lowell Thomas, Margo McBride.

A football cheer, rackety rax!
For Barber, Stern, Stan Lomax.
A long and heartfelt Christmas rave
For Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky, Dave.
A hey nonny nonny, a la di di
For all vice-presidents of NBC.
A special bit of midnight erl
For Garry Moore and Milton Berle
Another sponsor for Billy Rose
A special garland for Bob Hope’s nose
A bit of holly for Abe Burrows,
And don’t forget the Leland Stowes.

Get moving, my lovelies. Away we go
To lay a little mistletoe
On Whiteman, Waring, Mark Warnow,
Carson, Gardiner, Vaughn Monroe,
Abbott and Cos-tell-o
We haven’t space and haven’t rhymes
For Kate and Sammy Smith, Dave Taylor,
Syd Eiges, Phil Harris,
Rochester, Joan and Jack Sullivan,
Pete and Mary Hayes,
Bob Saudek and Art Linkletter.
But we’d like to offer a small apology to Frank Sullivan,
Who does this every Christmas and does it much better.
Copyright, 1947, for the Tribune

Tom and Jerry Christmas

In November 1953, MGM Records came out with a kids tale, ‘Tom and Jerry Meet Santa Claus.’ As neither Tom or Jerry spoke, the label brought in a narrator—Bret Morrison, better known as The Shadow (after Orson Welles gave up voicing the character on radio). He narrated several children’s records featuring MGM’s cat and mouse, accompanied by the Leroy Holmes Orchestra. You can sure tell Scott Bradley didn’t do the score. Press the play arrow to hear it.



Tom and Jerry were intimately familiar with the Yuletide season, having starred in a Christmas cartoon in 1941.

Screwy Squirrel and the Sam Prototype

Tex Avery dug out some familiar gags to toss into the final Screwy Squirrel cartoon, ‘Lonesome Lenny’ (1946). The whole ‘Of Mice and Men’ routine came over from Warners (though it had a long life there, too), we get an alum gag and a “Silly, Isn’t It?” sign gag.

Avery also tried out a chase-through-multiple-doors gag, one more associated with ‘Red Hot Riding Hood’, where the chase gets faster and faster and doors appear everywhere in the frame. Here, Tex’s timing is perfect again, as he establishes the routine of the chase and then starts adding ridiculous things to it. We end up with multiple Screwys and Lennys, a deer, a cow complete with udder (the holder of the forementioned sign) and a stocking-clad babe being chased by a tubby guy.

Is it just me, or is the guy a forerunner to Sam, the suburbanite pumped full of dog plasma in ‘Crazy Mixed Up Pup’, which Avery made at the Lantz studio in 1954 (released the following year)? Granted, his work at Lantz was more, but here’s a comparison of the two.




Boxoffice magazine of April 6, 1946 rated the cartoon “Amusing” and decided “What the two cartoon characters do to each other is nobody’s business but it’s all in good fun.” But while Screwy pretends to be killed at the end (prompting a facetious sign by Avery and writer Heck Allen), Avery really did kill Screwy’s career

Ed Love, Preston Blair, Walt Clinton and Ray Abrams get animation credits on ‘Lonesome Lenny.’ It was Avery’s last attempt to make anything out of Screwy Squirrel. Fans still love the gags—they’re vintage Tex Avery after all—but Avery didn’t like talking about the character. “He was never too funny” is about all he said to historian Joe Adamson. Animator Mark Kausler used to send letters to Tex with his rendition of Screwy. Later he learned Avery so disliked the character, he tossed away anything with Screwy drawn on it. Says Mark: “Tex really hated Skrewy, because he didn't catch on like "the rabbit".”

Jack Benny at 39 (Plus 32)

I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that in 1965, Jack Benny was looking back at his career an awful lot in interviews. After all, he had been in show business over 50 years at that point. It’s just that Jack never went away. He was still part of the present, not in the past.

The Associated Press interviewed Jack that year and his answers were assembled into a feature story that ran July 10th.

Jack Benny . . . The Non-Slowdown Comic
By MARY CAMPBELL
AP Newsfeatures Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — “Why are you going into a summer theater?” Jack Benny quotes his Beverly Hills doctor as asking him. “It can’t be for the money.”
Benny pauses for the inevitable laugh at his legendary stinginess, and continues, “So I said to my new doctor . . .”
At 71, looking 59 and saying he feels better than the many years when he was 39, blue-eyed Jack Benny has for the first time booked himself, “An Hour and 60 Minutes with Jack Benny,” (the hour a funny, rambling chat, the 60 minutes a combination of humor and violin playing) into a small theater, the Tappan Zee Playhouse in Nyack, N. Y.
“It’s so intimate,” he says. “The boxes are right close. I can talk to an audience like I'm talking to you.
“Of course I love the theater. If I had time this summer I’d continue to do it.”
But Benny doesn't have time. He arrived in New York from playing in Las Vegas and will go right back to the West Coast to perform at Lake Tahoe and do two hour-long TV shows. After that, there are shows in London, 10 or so benefit appearances with his Stradivarius with symphony orchestras in Arizona Texas and Florida, and then maybe he'll have time for more cozy theaters like the 792-seat Tappan Zee.
Intimate Revue Is New
Asked what else is new, Benny says, “What news could I give? I've been in the business now 100 years. Well, I’ve never done this before — an intimate revue.
“The only other new thing is if I found the right play on Broadway, I would do it. It would have to be something I was absolutely insane about. I’d want it to use any delivery but I wouldn’t want it to have anything to do with being stingy, and the Maxwell, etc. I wouldn’t want it to be too stylized, so it would only fit me and not anybody else.
“The best picture I ever made was ‘To Be or Not To Be.’ If I hadn't played it, some body else could have played it beautifully.
“If I ever made another film, I would want to make a film at my age like Chevalier, you know. Chevalier is very smart: Rock Hudson, Doris Day and Maurice Chevalier, playing the uncle, or the grandfather or the great-grandfather.”
For his “Hour and 60 Minutes,” Benny says, “Most of the material is new.
"I think the material has always been to a certain extent sophisticated. It has a human quality. It is about people, the frailties and faults of people, which I am supposed to have, you know. You have to have smart jokes, good sophisticated smart jokes. I think I’ve got them.
"My material usually doesn’t fit anybody else, therefore it isn't bandied around by a lot of people, you know. Certain routines that fit other people, they have taken. You know what I do?
“I always remember a thing Will Rogers said once when he was doing a show with Eddie Cantor. Cantor said, ‘I saw a fellow doing your whole act. Aren’t you going to do something about it?’ Rogers said, ‘Yes, I’m going to do new material for myself.’
Nicest Thing Ever
The comedian says that Jack Benny High School in his hometown, Waukegan, Ill., is “about the nicest thing that ever happened to me.
“They didn't just rename a school. They actually built it for me. I was there for the ground-breaking.
“And I never even graduated from high school. I was thrown out the first year, because I used to skip school all the time and practice my fiddle. The principal said, ‘Benny, we don't teach music here and I’m asking you to leave.’ So I walked out."
For nine years, Benny has been donating his services as guest violinist with various city’s symphonies, to benefit the orchestras or their pension funds.
“I love it,” he says. “I’m a frustrated violinist. I’m a comedian, and the greatest, most dignified, highest-class background that a comedian can have is to walk out in tails with a violin and have 100 of the finest musicians in back of you with a, Bernstein or a Steinberg or a Szell conducting, and I do what Heifetz does, but I'm a comedian.
“It doesn’t fit anybody else, except Danny Kaye, and he conducts the orchestra. If this fit eight other comedians, as nice and charitable as I'd like to be, I wouldn't like to do it.”
Mentioning the same subject at his Tappan Zee Playhouse opening night, he added, “The way I play, some people even yell bravo.”
Later in the show, Benny said he would like to introduce just one friend down front in the audience, Helen Hayes. She stood, acknowledged applause, and said to the man on the stage, “I’m the one who's been yelling bravo.”

More Caricatures Than There Are in Heaven

All-star pictures fell on North American movie theatres in World War Two as often as bombs on Berlin. And not all of the pictures bombed.

Here’s a great ad from Boxoffice magazine for the 1943 MGM extravaganza “Thousands Cheer.”



The thing that struck me instantly was that I had seen the caricature of Lucille Ball before. And so has anyone else who watched “The Lucy Show” in the 1960s.




It’s a shame the ad is unsigned. If anyone knows who drew these great caricatures, please leave a comment.

Sara Berner and the R Word

The at-times rancorous debate whether all exaggerated impressions of non-white people are racist (and, conversely, why exaggerated impressions of white people are not) is nothing new, as the article below will show.

Sara Berner was an actress who specialised in exaggerated accents, both on network radio of the Golden Age, and in animated cartoons of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Dialect and ethnic humour was perfectly acceptable (and wildly popular) in vaudeville. Exaggeration equals comedy. But eventually questions were raised about whether the humour was really at someone’s expense or, worse, bigotry. It’s a debate that continues to this day, one that will never result in an agreement. And I certainly don’t propose to debate it here.

What I will do is give you Berner’s take on it, from a United Press story of June 15, 1950.

13 ‘Voices’ Put Sara Berner in Demand for Show Parts
By VIRGINIA MacPHERSON
HOLLYWOOD. (UP) Sara Berner, who makes her living with 13 “voices,” said today she’s won her fight to keep rattling her comedy dialects.
“It’s been tough,” the brown-eyed comedienne explained. Radio bosses didn’t like it. They thought I was fostering racial prejudice.”
Miss Berner thinks different. She thinks she’s breaking it down by cracking wise in Jewish, Italian, Southern, and what-have-you.
So do a lot of top comedians who pay fancy prices for her talented vocal chords.
Jack Benny's had her on for years as “Gladys Zybisco,” his gum-chompin’ telephone operator. She’s “Mrs. Mataratza” with Jimmy Durante, “Helen Wilson” on the “Amos ‘n’Andy” show, “Mrs. Horowitz” on “Life with Luigi” and “Mrs. Jacoby” with Dennis Day.
She's also Gene Autry’s “Chiquita,” Fanny Brice’s “Phoebe” and Eddie Cantor's “Ida” (on the air, that is.)
MANY VOICES
Sara can switch her tonsil tones from Greek to Polish to French without a quiver from her vocal chords.
She’s pretty good at it, too. Good enough, anyway, for NBC to hand her her own half-hour show, “Sara’s Private Caper.”
But for a while there she sure had the big boys along radio row quaking behind their desks.
“Then a columnist had an item about my dialects being in bad taste,” Sara said, “and they ordered me to stop getting laughs with an accent.
“I argued and argued and finally convinced them. Golly, what’s all the fuss about? Dialects are a natural part of American speech.
“And the sooner people stop being on the defensive about them the sooner we can wipe out all that silly prejudice.”
POINTS TO OTHERS
Every time somebody bring up the battle Sara points to “Amos ‘n’ Andy” as the classic example.
“They laugh with Negroes—not at them,” she says. “And that’s the secret with dialects. You have to do them sympathetically. Otherwise you can cause trouble.
“But I know I haven't offended anybody because in all the years I’ve been doing them I’ve never, not even once, got a nasty letter.”
And she’s dead sure she’s getting her negro dialect across okay—the maid in the powder room at Ciro’s won’t ever let Sara tip her.

MacPherson’s made a slight factual error Gladys Zybisko was not one of the phone operators. That was another of Berner’s characters. Zybisko was Jack’s occasional girl-friend on radio.

Berner’s own radio show suffered from a variety of trouble, not the least of which was revealed by columnist Erskine Johnson of the NEA on October 9. He said the show started out as “Sara’s Private Eye,” then became “Sara’s Private File,” was changed to “Sara’s Private Crime” then “Sara’s Private Caper.” By then, it had long been off the air. The final show was broadcast August 24, replaced the following Thursday with ‘Folk Songs of the Menhaden Fishermen.’ It lasted 11 weeks, short even by summer replacement standards. The biggest problem was much like the one Mel Blanc had when he was handed a starring show in 1946—being adept at voices means nothing unless you do something funny or interesting with your characters. And even radio editors had trouble discerning whether “Caper’s” format was a comedy or a drama.

Unfortunately for the gifted Sara Berner, the R Word when it came to her big network break was “replaced.”

The Great Piggy Bank Phone Call

Daffy Duck looks fairly normal while on the phone as Duck Twacy in ‘The Great Piggy Bank Robbery’ (1946).



But then he stretches out in a few in-betweens.





The credited animators in the cartoon are Rod Scribner, Manny Gould, Izzy Ellis and Bill Melendez. Someone will, no doubt, comment below about who they feel made these smears. Though other artists at Warners were known for them—Bobe Cannon and Virgil Ross come to mind—any (assistant) animator should have been able to draw them if that’s what was indicated. Weren’t there five animators in each unit at this point?

Clampett cuts to this scene after a couple of seconds of Daffy answering the phone.



I’m no expert, but this looks like the work a different animator (Ellis maybe?). Notice how Daffy’s fingers are tapered.

Past Paarticiple

Jack Paar was a whiner.

I’m not referring to how he walked out on his late night TV audience because NBC censored his joke about a water closet. I’m not referring to his spat with Ed Sullivan, where he called Mr. Toast of the Town “a liar.” No, I’m going back even further.

Paar came out of the Army and was handed a network radio career by Jack Benny, who saw him overseas. But in almost every newspaper column I can find from his radio days (his first TV appearance was in 1951), he’s complaining about something. He’s complaining about poor Jack Paar and how everyone’s doing him wrong.

Want an example? Here’s one from the United Press from 1950 where he, basically, says his audience is stupid.

Comic Jack Paar Returns to Radio
With Lower I. Q., Down to Earth Gags
BY ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, July 26.—(UP)—Comic Jack Paar confessed today he was a flop in Hollywood until he lowered his I. Q. and didn’t go in for “intelligent” gags any more.
Paar, once heralded as the funniest guy in show business, is back on the radio after two years of being “broke and hungry.”
He hadn't had a pay check since he left R. K. O. where he sat for three years, with pay, doing practically nothing. And he hadn’t had a radio job since he made a hit with the critics as a summer replacement for Jack Benny’s show three years ago.
+ + +
“I’VE STOPPED trying to make people think while they laugh,” he explained. “I’ve quit being clever or new.
“People don’t want new gags. You can’t change show business. They want to hear the same old thing. They feel inferior if you make them think too much. If you give them something different they say it’s corny.
“Before, I was cold and satirical. Now, on the radio I talk about my baby, and they die laughing.”
Paar originally was discovered when, as a buck private entertainer, he verbally ripped Army brass with insults other GIs just thought about. After the war R. K. O. signed him before he got his Army boots off. Then he sat home and cashed a pay check every week for doing nothing.
“THEY WOULDN’T even let me park my car inside the studio,” he complained.
Once he was so sure the studio was going to drop him he insulted top movie brass at a studio party.
“I said the publicity chief ran a forest lawn with typewriters,” he said.
Dore Schary, then R. K. O. production chief, thought Paar was so funny he signed him up for another year.
Paar finally got in a movie, “Weep No More,” which he says is awful. He also landed the plum job of subbing for Benny.
He won every show business magazine award that year as the best comic on the air.
“Those awards were the kiss of death. I never worked again,” he said. “My wife’s family is well-to-do and they kept us going, or we wouldn’t have eaten.”
He finally got a foot back in the door and replaced Eddie Cantor on NBC’s “Take It or Leave It.”
“I discovered what the critics like isn’t what the people like,” he said. “I’ve stopped acting intelligent.”

An example of his “intelligent” humour? Well, one joke involved him looking at a photo of Paulette Goddard in a brief evening gown, then remarking “It that dress were a book it would be banned in Boston.”

It seems strange that someone like Jack Benny would hand his top-rated show to someone like Paar, but that’s what happened on June 1, 1947. Benny had his cast insult him. Paar insulted everybody but Paar. Sure, Don Rickles has insulted people for years. But he always made it known he wasn’t serious. That isn’t the impression one gets from Paar. Here’s a column from a couple of weeks after he debuted on the Benny show.

By Erskine Johnson
NEA Staff Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD, June 17—Hollywood’s newest comedy sensation, Jack Paar, landed in the movies because, as a GI entertainer during the war, he insulted army brass hats from one end of the Pacific to the other.
To a base command officer: “The only way you'll ever get the purple heart is if you get caught between two desks coming together.”
The tens of thousands of men Jack entertained in the Pacific will be happy to hear that he is now insulting the brass hats in Hollywood.
To Producer Sid Rogell: “I just saw a trailer of your latest picture. If you haven’t made it, don’t.”
But the Pacific veterans will be unhappy to hear that Hollywood hasn’t figured out what to do with Jack Paar. Sure, he’s a hit on the radio now as Jack Benny’s summer replacement.
“I’ve got enough money to last for the rest of my life. If I commit suicide at noon tomorrow.”
But after eight months under contract to R-K-O, Jack Paar still hasn’t appeared in a movie.
Jack, 29, who describes himself as “an aging Donald O’Connor,” did some film tests by himself.
“They were terrific,” says Jack, who has as much self-assurance as he has jokes. “Then they gave me a director and that mixed me up. He started talking about shading and reading my lines with tempo and stuff like that.
“I haven’t got any shading I’ve got four speeds—fast or slow or soft or loud.”
Some people refer to Jack as a “young Fred Allen.” Jack likes that. Fred is his idol. In fact, someone was trying to embarrass him in front of Fred at a New York cocktail party.
"You know, Fred, this Paar fellow worships you like a god.”
To which Fred replied, “What a shame. Five hundred churches in New York and he’s an atheist.”
It was Jack Paar’s irreverence to brass hats, as we said, and of just about everything else out in the Pacific during the war, that brought him to Hollywood’s attention.
Jack was a radio announcer in Cleveland and Buffalo when he was drafted into the army. It soon got around that he was a very funny fellow. He was sent around eastern camps to entertain troops. Then he was assigned to a special service unit of GI talent. For months he and his troupe toured the Pacific foxholes.
Jack became a hero to heroes. He got bigger writeups in the army papers than stars like Benny or Hope or Jack Carson. Paar was just one of the boys—a GI with enough nerve to insult the brass hats.
To a lieutenant who kept talking out loud during one of his shows: “Lieutenant, a man with your I.Q. should have a low voice, too.”
To a commanding officer: “My dear sir, and you are none of the three.
To a noisy captain: “You be quiet or I’ll take your shovel away and you won’t have any fun at the beach tomorrow.”

13 years later, NBC told him to be quiet or they’d take his water closet joke away. He didn’t think that was funny, told his audience they’ve have to do without him and left the studio to let announcer Hugh Downs somehow follow an act like that and fill the rest of the show. Paar may have idolised Fred Allen, who never concealed his dislike for network executives, idiotic sponsor decisions and inane radio programming, but Allen never walked out on his audience because of it. Paar did.

Fred Allen’s remembered, at least by those who still remember him, as a clever analogist and a benevolent man. Paar isn’t. And if he were still with us, he might just whine about that.