Pop Up Rabbits

“Delightful whimsical satire on Johann Strauss and the composition of his famous waltz, ‘Tales of the Vienna Woods’,” is how Variety termed the George Pal Puppetoon “Mr. Strauss Takes a Walk.”

Strauss turns into a human metronome at one point in the cartoon but the most interesting part to me was how rabbits popped up out of the ground. Not out of a hole. They just grew up out of the ground. And they obey the rules of squash and stretch. These are eleven consecutive frames.



This wasn’t Pal’s only encounter with the noted composer. He finished work on “Bravo, Mr. Strauss” around the start of 1943 and was so busy, a third sound stage for him was being built. Within five years, his stop-motion shorts got too expensive to produce.

Plug Plug Plug

Plugola on radio comedy shows was good for everyone, it seems. A company got a free plug. Audiences got laughs. Writers got freebie gifts in return.

For a period of a few years, no comedian seemed to take advantage of this more than Jack Benny. He had a sure-fire laugh formula based on his character being cheap. Someone on his show would mention a product, then Benny would joke that the mention would result in him getting the product for nothing. One show topped it by turning it into one of Benny’s great running gags that always came out of nowhere—Frank Nelson played a man who interrupted a scene later in the show by delivering the product.

Script writer Milt Josefsberg explained in his book about the Benny show that situation wasn’t quite as it played out on radio. Benny would rarely take advantage of the plug, he said; the company getting the freebie would generally send alcohol to the writers.

It seems the idea of inserting plug-gags on a radio show didn’t always originate with its writer. Witness this interesting column that appeared April 8, 1948:

Radio Full of Ad Plugs Sugar-Coated as Gags
By ALINE MOSBY
United Press Correspondent
HOLLYWOOD
The radio shows are getting so shot full of sneaked-in ads, disguised as gags, that you wonder how they have time for the commercial the sponsor is paying for. These plugs most listeners don't know about.
They hear Jack Benny make a crack about which end of a Studebaker you get into. Or Bob Hope spiel about somebody who combs his hair with a Mixmaster. They yak at the gags and figure the trademarks got there by accident.
Not in this bright commercial age. . . . The plugs are out-and-out ads. But neither Benny and Hope, their writers, nor the networks get paid for 'em. The only guy who does is the "script plugger." He takes dough from companies to get their names mentioned in a gag on a radio show.
Gift-Sending Part Of Ad Plugging
Script pluggers, we always thought, were mole-like characters who pulled slick deals with customers in the back booths of dim bars on Vine St. We found one sprinting around in broad daylight.
"This is strictly on the up-and-up," says Joe Gardner.
"We do not," he added indignantly, "pay writers to plug our clients in their scripts. Of course, we send them gifts, but that's just to cultivate their good will . . ."
He operates this way: He takes a script-writer for the Benny show, say, to lunch.
"Got a great gag on a Studebaker," he barks to the writer, and tells it to him. The gag's good. The writer says thanks, he'll use it.
"Everybody's happy," beams Mr. Gardiner. "My client gets a plug on a radio show that would cost him thousands if he bought it as a sponsor. He gets the plug for practically nothing—just the few hundred he pays me.
"The writer's happy. He has a good gag and a bottle of scotch I send him. Benny likes the gag, too."
Free Merchandise Helps Get Plugs
Hey, what about the networks, we said. After all, they're in business to get paid for the ads they broadcast, aren't they?
"Sure, the radio boys raised a fuss for a while," grinned Mr. G.
They shut up, he whispered, after the "script pluggers" began furnishing free merchandise for give-away shows. If the radio folks had to buy all the prizes they hand out to giggling contestants, they'd be out a few million bucks a year.
The give-away show is where Gardiner operates best. He loads 'em down with prizes like ball-bearing lipstick (for making-up under water), things to bake potatoes in atop a stove, egg beaters with low and high gears, shoulder pads for coat hangers, etc., etc.
Each time the master of ceremonies gives one of these treasures away, he lovingly describes it. The lady gets her prize that the show didn't have to pay for, the company gets a cheap plug, and Gardiner collects his commission.
There's only one guy who doesn't profit by this neat arrangement—the sponsor who pays for the show. Why he hasn't kicked up a storm yet, we don't know. Once the sponsor of a give-away show took a test. The ladies in the studio audience were asked to tell what the show advertised. Each carefully listed the brand names of all the fantastic prizes. Not one remembered the company that only shells out several thousand dollars a week so the housewives can win those things!

The most famous plug on the Benny show likely occurred on November 27, 1949:

JACK: And Rochester, the evenings are getting chilly so don't forget to plug in my General Electric blanket.
ROCH: Boss, boss, we haven't got a General Electric blanket.
JACK: We've got one now. (laughter and applause) I'm (ad-libs) oh, brother, will my home be full of General Electric blankets. (resumes script) I'm going into the den and read now.
ROCH: Are you gonna walk or shall I drive you in a Cadillac?
JACK: Let's not over-do it.

That's (Crash! Boom! Tinkle! Zorp!) Oswald

Sound in cartoons was still a fairly new concept in 1929. The Adirondack News explained how it worked in this syndicated piece published February 9, 1929.

You’ll notice the absence of any mention of dialogue in this story. Either there wasn’t any or it was recording separately.

As the last Disney Oswald was released in April 1928 and the first Lantz Oswald appeared on screens in September 1929, this would have been the period when the Winkler studio on the West Coast were making the cartoons. The first synchronised Oswald was “Hen Fruit,” released on Feb. 4, 1929.

GHOSTLY BANDS PUT SOUNDS IN MOVIES
Snores and Snorts Linked to Pictures at Night
Hollywood, Calif.—It is middle of the night and the great studio sprawls like a town of fantastic shadows between the dry river bed, and the barren hills. One supposes there is a night watchman somewhere on the lot, but apparently be does not see the dim figures slinking one by one toward a barnlike structure, each carrying something, and each disappearing through the same small door in the building.
Heading away from the studio, they might have been taken for burglars escaping with their loot, but under the circumstances it is more reasonable to guess they are conspirators of another sort.
The interior of the building is dimly lit, but by mingling casually with the crowd one can see very clearly what they carried in—two saxophones, a galvanised-iron washtub full of tin cans, a cornet, a tuba, a clothes wringer, three phonographs, a school bell, several cowbells, a band-operated alarm gong, three sites of electric bells, innumerable tin, brass and wooden whistles, many assorted pieces of wood and metal, half a dozen panes of window glass and a metal cylinder of compressed air.
Jolly Looking Conspirators.
Obviously these are not the paraphernalia of arsonists or dynamiters; and, besides, even in the dim light, the conspirators have a jolly look. It begins to look more like preparations for an old-fashioned charivari. Before one can ask who was married, however, the head conspirator explains everything: “Our job tonight,” says he, “is to synchronise Oswald the Rabbit.”
Oswald, one learns, is the pen-and-ink hero of an animated cartoon which, in keeping with the modern craze for screen sound, must be embellished with music and noise-effects.
Six musicians, skilled in leaping nimbly from tune to tune in harmony with the action on the screen, take their places under one microphone.
Another microphone bangs near the table where all the bells and whistles are spread. A large man in overalls sits near the tubful of tin cans with a wooden paddle in his hands, as if waiting for the cauldron to boil; the other conspirators stand here and there between the microphones, ready to make the right noises at the right times.
Rehearse at Showing.
They rehearse with the picture running on the screen in front of them. As the main title of the comedy appears on the screen the orchestra leaps into an overture, while the other sound-smiths stand tensely waiting for their cues.
When the opening scene discloses Oswald sleeping in his bed, the orchestra dodges quickly into a cradle song while a lad within whispering distance of a microphone snores rhythmically and another specialist imitates the squeaking of the bed by running sole leather through the clothes wringer.
After each rehearsal the recording engineer in the sound-mixing booth, who hears all this as it will sound to an audience, suggests improvements.
And again and again the mixed symphony of harmonies and discords is rehearsed; then, “This is the picture, boys,” and they go through it once more, with the sound-recording apparatus registering everything on celluloid.
Along about sunrise the sound-smiths call it a night and go home, tired and hungry, but with a little glow of pride at the thought that their artistry has made it possible for the world to bear as well as see Oswald the Rabbit.

Climbing Mannequins

Sylvester gets ready to climb the department store mannequin tower he’s built to capture Tweety in “Bird in a Guilty Cage” (released in 1952). It’s a variation on a gag found in a bunch of Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, usually preceded by Sylvester tippy-toeing from one side of the screen to the other accompanied by Carl Stalling/Milt Franklyn’s pizzicato strings.

The layout is by Hawley Pratt and the background by Irv Wyner.

Night Owls

Bullrushes sway to the “Moonlight Sonata” to open Walt Disney’s “Night” (1930), then are joined by waves on a lake and a la-la-la-ing moon (in falsetto) as the song changes to “The Blue Danube.”

The scene switches to a pair of owls in a typical gag of the era. The male and female owls dance together, but the female draws the line at kissing. You can see what happens next. I’ve never tried to count the Disney and Harman-Ising cartoons where a character flips up a rump in contempt.



Disneyshorts.org reports seven animators worked on this.

What Made Fibber and Molly

“Fibber McGee and Molly” had about as perfect a formula for a situation comedy as you could come up with. Set up the situation. Have time-tested supporting character appear ostensibly to comment on the situation then leave. Repeat several times. Conclude the situation with a twist. Add catchphrases. Repeat in seven days, adding occasional running gag (Myrt, closet).

Well, there was one other thing. Fibber McGee and Molly sounded like nice people. Someone like Chester A. (“Life Of...”) Riley was a loud blowhard. McGee could be a loud blowhard, too. But he was a nice one. He never seemed over the top, probably because the situations he found himself in weren’t over the top (fixing a clock, losing a train ticket, etc.) and ones the audience could easily accept.

The decay of network radio in the ‘50s quickly dismantled the elements and the formula that made “Fibber McGee and Molly” a success. In 1953, the show abruptly lost its studio audience and was scrunched into 15 minutes. Soon, it consisted of drop-ins on “Monitor.” Eventually, it couldn’t even be described as amusing or even droll, it was just dialogue. By the end of the decade, NBC told Fibber McGee and Molly to go away.

Let’s look at more pleasant days. Here’s a North American Newspaper Association column, July 15, 1944.

IN HOLLYWOOD
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
Plain, common-sense folks sometimes hit the jackpot in the amusement field but very seldom do they remain that way. Most of them get glamor and importance and find trouble remembering their old friends. One outstanding exception, or two rather, in the combination traveling under the radio and screen name of Fibber McGee and Molly.
In real life, of course, they're Jim and Marian Jordan, husband and wife who manage a home life in a secluded section of Hollywood even though their Radio Crossley is one of the very highest in the business. Recently RKO studio signed them for a new series of pictures and their latest, "Heavenly Days," is just about to be released.
When yon meet Jim and Marian Jordan you realize at once why their Fibber and Molly should be so down-to-earth and understandable. Their creators are equally real and normal just home folks who have never shown the slightest inclination to bask in the Hollywood spotlight.
"Listen, Pal," said Jim Jordan, "this is the toughest interviewing assignment you've ever faced. We just aren't interesting folks in print. We don't know how to ‘give.’ It's the old story, I guess —we just haven't got the color."
JORDANS FAIL TO REALIZE OWN POPULARITY
They do express a pleased sort of wonderment that they've managed to entertain so many people and keep them smiling, but they still insist that their private lives are of no interest to the seeing and listening customers.
Recently when the Jordans celebrated a wedding anniversary on their movie set, wires, phone calls and letters came pouring into RKO. The two were frankly amazed. "Gosh!" was Jim's comment, "I never knew we had so many friends."
The Jordans—both natives of Peoria, Ill., where Jim was born 48 years ago, and Marian a year later—look like Fibber and Molly. You'd recognize ‘em anywhere. Jim is a sprightly, rotund gent with twinkling blue eyes and Marian, a trim, attractive person who would never be suspected of having two grown children, is exactly the sort of person to whom you turn for sound reasoning and advice.
To strangers, Jim’s shyness often seems a trifle brusque, but after you've conversed a few minutes, you realize he's telling the truth and pulling on no act when he says, "I keep quiet when I haven't got anything to say; I think a lot of the headaches in this world could be avoided if more people practiced that."
The Jordans are one of the few old-time couples in show business whose first great success came via radio. After Jim got out of the Army following the last war, he and Marian toured tank towns with their own vaudeville troupe. Things weren't so good until they hit Chicago in 1924, when Jim, on a bet, tried out for a radio show and was hired as a singer. He earned $10 for the date and opened a new field for himself and wife.
FIBBER AND MOLLY ROLE WAS LUCKY PRECEDENT
For some years thereafter they made a precarious living until they and writer Don Quinn, with whom they had been working off and on, hit on the characters of Fibber and Molly, prototypes of the wise guy who always shoots off his mouth at the wrong time, and the level-headed wife who generally manages in he around to get him out of his jams.
Psychologists have attempted to explain the success of the Jordans with long, impressive Latin words. Elaborate explanations have been written as to why and how people from every walk of life drop whatever they're doing to tune in their program or rush to the neighborhood theatre or see them on the screen.
However, nothing that's ever been written seems to sum up Fibber and Molly nearly so well as Marian Jordan, when she says: "We try to make them the kind of folks who live right next door—the people everybody laughs at without realizing that they're laughing right back, for the same reasons."

It's Brown. No, It's Green

Here’s “Willie the Kid,” another UPA cartoon with dissolving backgrounds. Ah, but that’s not all. The colour changes, too.



I’m sure because the UPAers intended this as Art, the colour change means something. For a while, I thought the green represented the real world, while the brown represented the pretend world. But the kids are playing Old West when it’s green, too. And then there’s a rose colour during some scenes. Oh, well.

Some of the animation is by Bill Melendez, who went on to make kid-character cartoons that actually had some charm, unlike this one.

Fox Catches Dog

A standard-issue Tex Avery dog attempts to bag a fox in “Out-Foxed.” Lots of brushed swirls before we see the fox has bagged the dog.



Bobe Cannon’s working for Avery on this one, as well as Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Mike Lah.

Variety gives you an idea how long it took MGM to put this one in theatres:

Fred Quimby added ‘Outfoxed’ to cartoon slate at Metro. (June 26, 1947)

Leo Shows 5 Shorts
Five Metro shorts are scheduled for release during November. They include "Out-Foxed," Technicolor cartoon produced by Fred Quimby; "The Lonesome Mouse," a Gold Medal reprint cartoon; "In Old Amsterdam," FitzPatrick Traveltalk with color by Technicolor; and two Pete Smith specialties, "Water Trix" and "How Come?" (Oct. 21, 1949)

The Golden Dayton Allen

Show business wasn’t the be-all and end-all for Dayton Allen. He was a radio announcer, first at WAAT in New Jersey, then as the host of an occasional, 15-minute show on WINS in 1941, specialising in imitations of Franklin Roosevelt and Groucho Marx. He moved on to cartoon voices at Terrytoons, replacing Sid Raymond as the voices of Heckle and Jeckle. Television came along and, besides voicing commercials, he was one of the stock players on The Steve Allen Show opposite Ed Sullivan. But he wouldn’t go to the West Coast when Allen and the rest of the cast moved, continuing to work in New York until he decided to leave the spotlight behind.

Dayton talked about his non-entertainment interests this syndicated interview taken from the Yonkers Herald-Statesmen of February 5, 1959.

TV KEYNOTES
Comic Dayton Allen Likes Finance
BY HAROLD STERN
Dayton Allen put in 12 years at Terry Tunes, playing the voices of Heckle and Jeckle, plus all the other creatures inhabiting the cartoon world. He impersonated puppets on Winky Dink and Howdy Doody. He’s got about 60 spot commercials going for him on TV. He's the Wise Owl, the voice of a bank and he boasts that he made over $4,000 for less than five minutes work, saying, “The finest beer served anywhere,” on a dozen spot commercials for Pabst.
You'll get a chance to see Dayton Allen for yourself this Sunday night on the Steve Allen Show (they're not related). Will he be doing the commercial: He will not! Dayton Allen will appear in the role of a stand-up comic.
I had a chance to read and hear his routine the other day and if he plays it half as well on the show as he did with his mouth full of roast beef, TV may have another comic on its hands. Allen has a zany, off-beat and irreverent approach to humor which could make him as a comic or cut short his comedy career in a hurry. The Steve Allen spot casts him in the role of a slightly screwball doctor in celebration of National Surgeons Week.
Talking to Dayton, it's almost impossible to believe he's ever done kiddie shows. As he puts it, “The best shows we did were the rehearsals, and they were not for the kiddies!”
It's hard to carry on a straight conversation with the guy, but I found his weak spot. He becomes deadly serious when you turn the discussion to money—gold specifically.
Dayton Allen apparently hears voices when it comes to gold and to the stock market. Actually, he's a dedicated student of economics and, much as he loves show business, would drop it in a hurry to get into finance if the right opportunity came along. Just to prove he has a sincere interest in gold, he and his wife own 400,000 (that's four hundred thousand) shares of Canadian gold stock. “We bought it for pennies,” he said, “and expect it to be worth a dollar or two per share in the very near future.” He went on to advance some frightening (if true) theories on our inflation and on the world's monetary structure.
He denies that there is any connection between his obsessive interest in gold and the fact that he got into show business at the age of sixteen running films for inmates of a mental institution. “I am probably the cheapest guy in the world,” he admits cheerfully. “I didn't know banks had withdrawal slips until I was thirty-two.”

Allen returned to Terrytoons in the ‘60s to voice Deputy Dawg. He also did an astounding cheap-looking five minute syndicated TV show where he played all kinds of characters handing out goofy advice or information; it was designed to be used to fill part of the 15 minutes remaining in a half hour after the network news broadcast. Allen’s brother, Brad Bolke, was a voice-over man as well, and is best known as the voice of Chumley in the Tennessee Tuxedo cartoons.

Allen died in 2004 in North Carolina, where he had been selling property.

A Star in Spite of Herself

The first regular “character” on the Jack Benny show (not counting announcers, bandleaders and singers) was Mary Livingstone who, as we all know, was played by Jack’s wife. Her first appearance was on July 27, 1932, almost three months after the show debuted. She was not heard the next week but, so goes the story, there was a cry by fans to bring her back, so back she came.

Evidently, the fans wanted to know more about her. For a while, her identity was kept secret, but it soon leaked out that she was Mrs. Jack Benny. Before the Benny show moved from New York City for good in 1936, several newspaper and magazine pieces were written about her. Here’s one from the Long Island Press of June 2, 1935. This may be the earliest indication that Mary really didn’t want to be on the show at all. Still she stuck with it until, finally, she recorded her parts in the final radio season (1954-55) so she didn’t have to face an audience, and had to be coerced into making even a rare appearance on the TV show. It’s too bad because she was very funny and had the perfect delivery for the caustic lines the writers gave her.

She Couldn't Help Being a Radio Star
By Fred Wilson
THE first time she ever saw her future partner, she thought he was terrible and he thought no better of her.
She never wanted to go into the show business.
Her initial effort on the stage was a miserable flop and she firmly resolved that her career as an entertainer was ended before it started.
To this day she refuses to go into the movies, and gets out of theatrical engagements whenever she can.
In spite of herself, she has become one of radio's top-ranking favorites and is in no little measure responsible for her partner-husband achieving and maintaining his position as one of the air’s foremost comedians. We're talking about Mary Livingstone, poetess extraordinary, heckler and Jack Benny's greatest trouble-maker, who shares the spotlight with Jack every Sunday night over NBC.
Mary and Jack are facing the microphone these days in Los Angeles, a significant fact, for it was not so many years ago that they faced each other for the first time in that city under somewhat different circumstances. Love at first sight? To the contrary! For a couple of years after that, whenever they met, they were ready to tear each other's hair out.

IT WAS not long after the war. Jack Benny was playing vaudeville in the Southern California metropolis. He had some friends in town—that is, there was a daughter in the family. Jack had some time off between appearances at the theater and decided to do some courting. Everything would be going smoothly until the youngest of the Livingstone girls, Mary, then aged 12, would come into the room and embarrass her big sister and her beau to tears.
"Why doesn't that fresh kid leave us alone?" Jack pleaded.
“I don't understand what you see in that ham actor,” mischievous Mary replied.
That was bad enough, but the dark-haired girl with the big brown eyes was not finished with the "ham actor" yet. She did not think much of Jack Benny and did not spare him the pain of let him hear about it.
She persuaded her father to give her a week's allowance in advance and with the extra cash she took all her friends to the theater where Jack was playing. Before she bought tickets she gathered them together and made a bargain with them. "If you promise not to laugh at a single one of Jack Benny's jokes, I'll buy you each an ice-cream soda on the way home after the show," she said. The girls were on. They got seats down in front and the laughter and applause during and following Jack's act was conspicuous by its absence.
IT WAS several years before Jack Benny returned to Los Angeles. Mary had been away to school in Vancouver and after completing her education in her native city, she got a job as a buyer for a department store. The fresh kid had developed into an extremely attractive young lady. She still did not think much of her sister's actor-friend. They met at a party.
While Mary's opinion had not changed, Jack's did the minute he saw her. The vaudeville star danced almost every dance with her that evening. The next day he sent her flowers and called up for a date. Mary intended to say "No" but she said "Yes" anyhow. They saw quite a bit of each other during the rest of Jack's stay in town, and at the end of the week, in spite of herself, she found that she liked him.
Jack went back East. Two years later Mary went to visit her sister, who had now gone on the stage. She was playing in Chicago and as luck would have it, so was Jack. They became engaged on a Sunday and decided to get married at the end of the week. That was a tactical error on Jack's part because during the intervening five days he almost lost Mary forever.
It wasn't that she didn't care for him, but she definitely did not care for his profession. And the more she saw of theatrical life during that week in Chicago, the more she hated it. You could never settle down with an actor, she figured. Trouping around all over the country and living out of suitcases was far from her idea of married life. She carried on so much about it that Jack was soon discouraged. She broke off the engagement and Jack only went through the gestures of offering opposition. Mary packed her things and was ready to return to Los Angeles.
At this point a third party entered the affair. It was Jack's father. Mr. Benny had a long talk with "quite contrary" Mary. Next he visited with his son and then returned for another session with Mary. They loved each other, didn't they? They weren't children any more. Well, then, why not be sensible about this thing? Mr. Benny's kindly counsel was taken to heart and Mary and Jack decided to go through with it.
THERE never was such a wedding. Neither bride nor groom said a word on the way to the City Hall to get the license. Jack forgot to get a ring and had to use his mother's. And to top it off, the moment Mary Livingstone became Mrs. Jack Benny, she fell to the floor in a dead faint.
Here she had gone and married the fellow. But even worse, she found herself in the show business. The Bennys' honeymoon was spent in the Blackstone Hotel while the groom finished out his engagement in Chicago. (Early this year, Jack and Mary were in Chicago again and celebrated the eighth anniversary of their honeymoon by taking the same rooms in the same hotel.)
Mary's troubles were really beginning. Her worst fears began to come true. She hated the long rides on the trains, leaving one town in the dead of night and reaching the next one just in time for the show. Marriage meant a home, friendly neighbors, spending the evenings sitting in front of the fireplace reading and chatting. At least, that is what Mary Livingstone expected. Instead, her home was a small hotel room, a different one each week so you couldn't even get used to it and fix it up comfortably. Nice quiet evenings? They were nice and quiet, all right, because she had to spend them by herself while Jack was at the theater.
Wouldn't Jack leave the stage and go into some ordinary business so they could live like other people? Well, that was asking a bit too much. Why couldn't Mary interest herself in his work, come down to the theater and make friends with the people in the show?
MARY started hanging around the theaters. Chorus girls in scanties in front of the footlights are one thing, but backstage and in the dressing rooms they appeared to be positively naked. And how familiar they were with Jack and he seemed to reciprocate their friendliness. What, to anyone who has been with theatrical folks for more than five minutes, is simply the informal good fellowship of the show business, and completely essential to it because it provides the only relief from the tension under which everyone is working, seemed to Mary to be rather unorthodox behavior for a married man. She accused Jack of flirting and swept out of the theater angrily. Mary was a pretty unhappy girl.
Unhappy, but not stupid. When Jack explained to her what it was all about, she was quick to understand. But that did not solve her problem. She was still associated with the show business, and quite frankly, she had had more than enough of it. Jack talked some more. Perhaps if Mary could become definitely interested in his work, she might feel differently. Perhaps if she could learn some of his acts and realize what he was trying to do, and make suggestions, or possibly go on the stage herself some day, she would see things in another light.
Mary was a better trouper than she ever thought she could be. She would brace up and take an interest in her husband's work. She would willingly help him rehearse and if she ever thought of anything which might improve the acts, she would suggest it. But as for actually taking part in a show, well, he might as well forget it. The inevitable had to happen sooner or later, and it did when they were in New York. Jack's regular partner became ill and Mary was the only one who knew the role. Here she was an actress, something she had sworn she would never be. She went on the stage with him and before the act was half-way finished, she knew she was terrible. When the curtain went down, Jack stood in the wings trying to console her. Mary told him he didn't have to do that. She was terrible, she knew it, everyone else knew it, she was through with it and that was that.
JACK had to get another partner, but when they were in Chicago, she left. Mary was drafted, despite what she considered better judgment. She had regained her confidence and everything went well until they were booked into Los Angeles. Jack thought it would make her nervous to play before her family and friends and Mary was only too glad of the excuse to leave the show. Jack again had to get a new partner. But somehow the act did not click as well as it had across the country when Mary was in it. The new girl was released and Mary was persuaded to return. And this time she remained.
She disliked Jack the first time she had seen him, and she married him. She did not want to marry him because she hated the show business, and here she was, part and parcel of it. This was a little more than three years ago. They played their way back East and when he got to New York, Jack got an offer to go on the air.
This was the opportunity Mary had been waiting for. It meant Jack would have to stay in one place and they could take an apartment which would be a real home. For the first time since they were married, Mary was supremely happy. She figured she was through with the theater and they could begin the kind of married life she had always hoped and prayed for.
ONE night Jack's script ran short. He had to fill in for a couple of minutes and an idea flashed through his mind. He waved to George Olsen to start a number, walked over to where Mary was sitting and brought her over to the microphone with him. He signaled to the engineer to fade the music out and started an impromptu bit of dialog with her. They succeeded in ending the broadcast without any "dead air." Within two weeks Jack had received so many requests that Mary be made a regular part of the show that there was nothing to do but get Harry Conn, his writer, to bring her into scripts regularly.
So, in spite of herself, Mary Livingstone became a radio star. However, there were compensations. A radio broadcast once a week is a little different from four or five stage shows a day and Mary was able to have her full share of home life, too—that is, with exceptions. Today Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone constitute an inseparable combination. Jack without Mary is like Amos without Andy. Listeners wait for her poems and wisecracks as eagerly as they do for Jack's "Hello, again" and his gags at the expense of Don Bestor's spats. Mary's "O. K., Toots" has become a national catch-phrase. They even wrote a popular song about it. Mary has succeeded in making a pretty domestic fellow out of Jack, too. They hardly ever go in for night life. If Mary and Jack want to do something they consider very gay, they go to a midnight movie.
EVERYTHING goes along smoothly until Jack's managers make stage engagements for him. The following he has built up over the air puts him in greater demand for personal appearances than ever. But the theater owners insist that Mary be included in the act.
She always rebels at this and does everything possible to get out of appearing before the footlights. They usually work out a compromise. Mary will come along if Jack promises her she only has to play the first part of the week.
She has turned thumbs down absolutely on the movies. Jack is out in Hollywood now making a picture for M-G-M. Mary won't even go anywhere near the lot where the film is being made. They have rented Lita Grey Chaplin's house for the summer and Mary is having the time of her life.
A star in spite of herself, Mary still looks forward to the day when Jack will give up the show business, but she knows he would never be happy out of it. This summer they are planning to take their first real vacation since they have been married. Mary is pretty excited about this, but she is not building too many hopes because Jack does the word "rest" means.