"HERE'S MORGAN"
With Henry Morgan,
Producer: Harvey Marlowe
15 Mins.; Thurs., 8:15 p.m.
Adler Shoes
WABD-ABC, N. Y.
Henry Morgan's first video show has probably brought to light more problems that the Television Broadcasters Assn. can handle at the moment. In tele, as in radio, he's one of the most unorthodox performers extant, completely uninhibited to the point that he can cause more gray hairs to producers in a brief 15 minutes than most performers during an entire career.
Privately, performers complain of the terrific heat generated by the overhead light banks, but no one has ever done anything about it. Morgan—he stripped down to the waist, showed the viewers how the lights melted the records, and complained bitterly about the conditions under which video workers perform. TBA will probably promulgate a Hays office code to take care of guys like Morgan. Unorthodoxy of the performance was probably the most surprising thing ever to come over the screen, but lest TBA clamps down on Morgan too hard, it was all inoffensive and didn't exceed good taste, and it was funny.
His gab, strictly ad-lib, poked fun at the product in a manner which would cause immediate cancellation by a less liberal bankroller. His lampoon of Adler shoe products was funnier than anything he's done on the audio medium because of the sight values afforded by video. But withal, he gave a practical demonstration of the efficacy of Adler elevators by having a gent from the audience, accompanied by a femme, try on a pair. The guy afterward was much taller than she was.
Morgan probably didn't mean to be that good to his sponsor. Morgan has provided the first burlesque of television, a certain sign that the medium is on the way to growing up.
Jose.
ON THE CORNERThe show was scheduled for 13 weeks. It never got that far. The third and fourth weeks saw WFIL-TV technicians on strike; ABC cancelled one show and Morgan refused to cross the picket line for the second. The fifth week originated from WMAL-TV Washington on May 15th. Admiral brought in someone other than Morgan to do the commercials. He considered that a breach of contract. Admiral said that was fine with them. That ended On the Corner after a total of three broadcasts. Even Hayloft Hoedown lasted longer.
With Henry Morgan, George Guest, Virginia Austin, Roy Davis, Clark Sisters
Producer: Charles Holden
Director: Ralph Warren
30 Mins.; Sun., 6:30 p.m.
ADMIRAL CORP.
ABC-TV, from Philadelphia
(Enders) [ad agency that booked the show]
One of the first major tele comedy shows to recruit top comedic talent from radio, the new Henry Morgan "On the Corner" variety program "went network" via ABC-TV Sunday (18) after a "sneak preview" the previous Sunday for Philly audiences. Program originates from WFIL-TV in Philly and is carried in New York by the DuMont station, WABD.
It's a half-hour comedy-variety format, with Morgan bringing on the "acts" culled from the vaude section of Variety, which gets its share of camera showcasing as Morgan is shown thumbing through its pages. As variety-slanted video programs go, there was nothing particularly inspiring or distinct live about the talent surrounding Morgan. One act featured a marimba turn (George Guest); another a puppeteer act (Virginia Austin); the third some off-the-record impersonations (Roy Davis), with a femme quartet (Clark Sisters) rounding out the bill. It was the kind of stuff that, even at this early stage, already has old-hat overtones through their multiple showcasing on the flock of amateur, semi-pro and pro shows that have found their way into video.
Chief interest, of course, centered around Morgan and his particular style of delivery and satirical brand of humor. The Morgan technique, with its casualness and suggestion that it's all off-the-cuff, lends itself to the visual medium. Certainly it demonstrates anew that when a comedian's got it, he's got it for stage, screen, radio or tele, of course, depending on his material.
Morgan's got it— but if there were any major regrets about last Saturday's show, it was the lack of funny material. Plus a too casual mannerism of "throwing it away." Obviously it isn't deliberate, but it suggests to the videogler that, even on his preem tele performance Morgan's kinda bored by the whole thing.
Perhaps it was only natural that the show's top laughs came from the Morgan "kidding-the-commercial" routine, a carryover from his radio show, in this instance his TV sponsor's Admiral refrigerator. The prop really got a kicking around both verbally and physically. Here, too, the sponsor sensitivity angle projects itself, only doubly so. For a visual gander at the punishment taken by the product might easily start Admiral Corp. execs to wonder. It's funny, but how practicable it can be in terms of sales impact is questionable. There's an earlier commercial extolling the virtues of the Admiral radio-tele-phonograph combo set, but it's delivered straight.
Rose
Jack Benny PhonesIt was a kind and thoughtful thing to do. No wonder Jack Benny had so many fans.
By JANE MOORE HOWE
A birthday gift--one of those special imaginative ones--will make Mrs. William S. Deckelbaum's 39th birthday a long-remembered event.
Rosalind has been a Jack Benny fan for years and years. On Sunday night she would from the radio to the television to hear his show, ... her family's dinner would wait.
"What could be a better gift," thought her husband, Bill Deckelbaum, "Than a birthday telephone call to his favorite 39'er from her favorite 39'er."
Bill wrote an air mail letter asking Jack Benny if he would telephone a birthday greeting between 7 and 9 p.m. on the special day.
HE WROTE, "In the 17 years we have been married she probably has not missed a single one of your shows. She was your fan before I knew her." He added, "you'll have to do a selling job for she won't believe who it is. She will know nothing about it."
To celebrate the birthday the Deckelbaums invited a group of friends to their home before taking them out for dinner. Bill let the guests in on his secret.
THAT AFTERNOON Rosalind said to Ann, her teen-age daughter, "I thought of borrowing a violin and meeting the guests at the door but I'm afraid they won't know how crazy I am about Jack Benny and wouldn't get the point."
Ann never cracked a smile. Neither did her younger brother, Bill. But Rosalind did think it strange when she heard her daughter tell her date, "I have to be here until 9 o'clock tonight." Ann normally did not think it necessary to hang around when her parents were entertaining.
Around 8 o'clock the phone rang. No one moved. Rosalind answered it ... It was a child calling his mother. The phone rang again. Still no one offered to answer it. Rosalind went again. Another child calling.
Rosalind began to suspect there was a surprise coming over the telephone. "Is it an old boy friend calling?" she asked. No one bothered to say a word.
At 8:55 p.m. the phone rang again. A voice sang "Happy Birthday." She said, "Your voice sounds familiar. Who is it?" There was a grand rush to the telephone extensions. It was only an old friend in town who had remembered the date!
AT 9:50 P.M. the phone rang again. "Long distance" and then, "Rosalind, I want to wish you a happy birthday. This is Jack Benny."
"Oh, come on now!" said the birthday girl. "Rosalind, it IS Jack Benny," said one of the listening guests, not wanting her to waste time on identifications.
BENNY SAID: "Your voice sounds very young for 39." They visited a few minutes and he asked to speak to her husband.
"I just came in and saw your letter," he told Bill. "I looked at my watch and saw I still had a couple of minutes to make the call. I wanted you to know that I am sending back your check." "No," said Bill, "it was marvelous of you to call. Anyway I would like the check with your signature." "When I send the check I'll send a letter," Jack said.
LATER ROSALIND sent Jack Benny a wire thanking him for his call and saying, "I'll never be 39 so successfully again."
"I got a big kick out of the phone call myself," wrote Benny later. And as for her birthday, Rosalind said, "I never felt so pampered in my life."
Went From Legerdemain To The 'Bounding Main'The PT-73 jumped a shark in the waters off Taratupa after three seasons. The producers apparently ran out of ideas for a South Seas setting and plunked the show’s location in southern Italy. It lasted another year, enough to give it a number of episodes that would allow the producers to sell it into syndication and give Ballantine more exposure to youngsters like me. Meanwhile, Ballantine kept working. Variety reported on occasion his distinctive voice was to be heard on radio spots, and he even popped up on TV once in a while, looking older and a little slower.
By HARVEY PACK
A vaudeville act has gone straight. Carl Ballantine, known for the past ten years as The Amazing Mr. Ballantine, has traded in his bag of ineffective magic tricks for a sailor's suit and a berth on "McHale's Navy."
"I've always been an actor," explained the fast talking Ballantine, "but now I'm doing it with other guys. After all. to get up on a stage and do a comedy act as a bad magician is a form of acting."
Ballantine wasn't always a bad magician . . .his intention was to be a good one. "But who needed good magicians?" he asked. "Every kid who wanted to break into showbiz had gone through the magic stage as a kid, and most of tricks to the booking agents. I developed the Amazing Mr. Ballantine as a comedy routine, but the first time I tried it out the audience didn't dig the bit and I was virtually thrown off the stage. The act first clicked in a Chicago theatre, and I've been making a living by net puffing rabbits out of a hat ever since."
Carl is practically type-cast as the head wise guy in Ernest Borgnine's crew. As Lester Gruber he generally comes up with the wild ideas, like blowing an air raid siren to get the nurses into a shelter for a dance. Fans of the show may have noticed that Lester Gruber never stops for a laugh, and they often miss the next few lines because they're busy chuckling at a gag.
"How was I to know that they insert laughs after funny lines?" Carl said. "Now I'm wise to the trick. I noticed that Joe Flynn who plays the captain always stopped for a beat after a good line, but it didn't make any sense to me because there was no audience on the set. Flynn is a veteran of three TV situation comedy shows, and when I caught the first episode at home I realized he was waiting for the laugh track. Watch me slow down on the next group of episodes we shoot."
Not only is Carl Ballantine now a successful TV actor, but he inadvertently pulled the biggest trick of his career and saved the entire 10 per cent agent's commission on the job. "I signed up with MCA because they promised to get me acting roles," he continued. "The nearest I came was an audition for a 'Surfside Six.' Then they got me this job on 'McHale's Navy,' and the next day I received a legal letter from them informing me that there no longer was an MCA talent agency and, therefore, I didn't owe a commission."
Carl's wife, Ceil Cabot, is one of the stars of Julius Monk's intimate cafe revue which is playing a New York hotel located some 3,000 miles away from the set of "McHale's Navy." "That's the only bad part of this whole deal," explained the magician. "But she'll be joining me in January and, for a while, I hope she'll do all her performing in the kitchen. She could play clubs in Los Angeles, but they're disappearing as fast as vaudeville magicians."
Even though he's put the tricks in mothballs, actor Ballantine does not really intend to bury the character which earned him his keep for ten years. "I can still do an engagement in Las Vegas if the timing is right, and my TV fee has gone up as a result of the show," said Carl. "The only trouble is that sponsor conflict keeps me off a lot of programs I used to play regularly."
The producers of "McHale's Navy" plan to do flashback episodes telling what each member of the cast supposedly did in civilian life. This will give TM2-C Lester Gruber a chance to do his magic act, and it should be a funny show.
‘The Great Ballantine’, Sans Magic, Proves He’s an Actor
By HARRY HARRIS
THIS week a tall, blond, blue-eyed Chicagoan named Myer Kessler will be featured in two different guises on two different programs. In Perry Como's Easter show, Wednesday at 9 P. M. (Channel 3), he'll try to conjure up an appropriate-to-the-season rabbit.
In ABC's "McHale's Navy," Thursday at 9:30 P. M. (Channel 6), he'll be up to weekly tricks of another kind. Both ways, he'll elicit yocks.
Kessler, who claims he usually sees his real name only on licenses, income tax forms and similar documents, will masquerade Wednesday as Carl ("The Amazing Mr.") Ballantine and Thursday as TM2 Lester Gruber.
These are the current Kessler pseudonyms. He's had others.
"When I was a kid in Chicago, maybe 12, 13," he reminisces, "the other kids used to call me 'Gypper Jonas'—'Gyp' for short. Like Gruber, I was a con artist I guess I'm typecast. It's a part I've been doing all my life.
"I was always conning people. I'd swipe papers and resell them. Now it's all honest, but I still feel a little bad when I pick up my check."
He has used Carl Ballantine as a nom-de-hocus-pocus since 1938.
"A year earlier," he recalls, "I did a legitimate magic act in Chicago with a mustache and a long robe as Count Marakoff.
"My big finish was to produce a glass of beer from nowhere, toast the audience and walk off. I was just a kid. In fact, I was too young to drink beer.
"I stopped being Count Marakoff after three months and became Carl Sharpe—a river gambler type. See, even at an early age I was a character actor! I did tricks with poker chips, cards and money. At the finish, I'd produce a lot of dollar bills, one at a time.
"Then came Carl Ballantine. I got the name off a bottle of Scotch, but I wasn't drinking at the time. I don't drink."
The fact that his name could just as readily have come off a bottle of beer hasn't cost him any jobs, as far as he knows.
"I used to guest on Ken Murray's old variety shows that were sponsored by Budweiser," he notes. "There's quite a list of guys who could be out of work because their names are products—George Gobel, he's a beer, too; Tennessee Ernie Ford . . .
"I've been using a sign, 'Ballantine, World's Greatest Magician,' since my first television show in 1949—I've been on TV ever since it started, first with Lanny Ross, one of the first 'Sullivans,' Kaye Kyser, James Melton, Milton Berle—but the last show I did for Ed Sullivan, last summer, the sponsor said, 'Take the sign off; it's subliminal advertising.'
"After that, I taped Como's Easter show, and I took no chances. No sign."
Sponsor conflicts have kept him off several video variety shows lately—among them Jack Paar's and Sullivan's—but they've had to do with the products advertised on "McHale's Navy."
Although he still accepts engagements as the Amazing Mr. Ballantine, the rapid-fire magician who can do no right (he's slated, for instance, for a four-week stand at a Las Vegas club during "McHale's" May hiatus), he'd like to retire his dress suit and magic props.
"I tried to junk the act 20-odd years ago," he reports. "If anyone had only said then, 'You're the type'—for any part!
"Jobs do come up. If a fellow says, 'Be here at 9, after dinner, in your dress suit,' I'm there. But if things go good with 'McHale's Navy,' eventually I hope to work in a sailor suit.
"I had quite a few disappointments. I auditioned for the Nathan Detroit role in 'Guys and Dolls' and they said I wasn't the type. I was turned down for 'Bilko.' And for 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'
"If I had been turned down a few more times, it's a cinch I'd be throwing that dead chicken around for the rest of my life.
"It's a little tough to do nothing, and that's what I do in the act: nothing. I feel better now as Gruber, because I'm doing something."
He has never considered the Amazing Mr. Ballantine a magic act.
"Whenever my name would come up for a part," he says, "they'd ask, 'Can he act?' I'd say, 'Well, what kind of an act do I do?' and they'd say, 'You're a magician.' 'See,' I'd say, 'that proves I'm a great actor!'
"Magicians don't consider me a magician. I don't belong to any of their organizations. I'm lucky to pay my dues even in the Screen Actors Guild.
"The only time I've portrayed a magician—as Merlin, in 'Tennessee Ernie Meets King Arthur'—I was very bad. It's the worst thing I ever did. Lee J. Cobb directed it, and I did what he said. But I couldn't even play a magician!" Not any more, anyway. In earlier days, he admits, he was "quite proficient in the art of conjuring."
He first became interested as a child, because the family barber performed tricks between shearings.
"This old man, carrying a tiny bag, would come to our house," he recalls. "He used to take care of the whole family, I think, for two bucks.
"Later, when I was about 9, I'd go to a movie every Saturday and each week they'd give away a different magic trick. I collected them.
"The average comedian wants to do Hamlet. I did Hamlet first—at Herzl High, where I was active in the drama club. It was just for assembly, but I thought it was a pretty good Hamlet. I had no trouble remembering lines then; it's harder now.
"I didn't finish high school. I don't remember my first professional engagement; heck, I don't remember my first 'McHale's Navy!'
"It was rough landing jobs. I was fired for having 'the world's worst magic act.' Nobody seemed to understand what I was trying to do.
"Everyone said, 'You've got to have a finish—one legitimate trick, fake dancing, "The Stars and Stripes Forever' on the xylophone, something!' but I insisted, 'I open with nothing and I close with nothing.'
"It was four years before the act caught on and I started getting a little more work. Then I went to New York and was hired by Billy Rose for his Diamond Horseshoe and stayed there two years. The difference was that the audience knew I wouldn't do the tricks. It was like knowing an old joke, but loving to hear it all over again.
"I kept up to date, put in new lines. Now, when I do a bird trick, I say, 'Let's see the Bird Man of Alcatraz do something with that!"
To accept the "McHale's Navy" role, he bypassed "semi-regular" status on "Car 54, Where Are You?" as co-star Joe E. Ross' brother-in-law and took a steep pay cut—"over 200 percent."
"But I'm happy playing Lester Gruber," he says enthusiastically. "It's something I really like. The other is just a way to make a living.
"The 10 guys in the show love each other, and they're all crazy about Ernie Borgnine. There's a lot of kidding around, but when the chips are down, everybody's in there working.
"I'm in every episode, not always prominently—sometimes I just carry a barrel, sometimes my part is one I could telephone in, two 'sides.' But there are always ad libs. And big part or small part, the money's the same—$2!
"It's a gamble, but on a show like this you're liable to show up good and it can lead to other things."
Married to comedienne Ceil Cabot, Kessler-Ballantine doesn't consider himself a full-time fast-talking extrovert. At home," he says, "my wife and I are quiet cats. It's our 8-yearold daughter, Sara, we have to hold down. She's powerful!
"She'll probably be a comedienne. She's absolutely a natural, 100 proof. She sings, dances, delivers lines, clowns, has a great memory. I think she may become a big star!"
