Danger Mice

Mice are destroying the home belonging to the most casual farmer in the world in Van Beuren’s Barnyard Bunk (1932). The mice are kind enough to post “Danger” sings before they knock down things. And the farmer doesn’t care. He barely moves pulling off a boot and letting a mouse fall out, then pulling off his hat to let a duck fall out.



This has the usual odd Van Beuren nonsense, such as a skeleton in an outhouse and a dancing wheelbarrow. John Foster and George Rufle get the “by” credit. Gene Rodemich opens the score with “I Want To Go Back To Michigan,” an Irving Berlin composition. Billy Murray sang it on the Edison label. Hear Judy Garland’s version below, verse included. (“Wabash Blues” is heard for several minutes after Tom and Jerry enter with their saxophones).

Shuffle Off the Sternwheeler

Let’s get this out of the way. To my thinking, Mike Maltese wrote a Yosemite Sam cartoon for Chuck Jones but because Sam was Friz Freleng’s character, Maltese changed Sam to Colonel Shuffle. And to make the two seem more different, Billy Bletcher was hired to voice the Colonel. He does a fine job of it, too.

There are all kinds of fun (and familiar gags) in this cartoon. The Colonel’s pupils turn to ‘A’s when he sees he’s holding five aces (Bugs Bunny has six aces). There are some stretch in-betweens. And Bugs fools the Colonel at every turn.

Jones shows his masterful direction as barker Bugs keeps a steady stream of patter and action while selling the Colonel a ticket to a show and leads him off the paddlewheeler and into the muddy Mississippi yet again.



Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Lloyd Vaughn and Phil Monroe are the animators with backgrounds by Pete Alvarado.

Before Jeannie

Before she was Jeannie, she was Loco.

Barbara Eden finally thought she got her break when she was cast in a TV version of How To Marry A Millionaire in 1957. She took on the role of Loco that had been Marilyn Monroe’s in the movie.

Things were a little more loco than Eden might have imagined.

Millionaire was not a network show. It was created by syndicator NTA Films, as it tried to expand its reach beyond old feature films and cartoons. Judging by this story from November 8, 1958, it was loco on the tour publicising the show. There seems to have been absolutely no organisation and the actresses were left to run amuck during what was supposed to be an interview.

TV KEYNOTES
3 Girl Stars Offer Hospitality
By HAROLD STERN
Lori Nelson, Merry Anders and Barbara Eden arrived in New York recently to say a few words on behalf of their TV series, "How To Marry A Millionaire." I visited the girls in their hotel suite, spent a good part of the time just ogling asked virtually no questions about the series, and am now firmly convinced that "How To Marry A Millionaire" is one of the television triumphs of the decade.
In this era of unshaved cowboys on dustflecked horses, getting three girls on any half-hour show comes under the beading of windfall profits.
The first sight that greeted my eyes when I entered the suite was Barbara Eden in a form-fitting bathing suit "Ah ha," I though, "those stories I've heard about Hollywood are true, true, true!" No doubt about it, it was a nicely designed bathing suit.
Just Finishing Work
"Please excuse us," said a voice which I turned to find belonged to Merry Anders. "We're just finishing up a picture session."
Looking past Barbara Eden, I was able to make out several other figures, the dumpy sort one usually associates with newspapermen, photographers and press agents.
"Why don't you sit down somewhere?" asked another voice, this one belonging to Lori Nelson. I looked about and, finding no vacant chair, started to sit on a camera case.
"Hold it a minute, Mac," came a voice which could only belong to a newspaperman, "we'll be outta your way." And suddenly they were gone.
Coffee Ordered
"Would you wait just a minute, please," called Barbara Eden, as she dashed out of the room. "I have to change. Have some coffee."
"We're all out," said Lori and she and Merry went to the telephone and called room service.
"Do sit down," said another voice, "I'm Mrs. Nelson, Lori's mother".
This was an unexpected development!
I sat.
Birthday Party
the girls joined me and I opened my mouth to ask a question.
"Could you wait just a minute more?" asked Merry, and she disappeared into the foyer.
"Now what do you suppose she's up to?" Lori asked Barbara.
"Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Barbara and Lori." Merry's voice rang out. She re-entered the room, laden with gifts.
"Ooooh!" shrieked Barbara and Lori.
"Isn't she sweet?" asked Mrs. Nelson. "Lori's birthday was in August. And so was Barbara's." Cake Served
After me birthday cards and gag lingerie had been distributed, Merry turned back to me. "You're being very nice," she said.
How much further this blatant attempt to woo use might have progressed, I'll never know. The doorbell rang and a large table of coffee and serving dishes rolled into the room.
I turned back to Merry, but it was too late. She had vanished, only to return a minute later carrying an enormous ice-cream cake.
"You'll have to join us," she insisted. And she slashed the cake into slabs which resembled paving blocks. I was the only one of the group unable to finish.
"If this is a sample of your diet," I was finally able to ask, "how do you keep your figures?"
I poised myself to launch my interview.
"Girls!" came a sharp voice from the foyer, "you're a half-hour late for a cocktail party!" It was a press agent! The girls arose to leave.

The Marquis Chimps were big on TV in the late ‘50s—Jack Benny got loads of laughs with them—so someone got the idea of pairing Barbara Eden with a chimp. The Salt Lake City Deseret News managed to get an interview with her, explaining how she came to act with a chimp on TV after signing a movie contract with 20th Century Fox. A chimp didn’t help the sitcom careers of both Peggy Cass and Ted Bessell. It didn’t help Eden’s. Millionaire lasted 1½ seasons before NTA gave up on filming new episodes.

TV’s ‘Loco’ Wants High Comedy, But Gets Monkey As Co-Star
BY HOWARD PEARSON
Deseret News TV Editor
Barbara Eden, better known as Loco Jones on How to Marry a Millionaire, wants to do high comedy, but she'll appear in an episode with a trained monkey first.
The trained monkey bit has already been filmed and will be seen within a few weeks. Barbara has several movies behind her and she is now haunting producers to give her broad comedy. “Comedy doesn't have to be completely shallow,” she declares, “It is best when colored with pathos.
"Like my own experience in Hollywood," she says, "comedy comes where it's least expected. For instance, when I came to Hollywood from San Francisco, I was loaded with letters to prominent movie executives. They all saw me and gave me friendly advice.
“Most of this boiled down to ‘You’re too nice a girl for tough show business. Why don’t you go home.’ Not one of them offered to let me read a line. That’s comedy to me now, comedy mixed with the pathos of a girl struggling to get ahead.”
Barbara thought she could make enough as a singer in Hollywood. “I soon discovered this didn’t work out because there were too many singers,” she says. “So I took a job in a bank after hours. I’d haunt the casting directors during the day and operate an IPM machine in the bank at night.
Her first plunge into show business came as a dancer in a night club. “I didn’t know how to dance, but I stumbled through it for five months before the producer found out I couldn’t dance. Then I was fired. However, I’d met show people and was able to land some jobs.” She did 14 Johnny Carson shows, some episodes on Private Secretary, West Point, Highway Patrol and several others.
While doing parts in the movie, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" she tested for the TV Millionaire series and landed the part that Marilyn Monroe played in the movie
When she gets several episodes ahead on Millionaire, she is able to do movies. Forthcoming pictures in which Barbara appears are "A Private's Affair," with Gary Crosby, Christine Carere, Terry Moore and Sal Mineo, which she says is comedy, but not as broad as she wants, and “Blue Denim,” a drama.
Like Merry Anders and Lori Nelson, her co-stars on Millionaire, Miss Eden says: "I'd want no part in marrying a millionaire. With all his money he could get dates with all the girls he would want, and I want to be Queen Bee." True to her word, she did not marry a millionaire. At least he isn't yet. Her husband is Michael Ansara of the late Cochise series.

Five seasons as TV’s favourite genie awaited her, a genie who couldn’t show her belly button. We think that’s a little loco, too.

Turned Down Again

Poor Little 'Tinker (aka B.O. Skunk). He can’t get a date because of his smell (in cartoons, it can’t be shut off).

He spots a rabbit. She takes a whiff. The frames tell the gag.



The credited animators in Tex Avery’s Little 'Tinker are Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley; Louie Schmitt was the layout artist.

A Chicken Joke

Long before introducing Woody Woodpecker on a half-hour TV cartoon show, Walter Lantz played himself in silent pictures.

Here he is in the Pete the Pup cartoon The Lunch Hound from 1927. Pete is ready to eat a roast chicken that Lantz “drew,” but Lantz puts his pen to the paper and turns the bird into a live chicken that escapes.



I believe this is supposed to be an exclamation mark.



Walter thinks it’s funny. Then again, he thought the Beary Family was funny.



Lantz made this for the J.R. Bray studio. This is from the Tommy Stathes collection. Please support his Cartoon Roots discs. Anyone interested in silent animation will enjoy them.

New Comedians and Jack Benny

The vaudeville way was the better way, in the minds of many people who trod the boards at places like the Regent in Muskegon, Michigan (photo to the right). Entertainers could judge their acts in small towns and, if they weren’t fired by the theatre manager, try different things to make improvements and, hopefully, get bookings in bigger cities and better venues.

Then vaudeville vanished. So how were acts supposed to get better? That’s the question old vaudevillians were asking.

But get better they did. It wasn’t like a complete unknown was shoved on the Ed Sullivan show to sink or swim. They found a way.

Jack Benny talked about how vaudeville worked for him. In this syndicated newspaper story dated November 13, 1961, he also talks about giving new comedians a spot on his show—and then explains why he’d rather go with someone else.

Evidently the reporter was only fed salt and pepper during the interview.

Jack Benny Offers Glass Of Water To Newsman
By Jim Doyle
North American Newspaper Alliance
New York, Nov. 13—Jack Benny, the highest paid violinist since Paganini, came to town for a few days recently. He was in New York, as he has been once a year or so lately, to accept, as gracelessly as possible, the adulation of the public and a laurel wreath or two from his fellow longhairs.
He also received a hungry newspaperman for a 9 a.m. breakfast.
The offstage Benny is quite different from the performer Benny. He is a much better violinist, for one thing. For another, he's Mr. Generosity himself, having raised $1,000,000—tax free—in the last year or so for the symphony orchestras he plays with.
The Sunday night TV Benny saves toothpicks from the hors d'oeuvres for next time; the Monday morning Benny is an openhanded host, from time to time saying, "are you sure you won't have some more salt and pepper?' or "another glass of water perhaps?" and appearing to mean every word of it.
The bumbling, irascible, miserly Benney [sic], as we see him on television, is a deliberate creation, a continuing work of art that was started nearly half a century ago and is still far from finished.
How He Did It
Jack Benny made his professional debut in 1912 as a vaudeville fiddler, became a funny violinist, then a master of ceremonies and graduated to Broadway (musical) and the movies in 1929. He started in radio in 1932 and has been in television practically sine the day it started, proving, incidentally, to be one of the few comedians who successfully made the transition and one of even fewer who lasted in the monster medium that regularly eats its young.
The years have taught Benny a thing or two. One is that you can’t please everyone and perhaps that is why he has worn so well. “I wish I had $5 for everybody who thinks I’m terrible,” he says. Another is that show business gets tougher every day.
“I’m glad I’m not trying to break in today,” he said.
“George Burns puts it this way: ‘There’s no place for an actor to be lousy any more.’
"I spent years developing and polishing ‘Jack Benny the miser.’ I started by being a bum violinist; then, as an emcee, I got the idea of being the sort of guy who does everything wrong—I would announce one act and another one would come out—and blame everyone else for it. Gradually, the old meanie of today emerged.
Tough For New Comics
“Today, you've got to be good, you almost have to be perfect the first time. A new comedian gets a guest spot on television; everybody in the country sees him, and so does every critic.
“There are nightclubs, of course. But there are the big ‘showcase’ places and almost nothing else. There's no chance to experiment or try out new ideas." The new comedians are always welcome on the Jack Benny Show, but not as welcome as some others.
"I like to see the new people come up," he said. "A few years ago, if somebody new got a lot of attention, I might have been nervous about the competition, but what do I care about that now? I'll give them every break I can.
"But I've found, over the years, that straight actors make better guests than comics. Put a good dramatic actor in a funny situation and give him funny lines, and he'll turn out funny. Ronald Colrnan was always a great guest. So is Jimmy Stewart. I guess it just means that to be a good comedian you have to be a good actor first."
The breakfast interview over, the still-hungry reporter went to the nearest counter place and ordered a coffee.

The War Against War Cartoons

Mrs. Besa Short has been credited with saving Tom and Jerry from being one-shot characters when she wondered when theatres in her Interstate chain would be able to show more shorts starring the cat and mouse.

The woman responsible for booking programmes for 175 movie houses in the U.S. Southwest also came to the defence of Bugs Bunny.

The Showmen’s Trade Review of July 4, 1942 published this curious squib:

“For making vicious attacks on Bugs Bunny and short subjects generally, particularly Defense Shorts,” Mrs. Walter Ferguson, syndicated columnist, was placed “in the dog house” in a recent issue of Besa Short Shorts, short subject house organ for Interstate managers down Texas way.

Mrs. Ferguson was a columnist for the Scripps-Howard service and at the time had been writing for newspapers for 12 years. There exists today in Oklahoma a journalism scholarship named for her. I have gone through months of her columns and cannot find any reference to Bugs Bunny, though she took a shot at patriotic films in 1941, including those of the Defence Department, questioning whether were effective, especially with young people.

However, I did find this column from February 26, 1942, where she sends mixed messages about another cartoon character.

Propagandist Duck
By MRS WALTER FERGUSON
USING Donald Duck for propaganda purposes was not a good idea. As a movie fan, I was disturbed to learn that Congress had objected to paying Walt Disney $80,000 for his latest short, "The New Spirit," featuring the nation's favorite feathered hero. But, as a taxpayer, I was delighted by the news.
To the ordinary man and woman $80,000 is still a sizeable sum, although the Treasury may not think so.
Mr. Disney, we are told, was commanded to make the picture so we might be inspired to fork over our income taxes more joyfully. He was promised pay for it — the pay, of course, coming from Mr. Taxpayer's pocket. The Government believes our morale can be improved by the right sort of entertainment, so the entertainment is ordered up and charged to us.
"The New Spirit," now being shown in major theaters, is neither good Donald Duck nor good propaganda, but a hodge-podge of both, which peters out into incongruity. The combination of a cartoon breathing fun and a commentator's voice breathing hate makes for an uncoordinated whole — a headache for adults and a heartache for children.
We must remember that Donald Duck is better known in younger circlet than Donald Nelson. He belongs to a fairy world where the guileless spirit always triumphs over evil, and where blundering by those who are good brings about happy endings. Alas and alack, such is not the case in the grown-up scene where so frequently Right battles futiley [sic] against Wrong.
I think our lovable Mr. Duck has been badly treated and deserves an apology. Surely ten times $80,000 could not compensate his creator for being asked to turn the gay and gallant bird into a propagandist.

She turned her focus onto cartoons, briefly, again in her column of February 15, 1944. Her claim is preposterous. She believed people would not be able to tell real from fiction if they watched a war movie then a cartoon. For years, theatres had been running cartoons and newsreels on the same programme. No one was confused. She must have thought the movie-going public was incredibly stupid. And she pulled out the tired “think of the children” boogie-man. As a kid, I watched Daffy Duck and Fred Flintstone. I also saw Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. I could figure out the difference,

War Movies
By MRS. WALTER FERGUSON
A YOUNG air cadet from Newport, Ark. questions the wisdom of my criticism of grim war movies.
“If you refer to the blood-and-thunder Hollywood melodramas,” he says, “I agree.”
“However there have been excellent semi-official reels which depict battle scenes as they truly are.
“If the soldier can look upon and participate in such chaos why can’t the civilian stomach it? The people at home have failed their fighting men if they turn their faces from death and ignore their sacrifices I say more power to official movies which bring home with force the fact that men are giving their lives for freedom.”
His point is well taken, although he seems to have missed mine. What I object to about the official war picture is their presentation. They always come to us tied up with some Hollywood feature or short, which means that the audience gets a hodgepodge of the true and the false.
Duty doesn’t enter into the question. People don’t go to the movies from a sense of duty. They go to be entertained.
A poll taken recently among soldiers shows their preference for the lighter, gayer types.
The cinema is a form of escape. By this means men and women take flight from the drabness of their todays and the hopelessness of their tomorrows. Therefore I contend they are cheated when they go to a show expecting such release and are forced to sit through a program which tears them to bits inside and sends them home upset.
There should be special programs of war picture offered. Perhaps every adult should be required to see them, but the honest course is to separate the phoney from the real. As it is, audiences are asked to skip quickly from a battle to a jitterbug contest or a Looney cartoon. It results in mental confusion. In the end, the war briefs seem as unreal as the movie plot. And what about our children? They jam the movie house these days. What will be the effect of the horror pictures upon their minds and character!

Well, Mrs. Ferguson, kids who watched Bugs and Donald back then survived rather nicely. And Bugs adorned warplanes and other equipment designed to crush the Axis. Bob Clampett once remarked that Bugs was never more loved than during the war years. He was a boost to morale. He was a part of the war effort, where a columnist liked it or not.

Dad's Troublesome Tuba

The gentle Southern father has bought his son Ollie a tuba in Little Boy With a Big Horn, a 1953 UPA cartoon. He regrets it after hearing the boy’s loud practices. He tells the child it’s a nice horn, then yells “But don’t play it when I’m home!” He leaps up and down and becomes split (in outlines; it is a UPA cartoon after all). His wife has to pull him together.



Bobe Cannon loved kids in cartoons. He directed Gerald McBoing Boing. He directed this one. Gerald becomes a radio star despite his noisy handicap. In this cartoon, the noise simply has Ollie banished from his home town. He seems rather nonplussed about the whole thing as the cartoon ends with his puffing on his tuba at a music school (with no teacher in sight).

Bill Melendez, Frank Smith and Tom McDonald are the animators, with George Bruns handling the music score.

Porky the Tashlin Way

Frank Tashlin sure loved huge eyes on Porky Pig. An example from Porky’s Spring Planting (1938). He doted on close-ups for some reason, too.



Oh, and grotesque takes, too.



Joe D'Igalo gets the animation credit in this lacklustre cartoon, written by George Manuell. There are two radio jokes, a Stan Laurel joke and a Jewish joke.

Gene Rayburn's Career Wasn't a Blank

No answers about tinkling, no Old Man Periwinkle, no Brett or Charles.

You wouldn’t find those on the original version of The Match Game which debuted on Boxing Day 1962.

One thing you would find was host Gene Rayburn, asking pretty tame questions like “Name something you eat for breakfast.” (Goodson-Todman Productions got a lot of mileage out of that format. The company shifted it over to Family Feud when the second version of The Match Game was filled with double entendres and celebrities having a few nips in between tapings). Rayburn had been around NBC for a good period of time by that point and was perhaps best-known for being the announcer on Tonight with Steve Allen.

Hosting a game show was not Rayburn’s driving ambition. He wanted to sing and dance. In fact, he did. He replaced Dick Van Dyke on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie. But game shows got in the way.

Here are a couple of stories from the time of the original Match Game. First, from the Associated Press of January 31, 1964.

Panel Shows Not So Easy, Says Rayburn
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK (AP) — Gene Rayburn, the witty incisive young man who guides NBC's day-time "Match Game," with the gentle firmness of an English nanny, insists that participating in a panel show is not as easy as it looks.
Players and host not only must concentrate on the game but also give the session "dimensions of vitality, lightness and humor, he says.
Rayburn often turns up as a panelist on other shows.
"To Tell the Truth," he says, is the most difficult.
"People seem to think the panel has some advance information about the contestants," he said. "We don't know a single thing until the information is read off. It's a fast game in which a lot of information helps. Peggy Cass, on the panel, absolutely amazes me."
Page Boy to Star
Rayburn grew up in Chicago, got into radio by becoming an NBC page boy and moved on to announcing. In 1942 he had a radio show on a New York station, then teamed with Jack Lescoulie (now of "Today") for a comedy show and built a reputation for light-handed wit and nonsense. For the past 12 years Gene has worked as a single—announcing, hosting, sitting on panels and occasionally doing a dramatic role.
The five "Match Game" programs are taped over a period of two days a week, but Rayburn's job occupies most of his time.
"I've been a host so long, that's no problem any more," he said. "My biggest headache is trying to figure out new ways of introducing the panelists, i write out five different sets of introductions for the show's celebrities each week."
After all his experience, what is Rayburn's favorite occupation.
"I love to act," he said, almost wistfully.

This is a feature piece from the Hartford Courant, July 14, 1963. Again, he hopes for an acting career that never happened.

Beauties and Brains All in a Day Far Busy Emcee Gene Rayburn
By H. VIGGO ANDERSEN
Sunday Editor
Some guys have all the luck! Imagine having to drop everything, rush down to Miami, live in the plushest of surroundings, and spend your days and evenings with some of the most beautiful girls in the world, all of whom are trying to impress you with their beauty, poise and intelligence.
That's what's happening to Gene Rayburn all this week in preparation for the finals of the annual Miss Universe Beauty Pageant which you can look in on Saturday night, July 20, from 10:00 to 11:30 on Channels 3 and 12. Gene will be the on-stage master of ceremonies, just as he was last year.
Gene called this writer the other day from New York to talk about the pageant and his share in it. When I told him be was a lucky stiff on a very soft touch, he snorted in indignation.
"Emceeing a beauty pageant of this stature is anything but a soft touch," he disagreed. "You've no idea how much behind the scenes preparation goes into one of these affairs. We work long, long hours. Sure you meet some interesting people and most of them are beautiful. But it can get to be a grind.
Enjoyable Experience
"After a period of getting acquainted with the girls—and it goes without saying, this is highly enjoyable—we get to the business of setting up routines, finding out what we want to do and then learning to do it. This isn't as easy as you might think. | "Then we go into four nights of elimination, on stage, each a formal black tie affair for me before an audience. Now we are really underway, as the girls are judged in swim suits and evening gowns, and for poise and personality." His sympathetic sigh came over the telephone wire. "Here's where the heartbreak conies in when, one after another, girls are eliminated until only 15 have been chosen for the white-tie-and-tails event Saturday night, July 20, when the finals are broadcast over the CBS-TV network for 90 minutes, with Lord knows how many viewers looking in from all parts of the country."
Disagreed With Judges

Rayburn is by no means always in agreement with the judges of the pageant. Last year his choice for Miss Universe was Miss Republic of China.
"She had everything," he enthused, "a beautiful face, lovely figure, lots of poise, and she was one of the most gracious people I've ever met. I hated to see her lose out to Norma Nolan of Argentina. Not that Norma hasn't plenty on the ball too," he hastened to add. "She's gorgeous."
Let's hope Miss Nolan doesn't read this between now and next Saturday night. She'll be on stage with Gene and John Daly, to hand over the sceptre and crown of her office to the new Miss Universe.
But to depart from the beauty mart. After all, Rayburn's participation in this annual Miami marathon is one of the least of his claims to fame. The voice that was coming to me over the phone has been familiar to millions of radio listeners and TViewers for years. He came to New York via Chicago and Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, with the ambition to get into broadcasting and before you could say NBC he was with it—as a page! But the ambitious Gene wasn't satisfied with this. He enrolled in the network's announcing school, studied hard, and then was sent to Station WGNY, Newburgh. N.Y., where he remained for a year.
Subsequently be saw duty in Philadelphia, Baltimore, etc., until another form of duty called and he enlisted in the Air Force. After his discharge. Gene went to Station WNEW, New York, where he teamed up briefly with Jack Lescoulie, and subsequently with Dee Finch. Their program, "Rayburn and Finch," was to become one of New York City's all time popular radio shows. It lasted five years.
Switches to TV
Inevitably, of course, came the switch to television and Gene made it with the greatest of ease, his first big impact coming when be became the announcer on the Steve Allen Show. When Steve landed the "Tonight" berth, Gene went right along with him. He was in the big time now and he has stayed there ever since. Currently he is host of "Match Game" on NBC-TV, one of the highest rated daytime television programs in the country.| Concerning any and all quiz shows—and he has taken part in a good share of them—Gene feels that the amount or quantity of the prizes is not the important thing. "Putting on a good show is what really matters," he says. "For example, on 'To Tell the Truth,' the prize money, usually split three ways, was $50, no great shakes, you'll admit. Yet that show had a tremendous following."
But while his emceeing chores have brought him wealth and fame Gene likes to think of himself as an actor, and the highlight of his career, he told me, was when he replaced Dick Van Dyke in "Bye Bye Birdie" in New York. Be stayed with that smash Broadway musical for 26 weeks. "And the funny part of it is that I'm neither a singer nor a dancer, but somehow I managed to do both. How I got by I'll never know. But I'd like more of same."
With this difference, however. Next time he doesn't want to replace anyone, but create a role. He has read a play that has been offered to him but confessed he is not enthusiastic about it. "And you've got to be or it's not good," he said.
In the meantime he has plenty to keep him busy, what with the Miss Universe Pageant, "Match Game" and his 3-hour radio stint every Saturday on "Monitor." A busy, happy, successful man, Gene Rayburn is married to the former Helen Ticknor and is the father of a daughter, Lynn. They reside in New York City. As I said in the beginning, some guys have all the luck!

Considering Rayburn never accomplished a song-and-dance or dramatic career, maybe he didn’t have all the luck. But he had a fine career.