Spot the Radio Stars

You’d expect Toyland Broadcast to have radio caricatures in it. And you would be right.

This is a 1934 Harman-Ising MGM cartoon but it feels like one of their shorts for Warner Bros. Probably because it has animation from It’s Got Me Again (1932) and The Shanty Where Santy Claus Lives (1933).

Celebrity stand-ins: The Boswell Sisters.



Bing.



The old expended-balloon-air gag, turning a girl into Kate Smith.



The soldier is channeling Charlie Winninger of the Maxwell House Show Boat: “It’s only the beginning folks, only the beginning!”



Paul Whiteman.



Rudy Vallee, noted saxophonist.



Dave Rubinoff and his violin (of the Eddie Cantor show).



The Mills Brothers. They are actually white soldiers who become black when girls drop chocolates on their heads. Who thought of that gag, Hugh?



Aunt Jemima, who had a radio show at the time.



The cartoon begins with a spoof of the NBC chimes, which is how a number of these radio parody cartoons began.

No Cantor, Walter Winchell or Ed Wynn this time.

No animators are credited.

Grey Hair on Red's Gags

Red Skelton? Sorry, I’ll take a pass.

On radio, he played an obnoxious child. I don’t find obnoxious children amusing. He played loud dopes. I dislike loud dopes. On television, he could piously bleat “God bless” at the end of his show, but filled the stage with the foulest language during warm-ups.

Skelton could be quick and clever, though. I’ve heard him ad-lib on a couple of Jack Benny radio shows and he was very funny.

Herald Tribune syndicate critic John Crosby wasn’t crazy about Skelton, but for another reason. He clearly explains in this somewhat acidic review dated September 23, 1946.

IN REVIEW
Skelton Dusts Off Old Ones
By JOHN CROSBY.
NEW YORK, Sept 23.—Red Skelton, who has reappeared over the National Broadcasting Company network (10.30 p.m. EDT Tuesdays), presented recently several sketches from what he refers to as "The Skelton Scrapbook of Satires". It's quite a scrapbook and should bring back vivid personal memories to any one over 102.
The first of these precious, yellowing sketches to be unhooked from Mr. Skelton's scrapbook was about a character named Clem Cadiddlehopper, whose opening remark is: "Wull, here uh am, huh, huh."
Clem needs a haircut. "Uh could wait till Spring", he says. "Don't know, though. Three times muh mother had to buy muh back from the dog-catcher. Huh huh." The barber gives him an estimate on the job $1.50 for both heads. "How come the price is going up", asks Clem. "Hair go-in' up these days? Huh huh."
Then we were introduced to Cousin Sarah who says "Howdy, Clem" in those slow, lugubrious tones that were the trademark of stage rustics from the early 1880's until Weber and Fields put it in mothballs around 1911.
"Head comes to a point, don't it?" says Cousin Sarah, after agreeing to cut Clem's hair. "How did it get that way?"
"By giving directions to tourists with both hands full, huh huh, says Clem.
"What's that tattoo on your chest?"
"That ain't no tattoo. That's muh laundry mark. Muh mother sends muh out in one piece to save money. Huh, huh."
When Cousin Sarah finishes the haircut, Clem inquires: "How come one side's shorter than the other?"
"Uh couldn't help it. The floor slants."
"Oh! For a minute uh thought one laig was shorter than the other."
The last time I heard that sketch, or one very like it, was in a tent show many, many years ago. Even then the satire was a little misty around the edges. Village idiots were no longer very numerous and weren't considered as funny as they had been in 1885. Even the rustic Cousin Sarah seemed a little improbable since by then most of the rustics got to town at least once a week in their Model Ts.
Still, I was just a boy then and I found it hilarious. But time passes and tastes change. I found myself wondering idly why Mr. Skelton feels called on to satirize the 1880's when there are so many other things crying out for satire. Maybe, I thought, he's satirizing the tent shows. It seems hardly worth while for his nationally known talents. There are so few tent shows left and those remaining are immune to time, jibes and the radio.
In another satire, Mr. Skelton played his "mean widdle kid" character, certainly one of the most obnoxious brats ever created, who goes to the barbershop and shaves off a customer's eyebrows while the barber is on the telephone.
That transported me up into the more recent past. First time I saw that sketch—or "satire" as Mr. Skelton labels it—was in a Mack Sennett comedy in the early 1920s. Harold Lloyd or Ben Turpin— some one like that—was in it and I thought it as awfully funny then.
Well, it was fun rummaging in the attic with Mr. Skelton, but somehow I like my satire more up to date. How about a satire on Daddy and Peaches Browning, Red? Or the Teapot Dome scandal, or the Hall-Mills case, or Queen Marie's visit to the United States? Let's get on top of the news, Red.

Crosby took aim at a couple of other comedies in that week’s bunch of reviews. He isn’t impressed with Rudy Vallee and the Mad Russian in his September 24th column, and wanted more structure in Victor Borge’s show. Don Ameche is his target on September 27th, while the issue before he looks at a CBS preview broadcast which would appeared to have included Arthur Q. Bryan doing his Elmer Fudd voice. The Sept. 25 column involves a local station news commentator.

Singing Faces

Flip the frog sings to faces on the wall that urge him to have one of them attached to his head in Funny Face.



“You can’t go wrong with a face like mine,” says one face, grinning. “A face like his? Ha ha ha!” sings the other faces. The poor face becomes forlorn.



“A pan like this will suit you fine,” sings the next face. “A pan like that? Oh, ho, ho, ho!” is the response from the chorus, which provokes Iwerks’ usual radiating lines from the head.



Now the stereotypes. “I’m sho’ handsome, as you can see, the gals down South, sho’ go fo’ me,” says the black face. He doesn’t have much of a drawl and the chorus doesn’t make fun of him; the camera pans to the next stereotype.



Time for a gay joke. “How would you like to look like me?” says the tarted-up man. “Look like him? Whoops my dear!” adds the chorus. “How would you like to look like me?” he repeats, then starts kissing the air, then turns and looks coy.



Flip doesn’t get any of those faces, and at the end of the cartoon, the girl-friend that treats him like crap through the cartoon accepts his real face, and they’re happy together at the end.

Iwerks is the only one to get credit in this 1932 cartoon.

Personally, I think it would have been funny to have one of the rejected faces look like Walt Disney.

Drunk On Moonlight Bay

The best drunken fish in cartoons have to be in Porky's Duck Hunt (1937). The nascent version of Daffy Duck takes a back seat as the fish swim through hootch that leaked through a barrel, then get in a boat and sing “On Moonlight Bay.”

We had some frames of this sequence posted quite some time ago, but lets give you some more. The fish are hiccoughing as they sing.



The Billy Bletcher fish slurs a sentence at the audience in between lines of the song, and thrusts his head at us. “Don’t yuzz EVER go away!”



The fish boat floats behind the bullrushes and the song ends. Farewell!



Cut to the next scene. Director Tex Avery and his writing team have Porky add a groaner. “There’s something fishy about that,” he speculates to us, looking at the camera.



Virgil Ross and Bobe Cannon are the credited animators.

The Night They Raided Jack Benny's Show

A combination of factors managed to put Jack Benny in the radio business, and he reminisced about them in 1963 as he was returning to New York.

Jack was about to do a show at the Ziegfeld Theatre. Of course, he recalled it well, turning back the clock about 35 years.

We’ll let him tell the story. This column appeared on the news wire starting February 23rd.

Benny Back on Broadway at 69
Previous Appearance Was 32 Years Ago, When Police Raided the Show
By Jack Gaver
UPI Drama Editor
NEW YORK, Feb. 23 (UPI)—WHEN JACK BENNY returns Feb. 27 to the New York stage in an intimate revue of his own devising after a 32-year absence—during which he aged exactly two years to his perennial 39—he is sure of one thing.
Backstage at the Ziegfeld Theater won't be swarming with cops, and they won't be backing up the paddy wagon to the stage door to haul away the boss and some of the cast.
That's what happened with the last New York show in which he appeared, and it was only because of the stoutness of the Benny moral fiber that he wasn't one of those in the Black Maria.
The show was the eighth edition of the late Earl Carroll's lavish "Vanities" revues in 1930.
"I must tell you," Benny interpolated, "that in that show Carroll really did out-Ziegfeld Flo Ziegfeld and his 'Follies.' He was always trying to do that. There were never so many gorgeous girls in one show as in that 'Vanities.' Audiences cheered the sight of them. It was a really beautiful production."
And a funny one, too, according to reviews of the day. Four comedians—Jimmie Savo, Herb Williams, Patsy Kelly and our hero—headed the cast. Funny but quite dirty at times.
"There was this one pantomine sketch especially," Benny recalled. "It involved the apprentice window dresser of a department store getting into all sorts of difficulties with the dummies. There were numerous suggestive bits of action. The laughs, of course, were inspired by the fact that the dummies were real live and scantily clad showgirls.
"I was supposed to have played the window dresser. When I found out what the sketch was like, I told Carroll I wouldn't do it. He threatened me with breach of contract charges, and I said that if Actors’ Equity ruled that I had to do the scene, I'd quit show business. He gave in and had Jimmie Savo play it.
"The police got into action soon after opening night. They took a few looks at the number and then hustled Carroll, Savo and Faith Bacon, a beautiful fan dancer who had a principle role in the manhandling, off to the station house. The result was that the sketch came out."
That stand by Benny against a powerful producer was a courageous one. He really wasn't a big enough stage personality to be certain of getting away with such defiance—“Vanities” was only his second legitimate show—although his years of vaudeville experience after World War I had boosted him into a term movie contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that paid well.
"The trouble," the comedian explained, "was that M-G-M wasn't giving me enough work, and when this 'Vanities' offer come along, I persuaded the studio to free me to take it. I've played a number of hunches through my career and—knock wood—they've worked out.
"I was paid $1250 a week by Carroll while the show was in New York, and $1500 for touring. Do you realize how much money that was in those days with low taxes, depression prices and a hard dollar? And I didn't have to work very hard in the show, either."
Benny got another of his hunches after the show went on tour. "I hadn't been paying any attention to radio," he said, "but everywhere we went I'd hear people talking about Amos and Andy and other unknown guys who were suddenly becoming stars out of nowhere because of broadcasting. Maybe this annoyed me a little. It certainly made me curious about a medium that could do that in a short time.
"In the spring of 1932, an old friend, columnist Ed Sullivan who had a 15-minute radio show for CBS, asked me to appear on it just for kicks—no money. We cooked up some dialogue between us, and the right people happened to hear me and liked what they heard.
"Within a week, I had a sponsored half-hour radio show twice a week. And we did it with one writer. Can you imagine that? I've been in broadcasting ever since." It was on the first radiocast of his own program that Benny uttered that classic self-introduction, a line that set the pattern for the Benny character as a performer. "This is Jack Benny—and who cares?"
And now the veteran of 31 years of radio and television—69 years old and the past Thursday, Valentine’s Day—approaches the five-and-a-half-week engagement at the Ziegfeld, following a two-week tryout in Toronto, like a newcomer with his first chance to make good.
"I've been threatening to—wanting to—do this for years," the comedian said. "I managed to put together a pretty good show last spring for a short engagement in Las Vegas, where I make an occasional night club appearance just for kicks, and I just made up my mind that I'd better make the move to New York now or I never would."

Benny’s first radio series wasn’t a week later, but it’s generally conceded Jack’s appearance on Sullivan’s show led to it. And not once, until his TV series ended in 1965, was he raided again.

Those Offensive Cartoons

In a way, it’s amusing seeing old films and TV shows given anything but a “G” rating. That’s because all that ancient stuff was vetted by prudes at the time it was made.

Some examples can be found in this New York Sun story of September 30, 1939. Much like TV networks of later years, Columbia Pictures cow-towed to the wishes of people with sticks up their butts to ensure none of its cartoons were offensive. Someone objecting to a parody of Goldilocks because it was a parody? Yes, it really happened. Patriotism and religion, yes! Spanking children, yes! But a canary getting stuck in a bottle? Heavens, no.

We should point out these cartoons were never pulled from distribution. This only involves one theatre’s programme. Columbia was allowed to bore audiences elsewhere with its lacklustre cartoons.

PICKING MOVIES FOR CHILDREN
Four Women Judge Films for Happy Hour.
STREAMLINED GOLDILOCKS OUT
But They Pass Group Singing the National Anthem.
The four men watched the pen-and-ink antics of Goldilocks in the animated cartoon with chuckles of approval, but the four women smiled seldom.
It was at a showing in the Columbia Pictures' executive screening room at 729 Seventh avenue of six short subjects for one of the "Happy Hour" units, the short subject programs designed especially for children. The men were connected with Columbia, and the women were club women who act as jurors to see that the "Happy Hour" units are happy in a nice way.
They were reviewing the fifty-third unit in the fourth year of this series of children's shows. Fifty-two units already have been indorsed by various civic and women's organizations throughout the nation.
The first short on the program was "Krazy's Bear Tale," a cartoon poking fun at the tale of Goldilocks end the three bears. This unorthodox Goldilocks didn't like the baby bear's porridge, and in the end instead of fleeing from the three bears, she was trucking while they played hot music.
Then to Bermuda.
Following was a travel short on Bermuda, in which the hottest thing was the weather.
Then a sports reel on skiing was shown, and one of the women laughed when a skier fell on his head.
A "Happy Tots" cartoon, showing a lot of happy tots frolicking among the stars brought smiles every face, including those of Columbia men.
Next was the "Book of Books,” picturing the many processes that go into the printing of the Bible, and the final short was a "Community Sing."
In this, men in uniform sang patriotic songs, beginning with "Hail, Columbia." One of Columbia men hummed a little on this one.
Next the men sang “Yankee Doodle," then "America” which two of the critics hummed. Then came "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean," "Dixie" and finally “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Everybody stood up for the last, and one woman stood in the light from the projection room, blotting out part of the picture on the screen. She moved out of the way.
“How was it ladies?” asked a Columbia man when the lights went on.
One Is Rejected.
“All but the first one were fine," said Mrs. Rega Van Nostrand, representing a club in New Jersey.
The other women agreed, and one said: "You should change part of that picture.”
"Madam," said one of the Columbia men, "we cannot change it. We can substitute another short."
"First, let's get a picture of the ladies,” said another Columbia man.
One of them, Mrs, J. W. Emrich of the Motion Picture producers and distributors of America, didn't want to pose.
“We know you're timid," said the Columbia man.
“No, I have a complex about pictures,” said Mrs. Emrich.
After every one had posed, another animated cartoon was screened, showing the tribulations an early bird that tried to catch a tough worm.
“How was that?” asked the Columbia man.
The critics didn’t like that either, much.
"Do you think the children will want their money back?" said the Columbia man rather testily.
"That isn't the point," said one of the ladies.
They agreed to come back and select another short to round out the program.
Their Reasons.
Mrs. Emrich explained that she opposed the two shorts because they didn't come up to the high standard of the rest of the program.
"The rest was fine" she said. "At first I thought it would be nice to end with the Bible picture, but the community sing brings it to a veritable crescendo with the national anthem."
Mrs. H. A. Meyer, another juror, didn't like the Goldilocks short because Goldilocks spat out some porridge.
"We spank our children for things like that," she said.
She also thought that the early-bird film was vulgar, because the bird got his tail caught in a nipple from a milk bottle.



Mrs. Van Nostrand called the tail-in-the nipple point silly, but said that she didn't like the picture either. She was vague about the early-bird short, but disliked the Goldilocks film because it debunked a fairy tale.
The other judge, Mrs. J. W. R. Cooper, hurried away before she could be interviewed.
"Five out of six good," said the Columbia man. "Phew!”

Of course, judgementalists are still among us. Just the judgements are different. Any bets that, today, someone would play find singing “Dixie” offensive??

Today's Radio Reference

Radio references found their way into countless cartoons (well, I guess you could count them, but it would take a while). Some were indirect (ie. having a character do a spoof of the Lucky Strike tobacco auctioneers), some were borrowed catchphrases (ie. “hmmm...could be!”), and some were direct takeoffs or impressions of personalities on the air, like Jack Benny, the Great Gildersleeve, Jerry Colonna and many more.

Here’s an example from the Columbia cartoon Tooth or Consequences (1947). Yes, the title is a play on Ralph Edwards’ audience participation show but that’s not what I’m referring to.

This is a short starring the Fox and Crow, the latter heckles the former. In this plot by Cal Howard, the crow has decided to pretend to be a dentist to harass the dimwit fox. He tells the fox to open his mouth wider, and wider, and wider, creaking every time it opens. The fox looks at whomever is actually watching this cartoon, points and says “Inner Sanctum” and then laughs and pokes his head at the camera.



“Inner Sanctum” was a dramatic anthology show that opened with a squeaking door. It lasted on radio until 1952.

Howard Swift directed the short, with Grant Simmons and Paul Sommer getting animation credits and Darrell Calker coming up with another score that could fit in a Dick Lundy Woody Woodpecker short.

For some reason, Frank Graham is not voicing either character for a change. I can’t tell if Will Wright is sped-up and doing the crow. The fox has the same dullard voice as the dog in Kitty Caddy and Up N’ Atom (also released in 1947) as well as Meathead in the MGM Screwy Squirrel cartoons.

Today’s coincidence: Cal Howard later went to work for Ralph Edwards on Truth or Consequences.

The Doors of Tomorrow

“Why, it even has a separate entrance for each member of the family,” says narrator Frank Graham before Jack Stevens’ camera pans over a Johnny Johnsen background of The House of Tomorrow.

There’s one for Fido.



For Junior (Scott Bradley plays “The Alphabet Song”).



For the Missus. “She just loves sweets,” Graham explains (Bradley plays “Mother”).



For Dad (Bradley: “For he’s a jolly good fellow”). Evidently 1949 suburbia is loaded with bars and taverns. Or maybe he drives home drunk after a few at a bar in the city.



And, chuckle, for the mother-in-law.



Yes, the mother-in-law joke, a comic staple of stand-up comedians of the ‘40s, ‘50s, ‘60s, and...

Well, the battle-axe mother-in-law goes back to silent film comedies and who know how long before then. Avery dredged it up in several cartoons at MGM: Car of Tomorrow, Field and Scream, The Last Bad Man. I can’t think of any at Warners where he used it. He makes up for it with three mother-in-law gags in this one.

I can’t tell you who did the layout on this, but Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff helped Tex Avery gag it.

Meatball Man

He was a star on the stage, he was an award-winner, he was all over television 50 years ago. But anyone who saw him back then likely doesn’t know his name.

For the record, it’s Jack Somack.

He’s immortalised in minds of those watching TV in the early ‘70s for the words “Mamma Mia, thatsa spicy meatball.” Yes, Somack is the guy who starred in the commercial-within-a-commercial for Alka Seltzer. It was a monster hit with viewers. People could identify with the plight of the man in the phoney commercial.

At least three syndicated columnists out of New York sought out Somack. Here’s one report, published January 9, 1971.

Jack Somack Has Discovered It’s Never Too Late For Acting
By HARVEY PACK
TV Key
NEW YORK — Thirty-five years ago when Jack Somack went out into the Depression-ridden streets of Chicago to find a career for himself, he was aware of one thing: He did not look like an actor. Given his choice, he would have chosen a life in the theatre because he had always liked acting and felt quite at home on the stage in amateur productions. But he also enjoyed eating, and he entered the world of commerce where he spent a good part of his life as a traveling representative for a chemical company, raising a family and taking care of his theatrical ambitions by joining little theatre groups wherever his work relocated him.
Today, at 52, Jack Somack is a successful actor who built a career on one basic fact: He does not look like an actor.
His meteoric rise to fame began four years ago when he was appearing gratis in a workshop production of “The Seagull.” The theatre being used also housed an off-Broadway revival of “A View from the Bridge” and author Arthur Miller and director Ulo Grosbard caught amateur Somack’s performance and he was asked to take over the lead in “A View from the Bridge.”
"I didn’t even have an Equity card,” he recalls. “But I played it straight, went to the Union and undoubtedly became the oldest man ever to receive a junior membership. Then I talked it over with my wife. We had put the kids through college and I thought now I’d like to take that chance I couldn’t take in the ’30s. She went along and I became the star of an off Broadway play at seventy-five a week.”
Within a year, he was earning more in a good month than he might have expected in his best year in business. The non-actor face and physique turned out to be readily merchandiseable in the lucrative field of commercials. If your set is on at this moment, you can probably catch Jack as the man eating “thatsa spicy meatball” in the amusing Alka-Seltzer commercial. For delivering that frustrating line so well, the scale pay—according to Jack—is $8,000 for the amount of times that particular spot has been seen and, he adds proudly, he now receives well over scale wages.
And ‘‘Thatsa spicy meatball” is just one of many commercials in which Somack appears. “Now the nondescript face is a tremendous advantage,” he points out. I somehow look different in every situation and I am able to appear in as many as six commercials which are being telecast in the same 13-week cycle without any of the sponsors complaining. Naturally, I don’t do competitive products.”
But Somack is doing a lot more than getting rich in commercials. He is soon to open off-Broadway in a play “The Shrinking Bride” which he can afford to do because of the income he receives from the sales pitches. He recently completed his first important role in a feature film with Shirley MacLaine, and he played in “The Price” on tour. He even made it on Broadway last year in a short-lived little farce called “Paris Is Out” with Molly Picon.
He’s been a professional actor for four years but he still hasn’t recovered from the thrill of finally finding himself after so many years in the world of commerce. "I honestly expect to hear the phone ring some morning and when I pick it up I'll find out that this has all been a dream, I’ve overslept, and it’s the factory calling to tell me I’m fired.”

This is from the Newspaper Enterprise Association, October 13, 1971

Road to Success Is Paved with Spicy Meatballs
By DICK KLEINER
HOLLYWOOD – (NEA) – If you follow Jack Somack's advice, you'll take spicy meatballs for your headache.
Somack's story is one of those lovely, incredible tales that make Horatio Alger's heroes look like the Born Loser. Until five years ago, he was in the chemical business, selling his wares like Willy Loman for a quarter of a century.
He had always wanted to act. And over those 25 years he participated in little theater activities wherever he was based —Memphis, Tenn., Lexington, Ky., Jacksonville, Fla., Pittsburgh. He estimates he had the leading role in some 50 plays during that span.
"But I always had headaches, he says. "Constant headaches."
• • •
HE SAYS he dreamed constantly of turning professional, giving up chemicals for greasepaint.
It was only that — a dream. He couldn't give up a steady income for the wispiness of an acting career, certainly not with a wife and two kids to support.
But by 1966 things had changed with the Somack family. His son was in the Peace Corps and his daughter was a senior in college. He suddenly realized the days of financial drain were over.
"So I said to my wife, 'if I can make $200 a week, we can get by and I'd like to try,'" he says. "And she said, 'Go ahead.'"
WITHIN A few months he had replaced Richard Castellano in "A View From the Bridge" on Broadway. And he also began a career in commercials that was to lead him, ultimately, to Hollywood.
He did dozens of them, notably the man with the cymbals for TWA, the harried driving instructor for Americana Motors, and his masterpiece, the spicy meatballs commercial for Alka-Seltzer.
He says 80 per cent of that most famous of commercials was improvised. They just kept shooting and he kept improvising and they wound up with enough for 10 commercials.
"I made more money on that," he says, "than I'm making in my first movie — but that's not true of my next movie. I made more in one day on that than I'll make in 10 weeks on this."
• • •
HE SAYS few people recognized him in the spicy meatballs spot. He called his mother in Chicago and told her to watch it. She said she already had. and had remarked to his father, "Jack could have done that commercial."
His agent put together a 7 1/2-minute film, consisting of those three commercials and a bit he had done on N.Y.P.D. and submitted it to Warner Bros., then casting "Portnoy's Complaint."
Now Jack Somack is co-starring with Richard Benjamin and Lee Grant in the film, playing Portnoy’s constipated father. He's loved every minute of every day since he turned pro in ’66.
"I haven't had a headache in five years," he says.
• • •
THE PART in "Portnoy’s Complaint" is, of course, the current culmination of the dream. He read the book when it was first published but the idea of playing a part in it was then beyond his wildest reveries.
“This is like a dream world,” he says. "I love Hollywood. I was here" three years ago for four days, making a commercial, but I saw nothing. Now I'm like a kid on a holiday. We love it here and we hope to stay. Warner Bros, has an option for three more films, so I think I’ve found a new home."
He says that everything has broken well for him since he made his big decision five years ago. What ever he touches turns out well — he sold most of his stock before the market took its big drop and if he loses an acting job a better one comes along the next day.
So if you've always wanted to act, don't let age stop you — do as Jack Somack did and become an actor. Only be sure you also have 25 years of experience before you do it.

The commercial won the grand sweepstakes award at the 11th Annual International Broadcasting Awards in Hollywood, with laughter and applause ringing out throughout its showing over a Century Plaza Hotel stage.

While no one gets a screen credit on a commercial, Somack got an unusual one in 1983 on an episode of Benson: “In Memory of Jack Somack.” He was supposed to play a plumber but died during rehearsal of a massive heart attack. He was 64.