I apologize for the brief hiatus on my Jack Benny project yesterday, but I needed a day to sort of get caught up with some activities outside of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. We (and that’s the royal “we”) resume with a broadcast from January 8, 1950, in which a spoonerism from announcer Don Wilson becomes a beaut of a “boomerang” gag later on in the broadcast:

DON: Ladies and gentlemen, 1949 is gone and forgotten—but to Jack Benny, 1950 will always be remembered—because nineteen-fifty is what he paid for his new suit…and here he is, Jack Benny!

(audience applause)

JACK: Thank you, thank you…hello again, this is Jack Benny talking—and Don, I want to ask you something…how did you know that I bought a new suit?

DON: I heard it on Dreer Pooson’s…

(loud laughter from audience)

What the portly Mr. W meant to say was, “I heard it on Drew Pearson’s broadcast.” Pearson was a political commentator and journalist famous for his column Washington Merry-Go-Round, a feature of the Baltimore Sun newspaper which began in the 1930s and continues on today, written by his protégé Jack Anderson (and Douglas Cohn). Benny has some fun at Don’s expense, ribbing him about a recent announcing award he’s won and displaying utter disbelief that Wilson muffed the line. In actuality, Wilson was one of the show’s most notorious blooper artists; Mel Blanc wrote in his autobiography that he and Bea Benaderet would often place bets on what line the announcer would screw up. One notorious boo-boo had Wilson mangling the Lucky Strike slogan “Be Happy, Go Lucky” to “Be Lucky, Go Happy”—and the bad part about this was, according to writer Milt Josefsberg, is that he “usually made them at the top of his lung capacity.” (The fluffs, however, did inspire the writers—on the next week’s broadcast, they wrote in a series of jokes that had each cast member opening the door to a room that contained Don endlessly repeating “Be Happy, Go Lucky…Be Happy, Go Lucky.”

Jack then jokes around with Phil Harris (I love Jack’s nickname for Phil, “The Bashful Blonde From Elbow Bend”—a play on the 1949 Betty Grable film comedy) and Mary Livingstone, and then receives a phone call from Rochester about a visit from the life insurance agent:

ROCHESTER: The man from the life insurance company was here about that policy you’re takin’ out and he asked me a lot of questions…

JACK: Well, I hope you answered them right…

ROCHESTER: Oh, I did…when he asked me your height, I said five-foot-ten…

JACK: Uh-huh…

ROCHESTER: …your weight, a hundred and sixty-four…

JACK: Uh-huh…

ROCHESTER: …your age, thirty-nine…

JACK: Uh-huh…

ROCHESTER: We had quite a roundtable discussion on that one…

JACK: Wait a minute, Rochester—why should there be any question about my age?

ROCHESTER: Oh, it wasn’t the question…it was the answer we had trouble with…

JACK: Oh…well, I’ll straighten that out when I see him…what other questions were there?

ROCHESTER: Well…the color of your eyes, blue…

JACK: Uh-huh…

ROCHESTER: …the color of your hair, blonde…

JACK: You told him I was a blonde?

ROCHESTER: You must be…I got the red, brown and black ones in the Bendix…

JACK: Oh, yes…what else happened?

ROCHESTER: Well…then I told him what you wanted…and he said that never in the history of the life insurance business has a policy been made out that way…

JACK: Well, didn’t you insist that I want it that way, Rochester?

ROCHESTER: Yeah, but he told me that no matter what you say, you can’t be your own beneficiary…

The second half of this broadcast showcases “Murder at Romanoff’s,” a comedy-mystery spoof that features “Prince” Michael Romanoff, “Rat Pack” restaurateur, and guest stars Frank Sinatra, Rosalind Russell and Gene Kelly. Jack is Captain O’Benny of the Beverly Hills Police, and when he’s notified of a murder at the restaurant, he and his men, O’Day and O’Wilson, arrive at the scene:

JACK: Okay, men—this is Romanoff’s restaurant…that man in that red uniform and gold braid must be the doorman…I’ll ask him (SFX: walking) pardon me, are you the doorman?

DOORMAN: Well, who do you think I am—Dreer Pooson?

It’s one of the loudest and longest laughs in the history of the Benny Program (I clocked it at 25 seconds)—but the story behind the laugh line is a fascinating one. The doorman—played by Benny nemesis Frank Nelson—was originally supposed to say: “Well, who do you think I am—Nelson Eddy?” (The Nelson Eddy joke is a reference to the singer-actor’s role as a Canadian mountie alongside Jeanette McDonald in the 1936 film Rose-Marie.) Milt Josefsberg picks up the story in the book The Jack Benny Show:

The new answer not only undid Jack, but it had the same hysterical effect on the cast, crew, and musicians, all of whom had heard Frank rehearse the regular written line about “Nelson Eddy” and all of them thought “Dreer Pooson” was an ad-lib on his part.

What actually happened was that when Don made his fluff the writers, listening to the program’s proceedings in the control booth, got the happy idea of changing Frank’s line. We quickly motioned to him where he was sitting on stage waiting his turn. We got him into the booth, suggested our change, and he immediately penciled in our new line.

In listening to this show, considered by many to be one of Jack’s funniest, you can see that the “Dreer Pooson” fluff was contagious—Mary muffs one of her lines, and the Sportsman Quartet misses an important sound cue. All Jack can do is ad-lib: “One lousy rehearsal—that’s all I ask…”

In the second of two Benny broadcasts, originally heard over CBS February 12, 1950, Jack is broadcasting from New York, having spent two weeks there. Many of the New York broadcasts often found him staying at the mythical Acme Plaza Hotel, a seedy dive that apparently had Jack’s accommodations below street level. (In this broadcast, Jack and Mary are surprised by Don’s sudden appearance, but it’s not intentional on the announcer’s part—he just happened to fall down an open manhole...) Jack is awakened at 4:00 in the afternoon (his room has no window, so he lost track of the time) and gets a phone call in the hall from Phil:

PHIL: Hiya, Jackson! It’s about time you answered!

JACK: Oh, hello, Phil…did you have any trouble getting this hotel?

PHIL: No, I just dialed BO-7236 and Airwick answered…

JACK: Now cut that out…what’d you call for, anyway?

PHIL: Well, look…we’ll soon be going back to California and I wanted to know if it’s all right with you if Alice and I stopped off at Niagara Falls for a few days…you know, that’s the place to go for a honeymoon…

JACK: But, Phil—you and Alice were married eight years ago…didn’t you go on a honeymoon then?

PHIL: Yeah, but this time we’d like to go without Remley…

JACK: Phil…you took Remley on your honeymoon?

PHIL: Didn’t know it ‘til we got there—somebody tied him to the back of the car…

Then Mary drops in to pay Jack a visit:

JACK: Mary, when you said you’d come right over to this hotel, I wasn’t sure that you would…

MARY: Well, I have a confession to make…I only came out here out of curiosity…

JACK: Oh…

MARY: …and Jack, this Acme Plaza Hotel certainly is different…

JACK: What do you mean, different?

MARY: Well, I waited in the lobby…I asked the clerk for your room and he said it was six floors down…

JACK: All right, so you had to take the elevator…

MARY: Some elevator…they lowered me in a bucket…

JACK: Mary…

MARY: …they got a picture of John L. Lewis in the lobby…

JACK: Mary…

MARY: …some of the bellboys are on a three-day week…

JACK: Oh, stop! Be happy you found the place…you have any trouble?

MARY: No, I was lucky…I got in a cab and said, “Driver, do you know where the Acme Plaza is?” and he said, “Yes, ma’am…I used to live there when I was out of work…”

Since the Sportsmen didn’t make the trip with Jack and his cast (come to think of it, neither did Dennis Day—perhaps he couldn’t get the time off from his other show), the Ink Spots reprise their Lucky Strike commercial parody from April 4, 1948 to the tune of “If I Didn’t Care.” But the real treat on this program is the second half, which salutes the “Allen’s Alley” segment of The Fred Allen Show; on this broadcast, Jack imitates Fred (with a clothespin on his nose) and Mary takes on the role of Portland Hoffa. (Allen was one of the few people Benny actually tried to imitate, usually with hilarious results—one of the classic Benny programs comes from February 8, 1948, in which Jack’s take-off on the film Nightmare Alley ends with a riotous spoof of “Allen’s Alley,”) But Jack and Mary are joined by three Fred Allen Show alumni: Kenny Delmar (as Senator Claghorn), Parker Fennelly (Titus Moody) and Peter Donald (Ajax Cassidy). The fourth member of the Alley is a surprise appearance from Mr. Kitzel (Artie Auerbach), who knows it’s Jack impersonating Fred: “With those blue eyes, you didn’t fool me for one second.”
9:04:09 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“Ah, Liz-girl…George-boy…”

Allow me to briefly step into this blog’s confessional and present an opinion that I’m sure will border on utter sacrilege…

…I am not a big fan of I Love Lucy. I know, it’s blasphemy.

I don’t dislike the show, you understand—it just doesn’t rank very high on my list of all-time favorite situation comedies. And it’s not that I don’t find it funny; quite the contrary, many of television’s funny moments have been culled from Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s groundbreaking series—and some episodes (the Vitameatavegamin commercial, the one where Lucy meets William Holden, the Harpo Marx mirror bit, etc.) have been known to have me rolling off the couch in wet-your-pants hysterics.

It’s just that I Love Lucy—as essential and important as it is to the history of television comedy—is often overrated by its admirers and fans. First off, many of the classic “moments” are precisely that—clips from episodes in which Lucy is doing something incredibly funny and zany. The entire episode might be a real stinkeroo, but there’s at least one bit in it you can recommend that someone watch.

It’s also overrated, revered more for its status as a senior statesmen (or in Lucy’s case, stateswoman) for comedy—and it upsets me that cable channels who supposedly present classic television (TV Land, I’m talking to you!) often run it ad nauseam and crowd out lesser-viewed shows. Would it be asking too much to give Lucy a little R&R and schedule something else, say, like Our Miss Brooks or The Phil Silvers Show?

Okay, enough of me ranting. I will say, however, that I do like Lucy’s radio sitcom, My Favorite Husband—a show that essentially served as blueprint to the later I Love Lucy. As a matter of fact, the two broadcasts that I listened to last night at work—parts one and two of “Women’s Rights,” broadcast over CBS Radio on March 3 and March 10, 1950—later provided the inspiration for the I Love Lucy episode “Job Switching.” Now, normally I prefer the aural Lucy to the visual one, because watching her “antics” can sometimes become a little tiresome. But in this case, the TV show is far superior to its radio counterpart; it tells the story in only one half-hour, and it has that falling-down funny sequence where Lucy and Ethel (Vivian Vance) are wrapping chocolates on the conveyor belt at the candy factory. The two radio broadcasts do have their moments, but let’s face it—it’s hard to top that visual gem. As the first program opens, the Coopers (Lucy, Richard Denning) and the Atterburys (Gale Gordon, Bea Benaderet) are discussing the pending Equal Rights Amendment legislation before Congress:

GEORGE: Liz is off on a kick about women’s rights…I suppose you’ve been getting it, too, Mr. Atterbury…

RUDOLPH (clearing his throat): Well, let’s go eat, we’re late…

IRIS: Women’s rights?

LIZ: Sure, Iris…you know, that amendment they’re putting through Congress…we’re going to be free, Iris…free!

IRIS: We are…?

LIZ: You must have read about it…it’s been in the news for weeks…

RUDOLPH: Let’s go eat…we’re late…

IRIS: Oh, that explains it…for the last month, somebody’s been cutting things out of our paper…

LIZ (reproachfully): Why, Mr. Atterbury…

RUDOLPH: Well…let’s go eat (voice cracking) we’re late…

IRIS: Rudolph…

RUDOLPH: …just trying to keep you from getting any silly ideas, lotus bud…

IRIS: Tell me more about this, Liz…

LIZ: Well, it means new freedom for women, Iris…we’re going to be equal to men…we’ll be able to do things we’ve never been able to do before…

IRIS: Hooray! (pause) Like what?

GEORGE: Oh, you stick with Liz and you can be a pin girl at the bowling alley…

RUDOLPH: Or you can work in a blast furnace…

LIZ: All right, fellas…

RUDOLPH: …I even heard on the radio that women will be allowed to drive on the same side of the street as men…

LIZ: Don’t pay any attention to them, Iris…from now on, women aren’t going to be just women anymore…we’re going to be people!

IRIS: Hooray!

LIZ: Once the House of Representatives passes this bill, there will no longer be any difference between men and women (pause) hey—that doesn’t sound right, does it?

Liz and Iris demand to be treated like equals, so in one of those painful “let’s teach those two a lesson” scenarios, George and Rudolph inform their wives that they have to pay for their own dinner. Since the women haven’t a dime between them, they end up having to wash the dishes to settle the debt, but then Liz turns the tables on George and calls him at home, using the classic husband “I’m working late” excuse while Iris simulates a “wild party” in the background. When they finally get home, they challenge the men to stay home and do the housework (George and Rudolph assure them it will be a piece of cake, forgetting that tomorrow is the maid’s day off) while they go out and get jobs. So in the second episode—let the shenanigans commence:

IRIS: …help wanted…beauty operator…accountant…dental technician…registered nurse…

LIZ: How do you like that? Apparently you can’t get a job unless you know how to do something!

IRIS: It’s just like you said, Liz—women don’t have equal rights…

LIZ: Not even with other women…

IRIS: Oh, here’s one…”We need women…”

LIZ: Oh, we can do that…

IRIS: There’s more…

LIZ: Oh…

IRIS: “We need women…no experience necessary…must be attractive and…” Uh-oh…”under twenty-five…”

LIZ: Oh…that lets you out, doesn’t it?

IRIS: Lets me out? What about you?

LIZ: Oh, I wouldn’t take the job without you, Iris…

IRIS: Elizabeth Cooper, are you trying to tell me that you’re under twenty-five? Me, who’s known you since the first year you were twenty-eight?

This show starts to pick up a little steam when Liz and Iris decide to look for work at an employment agency—managed by the king of radio snark and condescension, Frank Nelson:

MANAGER: Ah, good morning ladies—welcome to the Sheridan Falls Employment Agency…have a chair…you wish to hire someone?

LIZ: Uh, no…we’re looking for a job…

MANAGER (barely concealing his disappointment): Oh…go over there and fill out a form…

LIZ: Boy…it sure got cold in here all of a sudden…uh, what kind of jobs do you have open?

MANAGER: Uh…what do you do?

LIZ (after a pause): What kind of jobs do you have open?

MANAGER: What do you do?

LIZ (another pause): What kind of jobs do you have open?

MANAGER: You go first this time…

LIZ: All right…what do you do?

MANAGER: What kind of jobs do you…no!!!

IRIS: The only thing we ask is that we work together…

MANAGER: All right, but tell me what you do…if you’re stenographers, maybe I can find someone with a big lap and you can each sit on one knee…

LIZ: Well, um…

IRIS: What kind of jobs do you have open?

LIZ: Gee, I wish I’d said that…

MANAGER: Yeesh…well, let’s try to get some facts down…what are your names?

IRIS (low, to Liz): Don’t give your real name, Liz…

MANAGER: What’s your name?

LIZ: Uh…um…

MANAGER: Don’t you know your own name?

LIZ: I’ll get it, I know it as well as I know my…oh no, that doesn’t make sense…um…uh…Bridget McGonigle…

MANAGER: Bridget Mc…how do you spell that?

LIZ: Uh…uh…M…uh…eh…M…O’Brien…my mother married again…

MANAGER: Uh-huh (to Iris) And what’s your name?

IRIS: McGonigle…

LIZ: Iris…

MANAGER: Iris McGonigle?

IRIS: Well…all right…

MANAGER: Don’t do me any favors…

LIZ: You see, she’s a half sister by my first mother’s second husband…

The women look through every job available, and find nothing that they are qualified for—but it really doesn’t matter, because their husbands aren’t exactly overwhelming anyone with their housekeeping skills; Rudolph, or “Mary Margaret McAtterbury” as he nicknames himself, manages to start a fire while ironing (he couldn’t find the ironing board, so he used the top of the piano instead). George and Rudolph call the employment agency for a housekeeper to clean up their prospective messes, and a battleaxe named Blanche (Elvia Allman, who played the candy factory supervisor when this episode was adapted for television) is sent to the scene, with her apprentice housekeepers in tow—and if you’ve guessed that they’re Liz and Iris, then you may be ready to move onto Advanced Sitcom Principles 201. Sure, both shows are dated as heck, but Nelson and Allman both make it fun, and the programs also contain the original Jell-O commercials (I love it at the beginning when Lucy calls out “Jell-O, everybody!”); one of which features announcer Bob Lemond interviewing Lucy playing a lady wrestler.
8:59:57 PM    comment []  trackback []