Comedy

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Abbott and Costello's 1938 Radio Debut on the Kate Smith Hour

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in the movie Hold That Ghost (1941) A year and a half ago a couple of comics stepped up to the microphone of the Kate Smith Hour for a 10-minute, one-appearance guest performance. No one -- with the possible exception of the comics themselves -- had any idea that their appearance was anything other than the simple guest performance it seemed, for their comedy was rowdy, hilarious, low-born, and to use their own words, "the hokiest of hokum." Bud Abbott and Lou ... (read more)

2022/11/14

My Second Childhood, by Fanny Brice

Fanny Brice performing burlesque in around 1914 Most people start out as children and grow up to be adults. Me, I'm different. I started out as a grown-up and now I'm a child. At least, I'm a child to millions of radio listeners each Thursday night on NBC's Maxwell House Coffee Time. While I'm doing the characterization on the air, I really feel like the 7-year-old brat that Baby Snooks is. Snooks reminds me of a childhood that I never knew. The first five years of my life were spent in New ... (read more)

2022/11/12

The Story of How Gus Van Met Joe Schenck

The comedy due Gus Van and Joe Schenck in the movie They Learned About Women (1930) Some men who sing direct their song to the girl they love. Some sing to a fancied ideal. Many carol out of sheer romance. A few sing solely for material reward. But different from any of these is the emotion which inspires the songs of Gus Van, interlocutor on the NBC Greater Minstrels. Van sings to a shadow -- the wraith of his former partner, Joe Schenck, whom he loved with a robust, masculine affection bred ... (read more)

2022/11/08

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll Created Amos 'n' Andy

Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll perform Amos 'n' Andy on radio Amos 'n' Andy are two of the best known radio characters in America, and in the last six months -- the time they have been on the National Broadcasting Company networks -- they have made radio history in broadcasting at least 150 times, which is the equivalent of three years on the air for an ordinary program. Amos 'n' Andy operate the Open Air Taxicab Company in Harlem. Each night a microphone picks up the highlights of their ... (read more)

2022/10/31

Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd Meet a New Generation

Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd on Charlie McCarthy #6 (1949) This past semester I've been teaching American humor to a group of 11th and 12th graders who have been brought up on Steve Martin, Bill Cosby, George Carlin and Richard Pryor. Sure, they've seen Bob Hope and Edgar Bergen and they remember Jack Benny and Groucho Marx. But Jack Carson? Judy Canova? Joe Penner? Fred Allen? Wasn't he the coach of the Red Sox? Well, being a OTR freak,I had to set these kids straight on just ... (read more)

2020/07/26

Jack Benny: How Radio Made Comedy Grow Up

In the past 20 years, American humor -- accelerated by radio -- has come out of the barnyard. It has been cleaned up, perfumed and sparked by those unsung heroes, the gag writers. Today, the ether is so full of good gags that even the ghosts have hysterics. I will go out on a limb to say that radio has done for American humor in 10 years what it would have taken vaudeville 50 years to reach. I feel no heartaches over vaudeville's passing, when I think of the way the old-time comic used to ... (read more)

2020/07/24

Bing Crosby: A Quick Study in Singing and Acting

Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949) When Bing Crosby changed from "live" radio shows to transcribed ones, it was because he felt that better programs would result when they could be assembled and produced with the care and control that transcribing allows -- you can't change a song or a comedy line once it's gone on the airways, but you can always "edit" a transcription. Besides, having to show up for rehearsals and broadcasts at set times every week was ... (read more)

2020/07/22

Harry Ackerman Produced Our Miss Brooks, Gunsmoke on Radio

Harry Ackerman Harry Ackerman, long-time executive at CBS radio died Feb. 3, 1991. He worked on many of network radio's successful shows, including Our Miss Brooks and Gunsmoke. After graduating from college in 1935, Ackerman became an assistant to Raymond Knight and appeared as part-time announcer and comic poet on Knight's Cuck Coo Hour at NBC. Later he became the assistant director of the Phil Baker Show. From New York he moved to Detroit, where he was hired as agency producer for ... (read more)

2020/07/16

Jim and Marian Jordan Were the O'Henry Twins

Marian and Jim Jordan of Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC radio The velvet drop concealing the skinny legs of marimba said "Marian and Jim Jordan," and the names sparkled with all the fine, phony brilliance of a dancer's exit smile. The act on stage in this small-town theater was a harmony team -- the girl at the piano, the man leaning debonairly against it and singing a pleasant tenor to the girl's contralto. The keynote was a jaunty good cheer. They sang "When You're Smiling," and a comedy ... (read more)

2020/07/03

Fibber McGee and Molly at Home in Chicago

Jim and Marian Jordan perform Fibber McGee and Molly on NBC News of their impending assault on the screen capital had just broken when I called on Jim and Marian Jordan, who are Fibber McGee and Molly as well as sundry other quaint characters on a weekly radio program. I found them at a modest but quite fetching home in Peterson Woods, an attractive, spic-and-span district of Chicago's North Side, neither exclusive nor ritzy. It is the Wistful Vista of the McGee radio script. No ... (read more)

2020/06/29

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