Golden Age of Radio

JACK    "Dennis, what you did to me tonight, scaring me the way you did -- oh Dennis, that gave me an eerie feeling." DENNIS  "Gee Mr. Benny, that's where I was born!" JACK:           "Oh, Erie Pennsylvania?" DENNIS  "No, Feeling, West Virginia." The zinger. This is a typical exchange between Jack Benny and his naive, young comic foils. Jack always enjoyed having this one-dimensional character to add to the mix of his radio `gang.' The tenor vocal range was the perfect match for the sweet, dumb kid type. The role was played by a handful of radio actors over the run of the Benny series among them Frank Parker, Michael Bartlett, and James Melton. The three that are most memorable in the role and most aptly portrayed the developing character were Kenny Baker, Larry Stevens, and Dennis Day . Longtime listeners and admirers of the Benny show will readily associated Dennis Day with the role. True, Dennis is mostly closely ...

  Say Hello To- VERNA FELTON—whose specialty on the air is playing mothers. You’ve heard her as Dennis Day ’s mother on the JackBenny program and as the mother of practically every famous personality dramatized by Hedda Hopper . Verna’s own mother, Clara Allen, was a noted actress, and Verna herself began acting when she was six. In 1923 she married Lee Millar, stage and radio star in his own right, and now they are one of Hollywood ’s ideally happy couples. They own right, and now they are one of Hollywood ’s ideally happy couples. They own a home with a garden composed entirely of old-fashioned flowers, where Verna spends most of her time when she’s not on the air, and they have one son, Lee, Jr., whose nickname is Spuddy . PLENTY PROUD is the mother of tenor Dennis Day , singing star of the Jack Benny program. Dennis Keeps busy while Benny’s show vacations for the summer months, makes an appearance Sunday on “Pause That Refreshes”

The Milwaukee Journal – May 18, 1941 Fred Allen —Pickle Puss With Nerves By Gladwin Hill NEW YORK, N. Y.—(AP)—If, walking down Broadway, you chanced to encounter a haggard, dejected man who looked as though he had lost his last friend, funds and scratch sheet pencil, the probabilities are the individual would be a happy, prosperous professional comedian. If, in addition to being haggard and dejected, the man looked as though he had recently been sentenced to the electric chair, but planned to beat the rap by hanging himself with his necktie, the chances are his brief case would disclose a partly consumed package of chewing tobacco and the tell tale gold lettering “F. Allen.” Fred Allen , who has been arousing mirth from coast to coast for 25 years in vaudeville, movies and radio, is probably the most morose looking person at large today. This is not a pose. Allen is just one of those people born to worry, fret, stew and suffer about their work, and the fact th...

The Milwaukee Journal – Sep 27, 1942 Hope Gets No Help in Books By Larry Feathers HOLLYWOOD , Calif.—Thousands of town wits and barbershop cutups throughout the land aspire to the thrones of Jack Benny , Bob Hope , Fred Allen and other top comics of screen and radio—and all entertain the same idea how their goal can be achieved. What to do? Simple! Start off by buying a large filing cabinet and cluttering it with old joke books. Then go through the tomes and “modernize” the antique puns. Thus, where a reference is made to horse car in Joe Miller’s classic volume, the fledgling craftily substitutes “trolley,” repeats the gag to himself—and has visions of wowing ‘em. Nothing to it at all, according to youngsters who aspire to profitable laugh provoking careers. In fact, they firmly believe that Jack Benny and company get by today by pursuing exactly such methods. “Just a lotta silly bunk,” says a rather successful young fellow named Lester Townes Hope, co...

CLAGHORN’S THE NAME BUT CALL HIM KENNY – DELMAR, THAT IS BY TWEED BROWN THAT grinning whirlwind whipping in and out of Radio City isn’t a refuge from the sound effects cabinet. On closer inspection it will prove to be a bushy-haired young gent out of Boston by name of Kenneth Frederick Fay Howard, attempting to keep up with his radio commitments. This bustling Bostonian has ample reason to rush, for under the professional name of “Kenny Delmar” his actor-announcer talents are in such demand as to require would be sponsors to queue up for considerable distances. Not only is Delmar sought for more announcing chores than he can shake a Social Security card at, but his brainchild, “Senator Claghorn” (That’s a joke, son!) is currently the “hottest” thing in radio. If you don’t immediately identify “the Senator” as the unreconstructed tenant of Allen’s Alley—on the Fred Allen program—then he is the person responsible for normally sane citizens from Wenatchee, Wash., ...

  The True Story of— GOSSIPS LINK PHIL HARRIS WITH DOZENS OF HOLLYWOOD GLAMOR GIRLS. BUT JUST ONE GIRL REALLY COUNTS! HE TAKES the romantic “rap” from Master Kidder Jack Benny on his fictitious “dates” with tawny-haired GingerRogers and wisecracking Carole Lombard , when a Hollywood blonde with a husky voice is the one who really makes his heart turn somersaults. And he’s never met her! That’s the “true story” of curly-haired Phil Harris ’ big “dates” . . . that is, it’s almost the story. The other half has to do with a five-foot, four-inch brunet. A gal who swims and dances and sings and handles the piano ivories in a way that should put her in her husband’s band. You’re right. She’s Mrs. Phil Harris . And has been for nine years. It takes the romantic starch out of the Sunday night kidding that Swingmaster Harris, with the broad, beaming smile, is subjected to. But there’s more to this romance-and-rhythm story than that. when I saw her.” Good sport ...

Sunday, December 27, 1942       THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL—SCREEN and RADIO Building a Bob Hope Radio Show Comedy half hour is put together piece by piece, rough edges trimmed By Kate Holliday “THAT was a boff . Leave it in!” Such a cry might barrel through the NBC control room in Hollywood at a preview of Bob Hope’s radio show . A boff, for your information, is a joke so funny it brings a belly laugh. What is a radio show preview? Just that: A show before a show—to which the public is invited and at which Hope and company test the merit of gags they have concocted. It explains, to a large degree, Hope’s continued success. A comedian’s life is usually not a happy one, evidence to the contrary. A guy like Hope, say, doesn’t just amble toward a microphone come Tuesday night and be funny. Instead, he builds his show gag by gag . It all begins on the Thursday or Friday of the week preceding the program. At that point Hope and his seven wri...