OTR Friday - Vic & Sade 1939 and The Jack Benny Program's Musical Side

It's time to smile again with radio's home folks!

As we work through the undated Vic & Sade episodes of 1939, our first segment today shows us more of just how treasured Vic's lodge, "The Dowsy Venus chapter of the Sacred Stars of the Milky Way" is to him.


Sade gets an offer from Mr Gumpox the trash man to store some of "the bushels of trash" in her house in an unused stall next to where Howard the trash horse sleeps. Vic is mortified that she should consider his lodge treasure trash and something to be stored in a horse stall, he is afterall the lodge president.

The items described seem pretty special to me. I can picture in my mind's eye perfectly the framed portrait of lodge founder R.J. Konk with the eyes that light up. Hell...I'd hang that in my living room...certainly not in a trash horse stall.

This episode is rife with Paul Rhymer's midwestern "vicandSadeisms"..."I was as grateful as a lion", "It's as clean as pie", "There's not enough room to shoot a snake" and of course my all time favorite running line and it's variations "Not enough time to choke Billy Patterson" and "Not enough room to choke Billy Patterson"!

I kept wondering, who the heck is Bill Patterson and in this wonderous digital information age it took me only a few minutes to find...

Dig in folks. This is a good one.

The second Vic & Sade undated 1939 episode for today centers around the age old issue of a boy maturing and his parents not acknowledging becoming a man. In modern sitcoms this would be a "very special episode" with lots of learning and hugging and maybe a special message about literacy from Nancy Reagan, but in Rhymer's expert hands it's funny to a 'T' and with genuine reality and warmth under it.

Favorite "VicandSadeism"? "It's no flesh off YOUR foot!".

Enjoy:



In "Speaking of Radio: the Jack Benny Program" part 11 of 12, the spotlight forms on the musical contributers of the show, most specifically on the personalities cultivated for the performers by Jack. This was never like the muscial act on SNL where you change the channel or go to bed, this was truly part of the show.

There was that loveable souse and ladies man, Phil Harris...

...who more of you may know from later in his career where he was the voices of "Little John" (Robin Hood), "Thomas O'Malley" (The Aristocats) and "Baloo" (The Jungle Book) for Walt Disney...

SIDEBAR: Remember when drunks were funny and not pitiable? sigh! I miss those days.

And simple minded and amiably boy-like, Irish tenor Dennis Day.

Another great 1/2 hour of insight into maybe the best show ever done.

Enjoy:

Talk to you soon!

Jack Benny - 39 Years Old and Still Counting!

This coming Sunday is Jack Benny's birthday! Born February 14, 1894, he would have been 39 years old! :)

For those not hip to Jack Benny, the character he developed and fostered for almost 25 years in radio and almost 25 in television, was a vain, self-centered miser who was perpetually and perennially 39 years old.

Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Waukeegan, Illinois to a Polish father and Lithuanian mother who both emigrated to America. Benny was a poor student who was expelled from high school and later dropped out of business school and failed miserably when trying to work at his fathers haberdashery.

At the age of 17 he began playing violin in local vaudeville houses. After a while he began to talk between songs on the violin...people laughed. After a while he began to just talk and make people laugh.

Benny had a good career in vaudeville which lead him to a guest spot on Ed Sullivan's radio show in 1932. He opened with the line, "Hello folks, this is Jack Benny. I'll now pause a moment while you all ask yourselves, 'who cares?'".

This self-effacing attitude, one where the butt of the joke was usually himself, was to be his long standing stock-in-trade.

He began his own show for "Canada Dry Ginger Ale" in 1932, then was sponsored by "Cheverolet" and then "American Tire Co." over the next 2 years. He kept getting in trouble with his sponsors when reading their commercials, for taking a light-hearted approach to hawking their wares. In 1934 "General Foods" came to him with a product that had been failing and that they were preparing to take off the market. Jack said he would only do it if he was left to himself to talk about their product any way he liked. They agreed, since it was failing anyway, what harm could come? In October 1934 Jack starred on the "Jello" program for NBC and soon Jello's 6 delicious flavors "Strawberry, Raspberry, Cherry, Orange, Lemon and Lime" were the nations #1 selling gelatine desert, knocking top-ranking "Royal gelatine" off the map.

During WWII when sugar was being rationed and Jello was in short supply, General Foods stayed with him and Jack advertised "Grape Nuts" for the duration.

In 1944, Jack switched sponsers to the American Tobacco Co. and "Lucky Strikes" was his sponsor from 1944 right on through Jacks transition to television right up until he stopped his regular series in 1955.

I tell you about this because this kind of loyalty from sponsors is just a clue to the kind of loyalty Jack fostered from everyone he worked with. His radio show was so special because of the wonderful cast of characters that Jack built around him.

There was his real life wife and on-air foil and girl friend Mary Livingstone.

His butler, valet and all around man friday, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson:

Jovial announcer Don Wilson:

Drunken/carrouser/hipster/orchestra leader Phil Harris (seen here with real-life wife Alice Faye):

And Naive boy tenor, a role first filled by Kenny Baker...:

...then by Dennis Day:

Jack's cast was wider than just this, filled with great comedians and voice actors, often playing multiple roles.

Jack's violin teacher and the source of the sounds coming from his delapidated Maxwell automobile, Mel Blanc:

A race-track tout who advises Jack about everything from what to order at a lunch counter to which elevator to take in a department store, Sheldon Leonard:

Jack even made other radio shows part of his ensemble. His feud with Fred Allen was funny and legendary.

The Jack Benny Show radio cast was the tightest group of funny people anywhere on the dial and made every minute of the show worth listening to. Someone once asked Jack if he wanted a script re-written because he didn't get any funny lines, all the jokes were delivered by his cast. His response was, "I don't care who gets the laughs as long as the show's funny. It doesn't matter if it's Mary or Rochester of Phil who get the laughs, the audience still tunes in to the Jack Benny Show."

Jack had a long television career and a long feature film career too, but it was this radio show that ran from 1932 to 1955 that will always have a place in my heart and mind.

39 shows a year for 23 years adds up to a lot of laughs. Thanks to the internet and MP3 technology, I'm happy to say I've heard nearly every one of them. And they're damn funny!

The miserly, self-centered jerk he played never fooled any of us.

Jack died in 1974 at age 80. Headlines in newspapers all over the country read, "Jack Benny dies at 39!"

He always got the last laugh

Bridging a Post Gap

Phil Harris

Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman

Today I'm bridging a gap in posts. There is nothing much to report here from "Uncle Jeffy's Big Almanac of Cool Stuff" for June 25th, so today I'll mention Phil Harris' birthday on June 24th 1904 and Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman's birthday on June 26th 1909 and briefly explain how these two diverse talents from different fields crossed paths in the 1960's.

Phil Harris was a singer and bandleader who came to prominence on The Jack Benny radio show in the 1930's. He came across with a realy original persona of a cross between a streetwise urban hipster and an everyman proud of his southern and rural heritage. He would come on the show and flippantly call Jack Benny "Jackson", flirt with Mary Livingstone (Jack Benny's on air girlfriend and real life wife) then turn and cue his drunken and sloven band to break into "That's What I Like About the South", a song hailing the virtues of butter-beans and black eyed peas.
He eventually spun off into his own radio show with his real-life wife Alice Faye and also had a respectable recording career, including a monster novelty hit with "The Thing". Then he broke into the big screen and met with Woolie Reitherman.

Wolfgang "Woolie" Reitherman was an animator who began with the Walt Disney company in 1934. Woolie was one of the key innovative people there who helped the Disney company grow artistically as they moved from animated shorts through their culmination in the first animated feature "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", the key people Walt Disney refereed to as his "Nine Old Men". The "Nine Old Men" moniker was a goof on how FDR referred to his sitting Supreme Court Justices at the time, though all of Disney's "Men" were very young at the time. Woolie became Disney's chief animation director in 1961 beginning with "101 Dalmatians", and in 1966 when Walt passed away, Woolie was a key figure in unifying the in-turmoil studio and helped organize what was to come "After-Walt". As an example of how the Disney folks were really one extended family and gave their all to their films, over the years all 3 of Reitherman's sons did voices for Walt Disney. Bruce was Mowgli in "The Jungle Book", Richard was Christopher Robin in the "Winnie-the-Pooh" featurettes and Robert was Wart in "The Sword in the Stone". Woolie himself even appeared as himself in the 1941 feature "The Reluctant Dragon".

Bridge?: They came together when Woolie directed Phil as Baloo in "The Jungle Book"...and as Thomas O'Malley in "The Aristocats"...and as Little John in "Robin Hood".


Check out this documentary of Woolie discussing his career...








Here's Phil Harris in a cheesy 70's special, reminiscing with Scatman Carothers about "The Aristocats"...he sneaks in some Baloo too...



And an earlier Phil showing his "slick/hick" persona and musical interpretation...



Two greats crossing paths and birthdays just 2 days apart.


In Closing: Remember that this blog is about people who have done stuff that was worth doing. I see lots of folks (tele-journalists, bloggers, etc.,) who report on what is the "flava-of-the-day" or mainstream personalities (i.e. those who appeal to the lowest common denominator) and I feel those folks who deserve the least attention, receive far too much of the attention. You won't see much focus to those "non-celebrities/entities" here as I try and do what I can to re-calibrate the balance of the universe and give those who earned our admiration what's due them.


p.s.: Michael Whojacallit died today I guess. You know...the guy who's hair caught fire in the Pepsi commercial in the 80's and was in that "Captain Eo" 3D thingie at Disneyland? oh well...sorry, I couldn't find any pics of him on the net. Sha-mon!