John Crosby Pans 1950 Opener

[Yhtapmys]

This was syndicated and appeared on different dates. This version comes from a newspaper of Sept. 15, 1950.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Jack Benny, CBS's $2,000,000 comedian who returned to the air this week for his 19th year (7 p. m. EDT Sundays, as if you didn't know), is an odd fish, extremely hard to explain in any rational terms.
His opening program, so help me Hannah, consisted almost entirely of exclamatory greetings. "Don!" Mr. Benny ejaculated to his perennial announcer, Don Wilson, and the air was instantly filled with tumultuous applause. "Well, Dennis!" he said a moment or two later. More applause.
"Well, look who's here! Hello Mary!" Pandemonium.
There was very little else on that opening program. It was just an introduction of the familiar cast, a sort of muster of the company. Phil Harris present and reporting for duty, as it were. That this should comprise
$40,000-a-week radio program and a highly satisfying one to Mr. Benny's millions of listeners is one of those things that astonishes even Benny and it certainly confuses me.
"Tell me about your trip to Europe," asked Mr. Wilson. Now, there is nothing duller than the recital of somebody else's trip to Europe. Yet Benny gets paid and paid very well to tell about his trip to Europe. As usual Mr. B. played the London Palladium with vast success. And that's hard to understand, too. The English will flock to the theatre to see our, shall we say, cinema stars. But then they've been well indoctrinated by Amercan movies. Mr. Benny's movie career was pretty close to a disaster; the English can hardly have cared much for his pictures; his radio career is just a rumor to them, still, they enjoy him on the stage.
He must have the common touch that surmounts the language barrier (What do you mean there isn't any language barrier? Have you seen any English pictures lately? The last one I saw had American subtitles.)
Anyhow, Benny is back for what may be the last year of big-time radio as we once knew it. Like so many other of the big radio stars, Benny is dipping a toe into television this year. By next fall night-time radio may have lost so much of its audience to television that it can no longer afford anything so expensive as Mr. Benny. Already, Benny's ratings in areas where he competes with television are shockingly low.
Going Into T-V
We can't tell you how well he'll do in television. But few, if any, people knew radio as well as he did. (Or, more accurately, as did his writers and advisers.) He was the only comedian who deliberately threw let-up pitches. If he had a whale of a program one week, he slowed to a walk the next week in order not to compete with himself. In an industry which has long been tyrannized by formats, Benny was never hampered by any single format. He had three or four of them and never hestitated to try a new one. Some of his programs contained parodies of successful books, plays or movies. Others didn't. Some programs had strong comedy plots. Others didn't have any plot at all.
In general he followed the Rogers & Hammerstein precept, which is simply to do what they like rather than what they think the public is looking for. This theory, fairly common in the theater, is almost unheard of in radio which slavishly sniffs at every popular whim and tries to satisfy it. He created rather than followed popular taste. Must be a moral in there some place for the other comedians who are all trying to be Milton Berle.
Incidentally, Benny is preceded by "Our Miss Brooks," one of C. B. S.'s better comedy efforts. Preceding Benny is one way to commit suicide. It's pretty much like the dog act in vaudeville. The audience is still rustling its
programs, getting, settled in its chairs, waiting for the headliner. Our Miss Eve Arden, who plays Miss Brooks, deserves better than that.

Yhtapmys

[Maxwell]

All I can say to that review is, "Wow!" Fortunately many more people remember Jack than remember John Crosby.

[Yhtapmys]

All I can say to that review is, "Wow!" Fortunately many more people remember Jack than remember John Crosby.

Only because Crosby was strictly a radio/TV columnist and never (at least consistently) ventured into other media. He was a big newspaper name in his day.

Crosby makes some valid points. He wasn't the first contemporary columnist to point out Jack suffered from an early case of the Fonzie Syndrome, where an entrance would result in wild, show-interrupting cheering. Sure, it's tame compared to how ridiculous as it became on Happy Days, but it was new then and people weren't used to it. I can understand a get-on-with-the-show attitude.

As well, Crosby didn't reveal any secrets that by 1950, network radio of the style of the last 20 years was half-dead. It'd be no different than me pronouncing that newspapers like the ones Crosby wrote for are in trouble.

I don't agree with Crosby's assessment the show is a bunch of "hellos." It has some structure behind it, a bare-bones one to be sure, but .. ironically .. it's making the same point Crosby was making about radio. The open with Joe Kearns and the kid (and Mel Blanc) is different approach. And the bit with Phil is really funny.

Crosby's right on with Jack's "format changes" and we've even discussed how his show has evolved here.

Yhtapmys

[Gerry O.]

Something needs to be noted regarding Jack's show having "The Fonzie Syndrome" (the audience breaking into wild applause when a cast member makes his or her entrance).......

That wasn't done on every show. It was mainly done on remote broadcasts where Jack would do his show from a different city or a military base. In those cases, you can understand how and why the audience would greet each major cast member with loud cheering and applause.....That was truly a big deal to have that cast do their show from an "away from the Hollywood studio" location, and those audience members weren't like the more blase NYC and Hollywood studio audiences. They didn't experience seeing live radio broadcasts every day....especially not BIG shows like Jack's.

The other instance where the cast members were greeted with loud applause was the first show of the season, and again, that was a big deal. That was before the days of summer reruns, and the radio listeners had been going without these performers and their program for a few months. Jack and his cast weren't just people on the radio to many listeners....they were like family or old friends, so the public would naturally be excited to have them back on the air (and in their lives), and would enthusiastically greet them accordingly.

On later TV shows like "Happy Days" and "Good Times", these loud ovations were a weekly occurance for no apparent reason, and they became very annoying. In the case of Jack's show, I think that occassional audience ovations (given the circumstances involved) can be understood and accepted.

[Roman]

On a different tangent, the first show of the Fall 1950 season was probably a somewhat difficult show to write for Jack and other comedy programs because of the outbreak of the Korean War. This would have been the first show to run since the start of the war and decisions had to be made on how and whether to discuss it. Unlike World War II, but very much like our wars since then, the vast majority of shows chose to ignore it or only very lightly allude to it. Today, we don't think it's all that unusual for the entertainment industry to mostly ignore the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but for a generation that lived through the super-patriotic atmosphere of World War II -- V-Records, the Stagedoor Canteen, victory gardens, flag-waving movies, War Bond rallies, etc. -- the less overtly patriotic Korean War atmosphere must have seemed very different and perhaps disconcerting. Jack and the other shows of that era had to wrestle with what they felt should be the appropriate tone to take in acknowledging the war while still entertaining the public.

[Yhtapmys]

Unlike World War II, but very much like our wars since then, the vast majority of shows chose to ignore it or only very lightly allude to it.

Because it wasn't the same type of war. For one thing, it started as a U.N. war, which is why Canadians got involved. Canada never declared war, and I don't believe the U.S did either.

Unlike WW2, no American territory was attacked, great numbers of U.S troops weren't involved (thus not affecting every neighbourhood/listener), and it was restricted to a small amount of territory. And there was no lightning rod opponant, unlike Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo upon whom great amounts of radio ridicule were heaped.

So, given that, there wouldn't really have been much for Jack to bring up on his show. He wasn't entertaining troops, no rationing or blackouts were going on at home (as far as I know), so there wasn't a lot for the audience of a comedy show to identify with.

Yhtapmys

[Roman]

All that Yhtapmys says about the differences between the wars is correct. But still it was America's first war experience since World War II and the memories of that war were certainly fresh in everyone's mind. We tend to react to new events based on our experiences from past events and so I imagine that, even with the differences between the two wars, the public in 1950 would have reacted to the Korean War with somewhat the same mindset and expectations that they had developed from the Second World War. So, from Jack's and other radio program's perspectives in 1950, it probably was not clear initially how to approach this similar, yet very different, war setting. They had to make their way, sensing public opinion, without clear guideposts. And ultimately they didn't ignore the war but, rather, played it on a much more minor scale than had been the case during World War II.

As far as the number of American troops sent to Korea, I know it wasn't nearly as many as was sent to war fronts during World War II but I think I read that about 2 million eventually went to Korea either during or in the immediate aftermath of the war. So it wasn't an insignificant number. But my point wasn't to discuss the political or military differences between the wars. Rather, I was just pointing out the murky waters that Jack and others had to tread as they decided how to deal with the war.

One factual quibble, or at least a question. I'm pretty sure that Jack did go to Korea to entertain the troops.

[scottp]

Crosby's assessment reminds me of Henry Morgan's parodies... just say "Hollywood and Vine" and get a big laugh; say "Vine and Vine" and bring the house down.

[JohnM]

I thought this line stood out:

He was the only comedian who deliberately threw let-up pitches. If he had a whale of a program one week, he slowed to a walk the next week in order not to compete with himself.

So -- was this true?

[Clyde]

Ahh yes....but they still LOVED him in St Joe!