Jack Pearl, The Baron Munchausen of the Air
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BARON: Vunce I vas traveling through the Sahara desert, und I met a man mit two heads!The premise of his 1932-33 series was slight, but it allowed Pearl ample opportunity to display his appealing personality, his skill at dialect, and his razor-sharp timing, no more or less than was demanded of other early radio stars such as Eddie Cantor and Ed Wynn (and Joe Penner got away with even less). In 1933, Jack Pearl's fame had reached such heights that he was summoned to MGM, the most prestigious studio in Hollywood, to star in his first feature, Meet The Baron. MGM, in a radio comedy two-fer, had just recently signed Ed Wynn, also at the peak of his radio fame, to appear in The Chief. Of MGM's two 1933 radio-movies, Meet the Baron is the better. The Chief, as abrasive and contrived a comedy as MGM ever made, was so soundly panned by audiences and critics that Wynn wouldn't appear in another live-action film until The Great Man in 1956. Meet the Baron, on the other hand, had charm and some genuine laughs, easily one of the best comedies MGM made in the early 1930s. Pearl plays the Baron as a phony named Julius who, egged on by his pal Jimmy Durante (a teaming that made sense!), cons his way into a speaking engagement at the all-girl Cuddle College. MGM surrounded Pearl with better
CLIFF: A man with two heads? That's ridiculous, Baron.
BARON: Vass you dere, Sharlie?
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After appearing in this critically-denounced curiosity, Pearl returned exclusively to the airwaves where he found himself rapidly fading from favor. By September of 1934, his second series, pulling in half the audience of his first, was cancelled. For the next seventeen years, Pearl would struggle to regain the fame he had enjoyed but to no avail. Although he was never really out of work on radio, new series such as Peter Pfeiffer (1935), Jack and Cliff (1948), and The Baron and the Bee (a Munchausen-themed quiz show, 1952), weren't exactly the kinds of vehicles Pearl needed to make his mark in the new character-driven radio comedy world of Jack Benny and Bob Hope. While Ed Wynn found new fame in the 1950s and Joe Penner continued in B comedies until his death in 1940, Jack Pearl was consigned to the radio doldrums for the rest of his career. Pearl's biggest handicap as a performer was his apparent insecurity. Reluctant to give up a "good thing", he continued to fall back on the "liar and stooge" format even as audiences were tuning him out in droves. He refused to exp
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PEARL: Un dere in the middle uv de ocean vas my Aunt Sophie! (waits for straight line, doesn't receive it) Und vat do you think she vas doing there?At the end of the clip, Pearl becomes so frustrated that he growls and grabs Buster's face in mock violence. In the coming years, I imagine he felt much the same towards the audience that had deserted him.
KEATON: I haven't the slightest idea...
PEARL: Light-housecleaning! (angrily) Vy don't you say something??
Jack Pearl died December 25, 1984.
Labels: cinema, Jack Pearl, Jimmy Durante, OTR
3 Comments:
I'm one of the few people who enjoy "Hollywood Party." I think with a studio more in synch with weird humor -- Paramount, say -- it would've been a classic. (Notice how even the lighting changes from scene to scene as each hapless director takes a turn salvaging it.) Any movie with Jimmy Durante doing a proto-rap song about reincarnation deserves a viewing by movie fans.
Your post is helpful. Some things in here I have not thought about before. Thank you. Keep posting....
I am a student at the Sorbonne in Paris and I am preparing a thesis on David O'Selznick and the radio...I read with interest the comments made on this blog about Jack Pearl and Baron Munchausen; can you tell me if there are similarities in the plot between the radio show and the movie, Meet the Baron? Is it the same story? Are there common dialogues?
Thank you very much for your attention.
Best regards
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