"... It's no good that way!"

I've said it before but it warrants saying again: Joe Cook was the most likable and versatile comic of the 1930s and it's a pity that his film career was so brief. Cook was tragically debilitated by young-onset Parkinson's, but not before his film career had already petered out with the release of Arizona Mahoney for Paramount in 1936 (which I still have yet to see). Cook, a creature of the stage, apparently had no particular love for film, doing little to pursue a Hollywood career. His real interests outside theater lay in live radio which similarly afforded him a degree of spontaneity that film couldn't provide. But Joe Cook on radio, as skilled with words as he was, was still half of a performer, and listening to transcriptions of Cook's appearances as host of Shell Chateau makes it very apparent that, much like Ed Wynn, he was playing to the studio audience and not the listeners. Cook, who was otherwise very meticulous in his attempts to shore up his legacy as a performer, treated film off-handedly after Rain or Shine, one of the best early talking feature comedies and a record of both his greatest Broadway success and his numerous talents, failed to generate a career in features. His generally funny Educational shorts were treated in much the same way as Clark and McCullough's RKO series; less as a means to an end than a way to publicize himself and pick up some money between theatrical gigs. Cook's entire career is a series of unfortunate "what ifs", not so much a matter of poor management, but of poor timing and missed opportunities. By all rights, he could have started much earlier. A 1925 Educational Kinograms newsreel, embedded below, shows Joe in his vaudeville prime, a masterful juggler and mimic whose personality comes across with full force despite the absence of sound. Cook clearly had the makings of a top-flight silent comedian, but did it ever cross anyone's mind? And if it had, did Joe simply refuse the offer? What if Cook had signed with a studio other than cash-strapped third-tier Columbia to make his feature debut? Would Paramount or Warners have been able to provide Cook the PR support and guidance he needed to make his Hollywood career a success? Misfortune even seems to have dogged his legacy; his estate, including hundreds of radio transcriptions and scrapbooks was scattered to the winds on Ebay in 2003-04, making a comprehensive biography extremely unlikely. Still, I'm hugely grateful for what does exist, and while I must forever remain greedy for more, Cook is still better and more thoroughly represented in film than many other major talents.

Joe Cook appears in the final item in this 1925 Educational newsreel.


Joe completely bamboozles Tom "IPTBI" Howard in this scene from Rain or Shine (1930).


Rain or Shine. A mustard stain on Tom Howard's vest reminds Joe of an important life lesson from his childhood.


The Greatest Man in America! Joe's formidable juggling skills were documented repeatedly, but this is the only footage I've seen of his balancing and wire-walking abilities. Dave Chasen, later of Chasen's Restaurant fame, plays stooge for Joe in this sequence. He's rather like a less-subtle, talking Harpo Marx.

What is a New Year's Resolution?

Something that goes in one year and out the other! After much deliberation and deep thought.. nearly a full five minutes.. I've decided to declare It Pays to be Ignorant the "official" Third Banana old-time radio series. I've always loved the show, but upon closer inspection I've found it really encompasses the entire Third Banana experience, so to speak. Between Tom Howard, George Shelton, Lulu McConnell and Harry McNaughton, we have our UK contingent (McNaughton), comedienne (McConnell), and comedy team (Shelton and Howard). Between the four we have vaudeville experience (Howard, Shelton, McConnell), burlesque (Shelton and Howard), Broadway (all four), film (all four), and radio (duh). The comedy is low, loud and anarchistic, the medium and format obsolete (in the US), and the cast is like a Mount Rushmore of Third Bananas. I can't think of a more thoroughly Third Banana-ish anything, really. So there you have it. Our first "official" thingamabob.

Created in 1942 by WELI program director Bob Howell, the concept was tailored by Howell's co-worker (and eventual wife) Ruth Howard as a vehicle for her father Tom and his comedy partner George Shelton. IPTBI is primarily a parody of Information, Please and Dr. IQ, taking the "board of experts" from the former and the venerable "Pay that man five silver dollars!" tagline from the latter. Too frequently it's classified as an actual quiz program which it most certainly isn't. The guests invariably win a token amount for "stumping the experts" with such questions as "Who painted Whistler's Mother?", but otherwise it's simply a free-form comedy show. Contemporary critics panned it and predicted it would have a short run (it lasted for a decade). Even today it seems that It Pays to be Ignorant isn't overly liked among OTR aficionados. Despite being a consistent ratings winner, it isn't mentioned once in Arthur Frank Wertheim's otherwise authoritative Radio Comedy. Why the animosity? Unfortunately, IPTBI cannot be classified as an "acquired taste". Either you find wordplay, terrible puns, and general vaudeville patter funny or you don't, and if you don't find one episode of IPTBI funny, you might as well forget the rest. It's either wonderful, addictive fun or less preferable than a root canal. Decide for yourself. Archive.org has a nice set of 35 shows that you can download here... and just for fun, here's the show's catchy themesong. Below is a two page spread from the October 16th, 1937 Radio Guide featuring Tom Howard's novel (and frugal) nautical-themed basement. At the time, Shelton and Howard were the featured comics on NBC's Sealtest Sunday Night Party. Daughter Ruth can be seen in the lower right-hand corner of page one. Pipes from Tom Howard's collection are fairly common on Ebay.

ADDENDUMB: On April 1st, 1946, a British version of It Pays to be Ignorant, entitled Ignorance Is Bliss, premiered on the BBC Light Programme. The series was apparently a letter-for-letter copy, using the same scripts as the American show (right down to the catchphrases!), and with stand-ins for Howard, McNaughton, McConnell, and Shelton. Regrettably, from the sound of the clip found at the bottom of this page about the show, what it couldn't duplicate was the verve and spirit of spontaneity of the original. It's worth noting that Lulu McConnell's replacement is Gladys Hay, none other than Will Hay's daughter.

New and Improved!

Folks and people, I'd like to draw your attention to a few new features here at The Third Banana, some of which you may or may not have even noticed yet or not. First, I've added labels to all 157 posts and will continue to add them from now on. As far as names are concerned, the new labels should make this blog effectively "searchable" (I was surprised by the number of Eddie Cantor posts). I've also added tags for OTR, stage, cinema, and TV. To what end, I really don't know. New feature number two: I had intended since last year to begin featuring public domain shorts and clips here but ran into some technical snags and, frankly, was blissfully unaware of the Great and Glorious YouTube Revolution. Now that I have a better handle on things, I intend to post at least a short a week here for the foreseeable future. Finally, as you'll notice down the sidebar, this blog now features (unobtrusive) advertisements. Please help me to cover the costs involved in bringing you free movies, radio shows, and magazine scans by clicking on some of the ads now and again (turns out I've been linking to some of these advertisers here for months anyway). Every little bit helps!

Meanwhile, enjoy this beautiful two-page spread from the January, 1945 issue of Tune In. This ad for CBS's weekday radio lineup has some wonderful Herschfeld art (no hidden NINAs yet; she wouldn't be born until later that year) and some offhandedly callous comments about some beloved comedians. RE: Burns and Allen: "It may seem strange that they still love each other.." Yeah! Why on earth does George put up with that idiot?? And adding an (?) after "Durante's brain" just strikes me as downright cruel.

Inside Radio Stars, part I

Radio Stars, April, 1933. We may have been deep in the throes of the Great Depression, but what a great year for comedy! On the cover, Jack Pearl at the very height of his fame, just prior to making his feature film debut in Meet the Baron at MGM. Inside, more info than I have ever seen anywhere else about Tom Howard. Who knew he owned a kennel of racing whippets? Also revealed is the fact that he and George Shelton used no scripts on the air, a true mark of the seasoned burlesque comic.

Radio Stars, May, 1933. Rudy Vallee on the cover, also at the height of his popularity. It was his show on NBC that featured Shelton and Howard. First, a dramatic tale about Ed Wynn's near financial (and physical) collapse. Wynn's lengthy career was marked by unusually severe ups and downs, so it's little wonder that his emotional state followed suit. And this is the first time I've ever seen a picture of his mother.

Clark and McCullough On the Air!

I recently discovered this mind-crogglingly rare C&McC radio appearance in an episode of NBC's 30 year retrospective series Recollections at Thirty. Broadcast in 1956, the show featured excerpts from NBC's archived transcription discs and even took requests from listeners. The problem is that the vast majority of these historic clips were introduced in the vaguest possible terms. This one, from the 7/4/56 episode, is simply introduced by host Ed Herlihy as being "Clark and McCullough's first radio broadcast" without giving a date or program title. Unless this recording predates the 1926 Friars Club testimonial dinner to the team that was broadcast on WGBS, I have to doubt it. It's still a fascinating clip. Clark and McCullough perform under their own names, and Bobby refers to Paul as "Mac", a nickname I've never heard or read anywhere else. Paul is especially fun here, giving an extremely lively performance that indicates that, before Broadway, the partnership was a little more balanced.

As a bonus, here's another clip from the same episode of Recollections at Thirty that they at least pin down for us. The aforementioned Tom Howard and George Shelton were the resident comedy team of The Rudy Vallee Show in 1935, taking over that duty from the aforementioned Olsen and Johnson. Rudy clearly liked his comedy low and loud. In this excerpt from the July 4, 1935 show, Howard and Shelton do the old "I'll bet I can make you say "Oh no I haven't"" routine. They're not bad, but they're not nearly as good as they later were on It Pays to be Ignorant.

"Omnia Cafeteria Rex"

At long last, I present the newly-renovated Clark and McCullough Database. I can't believe it has been seven years since I first opened the site on Geocities (before Yahoo! got their mitts on it). Also, I can't believe that I left those "speculation" and "assessment" essays unchanged since 1999. That's just embarrassing. In TC&McCDB v.4, you'll find:

• New essays about Clark and McCullough
• New images of Clark and McCullough
• Links to all my Third Banana blog entries about Clark and McCullough
• A complete history of Clark and McCullough by Paul's great-nephew Mike Brick
• A tasteful new index page... featuring Clark and McCullough
• and, most importantly, an off-site gallery I've set up featuring over 100 unimaginably rare photos and news clippings about Clark and McCullough culled from Paul's mother's scrapbook (courtesy Mike Brick)

And that's not all. Within the next few weeks, hardware/software problems pending, I'll be adding some actual Clark and McCullough shorts to the site, including Odor in the Court. If you like Clark and McCullough, you're in luck. If not... meh. Who knew?

On a related note, I recently realized that the George Shelton pictured among the cast of the Clark and McCullough-produced burlesque revue Monkey Shines is the same George Shelton who was a long-time panelist on It Pays to Be Ignorant, the 1940s radio gag quiz show hosted by vaudevillian Tom Howard (Joe Cook's bespectacled foil in Rain or Shine (1930)) and which I personally happen to find hilarious. As revealed in a review from the aforementioned scrapbook, Shelton, a long-time friend and former comedy teammate of Howard's, appeared in Monkey Shines alongside comic Al Tyler as Clark and McCullough imitators, performing routines C&McC had made famous. According to this page, Shelton once replaced Clark in a vaudeville act entitled "The Merry Wives of Windsor", of which I've seen no trace in these clippings. Anyway, Shelton is funny (in a very Joe E. Ross kind of way), and you can hear him here, for free, in six episodes of It Pays to Be Ignorant. "Mr. Shelton, a halfwit must have given you a piece of his mind!" "Yeah, and you're not gonna get it back, neither!"

addendumb 10/21: Refreshing my memory, I went back to Stanley Green's The Great Clowns of Broadway and noticed that "The Merry Wife of Windsor" (or "That Merry Wife of Windsor") was a skit written and performed by Clark in Michael Todd's Star and Garter (1942-3). I assume that the skit predated Star and Garter by many years and may have been one of Clark and McCullough's vaudeville turns. If this is the case, I find it more plausible that, rather than replacing Clark in this skit at any time, Shelton was allowed the use of it in vaudeville. Green notes that the skit involves Clark hiding in a trunk from Gypsy Rose Lee's jealous husband. A similar situation can be seen in C&McC's In the Devildog House (1934), in which Clark hides in a trunk from Dorothy Granger's jealous husband Tom Kennedy.. the same skit, perhaps?

"The best of the old comedy favorites, the brightest of the new stars"

Founded in 1915 by Earle W. Hammons for the production and distribution of classroom films, Educational Pictures quickly, and lucratively, shifted gears and began producing comedy shorts. Educational hit its peak sometime in the mid-20s, releasing Jack White's acclaimed Lloyd Hamilton shorts and distributing Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat cartoons. But in 1933, following a financially disastrous partnership with Mack Sennett to produce features (as Sono Art-World Wide Pictures), Educational was forced to sell off its exchanges and reopen at Paramount's old Astoria, Long Island facility (where The Cocoanuts and Follow The Leader were shot). Now releasing through 20th Century Fox, Educational had become a strange twilight zone of down-on-their-luck silent era names like Buster Keaton and moonlighting Broadway celebrities like Bert Lahr and Joe Cook, taking advantage of the studio's convenient proximity. Not only silent era performers but producers and directors found Educational a friendly port during the industry's turbulent transition to sound. The studio's product was wildly uneven during its final decade with even the best shorts looking extremely threadbare. As cheap as the shorts may have been, and as poor as the writing frequently was, the talent on display was undeniably impressive.

I found this 1936 trade ad for Educational on Ebay last month and it nicely illustrates the bizarre blend of "old comedy favorites" and "new stars" that populated the studio's product at the time. Buster Keaton, at a low point in his life but still capable of wonderful work, and the brilliant Joe Cook are clearly the studio's prize performers (Joe Cook had no better film vehicles than his shorts), but the lower ranks are pretty fascinating, too. Bert Lahr, the most famous of the second-stringers depicted, should have been a major film personality (IMO) but his film career never clicked and today he's remembered primarily for his performance as the Cowardly Lion. Tom Howard, Joe Cook's stooge from Rain Or Shine (1930), had his own series, appearing with his own stooge George Shelton. Both went on to star through the 1940s in the radio quiz parody It Pays To Be Ignorant. Until I saw this ad, I had no idea that professional milquetoast Ernest Truex had ever been the featured performer in anything, let alone his own series of shorts. He found work in film and on TV through 1965 as the meek next-door neighbor or the ineffectual boss. Truex's wife, Mary Jane Barrett (bottom right), appeared with him frequently on Broadway and, it seems, at Educational, although she doesn't have an IMDB listing. The rest of the comics are the aforementioned "new stars" and of them, only Tim and Irene Ryan, the poor man's Burns and Allen, went on to have any kind of substantial screen career. Gruff Tim and madcap Irene became a standard feature of poverty row musical comedies through 1944. I've never seen any of their work for Educational but The Wacky Family (1936) must be one of the weakest film titles of all time. Tim, a prolific B-comedy screenwriter, died in 1956. Irene Ryan, who divorced Tim in 1942, went on to lasting fame as Granny Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies. Incidentally, Tim and Irene are featured on the original 1934 sheet music for Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town. I'm assuming they introduced the song on radio. Does anyone out there know? The team of Patricola and West had a brief series of for Educational between 1935 and 1938, reportedly interchangeable with that of Educational's other musical comedy duo, Timberg and Rooney (curiously not depicted). It seems that Earl Oxford appeared in exactly one short for the studio and I can't find even that many for the amiable looking Fred Lightner (any relation to Winnie? There's a definite resemblance). Singer Niela Goodelle headlined her own series (and appeared at least once with Earl Oxford on Broadway), but I'm unsure about Nell Kelly, another Broadway singer.

This eclectic lineup represents Educational's last gasp. E. W. Hammons, eager to re-enter the features market ever since his 1931-33 partnership with Sennett, gambled it all and lost. In 1938, he merged Educational with Grand National Pictures just as it was sinking into bankruptcy, apparently in a bid to save it. But Grand National's situation was terminal and, when it finally folded in 1939, it took what remained of Educational with it (Fox took over distribution of the Terrytoons). Just a few years later, adding insult to injury, a vault fire at Fox's Deluxe labs destroyed a tremendous number Educational's negatives, all but wiping out the studio's (presumably superior) silent output and erasing most of the film careers of Lloyd Hamilton and Lupino Lane, a staggering blow to the record of the silent era.