Paul Winchell On the Air!

Before he became early television's number one ventriloquist, Paul Winchell spent many (mostly) thankless years in radio, the medium that discovered him. In 1936, Paul, only fifteen and eager to convince his mother of his talent, made his public debut on Major Bowes' Original Amateur Hour, ultimately winning the competition with an incredible impression of Edgar Bergen (who had made his own radio debut on December 17th of that year). Winchell, painfully shy and nearly overcome with stage fright, froze up before being urged on by the Major, but once he kicked into his Bergen impression, the audience was with him from the start. If his mother wasn't impressed (she wasn't, reportedly), Bowes certainly was and hired Paul to tour with a number of other Amateur Hour winners, giving the young comic some much-needed stage experience. In November, 1943, Paul Winchell was given his own series on the Mutual network. Although John Dunning claims in On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio that Winchell was riding "the crest of the Charlie McCarthy wave", The Paul Winchell-Jerry Mahoney Show bears little resemblance to Edgar Bergen's hit NBC series, both in format (standard issue sitcom complete with Beulah-esque maid) and laugh quotient. If anything, the sole existing episode sounds like a forerunner of Peter Brough's Educating Archie, with Paul cast as Jerry's mostly humorless surrogate father. It's also interesting to note that Winchell's technique in this July 10th, 1944 episode, while technically excellent, hasn't yet fully matured. Sorely absent are Paul verbal takes to Jerry's comments that would later make their "interaction" so remarkably convincing. Paul Winchell's last regular radio gig actually began the year he first broke into television, 1948. The show, a telephone music quiz on New York station WOR, was apparently begun by famed morning host John Gambling and Paul stepped in as a substitute on July 5th (a July 2nd audition disc exists). Paul must have made a minor hit with the quarter-hour quiz show because the August 26th transcription has its own sponsor, Coronet Magazine. The untitled quiz (Paul Winchell and Jerry Mahoney Calling?) simply consists of Paul, alone in a studio, making calls and playing records. The contestants on the other end of the phone are not wired through so Paul literally holds the program on his own. It's good fun, and Winchell's ventriloquism skills are finally in full bloom here. Since it was transcribed, it seems that someone at WOR may have intended to syndicate the little show, although I wonder if it ever did play outside NYC.

Paul Winchell Week: Monday

Ventriloquist, comedian, voice artist, and artificial heart inventor Paul Winchell should be better known known today. Easily one of the greatest and most innovative ventriloquists of all time, his legacy has been sadly neglected, largely because the bulk of his television career has gone up in smoke. The loss of so much of Winchell's career as a ventriloquist can in part be chalked up to the pitfalls of having spent one's peak years on live TV, but, disturbingly, a great deal of the loss was also by design.

Winchell's ventriloquy act differed from most in that he, as the ventriloquist, generally chose not to fade into the background. Instead, Winchell established a genuine double-act with his dummy, Jerry Mahoney, generating laughs not just from Jerry's wisecracks, but also from the friction between their personalities. Jerry was less a hellraiser in the Charlie McCarthy mold than he was a precocious smart aleck. Not mean-spirited and more than a little endearing, Jerry provided a counterpoint to Winchell's comically vain and rather autocratic taskmaster.. something akin to a father to Jerry, but more like an older brother. Winchell was capable of splitting his personality more vividly and convincingly than any other ventriloquist in the profession and, aided by his near-flawless technique and nuanced puppetry, the results were remarkable and extremely funny. Winchell could hold two sides of a heated argument, be convincingly taken off-guard by one of Jerry's barbs, and even sing duets with his dummies. My first Winch Clip this week is a 1953 ad for Cheer detergent taken from an episode of NBC's The Paul Winchell Show. It's a nice resume of Winchell's performing abilities. His delayed take at Jerry's slight of his ventriloquy technique is perfectly timed and wonderfully real. A word of warning: the jingle, performed on xylophone and ocarina, is a charmer that will stay in your head for weeks.

Paul Winchell Week: Sunday

More terrific character interplay as Paul and Jerry perform a Riverboat Gambler skit on The Paul Winchell Show (1953). Incidentally, all of this week's Winch Clips are available in their entirety, plus much, much more, on EarthStation1's Paul Winchell 3 DVD set.

Paul Winchell Week: Friday

Paul and Jerry perform a Frankenstein skit on The Paul Winchell Show (1953). I love Paul's rationalization of having Jerry play the Monster: "It's practically the story of our lives!"

Paul Winchell Week: Tuesday

The opening number and first skit from a 1953 episode of The Paul Winchell Show. Paul and Knucklehead Smiff perform "The Gyspy in My Soul". Enjoy!

Paul Winchell Week: Saturday

Winch, Knucklehead, and company perform "Chloe" on The Paul Winchell Show (1953).

Paul Winchell Week: Wednesday

Brilliant interplay between Winchell and Mahoney in this 1950 skit from Cavalcade of Stars. Jerry's dream, featuring Paul as an even smaller dummy that Jerry torments mercilessly, is hysterical and certainly one for the psychology textbooks. Winchell was always willing to push the envelope with his ventriloquy act. It's hard to imagine any other ventriloquist from this period.. Edgar Bergen, Jimmy Nelson, Peter Brough, Sheri Lewis, etc... going this far to deconstruct the very foundations of ventriloquism.

Paul Winchell Week: Thursday

Paul and Jerry on The Perry Como Show in 1955. I wonder what Perry is reacting to off-camera at the beginning...

Yoo-Hoo! It's Me!!

Sure.. I like thoughtful, understated comedy as much as the next guy, but I reserve a special place in my heart for comics like Pinky Lee. Was there ever a harder working entertainer? He wasn't exactly clever, nor was he original, but he was completely genuine. Even the lisp was his own, albeit exaggerated for effect. He was a cyclone, more hyperkinetic than Jerry Lewis, yet still amazingly controlled thanks to loads of talent and decades of experience in burlesque. Kids loved him, adults reviled him. Milton Berle spitefully quipped at a star-studded dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria that "if a bomb hit this joint, Pinky Lee would be a big hit", an odd comment considering that Pinky was a big hit at the time, with kids, at least, and Pinky seemed quite content with that.

Pinky Lee's Circus Time, aka The Pinky Lee Show (1954)

The legend persists that Pinky's uncanny gusto finally caught up with him, resulting in an on-air stroke. Not true, of course, but his tireless show-must-go-on attitude did cause him to ignore a nasal drip that was gradually poisoning him. In 1955, as a result of the infection, Pinky collapsed on live TV during one of his songs, an unimaginably shocking sight for millions of his young fans. His schedule of six shows a week plus personal appearances couldn't have helped his condition much. As a result of his collapse and absence from the air as he recuperated, the story arose that Pinky had died. The networks apparently felt that he might as well have. In their books, Pinky had become a Grade A "risk". In 1957, NBC pressed Pinky into service as the host of The Gumby Show.. for a fraction of what he had been earning before (Pinky claimed a take-home pay of approximately $34 a week). It was a smaller, more intimate program, and Pinky reasonably scaled back his style, but only by degrees. In this final episode of The Gumby Show, Pinky plays the xylophone, sings, tap dances, and is still giving every bit of business 200%. A professional to the end.



And that was more or less the end for Pinky Lee on TV. In 1965, he starred in a weekday revival of The Pinky Lee Show on ABC, but the 7:30 AM timeslot doomed it to a short run. Pinky also complained that he had no creative control, although it must have been becoming increasingly difficult to determine exactly who he was trying to reach even if the show had been ideal. It was now a decade since his heyday. The curtain was coming down fast, not just on Pinky, but on the entire breed of performer that he exemplified. He had survived longer than most because he had taken refuge in children's television where his style could still be appreciated for what it was, but now even that was changing beyond recognition. I can barely imagine a still-popular Pinky Lee on TV in the latter-half of the 60s, doing stock gags about hippies and rock n' roll, but I'm just as sure that he'd have given it the same old 200% had he the opportunity. But when it was over, it was over.

22 minutes and 54 seconds of Tootsie Roll commercials from The Pinky Lee Show and Winchell-Mahoney Time.

Pinky Lee appeals to the least jaded part of me, the part that can still enjoy terrible puns and the sight of a man playing the xylophone while tap dancing. Say what you will about him and his over-the-top style, the guy was the real thing, something his postmodern progeny Paul "Pee-Wee" Reubens certainly wasn't (nothing against Paul Reubens, mind you. He wasn't Pee-Wee and it was the cognitive dissonance in the wake of the scandal that wrecked his career as a pseudo-children's entertainer). I find something deeply disturbing in the idea that a Pinky Lee couldn't survive a second on today's network or cable TV without adopting the requisite degree of pre-packaged, thoroughly dishonest cynicism that has become de rigueur even for children's entertainment. Have we really gone too far down the road? In an age where snark passes for wit and unthinking skeptical posturing has supplanted genuine critical thought, an entertainer as skilled, as driven, and as basic as Pinky Lee would be a breath of fresh air.. to me, anyway.