1935

[Yhtapmys]

I haven't read much about the brief period Michael Bartlett was on the show, but here's a feature story by K.L. Eksan in the Oakland Tribune, November 10, 1935. Particularly of interest is the Mary screw-up. I don't believe any of the Bartlett shows are in circulation so it's nice to get a look at some specifics about the broadcasts in that short time.

GLUM-VISAGED, low-spirited radio folk wouldn’t last long around the Jack Benny rehearsals and broadcasts in the NBC studios in Hollywood. Why? Because that’s the time and place for spontaneous laughter—ad lib gaffes, practical jokes and the gentle art of “ribbing.”
It’s a fact that the Benny clan stumbles onto more good hearty laughs than the average script writer who gets paid for originating just that sort of thing. Writer Harry Conn, one of the wittiest wits who ever owned a typewriter, liberally sprinkles his continuity with usable jokes, but by the time Benny and his stooges wade through one rehearsal at least two jokes grow where one stood before.
For instance, on a recent broadcast Benny had a line in which he said, in effect, “That guy Michael Bartlett isn’t such a much,” and Mary Livingstone was supposed to answer, “Well fifty million women can't be wrong.” When Mary came to her line she read, “Well, fifty willion momen,” which was spontaneous enough to “break up” the entire cast. Patient practice throughout the balance of Saturday night and Sunday made Mary letter-perfect in the line. But when it came broadcast time she still couldn’t unscramble her m’s and w’s. Mistake or no, it proved the biggest laugh of the program.
An occurrence of similar spontaneity took place on the first broadcast of the new series when Bartlett and Benny were engaged in a bit of rube dialogue. As the conversation went on, Bartlett—doing the first rural dialect of his life—kept pitching his voice higher and higher. Unconsciously, Benny kept raising up on his toes and boosting his own voice, until he was stretched to his full height.
Then Benny’s sense of humor got the better of him and he called across stage to Bartlett. “Mike, I’ll come down, if you will.” And Mike did, but not without having created the best laugh of the show.
The Benny-ites have got to be good-natured. Else how would hefty Announcer Don Wilson be able to take it when Benny describes him in uncomplimentary terms?
The same goes for Mary Livingstone, who really does like poetry. Every time she composes a rhyming gem her fellow troupers point significantly at their heads and move one hand around in a circular motion. Whenever Johnny Green and Michael Bartlett do a particularly effective musical number their co-workers walk away. It’s all part of an act, of course, for underneath, every member of the cast is sure that the other one is tops in his particular endeavor. Benny wouldn’t trade his stooges for a tent-full of another comedian’s helpers. And the stooges wouldn’t trade Benny, either.
Did someone ask about the Benny-ites away from the microphone? Well, they’re a busy crew. Every waking hour—and some of the dozing ones, too—Benny spends at M-G-M, where he is regarded as the current sensation. Jack came to Hollywood six months ago to do “Broadway Melody of 1936” and took a short lease on Lita Grey Chaplin’s former home in Beverly Hills. It’s really the first home life the Bennys have had after all these years in vaudeville, and living in hotels and apartments. The climate clicked with Jack, and Jack clicked with M-G-M, so M-G-M renewed Jack, and Jack renewed the lease. Benny figured on leaving after his second film, “It’s in the Air,” but the picture bosses figured otherwise, so Benny has taken an indefinite lease on the home, and Mary is even planting flowers in the back yard.
Speaking of the home, it was a big laugh the other night when the Bennys had a house full of guests and Jack turned on the electric organ. The selection was “Love in Bloom.” Half way through the number the organ stuck. Benny and all the guests took turns at turning switches on and off, pushing and pulling pedals and pounding the back and front of the console. After two hours of the same high note, slightly off-key, Jack managed to get an organ technician over from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the recalcitrant console was repaired.
Michael Bartlett, who is no longer with Jack Benny, is no less busy. He is another sensational newcomer to films, having been a smashing success in Grace Moore’s latest picture, “Love Me Forever.” He is starting production on another movie this week. Incidentally, an odd note of a Hollywood coincidence is that Writer Harry Conn just took a new apartment and found that it was the one Bartlett had vacated a few weeks before.
Johnny Green hasn’t got his Hollywood legs yet. He still misses his New York, but is so busy arranging music for the broadcast he doesn’t have much time to notice his loneliness. As for Don Wilson, Los Angeles is his home. He started on the NBC station, KFI there, as a sports announcer.
So that’s a quick and candid camera shot of the Jack Benny cast in Hollywood. They're a swell lot of folks, and very busy, as well as happy.

transcribed by yhtapmys

[epeterd]

I never have heard why it is that so many of those early shows are missing but they have show from the beginning of the series? What happened?

peter