A Couple of Harry Conn Pieces

[Yhtapmys]

Scribe Will Turn Star
Harry Conn to Head Own Sunday Show
By JACK BURROUGHS
[Oakland Tribune, Nov. 27, 1937]
If all comedians wrote their own scripts life would be even sadder than it is.
Every day would be Blue Monday tf we had to listen to funny men's original wheezes every time we went dialing for laughs.
It would be a chuckle-headed arrangement and that's the only kind of chuckle the situation would afford.
Of course there are some exceptions to the rule that comedians crack foolish when they try to crack wise.
Will Rogers was the great exception of our time, and today there are a few lesser lights who do quite an acceptable job of scripting their own shows.
But they are the exceptions, nevertheless.
We have often wondered what would happen if a script writer turned comedian.
Next Sunday, well have a chance to find out.
Harry Conn, who has fathered some of the best gags ever mouthed into a mike by our topflight comedians, plans to launch a show of his own.
If the opus lives up to its title it should prove earworthy in the extreme. Conn has christened his opus "Earaches of 1938."
It will be a musical comedy series starring Conn, with Beatrice Kay, comedy singer; Barry Wood, young baritone signed recently by Columbia; Charles Cantor, radio comic; Mary Kelly, of the rasping voice, she who was one of the Chicken sisters starred by Jack Benny; Bert Parks, announcer, and Mark Warnow's orchestra. You'll be able to
dial the opener of this new series Sunday over CBS-KSFO, 5:30 to 6
o'clock.
Conn, in case you have forgotten, was a tap dancer and comedian of considerable reputation in the vodvil days.
- - -
RADIO NEWS
[Daily Gleaner April 25, 1938]
How radio comedians adapt material to their particular style was
described in an interview over NBC by Harry Conn, noted gag writer.
Conn, who has written for Jack Beany, Burns and Allen and Walter
O'Keefe, among others, was brought to the microphone by Fred Uttal, during NBC's For Men Only programme to tell how the wheels turn in the humour factories.
"The same basic materials is used by all comics. But the writer with his bag of tricks gives it a different twist to suit the individual comedian's style. They all have different deliveries and work at a different pace."
Conn elaborated on his thesis with an example, an average joke.
A man buys a new car to travel, around the country. A friend says to him, "Will you have a trailer?" and the first man answers, "Why, certainly, the Finance Company."
"Jack Benny's studio audience laughed long and loud at that one," says Conn, "and I'll tell you how he did it He talked about buying an automobile for three minutes be fore he got to the joke and then he didn't tell it—he let Kenny Baker teil it."
Benny didn't tell it himself because, Conn explained, "a stooge will always get a laugh quicker than a star."
Here is how Edward G. Robinson, the actor, would tell the same joke, according to Conn.
Robinson: Hurry up, I got a date to commit a slight case of murder.
Stooge: Alright, Ed—Did you buy a new car lately?
Robinson: Say, I got the greatest car you ever saw—streamline. bullet-proof.
Stooge: What I want to know, is have you got a trailer?
Robinson: Yes, I have —and if he follows me again, I'm gonna bump him off, see? Nobody can trail me and get away with it!

transcribe by Yhtapmys

[Yhtapmys]

Today’s Radio Programs
[San Antonio Light, July 7, 1937]
When Walter O'Keefe, the Broadway Hillbilly, takes over Fred Allen's Town Hall program tonight (WOAI-7), he will try to maintain the same merry pitch that marked Fred's broadcasts through the past season, in fact, he will pattern his routine along the same lines.
In keeping with the "Town Hall News" featured by the lanky Yank before he took off on vacation last week, Walter will present a less formal comment on the news of the day. Subbing for the Mighty Allen Art Players will be a troupe of O'Keefe's own stooges, headed by Alice Frost.
Guest stars will continue to reappear, being spotted at different stages of O'Keefe's broadcast, whereas Allen ran them all in during the last 20 minutes of the program.
Incidentally, Harry Conn, one-time song and dance man, has been signed to collaborate with Walter as script author. This is the same Conn who was associated with Funnyman Jack Benny for four and a half years and who wrote the first air series for madcaps George Burns and Gracie Allen.
This should be n good all around program.

You'll Laugh at Dialects, Hotel Scenes
And Class Room Gags, Says Harry Conn
THOSE ARE SURE-FIRE GIGGLE GETTERS, ACCORDING TO FAMED QUIPSTER WHO HAS BECOME HIS OWN GAG MAN ON AIR
By NORMAN SIEGEL
NEW YORK, Dec. 25 [1937]—For years Harry Conn has been the “Cyrano de Bergerac” of radio. Many of the airwave’ brightest personalities wooed fame and fortune with his words.
Jack Benny, Joe Penner and Walter O’Keefe got laughs with Conn’s quips. When Gary Cooper and Mae West made vaudeville appearances, they spoke what Conn wrote for them. As a script writer, Conn was tops. Now he has decided to talk for himself on the new Columbia variety program known as “Earaches of 1938.” Instead of appearing by proxy on this show, Conn steps out in front of the microphones to speak his own gags.
We found him backstage after one of his first broadcasts—a small, businessman-type in his early forties, calmly puffing on one of those large aromatic cigars that have become one of the hallmarks of the radio comedian. Although the role of broadcaster was a comparatively new one to him, he wasn’t a bit nervous, as his background includes ten years before the footlights as a hoofer and a number of A.E.F. performances in France.
Just Tired of Silence.
What we wanted to know was why Conn, after having written the Jack Benny scripts for five years should want to give up a distinguished writing career for a new onewhich is already crowded and extremely hazardous.
“I was tire of leading a behind-the-microphone existence,” he said. “I got lonely back there without a gag to call me own. So I decided eliminate the middleman, come out in front, and be my own comedian.”
Harry is responsible for many of the devices of modern radio comedy, especially the “group” technique, which enlists the entire cast for comic spots. He believes that it is a lot easier for five or six people to be funny than just one or two. So he makes comedians out of singers, announcers and orchestra leaders. This theory is practiced on his new program, in which he even makes a comic out of the script writer—himself.
Three Sure-Fire Laughs.
He contends that a gag writer has three sure-fire laugh-getters, all of which he’ll use on the new program. One of the best of these old standbys is the dialect actor.
“You can always get a laugh with dialect,” Conn said. “In fact, you can get a double laugh, one for what the dialectician says and one for the way he says it. Dialects are a typically American form of humor, because we are one of the few people on earth who not only tolerate the mutilation of our language, but love it.
“Another laugh standby is the hotel scene. The discomforts of small hotels are always good for laughs and all the numerous complaints, funny guests, bell boys knocking on the doors, elevators breaking down and you have one of the richest settings for humor.
“Then there’s the third old-faithful: the classroom scene where the children give gag answers to the teacher’s questions. This is the best sort of stooge scene possible, sinc the teacher is the most logical stooge in the world.”
Programmes, Sunday, Dec. 25, 1937
NBC-WEAF (Red) Network
6:00—Catholic Program
6:30—A Tale of Today
7:00—Jack Benny
7:30—Recital
7:45—Jerry Belcher
8:00—Chas. McCarthy
9:00—Manhattan Merry Go Round
9:30—Album of Music
10:00—Rising Musical
10:30—Haven MacQuarrie
11:00—Dancing Music
11:30—Press-Radio News
11:35—Jerry Blaine
12:00—Clyde McCoy
12:30—Earl Hines

NBC-WJZ (Blue Network)
6:00—Original Play
6:30—Green Brothers
7:00—Popular Classics
7:30—Peg Murray
8:00—Sunday Symphony
9:00—Tyrone Power
9:30—Walter Winchell
10:00—Marek Weber
10:30—Cheerio Program
11:00—Press Radio News
11:15—Walter Winchell
11:30—Henry Busse
12:00—Eddie Varzos
12:30—Fletcher Henderson

CBS-WABC Network
6:00—Joe Penner
6:30—Double or Nothing
7:00—John Charles Thomas
7:30—Phil Baker
8:00—People’s Choice - The Week in Review
8:30—Harry Conn
9:00—Sunday Evening Hour
10:00—Dramatic (Dawn Mississippi)
10:30—Headlines Bylines, Kaltenborn, Trout, Erwin Canham.
11:00—Cab Calloway
12:00—Henry King
12:30—Sterling Young