Mary and Her Poems

[Yhtapmys]

Undated and unbylined newspaper story of July 20, 1935.

Mary Livingstone’s Poetess Fame Grows
Mary Livingstone's fame as a poetess on the air has won such a following that half of her fan mail now consists of poems. If this keeps up Mary may award an annual scholarship at a leading university for the best rhyme submitted.
Even her hubby Jack Benny dashes off odd little jingles now and then to surprise her at the breakfast table. Jack used up an entire Mother Goose book until Mary got wise and asked him to quote from Dorothy Parker. Instead Jack has even named their new butler “Longfellow” to keep Mary in the spirit of her art.
Mary received one poem from a Montana farmer, written on a goatskin. Many fans have their rhvmes recorded and send Mary the discs. Another admirer long distanced the Hollywood NBC studio all the way from Dallas to phone in a jingle. A sailor in Honolulu wanted to sell Mary a poem, which turned out to be eight lines quoted verbatim from “The Ancient Mariner.” A boy in Boston offered to write Mary a poem a day if she would pay his way through college. A freak postcard with only this inscription ‘Labor Day, Oh, Labor Day, Hollywood, California was delivered promptly to Mary.

transcribed by yhtapmys

[Mister Kitzel]

The poems gave Mary her own spotlight in the show, but they never seemed that clever like Fred Allen's poems.