Re-using Jokes

[Yhtapmys]

I stumbled on a newspaper feature about saving jokes for future shows; Jack did it on occasion. In this case, the star in question was Fred Allen. As he's an "associate" and as the topic itself is one that relates to Jack's show, I thought I'd post it.

Comedians Keep Left-Over Gags
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
AP Newsfeatures Writer
[June 3, 1948]
NEW YORK—Fred Allen, the flat-voiced comedian with the astringent wit, uses leftover gags the way a thrifty housewife makes a hash from the remains of the Sunday roast.
“The script always runs overtime,” the comedian explained after a rehearsal of his half-hour radio show. “We have to cut it to fit, but we never throw away anything we can possibly use. Of course, we have to throw away stuff that is purely topical. Take Noise Abatement week gags. You couldn't use those after Noise Abatement week has passed.”
But except for such humor, tied firmly onto the time element, almost everything cut from one week's show is pretty apt to appear in a subsequent one.
Take for instance, the dialogue between Allen and his announcer, Kenny Delmar, on a recent Sunday show. Delmar remarked that a chemist had predicted whisky of the future could be made of wood. Then ensued some chatter, climaxed by Allen’s quip: “When a man picks up his cocktail he’ll see a knothole in his martini.”
This bit, Allen explained, was salvaged from an earlier show. The sequence, however, was much longer in the rehearsal and contained cracks about people calling “timber” instead of “bottoms up,” and about drinks really being on the house. Presumably these jokes will be forever lost to posterity for the theme has received its work-out by Allen and company.
Allen’s rehearsal ran over almost five minutes in that instance, and plenty of material was chopped from the script before it went on the air. Most of it will show up on later programs.
One gag which hit the cutting room floor and undoubtedly will be heard on the air sometime soon, opened the talk between Allen, and the character Titus Moody. Allen told him he looked sour.
“You’d have a sour look too if you dropped your teeth in the vinegar barrel,” replied Titus Moody, “my mouth tastes like my tongue’s been dilled.”
That was deleted in the interests of time, but only temporarily. Mrs. Nussbaum, another Allen character, was temporarily deprived of a couple of lines. They are timely, so it wouldn't be surprising if they showed up next week. The deleted lines ran like this:
Mrs. Nussbaum: “By me, in the blood, I am a rustic.”
Allen: “Really?”
Mrs. N.: “I could be Nature Boy’s sister, Nature Girl.”
The reference to the popular song, coupled with Mrs. Nussbaum’s accent, drew a smile from the pianist—a reaction carefully noted by Allen.
“Allen spends about 60 hours a week getting that half-hour program together,” one of his aides said. “Fred and his three writers start working on the script more than a week in advance. They read newspapers from all over and get around. They start with a rough sketch. By the Thursday before the show, it's finished—and usually it runs minutes overtime.”
Allen couldn’t explain exactly how the job of molding the script to the 30-minute time allotment was accomplished.
“That's a comedian’s business,” he said. “You have to know which are the best gags and when music is more important.”
In the show under discussion, the guest star was Gracie Fields. When it came time to bob the script, a couple of pages of lines between Allen and Miss Fields were taken out—out all of Miss Field’s musical numbers remained intact.
“In this case,” Allen said, “we couldn’t cut down on the music. But we could take out a whole sequence, or bob a line here and there.”
One rule in writing shows is hard and fast: they are always too long, not too short. The writers would rather cut after a rehearsal than have to patch up and pull out a show with new material.

Yhtapmys
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