Kenny Delmar column

[Yhtapmys]

Yhtapmys says: Kenny did the co-announcing on the first Lucky Strike spots on the Benny show, so this is—I SAY—this is even on topic.

In Hollywood
By Erskine Johnson
[for newspapers Saturday, August 17, 1946]
HOLLYWOOD (NEA) —Senator Claghorn was sitting at the north end of the bar, sipping a manhattan. He saw us coming and switched to the south end, but he couldn't do anything about the manhattan.
"Why Senator," we said, "how come you're not drinking a mint julep?"
The senator put a finger to his lips and whispered: "Shhh! Nobody knows me out here in Hollywood. I'm having fun."
But, he assured us, he wasn't living in North Hollywood.
As you've probably read, Senator Claghorn—Kenny Delmar—is a movie-star now. You'll soon be seeing "It's a Joke, Son," starring Kenny, which Bryan Foy is producing for the new Eagle-Lion film company.
No Beautiful Girls
But the senator was unhappy. "There are no beautiful girls in Hollywood," he said. "Where are all your beautiful girls? I saw beautiful girls in Texas, but none here."
We assured him a couple might show up after lunch, and that seemed to make him happy. (They didn't show up.)
Kenny was a surprise to us. He didn't look at all as we had imagined he would. He's a stocky little man with bushy hair that stands up in different directions, and he wears big, black, horn-rimmed glasses.
In fact, he looks something like a fat Harold Lloyd. We told him so.
"That's what they said at the studio, too," he told us. "They won't let me wear my horn-rimmed glasses because with them on I look too much like Lloyd. In fact, they gave me a flock of makeup tests, and I looked like too many actors—like Jean Hersholt. Edward G. Robinson, J. Carrol Naish, and Ed Wynn."
But after 38 makeup tests, he assured us, he finally wound up looking the way people think Senator Claghom should look. He'll just wear his own face plus big, bushy, prop eyebrows. He'll have no beard and no mustache, and his glasses will be the pince-nez type.
The South Can't Lose
There will be plenty of gags about the south, of course, in "It's a Joke, Son." This is one of them.
Una Merkel, Claghorn's wife, tells him to come into the house—"a north wind is blowing, and you'll catch cold."
Replies the senator: "There is no such thing as a north wind. That's just the south wind coming back home."
Kenny came to Hollywood, free, in the president's private car on the Southern Pacific railroad. (Everybody wants to get in the act)
"But it was pretty rugged," Kenny groaned. "I had to do 38 broadcasts and make about 48 speeches all through the South. Anytime there were four people at the station they dragged me out of bed to make a speech.
"I should have taken Fred Allen's advice. He said I'd be a wreck. After walking around in 110 degrees in Tucson while they made me a member of the Sunshine club. I was a wreck."
But, said Kenny, he's going to take Fred's advice about not associating in Hollywood with people who are sun-tanned.
Before he left New York, Fred warned him: "Avoid the people with sun-tans. They're the ones who are not working."