A 1944 Kenny Baker Profile

[Slowdream101]

Here's an interesting Feb 20 1944 article about Kenny Baker from the New York Times. It seems Baker was a little tired of being "the ether's favorite idiot" When you get to the following page click on the article to enlarge it for reading.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2005-9/1071730/KB1.jpg

[Roman]

I had the feeling listening to the shows in the year or so before Kenny Baker's departure that he was unhappy with the callow youth role he was assigned on the show. The fact that Don began including Kenny's name in the opening credits in 1938 must have been due to Kenny's insistence and the later inclusion, at the show's conclusion, letting us know that Kenny was appearing courtesty of Mervyn Leroy Productions hints at some backstage negotiating/discord over his role. When you consider Kenny's choice of movies and plays (The Mikado, Harvey Girls and, on Broadway, One Touch of Venus with Mary Martin), it certainly reflects greater ambitions that just being the sort of silly cartoon character he was playing every week with Jack. The fact that he didn't have the natural comic gifts that Dennis possessed (although I think Kenny was the more talented singer) must have made his role especially unfulfilling. Kenny was, I think, in his late 20s when he left Jack's show and I would have to imagine that he must have felt that it was now or never for his career if he was ever going to achieve singing stardom on his own.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out for Kenny like he must have hoped. But still, I admire that he had the guts to quit a well-paying comfortable job at the height of the show's popularity to seek greater and more personal career fulfillment.

[Gerry O.]

Unfortunately, it didn't work out for Kenny like he must have hoped. But still, I admire that he had the guts to quit a well-paying comfortable job at the height of the show's popularity to seek greater and more personal career fulfillment.

Immediately after he left Jack's program, Kenny became the regular vocalist on radio's "Texaco Star Theatre"....at first a variety hour hosted by John Barrymore, then Adolph Menjou, then Ken Murray, and eventually becoming Fred Allen's program.

The Texaco shows allowed Kenny greater range in the type of songs that he could sing. On Jack's show, Kenny had to pretty much stick to the then-popular "Hit Parade" songs that every other radio singer was singing...but on the Texaco shows he sang selections from Gilbert & Sullivan operettas, Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" and other numbers that would have been too long or out of place on the Benny program.

That freedom and flexibility to widen his musical range must have been a big factor in Kenny's decision to leave the Benny program.