Jack Benny, Music Devotee

The Palace in New York may have been the desirable destination for many a vaudevillian, but it was just one stop on the prestigious Keith Orpheum circuit, which stretched across the U.S. and Canada.

There were Orpheum Theatres down the West Coast from Vancouver to Los Angeles. One of them was in Portland, and one of the many stars who appeared there to delighted audiences was Jack Benny.

Long after vaudeville died, Jack decided to go stage again—this time to help symphony orchestras and their homes raise money through his violin concerts. One of his stops was in Portland.

In 1964, organisers in the city put together a “Benny Weekend” with the hope of raising part of the local symphony’s expanded $290,000 budget for that year. On the Saturday, there was a Benny Ball at the Multnomah Hotel (the cost, a thrifty $10) and on Sunday, a concert at the Auditorium (prices were $12.50, $7.50 and $5, though seats without much of a view of the stage could be had for $3).
Here’s part of a story about Jack and his concerts from Martin Clark of the Oregon Journal, November 2, 1964.

ALTHOUGH THE famed comic has built a radio-TV image of himself as “an unspeakable violinist”, he has played Sarasate’s “Aiguenerweisen”, Mendelssohn’s E-Minor Violin Concerto, and similar demanding classics with such notable conductors as Leonard Bernstein, George Szell, Fabien Sevitzky, and Alfred Wallenstein, as soloist with 33 symphonies from Honolulu to New York.
Since 1956, without fanfare, the alleged skinflint has raised more than $4 million for orchestras’ maintenance, pension, and endowment funds and side causes — retarded children, local hospitals, the City of Hope, and the committee “To Save Carnegie Hall.’ Never charging a fee, only modest expenses, Benny has brought in sums ranging from $21,000 for the Bloomington Symphony to $1,200,000 in Toronto.
JACK BENNY’S violin prowess is not a simple matter of playing “Love In Bloom” out of tune. Isaac Stern once told him his bowing arm was “still perfect” and Benny says of his concerts “although the orchestra and audience don’t always realize it, I play the best I can.”
A first-line performer longer than any other currently active TV personality. Benny’s goal at 70 (his real age) is to appear with every major symphony orchestra in the U.S. . . . and everyone has entered a standing invitation to him.
Here’s what Benny has to say on the subject, “Why I give concerts”:
“THE MOST IMPORTANT reason for my giving violin concerts — which have been doing for the past eight years — is because I am definitely a frustrated violinist.
“Some of my frustrations come, of course, from the fact that my wife, Mary, long ago banished me to a far corner of the house when I practice. It’s a small room, 90 per cent tile and 10 per cent towel — the same place in better circles is known as the powder room.
And she has long since stopped apologizing to the neighbors who live on that side of the house. We did once hear them wonder why they never saw the cats we obviously house, and didn’t know about the kennel laws in Beverly Hills, but we ignore those slurs.
“IF BY SOME miracle, I could become another Isaac Stern or a Yehudi Menuhin overnight, I would gladly give up my career as a comedian. As it is, I have managed to combine the two careers. One pays more than the other, however. Fortunately.
“I have given concerts with practically every major symphony orchestra in America, and to show you the guts I have, i appeared first at Carnegie Hall. I fear nothing.
I have been acclaimed by such great conductors as Alfred Wallenstein, Leonard Bernstein, Paul Paray, Izler Solomon, George Szell, Paul Kletzki, William Steinberg and Stanislaw Skcowaszewski to name a few. (In fact, the last name sounded like a few.)
DURING MY LIFETIME I have also played duets with Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Joseph Szigeti, the late Albert Spalding, Jayne Mansfield and Henny Youngman.
My closest friend in the world of classical music is Isaac Stern. He insults me more often than George Burns, who has been a friend of mine for 40 years. I’ll never forget a remark that Isaac made to me after a concert I gave in Philadelphia.
We went out for a bite to eat afterwards and suddenly he looked up at me and said, “You know, Jack, when you walk out on the stage with your violin, dressed in tails, stand in front of a 90-piece orchestra, you actually look like the world’s greatest violinist . . . It’s a darn shame you have to play.”
If he had stopped in the middle of that sentence, I would have appreciated it much more.

Jack got loads of favourable press in Portland, even days after his appearance. There are a number of stories we can pick from. Here’s one from the Oregonian of Nov. 22, 1964.

Jack Benny’s First Love Good Music, Not Comedy
By HILMAR GRONDAHL
Music Editor, The Oregonian
Jack Benny is an extraordinary person. And his devotion to serious music is touching. You might have thought that after the Jack Benny Weekend in Portland he might have looked forward to a gay party following the concert with the Symphony Orchestra. But no, he wanted nothing so much as to talk about music. So in his suite at the Benson Hotel he engaged some of the city’s best in that kind of discussion until into the morning hours.
Benny said at his press conference here that the work he enjoys most is these concerts. They represent something for his inner spirit which the adulation he gets from his role as a comedian can not satisfy.
It is interesting to recall that Benny began his professional life as a musician. His father, a clothing story [sic] owner in Waukegan, started him on violin lessons at an early age. As a kickerbockered boy in grammer [sic] school he played in the pit of the Barrison Theater, and at high school doubled between this orchestra and the school band. There was only a year of high school, however, and this fact later became one of Benny’s adult regrets. He had studied the violin for ten years when, at 16, he went into vaudeville. That was about 1912.
During the World War I, Benny’s routine in the Navy’s Great Lakes Training Station Revue was mainly musical. But one night during his performance the electricity failed and the lights went out in the auditorium. To keep the crowd from getting restless Jack and pianist Zev [Zez] Confrey started talking. The audience roared, and this ad libbing in an emergency told Benny that he could be funny. So he was off to a career as a comic which earned him a great deal of money, and immense popularity.
But through it all the yen for the violin ate at his complacency.
Benny will be 71 in February. When he reached 62 he decided he couldn’t stand not getting ahead with his violin, so he hired a teacher. He practices every day with diligence and serious purpose.
When you hear Mr. Benny perform before a symphony orchestra you are hearing him play the very best he can. He may make a glaring mistake. When he does, he knows it, and is apt to let the audience in on the blooper with the expressive lift of an eyebrow.
He may have been a prodigy as a boy, but he has not returned to that rare status. And he knows it.
Concerts Liked
It is easy to understand why Benny loves his concert appearances more than anything else he does these days. He admits that the quality of the audiences is a joy to him. And he feels greatful [sic] that he can ward off orchestral deficit and build up capital funds by his efforts in this direction.
The gross take from his weekend in Portland was $55,000.
Leonard Bernstein, conductor of the New York Philharmonic said, “Benny has done more than raise millions of dollars to eradicate operating deficits of major orchestras. He has brought multitudes of people who would not otherwise be there into the concert halls to learn that good music can be entertaining and rewarding.”
Jack Benny has said of himself that he is “a frustrated violinist.”
Some of the frustrations must be wearing away in these many concert appearances in which he performs creditably, if not really up to the standard of his friends, Heifetz and Stern. But, as his daughter Joan says, “who does?” Benny’s attitude toward serious music is a measure of his basic values.
The Jack Benny purpose toward music now goes beyond improving his technique and playing with fine orchestras. He is working on a violin concerto, which is said to contain autobiographical implications.
Everyone who met Mr. Benny during his stay in Portland has been pleased by his kindly and generous nature; this includes doorkeepers, society matrons, business executives, press people, and orchestral musicians.
As we suggested at the beginning, Jack Benny is an extraordinary person. And his devotion to music is touching.

Besides the concert and the ball, Jack met with students at the University of Portland where the daughter of writer George Balzer was attending. 60 years later, Bonnie Balzer Neel remembered the day with fondness in a conversation on the International Jack Benny Fan Club page on Facebook.

Jack also received a life membership in the now-Petrillo-less America Federation of Music. And he met the press, as Miles Green of the Journal reported in a page one story:

Sitting behind a bank of microphones and holding a long cigar which he never got around to lighting, the comedian answered a wide array of questions ranging from “Who are the best young comedians?” to “Are you really as insecure and frightened as they said you were in that magazine article?”
HE NAMED Buddy Hackett, Joey Bishop and Alan King as among the best of the current crop of comedians and noted young entertainers today don’t have the proving ground of vaudeville and burlesque that he and his contemporaries had. “As George Burns has said, it is unfortunate that no one has a place today to be lousy” he said.
Benny noted he had spent several years on these circuits, including frequent appearances in Portland, and they gave him a chance to polish his style. “If you didn’t have a good act in Portland, you could improve on it at your next stop. Now, when a young comedian gets a pretty good act, he is thrown to the wolves and is put on television.”
Of the magazine article which pictured him as an in secure and moody person despite his fame and fortune, Benny said he told the interviewer first that he was happy most of the time and then said at times he had bad moods (“maybe a couple of hours a month.”)
HIS MOODINESS was greatly magnified in the article, however, he said. “Since then, people have been sending me encouraging letters and books to read” he noted.
Although the statement doesn’t square with the “stingy character” role which has become his trademark, Benny claims he enjoys playing the violin free for benefit performances more than any other type of entertaining, “It’s a role that doesn’t fit any other comedian,” he said.
It is also a role in which he has been eminently successful. He has raised more than $4 million for symphonies all over the nation and is expected to raise several thousand more here Sunday night.

Portland mayor Terry D. Shrunk noted that day that Jack “in the short span of 39 years” had attained recognition as “America’s foremost comedian” and “the world’s foremost violinist.” Only the vain Benny radio/TV character would have believed the latter, but there were many in 1964 who would have agreed with the mayor’s assessment of Jack’s comic abilities.

Tendlar and Betty

In 1950, a local newspaper staff writer named Erma Bombeck told readers about alumni artists from Stivers High School in Dayton. First on the list was Milt Caniff. Second was an animator by the name of Dave Tendlar.

Tendlar’s career in animator stretched more than 50 years. He was cartooning a little before that. The Dayton Daily News of March 14, 1926 mentions he had been drawing for the student newspaper. A 1925 story mentions he was musically inclined, but didn’t state what instrument he played in the Stivers Orchestra.

His father was a tailor and by 1930 had moved the family to the Bronx, where the elder Tendlar was in the fur business. The Census that year lists Tendlar’s occupation as “cartoonist, movie.” He told the late Jim Korkis, quoted on Cartoon Research: “I started at Fleischer as a painter [in 1927]. It was opaqueing, but now they call it painting. I was there a very short time but they reorganized Fleischers so I went to Krazy Kat for a couple of years. And then I went back to Fleischer as an animator.” There was also a stop at the John McCrory studio in between.

Tendlar’s first screen credit was on the Betty Boop/Bimbo short Crazy-Town (copyrighted 1931 but released in 1932). He followed the Fleischers to and from Miami, where he was president of the Flippers social club (the club had a 40-page magazine called Flip. Oh, if copies survived!).

He was part of the staff when Fleischers became Famous. Evidently, he left the studio briefly, then returned, as the 1950 Census records him as “cartoonist, novelty films.” He was back at Famous that year. When Gene Deitch arrived at Terrytoons, Tendlar was hired to work for him. Near the end of the 1960s, he had moved west where he worked for Filmation and then Hanna-Barbera, where he was picked to train new animators, among other duties.

In 1936, the Dayton Herald announced he was coming to town to visit friends. The Daily News followed up with a story about him in its August 7, 1936 edition. He talks about the changes in Betty Boop's design.

Comic Movie Artist on Visit
David Tendlar, native of Dayton, but now one of the most interesting of the commercial artists in New York is home on a visit to family and former haunts. And with him is Mrs. Tendlar on her first visit.
Tendlar is the leading artist of a group of animators for the “Betty Boop” and “Pop-Eye” cartoons, seen in the movies. He spends a full working day either drawing one of the characters, depending upon which one is in production at the New York studios of Max Fleischer.

When interviewed at the Biltmore where he is domiciled while in Dayton, Tendlar, personable, jolly and interesting, said that the making of an animated cartoon such as those he works on was a great job. “An artist makes about four and one-half feet a day,” said he; “that is all he can do. The average visual length of a completed film is about six minutes on the screen. Ninety feet of film pass in one minute, so you see the cartoon is about 550 feet in length. Each move is a frame, and each frame is a separate shot for the photographer, and that makes more shots than one could figure up in a few moments.
“We sketch our figures on thin paper, and the first move is placed on another piece of paper, and so on and on. A bright electric light bulb is under our sketching desk, and in that way we watch the progress of the figure across the screen.
“The figures are then placed on transparent celluloid and colored, as the background is stationary for each scene, only the figures are changed.
“About 10,000 separate sketches are made for each cartoon,” and with that amazing statement Mr. Tendlar was asked to sketch the figures of the famous Betty and also Pop-Eye, Olive and Wimpy in the interviewers book which he did. Said the artist, “We have lots of fun with Pop-Eye, and we can make these figures do anything, fall down, hit each other, and indulge in all sorts of slap-stick comedy, hut it is different with Betty. She is always dignified. She must never fall, never be treated too roughly, and for that reason she is a very difficult character.”
Eagerly the idea to include Betty’s missing garter was made, but it seems that the censors preferred to have Betty eliminate that obsolete piece of apparel, and also to observe that the fashion trend was for an added inch or so on her skirt length, and so that is the reason why Betty flirts a longer skirt.
Tendlar went to Stivers high school, and was interested in art always. When quite a youngster he admits that he went in for cartooning and copying all sorts of pictures, and chose the wall paper (on the wall) for “bigger and broader fields.” Martha Schauer was the teacher of art at Stivers, and encouraged Tendler and Milton Caniff, also a Stivers student, when they sketched for the Stivers paper. Caniff lives in New York.
The first visit of Tendlar in some years is finding him visiting various places which he remembers most happily. For instance, Thursday afternoon was to be spent at Lakeside park and the Soldiers home. Tendlar wanted to see the lake, and the spots in Lakeside park in which he remembered having good times.
Max Fleischer owns Betty Boop, and has been making cartoons with this character for eight years, also with Pop-Eye, although the character is copyrighted by someone else.
Saturday Mr. and Mrs. Tendlar will complete a number of social gatherings which have feted them during the week of their visit in Dayton, and will then return to New York to start work on several technicolor cartoons.

Tendlar was 84 when he died in Los Angeles on September 8, 1993.

Hold It

Thanks to DVDs (and Blu-Rays), it’s easy for the animation fan to stop a cartoon and look at an individual frame. The Fleischers did this for theatre-goers in 1938 with the release of the Color Classic Hold It.

At the end of the cartoon, director Dave Tendlar (listed as an animator with Nick Tafuri) has joyous cats jumping into the air. Then they “hold it.” The soundtrack goes silent and the drawing below is held for 15 frames.



There’s a fun series of drawings of two cats, twirling 180 degrees then back again in a cycle. Did any other studio try anything like this before 1938?



The cartoon also borrows a gag from the defunct Van Beuren studio. Four singing cats join their mouths together to form one mouth.



UCLA did a great restoration job on this cartoon.

One of the cats in this short is named “Myron,” no doubt in honour of Mr. Waldman (I do not know if he animated any of this cartoon. Someone likely does).

Jack Mercer does a fine job as a raspy cat singing the title song. The short begins with Bing Crosby’s theme “Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day.”

Heir-Conditioned Background

Heir Conditioned (1955) opens with a left-to-right pan over an Irv Wyner background.



In case you are wondering who wrote this cartoon, observe the newspaper on the ground below.



This is one of the Warners cartoons made for the Sloan Foundation, which promoted capitalism, though this one is less bombastic as the same kind of cartoons made by John Sutherland Productions, some of which were released by MGM.

There’s a cameo appearance by Tweety in this cartoon, and one of the cats has the same voice as Huckleberry Hound supplied by Daws Butler.

TV's Combustible Foil

When you think of Gale Gordon, you think of someone who explodes over the latest antic of Lucille Ball. Because they appeared regularly together on television in three series (and, occasionally, on I Love Lucy), it’s impossible to think of Gordon being without her.

Yet Gordon had a lengthy career throughout the Golden Age of Radio. It’s true he was on Lucy’s radio show My Favorite Husband (he was not the husband), but he got the most notice for his role on both the radio and TV versions of Our Miss Brooks opposite Eve Arden. He played the same type with her as he did with Lucy, erupting in anger over something-or-other she did.

To be honest, I preferred him on Fibber McGee and Molly, though the routine was the same every time. Gordon would sputter, tongue tied, as the main characters mangled the meaning of something he said. There would be a brief pause of calmness, and then the blow-up.

TV Guide profiled him in a cover story of March 26, 1955.

Danger! Principal At Work!
But Gale Gordon, Of ‘Our Miss Brooks,’ Is A Pipe Smoker At Heart
It is a matter of both fact and sentiment that Gloria Gordon, who for so long played Mrs. O’Reilly on radio’s “My Friend Irma,” is the mother of Gale Gordon, who still plays Osgood Conklin on both the radio and TV versions of Our Miss Brooks. The broadcasting industry can be very clubby.
The point, however, is not so much the clubbiness of broadcasting as the family tree of Gale Gordon. His mother is an actress. His father was a vaudeville performer. His wife is an actress. The actors in the family stop here, however — only because Gale has no children.
Gordon himself, in addition to being an actor, is a pipe-smoker. He is also a plumber, a carpenter, a fruit grower, an oil painter, a playwright, a gun collector—and one of the few actors in history to appear in a radio dramatic role without saying a word. He once played the footsteps of the “Unknown Soldier.” Gordon, who has been doing the Osgood Conklin role since its radio inception back in 1948, figures it is just about a character actor’s dream. “There is nothing subtle about Osgood,” he says contentedly. “No nuances. Just a lot of very satisfying acid, bluster and bellowing, with an occasional weak moment of cordiality thrown in for leavening. It is practically impossible to overplay him. Even when he’s being cordial, he’s like an elephant trying to waltz.”
Just how well Gordon has established the Conklin character came out during a recent trip through New Jersey. At a small country store, presided over by a little old woman, he was introduced as the man who played Osgood Conklin in Our Miss Brooks. The little old woman, who had never before been so close to a celebrity, peered at him intently. “Why,” she said in surprise, “he’s just like a human being!”
Aside from the fact that he is quite possibly the most accomplished bellower in Hollywood, Gordon is the personification of normality, with no more than a surface resemblance to Eve Arden’s nemesis. An actor for 30 years, he is the most solid of solid citizens.
Gordon, whose deep, cultured tones are the envy of his profession, was at one time the highest paid radio actor in Hollywood. That was in 1933 when he was demanding—and getting —$15 a week for playing in “English Coronets.” Two years later every radio actor in town was auditioned for the lead opposite Mary Pickford in her own show. One of the finalists, Hanley Stafford, went on to become the most hapless father in radio history, opposite (if that’s the word) Baby Snooks. The other, who won the role, was Gordon. It paid him $100 a week and made him practically royalty. Thereafter, he hit just about every big-time show on radio. He was Barbara Whiting’s father on “Junior Miss,” Lucille Ball’s boss on “My Favorite Husband,” the mayor for 12 years on “Fibber McGee and Molly” and, for seven years, Irene Rich’s leading man on “Dear John.”
Gordon was born 50 years ago in New York City but spent virtually all of his first eight years in England. The following nine years he spent in New York City schools, hating every minute of it because it apparently took him that long to get over the fact that in New York one did not wear short trousers in grade school. The little New Yorkers threw stones at him when he first appeared in his correct English garb, and the impression lasted a good deal longer than the black and blue marks.
“The character of Osgood Conklin,” he says darkly, “was not only born but pickled in vinegar during those nine years. I hated school, from the principal on down.”
Not until he returned to England at 18 did Gordon begin to like school. It was there, too, that he picked up his flawless diction, which John Barrymore once said was the best of anyone on the stage, radio or screen.
Like most accomplished if unsung radio actors, Gordon is an expert dialectician. It may come as a shock to the younger fans of Our Miss Brooks to learn that Mr. Conklin once played the fabulous Texas millionaire, drawl and all, on the Burns and Allen radio show, and Inspector Lestrade, complete with Cockney overtones, on “Sherlock Holmes” with Basil Rathbone. On one particularly low-budgeted “Gangbusters” episode in the old radio days, he played the weak-kneed killer, the cop who arrested him and “the siren that presaged the advent of the cop.”
A man like that just has to be a success.

He's a Bat Man, Not Batman

Director Don Patterson found a different way to transition from one scene to the next in Under the Counter Spy, a 1954 Woody Woodpecker cartoon.

The villain of this Dragnet parody, The Bat, jumps over a fence and runs toward the camera, mainly on twos. His black cape envelopes the frame.



After only two frames in darkness, The Bat has turned around and heads toward a new background drawing, one of the outside of Woody’s home.



The scene isn’t really animated. The drawings of The Bat are poses, one after another, with the camera moving closer to them to simulate movement.

Ray Abrams, Ken Southworth and Herman Cohen are the credited animators, and I imagine Patterson did some animation as well.

One End to the Other

The city wolf spends a good portion of Little Rural Riding Hood trying, with absolutely no success, to get his country cousin wolf to stop reacting to Red’s nightclub stage performance.

In one gag, the country wolf (Pinto Colvig) gets a look at Red’s butt and begins whistling. The city wolf (Daws Butler) casually puts his fingers in the country wolf’s mouth to stop it, but the whistling simply gets transferred from one mouth to another. So much for the city wolf’s reserve.



The city wolf reacts to the viewing audience. Tex Avery holds the drawing for five frames.



Colvig has my favourite line in this short when he turns to the audience and observes “Kissed a cow” after we see him kissing a startled cow.

Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton, Mike Lah and Bobe Cannon are the credited animators (though Preston Blair did Red), with Rich Hogan and Jack Cosgriff sharing the story credit.

The cartoon was released on September 17, 1949, though we’ve found it was playing at Loew’s State in Memphis on Sept. 8th. It was re-released by MGM in 1956 and 1966.

Dennis Day Tries It Again

One of the many running jokes on the Jack Benny radio show was singer Dennis Day had two shows (and that somehow made him—“HA!”—superior).

With the passage of a few years, Day had no shows.

A Day in the Life of Dennis Day debuted on October 3, 1946 on NBC. It was a sitcom where Dennis Day played Dennis Day, but not THE Dennis Day. He played a small-town shy-boy with the same name as the singer, which enabled the producers to bring in a cast not associated with the Benny show.

The series carried on (called The Dennis Day Show after a story-line and cast change) until Colgate-Palmolive decided to pull some of its money out of radio. First, sports spinner Bill Stern. Then sometime-hillbilly singer Judy Canova. Then Dennis Day. All of them were told by the tooth-powder maker to take a powder. Dennis’ last show was June 30, 1951 and he was replaced with two obscure announcers from Boston named Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding.

Network radio may have been sputtering but it wasn’t quite dead. Day was still a bankable commodity. Not only was he still with Benny, but he was appearing at state fairs and nightclubs/casinos, recording for RCA-Victor and performing occasionally in films.

So it was that The Billboard trumpeted in its May 29, 1954 issue that Day was coming back to radio on Sunday, Sept. 19 from 5:30 to 6 p.m. as Nutrilite decided to push its food supplement on the air. Now, Dennis was no longer singing about tubes of tooth goo, but pills of parsley (with watercress and alfalfa).

You’d think a return to the radio dial would have resulted in all kinds of newspaper wire service or columnist interviews. But in 1954, radio wasn’t a big deal any more. I haven’t been able to find one with Dennis promoting his coming show. Instead, there were publicity department profiles of Day, some with “Paid Advt.” at the bottom.

In the meantime, Day, like Jack Benny, jumped into television. In September 1951, he turned down on offer to front a Monday through Friday daytime show on CBS-TV (similar to what future Benny bandleader Bob Crosby had been doing). Instead, he was given a spot on prime time, starting February 8, 1952, for RCA-Victor on NBC. He played what the press called “a swinging single,” but there was an air of familiarity as Verna Felton was brought back to play his mother, as she did during the run of the Benny radio show.

On September 6, 1952, he debuted as one of the rotational hosts on All Star Revue. Starting October 3, he was back on TV with RCA-Victor and then was renewed the following season. But he couldn’t have been given a worse spot on prime time, and even joked (in song) about it in his club act. The show died (in a rerun) on August 2, 1954, thanks to Benny’s real-life next door neighbour.

Here’s what columnist Earl Wilson wrote for publication Jan. 27, 1955. Day was performing in New York; this explains his absences from the Benny radio show in its final season. Day’s engagement at the Copa had been delayed from September as his wife was having their fifth child. The Bing Crosby episode Day refers to aired March 16, 1947.

That sweet Irish lad from the Bronx, Eugene Patrick McNulty—"Dennis Day"—has been dispensing a few truths at the Copacabana.
He confesses publicly that Lucy and Desi knocked him out of television.
"I had the program that people switched off to turn them on,” admits the father of five (Patrick, Dennis, Michael, Margaret and Eileen).
"I was replaced by Medic," he further testifies there on the cafe floor. "I made NBC sick—and they cashed in on it."
* * *
Such frankness is unusual in these days when everybody boasts about a rating.
Later in his suite at the Hotel 14, Dennis said:
“I wasn't kidding. This year Lucy and Desi are down to about a 56. Down! That'd be going up for everybody else.”
Right now NBC's working on a new TV show for him. He trusts he doesn't have to go on opposite Jackie Gleason. He lasted a year against "Lucy" and a year against Ozzie and Harriet [1952-53 season].
Yet many think of him as that nice young chap who's frequently on with Jack Benny.
And with permission of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, he'll tell a tale about that.
“Jack and Bing Crosby used to swap guest appearances on radio—it didn't cost either one anything,” Dennis recalled.
* * *
“Once Bing was on Jack's show and didn’t know we were on 'live.' He didn't start out very good.
“Suddenly he said, 'Who the hell picked this key Dennis Day?' ”
It was heard round the country and Bing—who'd played a cleric in two previous films—was worried and asked Dennis if he should do something.
“I don't know, but in your next picture, you'll be wearing a tie,” prophesied Dennis.
* * *
Watching Dennis perform—he has a pleasant manner—I was struck by the durability of Jack Benny's "cheap" joke.
For not only does Jack still use it after all these years, but so does Dennis. He mentions that Jack has a sign in his bathroom reading LSMFT.
Translated: "Leave Some Money For Towels."
And who perpetuates this one joke? J. B. himself. He sent Dennis a telegram saying: “I would come to your opening, only I understand they have a minimum.”

The debut show got reviews in The Billboard, Variety and Broadcasting-Telecasting. They were mixed. Here’s what Variety wrote on Sept. 22, 1954:

DENNIS DAY SHOW
With Rosemary Clooney, Jimmy Durante, guests; Jimmy Wallington, Robert Armbruster Orch.
Producer-director; Fred R. Levings
Writers: Irving Taylor, Allan Wood
30 Mins.; Sun., 5:30 p.m.
MYTINGER & CASSELBERRY
NBC, from Hollywood (transcribed)
(Dan B. Miner)
Dennis Day, out of the video ranks this season, is back in radio and with one of those current rarities in network broadcasting, weekly half-hour sponsor. Bankroller is Nutrilite, the food supplement; and this alone points up the changes that have taken place in AM from the time when a big-name variety segment in prime Sunday time would have no other bankroller than one of the top 10 food, soap or tobacco spenders.
Another change is the fact that Day is formatted in a show that five years ago would have been rated a good one, but today shapes as no more than satisfactory. It’s a straight comedy-variety segment, leaning heavily on guest stars, along with Day’s impressions and singing and the traditional byplay among the comedian, announcer Jimmy Wallington and bandleader Robert Armbruster. All of which adds up to pleasant though un-exciting entertainment which provides little incentive for redialing.
Guests on the opener were Jimmy Durante and Rosemary Clooney, the latter soloing “All the Pretty Little Horses”, and dueting with Day on “Light of the Silvery Moon” and the former running through his familiar paces with the band on “Inka Dinka Doo.” Day joined him on the latter with a carbon of Durante’s voice, and this combined with some evident adlibbing by Durante made the turn a funny one. Day soloed “From This Moment On” and “September Song” and reprised “Moon” as the Ronald Colman’s would sound.
How long the show will remain a fixture on NBC is hard to say, what with the shaky state of half-hour sponsorships in network radio. Program itself does little to insure its own longevity. Chan.

Day relied on his Benny connection for the show. Benny guest-starred on the Jan. 16, 1955 episode, with guest shots by Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Mel Blanc (two appearances), Sara Berner and Andy Devine.

Murdo Mackenzie was brought in to direct the show by the start of 1955, and George “Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” Wile took over as musical director, but, like the Benny radio show, its days (no pun intended) were numbered. Neither returned for the 1955-56 season. Magee Adams from the Cincinnati Enquirer of Feb. 28 explained:

FROM THAT ever-present source of information, the trade grapevine, comes a report that the Dennis Day show is to be dropped by its commercial sponsor March 13. According to the now fashionable view, this just goes to show why radio networks are having economic difficulties.
As that sort of thing goes, Dennis Day’s Sunday evening airing on NBC-WLW Radio is an ambitious variety show. In addition to the star, it has been making liberal use of “name” guests, for musical and comedy acts. On the drawing board, this is a formula that simply couldn’t miss, but taking it by ear discloses something else about the show.
As its star, Dennis Day evidently believes that the height of entertainment is a low of dialect impersonations wearily reminiscent of the “life of the party” kind of thing. And the guest acts have been shrunk to a mold as just meager. In short, the show’s variety formula has everything except an idea with enough entertainment muscle to lift it out of its adolescent groove.
For Dennis Day, this is no novelty. He scored with a previous radio flop with a purported comedy patterned after his witless youth role in the Jack Benny show. But it might have been expected that this mistake would not be repeated twice.
It is not the fault of radio that the Dennis Day show failed to satisfy its commercial sponsor. More clearly than some of the other examples, it demonstrates the oldest and most familiar principal in broadcasting—there is no substitute for program quality. In 1955, you might suppose this would not need proving.

Day could have used one of those Irish good luck shamrocks. Three days after Nutrilite lowered the boom on his show, and the day after St. Patrick's Day, he ended up in hospital with pneumonia and had to cancel his shot on a big NBC colour show on the 27th where he would play all the characters in Allen’s Alley with Fred Allen (Allen, for his part, joked to the UP’s Vernon Scott that Day should have been treated on Medic).

Plans for another go at a TV series (including one where the pilot was to be shot at the Copa) fizzled, so Day had to be content with guest appearances in addition to the rounds of show-rooms, recording studios, fairs and maternity wards. He was lauded by everyone, it seems, as a nice man and a wily investor, and always gave credit to Jack Benny for his success.