For almost as long as there has been broadcasting, there has been commercial sponsorship. But from the 1930s through the 1960s, sponsors had an unusual amount of power because, through advertising agencies, they owned entire blocks of time on the program schedule and produced their own shows. In this episode we look at a few examples of sponsor power run amok, resulting in complications that were sometimes dangerous, sometimes just silly. Along the way we will sample clips from “The Jack Benny Program,” “The Flintstones,” “I Love Lucy,” “Playhouse 90,” “The $64,000 Question” and “30 Rock,” among others.
It was Sunday, November 28, 1943, and there was trouble behind the scenes on "The Grape Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny."
The show would be live on the air within hours, and the show's female lead, Mary Livingstone, had laryngitis. And on a radio program there really wasn't a workaround for that. The real-life wife of Jack Benny, Livingstone was Benny's most regular on-air tormentor. Without her, at least half the show would be dead air.
Jack Benny got on the phone. He had to find a substitute, and one person immediately and clearly leapt to mind:
Barbara Stanwyck.
Not just because she could handle the role -- she was Barbara Stanwyck, after all. But also because she was also extremely tight with Jack and Mary. Sure enough, she happily showed up to play Mary's part on short notice.
That, friends, is almost a textbook definition of a solid Hollywood friendship. And it symbolizes the bond between Stanwyck and Jack and Mary Benny -- one that led to Stanwyck's numerous guest appearances on Benny's radio show, and at least one TV sketch with Benny that would end up being a topic of discussion at the U.S. Supreme Court.
First, a little background.
From 1934-55, Jack Benny's Sunday night show was one of the most popular on radio. To most Americans it was almost a religious ritual to check in with Benny, Livingstone, announcer Don Wilson, singer Dennis Day, comic Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and bandleader Phil Harris. It was a tight team and everyone had their place -- Livingstone needled Benny; Day sang a song in his Irish tenor and needled Benny; Anderson, as Benny's valet Rochester, played a "subservient" role and needled Benny; Harris told jokes about his drinking or his band's lack of talent and needled Benny; and Wilson did commercials for Lucky Strike cigarettes or Jell-O or Grape Nuts Flakes and needled Benny.
That was the key to Benny's success -- as talented a comic as he was, with a sense of timing honed by years in vaudeville, Benny was the straight man on his show. He was ridiculed as a ham, a miser, an egotist, a pedant and a lousy violin player. And he cried all the way to the bank. His hold on his Sunday night timeslot was so strong that when General Foods ended its sponsorship of Benny's show in the early 1940s, they gave him the slot to work with any other sponsor he chose.
Despite his on-air image, Benny was a generous boss to his cast and to his writers -- whom he signed to long-term contracts, something unheard in the cutthroat world of radio. They repaid him with great work -- Hollywood stars who didn't usually do radio gladly worked with Benny because they knew the material would be great. Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, James Stewart -- they all made several appearances with Benny. (Bogart even made a very rare TV appearance on Benny's show.) From 1945-47, Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume were practically semi-regulars with Benny, playing themselves as Jack's put-upon Beverly Hills neighbors. At first, Colman was terrified of doing straight comedy, but Benny's encouragement and good scripts helped convince him.
Now back to Barbara Stanwyck.
In real life, Jack and Mary Benny were close friends of Stanwyck and husband Robert Taylor. In her Stanwyck biography Steel-True, Victoria Wilson writes that Stanwyck's adopted son, Dion, was a playmate to Jack and Mary's adopted daughter, Joan. Wilson also writes that Stanwyck would visit the Bennys in Palm Springs, where she would sunbathe nude on the roof. (Makes you wonder if Billy Wilder had that in mind when he wrote Stanwyck's opening scene in "Double Indemnity.") Benny told interviewers that Stanwyck had the best sense of humor in Hollywood.
To make their connection even more complicated, Benny freely admitted that he appropriated his low-key comic style from Stanwyck's abusive ex-husband, Frank Fay, a leading vaudeville comic. When the major studios made their big talking revues in the late 1920s, Fay hosted the Warner Bros. entry, "The Show of Shows," while Benny was a co-host of MGM's "Hollywood Revue of 1929."
Although Benny made a handful of movies, including Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be," he did his best work on the radio. And some of Benny's best radio work consisted of parodies of current movies. We've detailed some of them in other blog posts, like "Dive Bomber" and "City for Conquest." On January 7, 1940, Benny burlesqued "Golden Boy," and Stanwyck went along for the ride. The storyline begins with Jack and Mary at the Biltmore Bowl, a dance hall where Phil Harris played with his band. They come across Stanwyck -- she's good friends with Phil Harris, but she mistakes Jack Benny for bandleader Ben Bernie. Still, Jack convinces her to appear opposite him in his production of "Golden Boy" and they schedule a rehearsal at Jack's house. Listen for yourself:
Wilson writes that Stanwyck refused to accept any payment for her performance, so Benny bought her a sable coat.
This episode is from what, to me at least, is Benny's funniest period, mostly because of the contributions of writers Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin, who worked for Benny from the mid-1930s until 1943 and gave the show a fresh, eccentric flavor. The team broke up when Morrow was drafted, and Benny turned to a staff of four writers, most of whom would stay with him until the end of his career -- Sam Perrin, Milt Josefsburg, George Balzer and John Tackaberry. From the time of that switch, "The Jack Benny Program" became slicker, more self-referential and, in one guy's opinion, just a little stale, but the show was still a ratings powerhouse. When Benny jumped from NBC to CBS in 1949 for tax reasons, virtually all of his audience jumped with him.
In June 1953, Benny teamed with Stanwyck for a spoof of "Gaslight," called "Autolight," for his TV series, He had done the sketch on live TV in 1952, so this was simply a way of getting it on film. But once it was in the can, an unusual lawsuit was filed by MGM parent Loews, Inc. They argued that because the sketch incorporated the film's plot to an unusual degree, it went beyond being a parody and constituted "infringement and unfair competition." Benny and his sponsor, the American Tobacco Company, went to court, and the judge found in favor of Loew's. Arguing that the ruling would have a stifling effect on comics and comedy, Benny's lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court in 1957. The next year, the court upheld the lower court's verdict, and Benny knew he was beaten. He bought a seven-year "license to parody" from MGM and the sketch finally aired in January 1959, five and a half years after it was shot.
A couple of notes before you watch:
1. The cartwheeling girl who interrupts the sketch is part of a running joke introduced earlier in the show.
2. The man from Scotland Yard is played by Bob Crosby, who became the show's bandleader after Phil Harris left in 1952.
3. And while you watch, wonder if MGM maybe had a point -- the sketch includes a fair amount of the plot of "Gaslight," albeit infused with jokes about salami and horses in closets. Also notice Stanwyck's reference at the end to her friend, Mary Livingstone:
"The Hollywood Revue of 1929," MGM's entry in the look-at-us-we're-talking sweepstakes, is a lot like Warner Bros.' "The Show of Shows," released later that year. It's a big-budget hodgepodge of skits and songs featuring almost every performer on the lot (a select few were exempt -- Al Jolson isn't in "The Show of Shows" and Greta Garbo isn't in "Hollywood Revue").
The budget is so big, the chorus ends up passing the hat.
Both films were designed to introduce audiences to the brave new world of talkie films -- the ironic thing is that early talkies, because of cumbersome cameras and sound recording equipment, were much less "free" than silent films. The setting that both studios use to showcase sound is very static -- a clearly defined stage, proscenium arch and all. ("Broadway Revue" even has a pit orchestra.)
Joan Crawford warms up for her big dance number.
Still, this was a chance to see your favorite actors and actresses talk, dance and sing. MGM used to brag about having "more stars than there are in heaven," and at least a galaxy or two is accounted for here -- Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Marie Dressler, Bessie Love, Anita Page, Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and many others.
Like "The Show of Shows," "Hollywood Revue" prides itself on being very up to date, with sketches that poke fun at quaint Victorian songs and melodramas. The opening number of "Hollywood Revue" and at least part of the proceedings take place in the context of a much more modern setting -- a, um, minstrel show.
The emcees here are Conrad Nagel and Jack Benny. Benny was a headliner in vaudeville by this point, but this is early in his career and he's just beginning to perfect the mannerisms and low-key style that he would utilize so successfully in radio and television. The emcee of "The Show of Shows" is Frank Fay, whose stage persona Benny freely admitted to appropriating, and in comparing the two, Fay comes off as more effective (at least to me). Here's Benny in a sketch with William Haines:
Here, by comparison, is Frank Fay in "The Show of Shows":
The other emcee, Conrad Nagel, is pleasing and polished -- like almost everybody else he sings a number, a song that sends lyrics of love right up into Anita Page's nostrils.
The two performers who are featured most prominently in "Hollywood Revue," however, are singers -- Charles King and Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards. King was the male lead in MGM's other big film of 1929, "The Broadway Melody," and gets far more attention here that he merits. (He sings the song "Your Mother and Mine," which is parodied in "The Show of Shows.")
Edwards, on the other hand, was never a big star, but he was a reliable second banana in several MGM films of the early 1930s. (And he was the voice of Jiminy Cricket in "Pinocchio.") His singing style is simple and appealing, and here he accompanies himself on the uke:
That is some art right there.
Comedy bits are offered by Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton and Marie Dressler, but they are minor stuff. There are also quite a few ensemble numbers with elaborate sets and costumes.
And then, toward the end, there is for me the most wince-able portion of "Hollywood Revue" -- a bit, shot in two-strip Technicolor, with Norma Shearer, John Gilbert and Lionel Barrymore.
You've probably heard of it if you haven't seen it -- Gilbert and Shearer perform the balcony scene from "Romeo and Juliet," and then director Barrymore tells them that, under studio orders, the dialogue must be updated.
Norma Shearer tries and fails to act like a regular person.
It's one of those ideas that has "cute" written all over it, and not in a good way. It also features what is supposed to be good-natured, natural bantering between the three, and it's truly squirm-worthy.
Soon enough comes the ending, also shot in two-strip Technicolor -- it's the movie's big hit song, "Singin' in the Rain," sung by the entire cast, in rain slickers, as they prepare to -- board Noah's Ark?
SEE Cliff Edwards in a rain hat! SEE Joan Crawford looking around for her camera! SEE Buster Keaton look like he wishes he was somewhere else!
SEE the complete credits for "The Hollywood Revue of 1929"!
The 1941 film "Dive Bomber" was released a month or so before the attack on Pearl Harbor. America wasn't yet formally involved in World War II, and it would be a few more months before Jack Warner started strutting around the Warner lot in the Army officer's dress uniform he'd had custom tailored in Beverly Hills.
But like a lot of films from that time, "Dive Bomber" anticipates America's entry into the war and gives us a lovingly-presented parade of military might -- in this case it's air power, in Technicolor, yet, and flanked by the rugged faces and forms of Errol Flynn, Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy. "Dive Bomber" looks great, and director Michael Curtiz never wastes a patch of blue sky -- there are always planes flying across it while troops and/or equipment pass by below. Dig:
World War II is a thing we're used to seeing in black and white, so the Technicolor scenes in "Dive Bomber" -- especially of real-life settings like an aircraft carrier staffed with actual people -- are riveting:
Based on a story by former Navy flier Frank "Spig" Wead, who also gave us "Ceiling Zero" and "Test Pilot," "Dive Bomber" oozes testosterone -- watching it makes you want to put on a khaki uniform and light up a Camel. Because there is smoking, always smoking -- in fact, the movie is positively Hawksian in the amount of cigarette-related male bonding that occurs. If you like a guy, you offer him a smoke. If you don't, you don't. And the symbol of ultimate bro-ness is to have the same cigarette case as your buddies.
The three guys with the same cigarette case at the beginning of "Dive Bomber" are Navy flyboys Joe (MacMurray), Tim (Regis Toomey) and Swede (Louis Jean Heydt). Watch them frolic and light each other's smokes!
Alas, tragedy occurs when one of the three (the guy whose name isn't as prominent in the credits) passes out during a steep dive and he crashes. On the ground, working in vain to rescue him, is Dr. Doug Lee (Flynn), whose fancy-pants education at Harvard and Johns Hopkins means nothing -- Nothing, you get me? -- when he can't bring the pilot back from the great beyond.
Dr. Doug decides to become a flight surgeon and try to solve the problem of pressurization and oxygen deprivation. In a weird coincidence, he begins flight lessons on December 7 (not 1941, but still). Then Dr. Doug is forced to team with the surly Dr. Lance Rogers (Bellamy), who is bitter because he is a grounded pilot. He doesn't even offer Dr. Doug a cigarette!
So Joe doesn't like Dr. Doug because he couldn't save Joe's friend. And Dr. Lance doesn't like Dr. Doug because he doesn't like anybody. And Joe doesn't like Dr. Lance because he thinks all that medical talk about pilot fatigue is a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. So nobody likes anybody. And we lose World War II, the end.
No, just joshing. Everyone ends up respecting the heck out of each other and working together to keep 'em flying. Joe joins the team when one pilot's death due to fatigue hits him right in his cigarette case:
"Test Pilot" is chock full of delicious propaganda -- Hollywood always knew how to sell a war -- and our leading men, especially Flynn, deliver solid performances. There are, however two unnecessary inclusions -- one is Alexis Smith, who spends the movie chasing Flynn even though he doesn't seem that interested. The other is "comic relief" by Allan Jenkins as Lucky, a bumptious sailor who's trying to escape from his equally bumptious wife.
Since "Dive Bomber" was a big hit at the box office, it was fair game for a parody on "The Jack Benny Program." The show aired on October 26, 1941, so there are opening jokes about Halloween, including this exchange between Benny, sidekick Mary Livingstone and announcer Don Wilson:
Don: You don't have the excitement nowadays that you used to have on Halloween. Jack: I guess you're right. Don: I remember when I was back in Denver as a kid. We used to have the time of our lives! Jack: Denver? You should have seen the way we celebrated Halloween in Waukegan! The old-fashioned pranks we used to play. But -- kids don't have fun like that anymore. Mary: Whaddya want -- plumbing or fun?
Then comes the parody of "Dive Bomber," with Jack unable to decide if he wants to play Flynn, MacMurray or Bellamy. Finally, the production gets underway, with bandleader Phil Harris as Flynn, Dennis Day as MacMurray and Benny as Bellamy.
By the time "City for Conquest" was released in 1940, James Cagney had been one of the top stars at Warner Bros. for ten years. The movies that put him in that position -- tough, fast-moving urban dramas with lots of action and snappy dialogue -- were so successful financially, artistically and culturally that they came to symbolize the studio's style during the 1930s.
In a way, "City for Conquest" is the last Cagney picture of that type. It's an elegy for those movies, usually set in New York City, with Cagney as a working-class Irishman named Danny, Eddie or Tommy who fights passionately for what he believes in, regardless of what side of the legal fence he's on.
In this movie, Cagney is in the unique position of being a kind of hero and elder statesman at the same time. There's crime in the picture, but unlike in the old days, he doesn't get directly mixed up in it. He's showing his age slightly -- his teaming with Ann Sheridan as his romantic interest, who's supposed to be the same age (there's a 15-year difference), is a little off. But in many ways, "City for Conquest" is the quintessential Cagney performance, combining his natural pugnaciousness and physical style with low-key drama and naturally played sentiment.
We begin in the city's Lower East Side, of course, led there by a philosophical and slightly annoying tramp (Frank Craven) who's supposed to symbolize the unbreakable spirit of New York. This part would seem a natural for Craven, who played a similar role, the omniscient stage manager, in the Broadway production of "Our Town." It isn't that it's a bad performance -- it's just that the character is more of a dramatic conceit than a person, and Craven has to make his way through purple pronouncements about the city like this: "Look at it! Seven million people fighting, fighting, clawing away to get one foot on a ladder that'll take em to a penthouse." See for yourself:
We first see Danny (Cagney) and Peggy (Sheridan) as kids -- Peggy demonstrates her love of dancing by doing a number on the sidewalk, and Danny demonstrates his gift for fighting by decking a kid who interrupts her act. Oh, and there's one other kid hanging around -- Danny's artistic brother Eddie (Arthur Kennedy), fingering his accordion and staring into space, dreaming of the symphony he's going to compose.
Then we fast forward a few years -- Danny is driving a dump truck and boxing for relaxation. Eddie is giving piano lessons and still dreaming of that symphony, which he describes in phrases that might as well be spoken by our verbose tramp friend: "It's the city, with all of its proud, passionate beauty and all of its sordid ugliness ... of its teeming seven millions and its barren loneliness."
Meanwhile, Peggy's dream of dancing is given life by the smooth, arrogant Murray (Anthony Quinn in his days as the second-string Cesar Romero), and they become a team. Danny's happy for her success -- she's always gonna be his goil, no matter what -- but when Murray starts bad-mouthing Peggy and her friends, Danny gets hot:
Despite his skill in the ring, and despite the entreaties of his buddy Mutt (longtime Cagney sidekick Frank McHugh) Danny's always been resistant to a boxing career. Then, when Eddie loses his music scholarship and Peggy tells him of her dreams of being upwardly mobile, Danny realizes he's going to need some extra kale. So he signs with kindhearted fight promoter Scotty MacPherson (Donald Crisp) and starts making the boxing circuit at the same time that Murray and Peggy start making the vaudeville circuit. We learn this in one of those great Warner montages:
About this time, we're introduced to a character who's a lot like the characters Cagney used to play -- Oogie, a pal from the old neighborhood (director Elia Kazan in an early role). Oogie's back from a stretch in the pen, and Danny stakes him to a meal and a new pair of shoes. As Danny rises in the fight game, Oogie's star is rising, too, most likely through nefarious means.
Then comes heartbreak -- Peggy leaves Danny for a nightclub tour, and a heartbroken Danny starts fighting outside his class out of anger and spite. This leads to a championship match where the opponent plays dirty by rubbing rosin dust in Danny's eyes, causing him to lose his sight. For the rest of the movie Cagney plays his role with a squint -- and he's one of the few guys who can make a squint look heroic. Oogie takes it upon himself to avenge Danny, and ends up eating lead on the waterfront. You can almost hear him say "I ain't so tough" a la Cagney in "The Public Enemy."
At the movie's climax, only Eddie has achieved his dream -- to conduct his symphony at Carnegie Hall. Danny listens on the radio, from his newsstand in Times Square:
You might call this ending over the top -- I would, but I think it's bad form to poke fun at a scene that brings tears to your eyes.
One of the best parts of Jack Benny's radio show were parodies of current movies, and "City for Conquest" did not escape scrutiny. By this point in Benny's career, he was the country's most popular radio comic and the regular cast that would be with him for decades was firmly in place -- jovial announcer Don Wilson; comic foil Mary Livingstone (Benny's real-life wife); vain, boozing bandleader Phil Harris and naive singer Dennis Day.
This is during the period when Benny's show, written by Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin, hadn't quite fallen into its postwar sitcom phase -- there is an opening about Jack putting his footprints at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, with Benny exhibiting the same kind of false modesty as Anne Hathaway accepting a Golden Globe for "Les Miserables."
The "City for Conquest" sketch is short, concentrating mainly on the boxer plot. Targets include the film's overblown "poetry" and Eddie's musical aspirations (Phil Harris plays Eddie, who is composing his symphony on a drum set instead of a piano. His solution for the big finish: more cowbell.) There's also fun poked at Cagney's Lower East Side patois:
Benny (as Cagney, to Mary): Is that a new skoit? Mary (as Sheridan): Yeah. Is that a new shoit? Benny: Yes, it's a new shoit. How do you like my shoit? Mary: It's a little short around Detroit.
Here are the credits for "City for Conquest," and a trailer:
About midway through the 1930 film "Chasing Rainbows,"Bessie Love -- as Carlie, one-half of a musical comedy team -- gets the news that the other half of the team, Terry (Charles King), has gotten engaged to someone else. Carlie has always loved Terry, and earlier that day Terry was finally feeling something for her, too, so now she feels like she's been hit in the gut.
To cover her emotion, Love plays this scene by crying like she's laughing, which is kind of sweet. And she plays it that way for more than 90 seconds, which is awkward:
But hey! That's life in show business, kid, and if you can't take the hard knocks then you won't be around for the soft knockers, or something like that.
"Chasing Rainbows" reunites Love and King of the 1929 hit "Broadway Melody" in another musical drama set behind the scenes of a show. This time around, they are appearing in a road show production of "Good-Bye Broadway," a show that includes the tune "Happy Days Are Here Again" two years before Franklin Roosevelt appropriated it as his campaign theme.
King's role is less sympathetic than it is in "Broadway Melody," where he can't bring himself to admit that he has fallen for the sister (Anita Page) of his longtime girlfriend (Love). Here, he's a bit of an oaf who's always chasing after -- and getting his heart broken by -- the female lead of the show, while good old Carlie makes his bed and folds his underwear. By the end of the movie, he finally realizes that Carlie is the girl for him, but you find yourself wondering how long it will be before he goes chasing after someone else.
And don't get me wrong -- despite her weird cry/laugh scene, Love is a pip, as they used to say. She's easily the most natural performer in the cast, which also includes Jack Benny -- two years before he would make his debut as a radio comic -- and Marie Dressler.
Both Benny and Dressler provide comic relief, but in vastly different ways. Benny already has his deadpan style in place and wouldn't make funny faces if his life depended on it. Dressler, on the other hand, can't even ask someone what time it is without crossing her eyes. Dressler's frequent co-star Polly Moran is in the cast as well, as a drunk wardrobe mistress.
The hefty Dressler is the butt, you should excuse the expression, of many jokes, such as when the cast hops a train to the next town:
Dressler: Who am I sleeping with tonight? Benny: There'll be three in your compartment -- Carlie and you.
The true awkward acting honors, however, go to Nita Martan and Eddie Phillips. She plays the vamp who gets her claws into Terry -- she wants to marry him because his sister is married to a big Broadway producer. Phillips plays her smooth boyfriend. But their bad acting, especially in their scenes together, is anything but smooth:
Benny fares a little better -- one of his early radio writers, Al Boasberg, contributed dialogue to the movie. Benny plays the stage manager, and his speech to the cast near the end of the movie is similar to the kind of material he'd soon be doing on the radio:
"Chasing Rainbows" originally included several production numbers in two-strip technicolor, which as of this writing are lost. Here's a link to the complete cast and credits.
