Funny You Should Ask

Imagine working with Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Fred Allen, Groucho Marx, Red Skelton and other comedy kingpins of the 1930s and 1940s. Sounds like a barrel of laughs, right?

Not necessarily, if you were a radio comedy writer.

It was a time, writer Charles Isaacs remembers, when “there were no laugh tracks. There were no retakes. It was on the air live, and, damn it, you had to get your laughs, or--in those days without a strong guild--you could get fired. The comics would throw fits if they weren’t getting laughs.”

Recalls fellow radio comedy writer Bob Schiller: “We were slaves. Listen, they owned you. The image that comes to me is guys on a slave ship. ‘More steam!’ Smack! When the comedians paid you, they figured they were giving you an allowance, like you were their children.”

Moreover, comedy writers rarely received credit for their work.

They’re getting it now.

Isaacs and Schiller are among a dozen top radio comedy writers rounded up by show-business historian Jordan R. Young of Orange for an oral history of this often overlooked period of American popular entertainment.

“The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV’s Golden Age” (Past Times Publishing, $17.95) provides a series of interviews in which veteran comedy writers speak their minds and tell colorful inside stories of the so-called Golden Age--tarnish and all.

In addition to Isaacs and Schiller, Young interviewed Paul Henning, Irving Brecher, Norman Panama, Sherwood Schwartz, Bob Weiskopf, Hal Kanter, George Balzer, Sol Saks, Larry Gelbart and the late Parke Levy.

As Young sees it, the legion of comedy writers who wrote the words that made millions of Americans laugh through the Great Depression, World War II and the early days of the Cold War are the unsung heroes of the airwaves.

“Behind every successful radio and TV comic was a hard-working writer--or a platoon of them--who toiled in virtual anonymity,” Young wrote in the book’s preface. “It is high time these invisible comedians took a bow.”

Young said the idea for “Laugh Crafters” grew out of an oral history of radio’s early days that he and fellow show business historian Randy Skretvedt of Buena Park began in 1989.

So far, they’ve interviewed more than 100 directors, writers, actors, sound-effects men, announcers and producers for that as-yet-unpublished book.

Kanter, whose radio credits include writing for Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Jack Paar and “Amos ‘n’ Andy,” was one of the first interviewed.

After talking to Henning (a former writer for “Fibber McGee and Molly” and “Burns and Allen” and creator of TV’s “The Beverly Hillbillies”) and Schwartz (a former Bob Hope radio show writer who created TV’s “The Brady Bunch” and “Gilligan’s Island”), Young wondered if there wasn’t a separate story on comedy writers.

“I thought, ‘Gee, these comedy writers have better stories than anyone else, and they’re more articulate than writers in general.’ After I had done six or eight of them, I said, ‘This could be a book unto itself.’ ”

The comedy writers held little back.

“As these guys get older, they seem to be less inhibited,” Young said. “It’s ‘What the hell? You have to hear this. This is the way it really happened.’ The underlying theme of the book, if it has one, is the way the writers were exploited, ripped off.”

The lack of credit for their work--either at the end of each week’s show or publicly from the stars themselves--was one of their biggest beefs.

“So many [of the comics] were legends in their time, and they virtually, almost to a man, wanted to perpetuate the myth that they were the creators of their material,” said Young, 48.

Radio comedy writers “were virtually unknown except for the people who did the hiring,” Young said. “They really didn’t start to get credit until TV.”

‘These Are the Boys That Write My Material’

Charles Isaacs, who spent four years as Jimmy Durante’s head writer on “All Star Review,” told Young he became so angry at Durante for never publicly acknowledging his writers that he was ready to quit.

Not long after yelling at Durante that “nobody seems to know that Jackie [Elinson] and I write the show,” Isaacs and Elinson were having a meeting with Durante in his room at New York City’s Astor Hotel.

As they sat chatting, Isaacs recalled, a maid entered the room to vacuum.

“Hilda, this is Charlie and that’s Jackie,” Durante said to the maid. “These are the boys that write my material.”

As the maid exited, Durante turned to Isaacs and said, “You see, I give you credit.”

All 12 writers interviewed were raconteurs, Young said. Ed Gardner, the mercurial star and producer of the popular “Duffy’s Tavern” radio show, was the focus of some of the most outrageous stories.

Former “Duffy’s Tavern” writer Gelbart, co-creator of TV’s “MASH,” remembered the time Gardner and guest star Monty Woolley went out for supper between the East and the West Coast broadcasts of the show. At least they were supposed to eat.

“They just had a ton of martinis and came back,” Gelbart recalled. “And during the broadcast, Monty Woolley fell on the floor he was so out of it, and Ed got down on the floor with him. And they just finished the program lying on their sides--reading the script of course, into the microphone.”

Balzer, who wrote for “The Jack Benny Show,” explained the origin of one of the best-known moments in radio history: The show in which a robber approaches Benny and asks, “Your money or your life?”

Famous Robber’s Line Came Out of Thin Air

Writers John Tackaberry and Milt Josefsberg were working on the script when they arrived at the robber’s line. But they were stumped over what should come next. As Balzer recounted:

“ ‘Tack’ is stretched out on the couch, and Milt is pacing up and down, trying to get a follow for “Your money or you life?” And he gets a little peeved at Tack, and he says, ‘For God’s sake, Tack, say something.’ Tack, maybe he was half asleep--in defense of himself, says, ‘I’m thinking it over.” And Milt says, ‘Wait a minute, that’s it.’ And that’s the line that went in the script.”

When the robber asked Benny, “Your money or your life?” during the broadcast, the studio audience roared with laughter--and continued to roar--as Benny, the notorious skinflint, silently mulled over his answer.

But that wasn’t the longest laugh Benny ever got, according to Balzer, who wrote the line that did.

On one show, guest star opera singer Dorothy Kirsten was introduced to the rest of the cast members, including Benny’s portly announcer, Don Wilson. Recalled Balzer:

“Just the night before, [Kirsten] had given a concert here in Los Angeles. And Don, being the educated one of our cast, started talking to her about music, and he said, ‘Miss Kirsten, I thought it was absolutely astounding when you did so and so’--he used all the musical terms, the obbligato, the crescendo--and she says, ‘Well, I don’t quite agree with you in every respect. I thought the . . . --and she had her string of beautiful musical terms. This went back and forth. And Jack, who’s been standing there all this time, said, ‘Well, I thought . . .’ And Mary [Livingstone] said, ‘Oh, shut up.’ That’s all she said. Mary delivered the line perfectly.”

And as long as Benny looked at the studio audience, Balzer said, they laughed.

“The laugh ran 29 seconds. ‘Your money or your life?’ got seven seconds.”

He Wanted to Portray Radio Writers’ Reality

Young said his aim was to paint “a picture of what it was like in those days working in radio. It’s a virtually forgotten medium. When somebody dies, their obit goes on and on about their film or television work, and it says, ‘He also worked in radio.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute. Before television, there was radio, a huge thing, and still of great importance, and a lot of people prefer it to television.’ ”

Legendary radio dramatist Norman Corwin, who wrote a book jacket blurb for Young, calls the book “a must” for writers and general readers. And John Dunning, author of “On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio” calls “The Laugh Crafters” an “oral history of the first order.”

The writers themselves appreciate the forum--and the recognition--Young has given to them.

“I think the book is quite accurate in the picture that it paints of the writers in those years,” Schwartz said.

Former “Abbott and Costello” comedy writer Schiller, who, in tandem with Weiskopf, wrote for TV’s “I Love Lucy,” “All in the Family” and “Maude,” said the book’s portrayal of the fraternity of radio comedy writers “is dead on.”

“The writers are speaking--or crying--their plaint, and that’s the way it was. Anonymity was the order of the day.”

As for him and Weiskopf speaking frankly into Young’s tape recorder, Schiller laughed and said: “We pretty much scorched the earth behind us, my partner and I.”

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“The Laugh Crafters” is available at show business specialty bookstores such as Samuel French and Larry Edmond’s in Hollywood and through. amazon.com. For more information, call Young at (800) 677-1927.