Radio: Something Old, Something New

The desire to settle old scores gave a crusading fervor last week to the first Ed Wynn Show (Thurs. 9 p.m., CBS-TV). With blood in his eye, veteran Comic Wynn was out to challenge the TV popularity of brash Milton Berle. Wynn’s feelings for Berle, whom he can scarcely bring himself to mention by name, range from lofty superiority (“I’ve yet to see something original from that man”) to pitying scorn (“He’ll be the D.W. Griffith of TV—nobody will give him a job in a couple of years”).

Wynn had promised to bring to TV “something old and something new, but nothing borrowed and nothing blue.” In his opening telecast, there were a few borrowings (e.g., the ancient gag of casually lifting an outsized dumbbell from the straining hand of a strongman), and one skit, if not blue, verged on the off-color (Wynn coyly repelling the advances of Singer Gertrude Niesen).

Supremely confident (“I think I will bust TV wide open”), Wynn was onstage all but five minutes of the half-hour show, grimacing in a succession of funny hats, outlandish garments and size 13 shoes. The fluttery mannerisms, Rube Goldberg inventions and falsetto giggles were the Wynn trademarks made popular by a long succession of musical comedies (Ziegfeld Follies of 1914 and 1915, The Perfect Fool, Hooray for What!).

Wynn talked his sponsor, Speidel Corp., into letting him make television recordings of his show on the West Coast two weeks before it was shown to the rest of the country. It seemed unlikely that Eastern critics would duplicate the West Coast raves (“The ultimate in TV comedy,” cried the Los Angeles Mirror). Variety complained of Wynn’s “vintage jokes and facial contortions,” and commented acidly: “If he was trying to imitate Milton Berle he outdid him by staying in camera range longer.”

Busy with TV rehearsals and with plans to play the Mad Hatter in Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, Wynn saw but one roadblock on his upward path. “The only trouble with television,” he said thoughtfully, “is that you can be wonderful this week and just as bad the next.”