Radio: Have You Heard This One?

Three of Joe Miller’s* most successful radio debtors publicly acknowledged their debt last week. They gave a party (lavishly attended by comics) at a Manhattan hotel in honor of the immortal card. One gag man telegraphed regrets: “Where would radio be without him?”

The three grateful comedians could not say, but they could ask the question of themselves. They were “Senator” Edward Hastings Ford, 56, Harry Hershfield, 58. and Joe Laurie Jr., 50, who have wisecracked their collective way through no years of U.S. vaudeville, formal banquets, benefits, railroad smokers, etc. Their bow to Joe Miller was also a pat on the back for their radio program, Can You Top This? (NBC, Sat., 9:30-10 p.m.; WOR, Wed., 7:30-8 p.m., E.W.T.).

Con You Top This? is predicated on the sure-fire principle that every man has an irresistible urge to tell his favorite wheeze. The program is nothing but jokes, good, bad and indifferent, and there is nothing quite like it on the U.S. air. Some 10,000,000 steady listeners send in an average 10,000 jokes (90% of them unusable) a week. Four or five are chosen and told on the program by red-haired Peter Donald, actor and dialectitian. The decibels of laughter from the studio audience are registered on a “laughmeter.” After each joke the Senator and his colleagues tell one on the same subject (matrimony, money, courtship, etc.), try to outmeter the contestant. If he is not outmetered, he stands to win from $5 to $11.

Thanks to the versatility of wry, doom-voiced Senator Ford, cozy, white-haired Harry Hershfield, and “Little Joe” Laurie Jr., this incredibly simple formula is a funny fiscal success. Sponsor Colgate-Palmolive-Peet foots the bills, and the three jokesters freely admit that they never anticipated making so much money out of Joe Millers. Sample:

Mrs. Finnegan was dressed in black. A friend asked: “What happened, Mrs. F.?”

Mrs. F.: “My husband fell off a barge and was drowned.”

Friend: “That’s too bad. Did he leave you well provided for?”

Mrs. F.: “He left me $100,000.”

Friend: “That’s marvelous for a man who couldn’t read or write.”

Mrs. F.: “Nor swim either.”

Want a Laugh? A gang of Brooklynites make weekly book on the program, betting on their favorites to win. That disturbs the three showmen. Says Laurie: “We’re worried to death some night a gunman will come into the studio and say ‘Keep the fourth joke under 70. fellers, we’re out for a killing.’ ”

Politicians, executives and other people afflicted with speechmaking have taken to telephoning Can You Top This? for material. The Senator and his colleagues usually oblige, but they seldom give away much. Sample giveaway for corporation lawyers—Professor to student: “Give me a definition of syntax.” Student: “My god, have they got a tax on that too?”

Scotsmen Don’t Kick. Religion, politics and arson (dangerous subject) are taboo for the program’s joke-making, but everything else, within the bounds of reasonable taste, goes. Hershfield, who is also a columnist (New York Daily Mirror) and cartoonist (Desperate Desmond), and Donald are grade-A dialect storytellers. This talent usually arouses protests from the nationality they have outraged. But Scotsmen never protest. During 1943 the favorite type of joke sent in by contestants has been that known as “moron.” Sample: “Have you any children?” “Un happily, no.” “That’s too bad. I wanted to ask you how they were.”

Because the three professionals beat the contestants’ jokes about 75% of the time, their show has probably the lowest sponsor payoff of any program on the air. Advised that this might kill the program, Senator Ford observed: “We’re hammy enough to want to win all the time.” The Senator, who thought up the show and owns it, claims that no new jokes have been sent in. He is not surprised. He and his colleagues spend most of their time modernizing old wheezes. Last week Laurie was at work on the oldest of all. He had the first line : “Who was that lady I seen you OUTWIT last night?”

* The patron saint of gag men. He was a celebrated player of comedy parts in the plays of Shakespeare, Congreve, Jonson, Fielding, etc. His name, after his death in 1738, was fastened to a book of 247 jokes, sayings, anecdotes (Joe Miller’s Jests; or The Wits Vade-Mecum). It was a best-seller and, with hundreds of added jokes, inevitably became the comedian’s Bible.