After 13 years of life on the half shell in Hollywood, I have made a trip where I wasn't a tourist. |
But Charlie, Charlie, how can we ever really know anything? Charlie, what or who is God? |
Charlie, what is nature of life? |
Charlie, where is the soul? |
Funny, nothing ever happens nowadays. |
Hey kid, do you want to come and talk to Charlie? |
I was asking Charlie the most important questions, and you heard the answers. |
I would like to see a vaudeville world of three-a-day. Five-a-day is too many. Managers who are trying to profit at that rate will gorge themselves right out of business. You can't put entertainment on a production line basis. |
I've never told you the story of Alice in Wonderland, have I? |
Maybe it is the war or the movies or because this generation was bred on radio comedy, but I found out that they want bombastic stuff with a lot of drive. They have little time for whimsy. It varies, of course, from town to town. The Hartford audience was sharper on some things than the Buffalo audience. Political jokes go, depending upon how the community votes. A Negro audience will pick up subtle comedy quicker than anyone else. |
My friend Charlie McCarthy is, of course, much more of a celebrity than he was 13 years ago... They wanted to see McCarthy: striped pants, monocle, derby and Bergen's bald head. If that had happened in radio, the reaction would have been slow, diffused and debatable. I wouldn't learn anything from an audience sitting in a broadcasting studio in Hollywood, because those people all are in my business. |
Nobody seems to know yet how television is going to affect the radio, movies, love, housekeeping or the church, but it has definitely revived vaudeville. |
OK, magic boy, let's see who you really are. |
Show me where Stalin is buried and I'll show you a Communist Plot. |
So many people are working in vaudeville today that I looked for three weeks to book enough acts for an hour bill and didn't have them until the night before we opened in Buffalo and money was no object! |