Tag: Minerva Pious

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Wireless Women, Clueless Men: Joan Davis, Vallee Girl

I was inclined to put the “wireless women” on hold for today. I have been feeling rather poorly as a result of an exposure to noxious fumes emanating from a fresh coat of paint in our conservatory. My evening with Claudette Colbert, starred in the rarely screened melodrama The Man from Yesterday (1932) was utterly spoiled. I also missed the BAFTAs, the new Marple (controversially, not a mystery in which the old sleuth was placed by her creator), and found little enjoyment in Crack Up (1946), a noirish thriller directed by radio dramatist Irving Reis, which aired on BBC Two early last Saturday. Dizziness, mood swings, fatigue and nausea are my mental and bodily responses to a thankfully small number of chemical solutions including household cleaners, varnishes, and insecticides.

Having spent some time in the crisp winter air this afternoon, I am ready to carry on about those fabulous radio ladies. I was thrilled to hear from a relative of Ms. Minerva Pious, one of the “wireless women” I have been commemorating here over the past few weeks. Her rags-to-riches-to-rags story sure seems worth exploring, particularly by someone who has ready access to personal correspondences and can draw on childhood memories.

The series will come to an end this Friday, when the (to the best of my knowledge) correct answer to the quiz will be disclosed in a tribute to radio playwright Lucille Fletcher. The “microphonic men” will be honored in the fullness of time (meaning, the emptiness of my schedule).

Earlier today, after a few exchanges via email, I was pleased to send off excerpts from my doctoral study to one of those old-time radio greats: none other than poet-journalist Norman Corwin, who will be very much a man of the hour come Oscar night, considering that a documentary about his work is up for an award. Now, on to the current column.

Judging from above picture, I seem to have quite a bit in common with ditzy dame Joan Davis. I am lousy at housework (particularly after taking a whiff of those detergents), tend to break things around the house (even when not intoxicated), and am inclined to sweep many of my mishaps under the proverbial carpet. Of course, Davis merely “enacts a housecleaning drama for Tune In,” a 1940s broadcasting magazine. According to that periodical (an issue of which I picked up years ago at a Chicago memorabilia store), Davis’s career was a “New Example of Rudy [Vallee]’s ability to Pick and Make Stars.”

No “clueless men” here, so far (except for me, of course). Certainly not Vallée, whose oleaginous radio persona I never found particularly prepossessing (give me John D. Hackensacker III anytime). He was a poor reader of lines, and his singing, too, had an air of carelessness about it. I gather he relied rather too much on the superstardom to which he became accustomed and used it to propel others instead of making any further efforts to push himself. Among those who came out of Vallée’s star factory were Carmen Miranda, Milton Berle, Edgar Bergen and Beatrice Lillie, the article claims.

Joan Davis, anno 1943, was hailed as Vallée’s “newest discovery,” notwithstanding the fact that she had already appeared on the screen in comedies like Sally, Irene, and Mary (1938) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941). “To many who have seen her in films,” the article continues, “Miss Davis may not seem a new discovery. But it was Vallee who lifted her out of a medium in which she was but little known, a minor success, and built her into the radio’s outstanding find of the season.”

When Vallee left his show to join the Coast Guard in the summer of 1943, he chose Joan to mind the Store. Here you can tune in to Joan’s remodelled Sealtest Village Store. It becomes clear just who took care of business, even though clueless executives thought for a while they needed to throw in Jack Haley for support. Davis, in fact, slightly improved on Vallee’s Hooper ratings, outscreeching competitors like Abbott and Costello, Burns and Allen, Eddie Cantor, Fannie Brice, Fred Allen, and Jimmy Durante. Obviously, his time was her time—and America made time for it.

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Wireless Women, Clueless Men: Minerva Pious, Alleyway Dialectician

Well, it is time to light the candles, open that bottle of champagne, and count the ways in which we love . . . Mrs. Living- stone’s husband? Comedian Jack Benny, I mean, who would have turned thirty-nine all over again on this Valentine’s Day. Americans may declare their love for the man by signing the Jack Benny Stamp petition. A licked backside! Now, that is more respect than the pompous miser got on his own show.

So, in keeping with this lack of reverence—and my commemoration of the dames, gals, and ladies of radio—I will give Benny the brush and stroll down Allen’s Alley, the imaginary neighborhood whose denizens were quizzed each week by Benny’s archrival, the partner of Mrs. Portland Hoffa. “Shall we go?” Portland used to ask, cheerfully, to which Fred Allen would reply something like “As the bathtub said to the open faucet: I think I shall run over.”

One of the people you’ll find on Allen’s Alley is Pansy Nussbaum, a Jewish housewife played with great zest by Russian-born actress Minerva Pious (shown above, with Allen, in a picture taken from Mary Jane Higby’s Tune in Tomorrow). Mrs. Nussbaum, whom Pious also impersonated on the big screen (in the 1945 comedy It’s in the Bag), was the “heroine of millions who listen to Fred Allen’s programs,” radio dramatist Norman Corwin remarked. Having cast her as a hard-boiled Brooklyn crime-solver in his comedy-mystery “Murder in Studio One,” Corwin was appreciative of Pious’s vocal versatility, adding that she could also be a “fire-spitting cowgirl, a “swooning Southern belle with six telescoped names,” or a “femme fatale from the Paris salons of Pierre Ginsburgh.”

In other “woids,” Pious was a first-rate dialect comedienne. And even though her heavy-accented caricature of a linguistically challenged, half-assimilated Jew was resented by some proto-politically correct critics, Pious brought so much heart and spirit to her weekly chats with Allen that her verbal stereotyping seemed good-natured, inoffensive, and indeed endearing to those who heard themselves in her laments and grievances.

As old-time radio aficionado Jim Harmon once put it, “Mrs. Nussbaum had less of the schmaltz and charm of Gertrude Berg’s Molly Goldberg” (discussed in the previous entry), and “more of Allen’s own sometimes acid wit.” Mrs. Nussbaum was no “Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog,” mind you; but, well past hearts, flowers, and Valentine’s cards, she did find considerable relief in complaining about whatever she was forced to put up with: wartime food rationings, the post-war housing shortage, or long-time husband, Pierre. Mainly, “mine husband, Pierre.”

When Allen knocked on her door exclaiming “Ahh, Mrs. Nussbaum,” the exasperated wife often had a smart answer revealing her Jewish state of mind: “You’re expecting maybe Weinstein Churchill” or “Turaluralura Bankhead,” or “Cecil B. Schlemil,” or “Mrs. Ronald Goldman?” A former beauty contest winner (“At Rockaway Beach, for 1925, I am Miss Undertow”), she claimed to have had her share of admirers who showered her with presents (“costume jewelry and coldcuts”). For a while, Pansy was torn between two playboys. What a “dilemmel”; but, long story short, after a weekend of deliberation at Lake Rest-a-Bissel she ended up with a “woim” by the name of Pierre.

Eventually, Pierre wormed himself into Pansy’s heart. Her marriage was by no means a loveless affair, even though it all began rather unconventionally, as a fluke. “Thanks to the telephone, today I am Mrs. Pierre Nussbaum,” she gushed during another one of Allen’s visits to the Alley. According to this account of her youth, she had been no catch: “On Halloween I am sitting home alone bobbing for red beets. Suddenly the phone is ringing. I am saying hello.” A “voice is saying, ‘Cookie, I am loving you. Will you marry me?'” And what did she reply? “Foist I am saying, ‘Positively!’ Later, I am blushing.” So, a confused Allen inquires, “why be so grateful to the telephone company?” “They are giving Pierre a wrong number.”

A telecommunications screw-up and a clueless suitor. Now, that’s as close to romance as Pansy Nussbaum—nee Pom Pom Schwartz—was destined to get. So, Valentine’s, Schmellentine’s! Minerva Pious was the one who lamented on behalf of all of us who have a Pierre of our own snoring on the sofa. We were expecting maybe Russell Kraut?