Review - Honest Harold (The Harold Peary Show)

Imagine The Great Gildersleeve show.  Now imagine taking away all the characters on the show besides Gildy and replacing them with ones of inferior talent.  If you can successfully do both, you'll have a 'vision" of the 1950's radio program called, "Honest Harold."

The show is situated very much like The Great Gildersleeve.  This is certainly what Harold Peary envisioned in 1949 when he left NBC for CBS.  It's not like he was the only one doing this as many of his contemporaries were doing the same thing (Jack Benny, Amos and Andy, etc.)  He was sure he and his cast would rake in more revenue, would gain a bigger audience... but none of that happened  When he left NBC he assumed Kraft (the Gildersleeve sponsor) would jump on the bandwagon and take the successful Gildersleeve Show right along with him.  But Kraft was super faithful to NBC and Peary wound up at CBS without his sterling cast and without his show.

To make matters worse, William Waterman (a man who looked and sounded an awful lot like Harold Peary) stepped right in and replaced him on The Great Gildersleeve without skipping a beat.  Most people never knew the difference when he left the show!

Honest Harold was about Peary running a daytime radio show for women called, "Honest Harold: The Homemaker."  He would sing and give tips to the gals about housework.  He was a bachelor who lived with his mother.  Actually, this was probably a 100% innocent situation in 1950 but kind of queer when we reflect back on Honest Harold's "life."

Although this show boasted Peary, Parley Baer and Joseph Kearns, I dare say all 3 played their weakest parts of any show in recollection here.  Kearns is particularly weak in his role of Doc Yak-Yak, an annoying "Judge Hooker"-type character in a rip off of the Gildersleeve show.   Joining the cast is Peary's real life wife, Gloria Holliday playing one of his girlfriends.  Sorry, but she's no Shirley Mitchell or Bea Benaderet.

Honest Harold lasted just one lonesome, unimpressive season.  His partnership with mega-talent Walter Tetley was broken and Peary's show business career would continue it's stumble from here.

It's not a horrible show; but it's a far cry from The Great Gildersleeve.  2 Stars at best.





©Jimbo 2010/2011

Rare Great Gilderleeve stuff (including second fiddle Eve Goodwin!)

A Day in the Life of Dennis Day

I was very fortunate today to run across another Dink Trout photograph, this one showing his full face; also found today was the best photograph I have found so far of John Brown!

Betty Mills, John Brown and Dennis

Review: My Favorite Husband

My Favorite Husband is another of the long line of old-time radio comedies that doesn't hold up so well today.  It's not that it's a bad show (most of the scripts were later turned into scripts for the I Love Lucy television show) or has bad acting (the show is blessed with Lucille Ball, Richard Denning, Gale Gordon and Bea Benaderet) nor is it loaded down with unbearable musical numbers every 10 minutes (ala A Day in the Life of Dennis Day) - this show has no musical numbers at all.

Everything is in place for this to be a classic radio show - but instead, what we get is a soggy version of The Lucy Show.

In my mind, there's not one episode of the show that I can pick out and say, "You know, that was a great episode."  The only thing that makes the show memorable is the endless comparisons that are made with I Love Lucy and perhaps that is the show's curse?  It wasn't Desi Arnez or the Mertz's who made I Love Lucy work - it was the writing and Lucy herself.

This is where we came in.  This show has both of those things: the scripts of Jess Oppenheimer (the I Love Lucy creator and writer) and a younger, more virile version of Lucille Ball.

But for some reason, it just doesn't work.  One thing that would have made the show better is to flip husbands.  Make Denning the husband of Benederet and Gordon the husband of Lucy.

There's a good chance that this would have turned the show into a hopped-up version of The Bickersons (which is not a good show at all) but a souped-up version with Lucy and Gordon as a married couple might have provided hours of entertainment.

Gordon was one of Lucy's favorite actors and she really wanted him to be Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy.  Gordon never played Lucy's husband in all of the shows they did together; why not?

At any rate, Denning is boring.  He's not horrible but like Alice Faye on the Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show, Denning is simply a piece of living room furniture.  And really, why would you want him to be anything else?

The blame for the lack of fun in this show then lands squarely on Lucy.  I have no idea what the deal was, I just know that the show is just like most of the others (actually, slightly less fun) during that time frame.  The situations may have been a little more outlandish than say, Our Miss Brooks - but I dare say, Our Miss Brooks is a better show on radio.

If I were rating the show on a 5 star system, I'd have to give the show 2 stars - maybe 2 and a half on a good day.

Billboard vs Jimbo: The Whistler

The Whistler - like Suspense - is a thirty minute mystery/suspense tale that's better in the post-war years than the early 1940's.

Good guess here is that 20 of the first 30 shows use esentially the same cast, including Bea Benaderet and Gerald Mohr - Benaderet can use different dialects, Mohr is the same every show. (The cry in 1942 was probably, "Less of Mohr!")

The Whistler will always be the red-headed stepchild because it drew few stars to the batter's box than more expensive Suspense did.

Unlike Suspense, The Whistler has a twist ending always even if you know the solution.

Hodge-podging [#03]

Time for me to shoot from the hip.

Fred Allen wasn't funny.  Ever.  He was interesting and brilliant but not funny.  He was usually the straight man.  Great timing - just not funny.

No OTR show was better than "The Six Shooter", the James Stewart vehicle.  Everything about the show is smooth, easy and as professional as you could possible expect.  Every episode is really worth listening to, even if you don't like Westerns.

Bea Benaderet

The early days of Gunsmoke make for a different listening experience than the later episodes.  In the early episodes, Doc is greedy and it appears for all the world that Matt Dillon only "puts up with him" because he has to.

Jack Benny as "Buck Benny" isn't funny. Ever. And there are more than 10 Benny episodes about Buck Benny. Maybe it was funny then but it sure doesn't hold up today. That doesn't mean I don't listen to them, because I do. I just don't laugh...

I hold "I Was a Communist for the FBI" in almost the same esteem as I do, "The Six Shooter."

The early Whistler episodes are boring to me because I'll bet the same cast is used in 15 of the first 25 episodes.

I really wish there were more "People Are Funny" episodes available to listen to. By my count there are only 22 of them out there. Art Linkletter and the writers came up with some fun bits.

I don't own a television set.

One of the most versatile actresses of radio (and early TV) was Bea Benaderet.  But as the maid/cook on the early days of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, I just dislike her character (Gloria) so much that I often pass up the episode.

Did you ever wonder what kind of sickness kept Marian Jordan (Molly) off of Fibber McGee and Molly for 18 months (1937-1939)?  According to Greg Bell, it was alcoholism.

Does anyone really listen to Life With Luigi, Alan Young and Jimmy Durante?

Is there anyone funnier than Groucho Marx?

If you have never heard the early and hilarious Bill Cosby talk about The Lone Ranger on radio, now is your chance. And don't miss this 1966 clip of Cosby yukking it up about Lights Out.