The Lower Globaler

The Lower the Globaler

When he stopped working for Comedian Jack Benny, the veteran gagman Harry Conn was asked his opinion of Benny's ability to ad-lib a joke. Said Conn, sourly: "Benny couldn't ad-lib a belch after a Hungarian dinner."

Benny's ad-libbing ability was obvious to most of his soldier audiences on his recent 32,000-mile U.S.O. tour. But not a single top-rank U.S. comedian could get by for long without his stable of gagmen. The comic demands of regular radio appearances are too heavy for one man's wits. This fact confronted U.S.O. with a traffic problem when it decided to transport U.S. comedians abroad to entertain the troops. The gagmen would have made just so much extra baggage.

U.S.O. hit on a solution: a one-man U.S. gag factory established in London to turn out material for touring entertainers. The man chosen was serious, curly-haired, stocky Hal Block--who resembles Actor Edward G. Robinson. A University of Chicago graduate (1934), he was a scriptwriter for Burns & Allen and coauthor of Olsen & Johnson's Sons o' Fun. U.S.O. installed Block at BBC, which pays him a fraction of his previous earnings.

Block's chief job at present--aside from pointing up the patter of visiting entertainers--is doing the script for Yankee Doodle Doo, a radio show starring Vic Oliver, Winston Churchill's son-in-law. The program goes out to U.S. and British troops, hopefully designed to teach them each other's slang, humor, point of view.

Block has found that the British like old jokes to which they are sentimentally attached, whereas U.S. troops prefer a new twist. The British do not think insults are funny, whereas U.S. boys do. One of the few common denominators that both sides share is a knowledge of Hollywood and its personalities. Block also observes that the lower the humor, the more international it is.

International politics is a seasonably safe ground for comic amity between nations. Block was the man behind Bob Hope's recent European gagfest and had a circus trying out his best Anglo-American jests. Hilariously successful sample:

Hope: "I'm so glad to be here in England--the place where Churchill comes when he leaves Washington. He has to come back occasionally or he would lose his English accent. Churchill goes to Washington to see President Roosevelt. Of course, he could see Mrs. Roosevelt anywhere."

For Hope, as well as all traveling celebrities, Block's prime job is to localize gags so as to take comic advantage of particular localities. Thus, when Hope referred to a North African native woman as "a Lister bag* with legs on," the boys in North Africa howled.

* Shapeless water bag prevalent in North Africa.

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