The Baby Snooks Show
Encyclopedia
Ziegfeld Follies
The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 through 1931. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air....
alumna Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice
Fanny Brice was a popular and influential American illustrated song "model," comedienne, singer, theatre and film actress, who made many stage, radio and film appearances and is known as the creator and star of the top-rated radio comedy series, The Baby Snooks Show...
as a mischievous young girl who was 40 years younger than the actress who played her when she first went on the air. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing on Sunday evenings at 6:30pm as Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods
General Foods
General Foods Corporation was a company whose direct predecessor was established in the USA by Charles William Post as the Postum Cereal Company in 1895. The name General Foods was adopted in 1929, after several corporate acquisitions...
). The title soon changed to The Baby Snooks Show, and the series was sometimes called Baby Snooks and Daddy.
History
In 1904, George McManusGeorge McManus
George McManus was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of Irish immigrant Jiggs and his wife Maggie, the central characters in his syndicated comic strip, Bringing Up Father....
began his comic strip, The Newlyweds, about a couple and their child, Baby Snookums. Brice began doing her Baby Snooks character in vaudeville, as she recalled many years later: "I first did Snooks in 1912 when I was in vaudeville. At the time there was a juvenile actress named Baby Peggy
Diana Serra Cary
Diana Serra Cary , best known as Baby Peggy, was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent movie era along with Jackie Coogan and Baby Marie....
and she was very popular. Her hair was all curled and bleached and she was always in pink or blue. She looked like a strawberry ice cream soda. When I started to do Baby Snooks, I really was a baby, because when I think about Baby Snooks it's really the way I was when I was a kid. On stage, I made Snooks a caricature of Baby Peggy."
Early on, Brice's character was sometimes called "Babykins." By 1934 she was wearing her baby costume while appearing on Broadway in the Follies show. On February 29, 1936, Brice was scheduled to appear on the Ziegfeld Follies of the Air, written and directed by Philip Rapp in 1935-37. Rapp and his writing partner David Freedman
David Freedman
David Freedman was a Romanian-born American playwright and biographer who became known as the "King of the Gag-writers" in the early days of radio....
searched the closest bookcase, opened a public domain collection of sketches by Robert Jones Burdette
Robert Jones Burdette
Robert Jones Burdette was an American humorist and clergyman who became noted through his paragraphs in the Burlington Hawkeye.-Early life:...
, Chimes From a Jester’s Bells (1897) and adapted a humorous piece about a kid and his uncle, changing the boy to a girl named Snooks. Rapp continued to write the radio sketches when Brice played Snooks on the Good News Show the following year. In 1940, she became a regular character on Maxwell House Coffee Time, sharing the spotlight with actor Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan
Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.-Early life:...
, who sometimes did a crossover into the Snooks sketches.
In 1944, the character was given her own show, and during the 1940s, it became one of the nation's favorite radio situation comedies
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
, with a variety of sponsors (Post Cereals
Post Cereals
Post Foods, LLC, also known as Post Cereals is a food company that was founded by C.W. Post in 1895 with the first Postum, a "cereal beverage," developed by Post in Battle Creek, Michigan. The first cereal, Grape-Nuts, was developed in 1897. Post has its headquarters in the Bank of America Plaza...
, Sanka
Sanka
Sanka is a brand of instant decaffeinated coffee, sold around the world, and was one of the earliest decaffeinated varieties. Sanka is distributed in the United States by Kraft Foods.-History:...
, Spic-n-Span, Jell-O
Jell-O
Jell-O is a brand name belonging to U.S.-based Kraft Foods for a number of gelatin desserts, including fruit gels, puddings and no-bake cream pies. The brand's popularity has led to it being used as a generic term for gelatin dessert across the U.S. and Canada....
) being touted by a half-dozen announcers—John Conte, Tobe Reed, Harlow Willcox, Dick Joy, Don Wilson and Ken Wilson.
Hanley Stafford
Hanley Stafford
Hanley Stafford . An actor principally on radio, he is remembered best for playing Lancelot Higgins on The Baby Snooks Show. He is commemorated by a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.-External links:...
was best known for his portrayal of Snooks' long-suffering, often-cranky father, Lancelot “Daddy” Higgins, a role played earlier by Alan Reed
Alan Reed
Alan Reed was an American actor and voice actor, best known as the original voice of Fred Flintstone on The Flintstones and various spinoff series...
on the 1936 Follies broadcasts. Lalive Brownell was Vera “Mommy” Higgins, also portrayed by Lois Corbet (mid-1940s) and Arlene Harris
Arlene Harris
Arlene Harris was a Canadian-born American radio, film, and television actress. Before her career in film, she was well-known as a comic actress on the radio program, The Chatterbox....
(after 1945). Beginning in 1945, child impersonator Leone Ledoux was first heard as Snook’s younger brother Robespierre, and Snooks returned full circle to the comics when comic book illustrator Graham Ingels
Graham Ingels
Graham Ingels was a comic book and magazine illustrator best known for his work in EC Comics during the 1950s, notably on The Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt, horror titles written and edited by Al Feldstein, and The Vault of Horror, written and edited by Feldstein and Johnny Craig...
and his wife Gertrude named their son Robespierre (born 1946) after listening to Ledoux's child voice.
Danny Thomas
Danny Thomas
Danny Thomas was an American nightclub comedian and television and film actor, best known for starring in the television sitcom Make Room for Daddy . He was also the founder of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital...
was "daydreaming postman" Jerry Dingle (1944-45) who imagined himself in other occupations, such as a circus owner or railroad conductor. Others in the cast were Ben Alexander, Elvia Allman, Sara Berner, Charlie Cantor, Ken Christy, Earl Lee, Frank Nelson, Lillian Randolph
Lillian Randolph
Lillian Randolph was an American actress and singer, a veteran of radio, film, and television. An African American, she worked in entertainment from the 1930s well into the 1970s, appearing in hundreds of radio shows, motion pictures, short subjects, and television shows.-Early years:Born...
, Alan Reed (as Mr. Weemish, Daddy's boss) and Irene Tedrow.
The scripts by Bill Danch, Sid Dorfman, Robert Fisher, Everett Freeman, Jess Oppenheimer (later the producer and head writer of I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy
I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...
), Philip Rapp (who often revised his scripts three times before airing) and Arthur Stander were produced and directed by Mann Holiner (early 1940s), Al Kaye (1944), Ted Bliss, Walter Bunker and Arthur Stander. Clark Casey and David Light handled the sound effects with music by Meredith Willson (1937-44), Carmen Dragon and vocalist Bob Graham.
Tums
TUMS is an antacid made of sucrose and calcium carbonate manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline in St.Louis, Missouri, USA. It is a non-prescription drug and available at many retail stores, including drug stores, grocery stores and mass merchandisers. It provides relief from acid indigestion, heartburn,...
, The Baby Snooks Show continued on NBC until May 22, 1951. Two days later, Fanny Brice had a cerebral hemorrhage, and the show ended with her death at age 59.
One of the last shows in the series, "Report Card Blues" (May 1, 1951), is included in the CD set, The 60 Greatest Old-time Radio Shows of the 20th Century (1999), introduced by Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite
Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr. was an American broadcast journalist, best known as anchorman for the CBS Evening News for 19 years . During the heyday of CBS News in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often cited as "the most trusted man in America" after being so named in an opinion poll...
.
Radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim wrote this description of the devilish imp's pranks: "...planting a bees' nest at her mother's club meeting, cutting her father's fishing line into little pieces, ripping the fur off her mother's coat, inserting marbles into her father's piano and smearing glue on her baby brother."
Yet she was not a mean child. "The character may have seemed a noisy one-joke idea based on Snooks driving Daddy to a screaming fit," wrote Gerald Nachman in Raised on Radio. "Yet Brice was wonderfully adept at giving voice to her irritating moppet without making Snooks obnoxious." Nachman quoted Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
critic Hobe Morrison: "Snooks was not nasty or mean, spiteful or sadistic. She was at heart a nice kid. Similarly, Daddy was harried and desperate and occasionally was driven to spanking his impish daughter. But Daddy wasn't ill-tempered or unkind with the kid. He wasn't a crab."
Brice herself was so meticulous and fanatical about the character that, according to Nachman, "she dressed in a baby-doll dress for the studio audience," and she also appeared in the costume at parades and personal appearances. She also insisted on her script being printed in extremely large type so she could avoid having to use reading glasses when on the air live. She was self-conscious about wearing glasses in front of an audience and didn't believe they fit the Snooks image. By her own admission, Brice was a lackadaisical rehearser: "I can't do a show until it's on the air, kid," she was quoted as telling her writer/producer Everett Freeman. Yet she locked in tight when the show did go on---right down to Snooks-like "squirming, squinting, mugging, jumping up and down," as comedian George Burns
George Burns
George Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...
remembered.
Snooks proved so universally appealing that Brice and Stafford were invited to perform in character on the second installment of The Big Show
The Big Show (NBC Radio)
The Big Show, an American radio variety program featuring 90 minutes of top-name comic, stage, screen and music talent, was aimed at keeping American radio in its classic era alive and well against the rapidly-growing television tide...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's big-budget, last-ditch bid to keep classic radio variety programming alive amidst the television onslaught. Snooks tapped on hostess Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
's door to ask about a career in acting, despite Daddy's telling her she already didn't have what it took. Later in the show, Snooks and Daddy appeared with fellow guest star Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
in a spoof of Marx's popular quiz-and-comedy show, You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life
You Bet Your Life is an American quiz show that aired on both radio and television. The original and best-known version was hosted by Groucho Marx of the Marx Brothers, with announcer and assistant George Fenneman. The show debuted on ABC Radio in October 1947, then moved to CBS Radio in September...
.
Television
Brice and Stafford brought Baby Snooks and Daddy to television only once, an appearance on the June 12, 1950 edition of CBS-TV's Popsicle Parade of Stars. This was Fanny Brice's only appearance on television. Viewing the kinescopeKinescope
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program made by filming the picture from a video monitor...
recording today, Fanny is a strange, but amusing sight: a middle-aged woman in a little girl's outfit (and none of the other cast seem to find this unusual). Brice handled herself well on the live TV broadcast but later admitted that the character of Baby Snooks just didn’t work properly when seen.
Fanny Brice died May 29, 1951 with her memoirs unfinished and with Baby Snooks due on the air that same night. The May 29 memorial broadcast, a musical tribute to Brice, ended with a short eulogy from Stafford: "We have lost a very real, a very warm, a very wonderful woman."
Philip Rapp's The Baby Snooks Scripts, edited by Ben Ohmart (BearManor Media, 2003), contains Rapp's original radio scripts from Maxwell House Coffee Time, the Good News Show and other programs. The Baby Snooks Scripts, volume two (BearManor Media, 2007), includes an undated script by Rapp featuring Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
in the unlikely role of Snooks.
1938
- 02/17/38 Telling Time And Shaving
- 03/24/38 Rehearsing A Speech
- 03/31/38 At the Circus
- 04/14/38 Why? Because! (With Judy Garland)
- 05/05/38 Vitamins & Hiccups
- 05/19/38 Beach House
- 06/09/38 At the Doctors
- 09/22/38 Aunt Sophie Having a Baby
- 12/22/38 Visiting Santa Claus
1939
- 01/??/39 The Man Who Came to Dinner
- 01/22/39 Daddy's an Elk
- 01/29/39 Daddy's Boss Comes to Dinner
- 04/04/39 House Breaking
- 05/05/39 Life Insurance
- 05/11/39 Barking Rabbit
- 05/18/39 Golf Tea
- 05/25/39 Hugh What?
- 06/01/39 Gone Fishing
- 06/08/39 Violet Ray
- 06/15/39 Living by Dyeing
- 06/22/39 New Baby
- 06/29/39 Jealousy
- 09/07/39 Pulling Teeth
- 09/14/39 At the Dentist
- 09/22/39 Heat Wave
- 09/28/39 Airport Meeting
- 10/05/39 Mudneck
- 10/26/39 Cake Writing & Abe Lincoln
- 11/05/39 Barking Rabbit
- 11/16/39 Rich Uncle & Slapsie Maxie
- 11/23/39 Court Case
- 11/30/39 Insurance Exam
- 12/14/39 Psychoanalyzed
- 12/21/39 Sneaky Snooks
- 12/28/39 Hunting
1940
- 01/04/40 Bungling Burglars
- 01/11/40 Male Secretary
- 01/18/40 Chemical Catastrophe
- 01/25/40 Shetland Pony
- 02/01/40 Family Tree
- 02/08/40 Anatomy of a Robot
- 02/15/40 Tax Returns
- 02/22/40 The Missing Dollar
- 02/29/40 Wedding Cake
- 03/07/40 Baby Snooks Has Amnesia
- 03/14/40 Tom Thumb
- 03/21/40 Laying an Egg
- 03/28/40 Baby Brother (Wants Attention)
- 04/04/40 April Fools
- 04/11/40 Baby Fish Story
- 04/18/40 Magic
- 04/25/40 Motel
- 05/02/40 Auntie Septic
- 05/09/40 Lies
- 05/16/40 Jokes for Jack
- 06/22/40 Tonsils Operation
- 07/11/40 At the Beach
- 07/18/40 Library Visit
- 07/25/40 Port Hole Safe
- 09/05/40 Magazine Scam
- 09/12/40 New Car
- 09/19/40 Playing Hooky
- 09/26/40 Where's the Medicine?
- 10/10/40 Football Game
- 10/17/40 Where's My Change?
- 10/24/40 Raising a Loan
- 10/31/40 Ruined Suit
- 11/07/40 Oil Discovered
- 11/14/40 Measles
- 11/21/40 4 Fathers
- 11/28/40 Stolen Turkey
- 12/12/40 Haunted House
- 12/19/40 Christmas Skates
- 12/26/40 Returning Presents
1941
- 01/02/41 Sneaking Out
- 01/09/41 Art Museum
- 01/23/41 Flat Tire
- 01/30/41 Jury Duty
- 02/06/41 Flower Gardens
- 02/13/41 Taxes Again
- 02/27/41 At the Races
- 03/20/41 Photographer
- 03/27/41 Buying Shoes
- 04/03/41 At the Zoo
- 04/10/41 Trout Fishing
- 04/17/41 Baseball Game
- 04/24/41 Fixing Supper
- 05/08/41 Riding Academy
- 05/22/41 Insomnia
- 05/29/41 Antique Auction
- 06/05/41 Calisthenics
- 06/12/41 X-Ray Machine
- 06/19/41 Dollar Day
- 06/26/41 Artist Daddy
- 07/10/41 Going to Camp
- 10/02/41 Snooks Returns
- 10/09/41 New School
- 10/23/41 Duck Hunting
- 10/31/41 Halloween
- 11/06/41 Defense Stamps
- 11/13/41 Mixed Nuts
- 11/27/41 The Opera
- 12/18/41 Air Raid Warden
1942
- 01/01/42 Hangover
- 01/08/42 Victory Garden
- 01/15/42 House Guest
- 01/22/42 Hiccups
- 01/29/42 Report Card
- 02/05/42 Knitting Lessons
- 02/12/42 Camping In
- 02/26/42 Stealing Chickens
- 03/19/42 Fake Measles
- 03/26/42 Red Cross
- 04/02/42 Easter Suit
- 04/09/42 Daddy's Birthday
- 04/16/42 Poultice
- 04/23/42 $50.00 Raise
- 04/30/42 Quiz Kids
- 05/07/42 Fishing Rod
- 05/21/42 Sugar
- 05/28/42 Abnormal Psychology
- 06/04/42 10th Anniversary
- 06/11/42 The Twins
- 06/18/42 The Trade
- 07/02/42 Baby Buggy
- 09/03/42 Camp Report
- 09/24/42 Matinee
- 10/01/42 Gozinta
- 10/08/42 Charlie
- 12/03/42 Getting Gas
- 12/18/42 Cinderella
1945
- 05/13/45 Live from the Bijou
- 09/16/45 Snooks is Missing
- 12/16/45 Baby Snooks is Lost
1946
- 04/28/46 Going on Vacation
- 09/01/46 First Day at School
- 09/06/46 Baby Snooks Stays at Home
- 09/29/46 The Cat-man's Revenge
- 11/01/46 Hallowe'en Trick or Treat
1947
- 03/02/47 Home Remodeling
- 05/23/47 Miracle Children Quiz Show
- 10/17/47 Daddy's New Suits
- 10/24/47 Ugly Duckling (Snooks is Unpopular)
1951
- 01/05/51 Daddy's Old Flame
- 01-15-51 The Lady Detective
- 02-18-51 Hanging Wallpaper
- 03/20/51 The Easter Bonnet
- 05/05/51 Report Card Blues
Further reading
- Rapp, Philip. The Baby Snooks Scripts. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2003. ISBN 1-59393-057-7.
Listen to
- OTR Network Library: Baby Snooks (seven 1940-51 episodes)
- Botar's Old Time Radio: Baby Snooks (15 1940-51 episodes)