Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [116]
“Then why don’t you quit?” asked the psychiatrist.
“I can’t quit,” stormed the frantic one. “I’m a star!”
Moss Hart was almost as famous for his faith in psychoanalysis as he was for successful playwriting and directing. (His Lady in the Dark was the direct outgrowth of one of his many visits to psychiatrists.) So, when Hart’s brother Bernard produced Dear Ruth on Broadway and Moss read the critics’ rave notices, he couldn’t resist phoning his brother immediately and asking:
“Say, who’s your psychiatrist?”
Hart, one of Noel Coward’s dearest friends, invariably sent a gag telegram to him on every one of his first nights. Once, after racking his brain for an idea, he came up with a plan to send a congratulatory message signed, “Winston Churchill.” But the Western Union clerk, after looking Hart up and down and then at the signature, said, “Sorry, but you should know you can’t sign Churchill’s name to a telegram.”
“Whereupon Hart scratched out Churchill’s name and wrote, “Moss Hart.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said the clerk. “You can’t use the name of Moss Hart, either.”
“But I am Moss Hart,” explained the playwright.
“You are?” said the clerk. “In that case, you can sign it ‘Winston Churchill.’”
Will Rogers was entertaining during World War I when a large middle-aged woman called out, “Hey, why aren’t you in the Army?”
Master showman that he was, Rogers wanted everyone to hear the question. “What was that question?” he called out.
“Why aren’t you in the Army?” repeated the woman.
“Madam,” said Rogers in his unforgettable drawl, “for the same reason that you aren’t in the Follies – physical disabilities!”
Alben Barkley, the beloved “Veep,” told of a trip to Berlin in 1948 with Bob Hope to entertain GIs. Hope, according to Barkley, talked in his sleep and frequently “mentioned the name Irene.” This puzzled Mrs. Hope, also on the junket, and she asked for an explanation.
“Oh, it’s just the name of one of Bing Crosby’s horses,” he replied.
Back home a week later, the telephone rang and Mrs. Hope answered it.
“Who’s it for?” asked Bob.
“You, dear,” said Mrs. Hope. “One of Bing’s horses is on the phone.”
Hoosier humorist Herb Shriner, whose folksy, small-town-boy wit probably is the closest modern-day counterpart of the humor of Will Rogers, was recalling his home town in Indiana:
“The girls in our town weren’t very pretty. In fact, we had a beauty contest for five years – and never could pick a winner.”
Few city folk may have heard of Donald (“Red”) Blanchard and the WLS National Barn Dance gang, but for years they have been adored by millions in the rural regions. A sample of Red’s humor, from reminiscences about his earlier life:
“Pa wanted me to be a farmer, and Ma wanted me to be a doctor. So they had a nurse put out a pitchfork and a medical book alongside my crib. They figured the one I grabbed for first would decide. It didn’t work out that way. I grabbed for the nurse.”
Blanchard, when the preacher asked whether he took his wife for better or worse, recalls that he replied:
“I might as well, because I can’t do any worse and I don’t seem to be able to do any better.”
Fred Allen’s classic response to the statement, “The show must go on”:
“Why?”
And I’ll always remember this thought from one of Allen’s inimitable lower-case letters:
“remember, as maine goes, so goes the nation, but after spending a summer here i am convinced maine isn’t going anywhere.”
A Hollywood producer was said to have fired a dozen high-powered press agents within a month. With great trepidation, No. 13 approached him to show the copy he had prepared for the producer’s latest movie.
“This picture,” the copy read, “combines the poetry of Shakespeare, the suspense of Poe, the wit of Voltaire, and the plot mastery of Dumas. More than an epic, greater than history, it is guaranteed to give you a thrill you’ll remember the rest of your life!”
Expressionless, the producer studied the copy a moment, then exclaimed:
“That’s more like it. Just simple facts