Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [36]
For timing, control, good taste, and generosity in giving laugh lines to others, Jack has no peer in his field. He is also a true gentleman. By now it should be no secret that his favorite comedian is George Burns, who has only to walk on to make Jack break up. And it should be common knowledge that he is not really the skinflint and antique collector of his comedy sketches.
Jack gives lavishly to charity. During World War II, he insisted on paying the line charges for his broadcasts made around the country for War Bond drives and Army recruiting – an expense of one hundred thousand dollars in one year alone. Once, when Eddie Cantor invited him to dinner and began discussing a Bonds for Israel campaign, Benny overwhelmed his old friend by writing a check for $25,000. But Jack observed later: “Don’t ever eat at Cantor’s house. He serves the most expensive meals in town.” The appeal of Jack’s benefit violin concerts is well known. To date they have raised more than two million dollars for charity.
Danny Thomas, another good friend and comedy artist with a Chicago pedigree, traveled a rocky road up as a café comic. I remember him well from his days at the 5100 Club on Chicago’s far North Side, in the early 1940s. He was just in from Detroit, jobless, with a wife and one child to feed, and another child on the way. Agent Leo Salkin, then of the William Morris Agency, booked him into the 5100 for seventy-five dollars a week. Danny played there for three solid years. That success led to a radio show (WMAO), the night-club big time (first at La Martinique in New York) – and Danny was up and away.
Chicago also plays an important part in the story of Danny’s service to St. Jude Thaddius, the “patron saint of hopeless causes.” After being fired from a night club in Detroit, Danny prayed to St. Jude for a sign that he should continue in show business, and he received one; a telegram arrived, inviting him to come to Chicago to do a radio tooth-paste commercial. Later, reflecting on his good fortune and seeking a way to honor St. Jude by helping others, he asked the late Samuel Cardinal Stritch of Chicago for suggestions. “Why not a hospital for children? And why not in a city I’ve always felt close to – Memphis, where I began my priesthood,” said the beloved prelate. Through personal appearances and fund drives, Danny raised $1,500,000 in five years, and in 1961 his six-million-dollar leukemia research hospital, dedicated to St. Jude, was opened in Memphis.
George Gobel, a Roosevelt High graduate and former singer on the WLS National Barn Dance, also calls Chicago home. In 1954, he stole the two-hour, four-network Diamond Jubilee of Light show with his explanation of a complicated electronic calculator:
“The reason I’ve been asked to explain the workings of this thing is because of my education in the field of elec . . . elec . . . elec . . . well, I know so much about the intric . . . I’m able to put technical terms into the language of the … I work cheap, is the reason.”
George’s break came after years of knocking around the small clubs, capped by a long stay at the North Side’s Helsing’s Lounge. It was a replay of the familiar Chicago success story. Many others came up the same way – Joey Bishop in the Vine Gardens on North Avenue, Olsen and Johnson in the old North American Restaurant, Shecky Greene at the Old Cuban Village, New Yorker Alan King at the old Silver Frolics on Madison, and the late Willie Shore at the High-Hat on Rush Street.
Willie, nicknamed “Benefit Willie” (and during the war “Off-Shore Willie”) for his willingness to play benefits anywhere, was particularly beloved. As familiar a part of the Near North Side as the Water Tower, he set what must be a record for a single stand – nine consecutive years at the High-Hat.
Then there is Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen, a show-business kid almost literally born in a trunk (in New York), but most closely associated with Chicago and Hyde