''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'' was a comedy radio series, created by the actor-humorist Cal Tinney (February 2, 1908 – December 2, 1993) and sponsored by

Quaker Oats The Quaker Oats Company, known as Quaker, is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago. It has been owned by PepsiCo since 2001. History Precursor miller companies In the 1850s, Ferdinand Schumacher and Robert Stuart founded oat mills. S ...

. Hosted by

Milton Berle Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; ; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over 80 years, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and tel ...

, it aired Saturday evenings at 8:30pm on NBC beginning October 7, 1939.

Production history

The premise was that listeners received prizes for jokes they submitted to the program. The panelists,

Harry Hershfield Harry Hershfield (October 13, 1885 – December 15, 1974) was an American cartoonist, humor writer and radio personality. He was known as "the Jewish Will Rogers". Hershfield also was a columnist for the ''New York Daily Mirror''. His boo ...

and

Jay C. Flippen Jay C. Flippen (March 6, 1899 – February 3, 1971) was an American character actor who often played crusty sergeants, police officers or weary criminals in many films of the 1940s and 1950s. Before his motion-picture career he was a leading va ...

, were known as "the gagbusters," and their job was to recognize the joke, interrupt Berle and finish telling the joke. If they failed, the listener received more prizes. The show's list of guest panelists included Tinney, cartoonist

Peter Arno Curtis Arnoux Peters, Jr. (January 8, 1904 – February 22, 1968), known professionally as Peter Arno, was an American cartoonist. He contributed cartoons and 101 covers to ''The New Yorker'' from 1925, the magazine's first year, until 1968, the ...

, Harry McNaughton (later a panelist on ''

It Pays to Be Ignorant ''It Pays to Be Ignorant'' was a 1942–1951 radio comedy show which maintained its popularity during a nine-year run on three networks for such sponsors as Philip Morris, Chrysler, and DeSoto. The series was a spoof on the academic discourse o ...

''), character actor

Lionel Stander Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor in films, radio, theater and television. He is best remembered for his role as majordomo Max on the 1980s mystery television series ''Hart to Hart''. Early ...

and Ward Wilson.

Dan Seymour Dan Seymour (February 22, 1915 – May 25, 1993) was an American character actor who frequently played villains in Warner Bros. films. He appeared in several Humphrey Bogart films, including ''Casablanca'' (1942), ''To Have and Have Not'' ...

was the announcer. The program's director was Joe Rines, and music was supplied by

Del Courtney Del, or nabla, is an operator used in mathematics (particularly in vector calculus) as a vector differential operator, usually represented by the nabla symbol ∇. When applied to a function defined on a one-dimensional domain, it denotes th ...

, Ben Cutler and Vincent Travers. Hershfield was replaced by "Senator" Ed Ford shortly before the series ended on February 24, 1940. Nine months later, Ford, Hershfield and Wilson became regulars on the more popular panel show of joke-tellers, ''

Can You Top This? ''Can You Top This?'' was a radio panel game in which comedians told jokes and tried to top one another. The unrehearsed program, sponsored at one point by a papaya-flavored soft drink called Par and later by Colgate-Palmolive, was created by ...

'', which had a long run of 14 years.

Post-war revival

''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'' was revived on the

Mutual Radio Network The Mutual Broadcasting System (commonly referred to simply as Mutual; sometimes referred to as MBS, Mutual Radio or the Mutual Radio Network) was an American commercial radio network in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. rad ...

on September 13, 1947, hosted by Roger Bower (1903–1979). Jokes that were used could win $5 plus an additional $10 if the joke could not be completed by panelists Tinney,

Lew Lehr Lew or LEW may refer to: People * Lew (given name) * Lew (surname) Places * Lew, Oxfordshire, England * River Lew, in Devon, England Transport * LEW Hennigsdorf, a rail vehicle factory in Hennigsdorf, Germany * Lew (locomotive), a British narr ...

George Givot George David Givot (February 18, 1903 – June 7, 1984) was a Russian Empire-born American comedian and actor on Broadway and in vaudeville, movies, television and radio. He was known for speaking in a comedic fake Greek dialect and was styled th ...

and

Morey Amsterdam Moritz "Morey" Amsterdam (December 14, 1908 – October 28, 1996) was an American actor, comedian, writer and producer. He played Buddy Sorrell on CBS's ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' from 1961 to 1966. Early life Amsterdam was born in Chicago ...

. Ted Brown was the announcer, and Harold Hoffman was an occasional guest panelist. Comedian Lehr (1895–1950), once well known for his humorous contributions to

Fox Movietone News Movietone News is a newsreel that ran from 1928 to 1963 in the United States. Under the name British Movietone News, it also ran in the United Kingdom from 1929 to 1986, in France also produced by Fox-Europa, in Australia and New Zealand until 1970 ...

and other film shorts, is mainly remembered today for his popular

catch phrase A catchphrase (alternatively spelled catch phrase) is a phrase or expression recognized by its repeated utterance. Such phrases often originate in popular culture and in the arts, and typically spread through word of mouth and a variety of mass ...

, "Monkeys is the cwaziest peoples." The 1947 revival, which first aired on Saturdays at 9pm and then moved to 8:30pm, continued into the next year, ending on October 9, 1948. Around this time, Tinney lost the election in his bid to become the mayor of

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

. Cal Tinney Productions brought the series to television on March 4, 1948, for a primetime run on the

NBC Television Network The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

on Fridays at 8:30pm ET until April 22, 1949, with hosts Bower and Leon Janney. Radcliff Hall was the announcer, and the panelists were Amsterdam, Lehr, Tinney, and

Benny Rubin Benny Rubin (February 2, 1899 – July 15, 1986) was an American comedian and film actor. Born in Boston, Rubin made more than 200 radio, film and television appearances over a span of 50 years. Career In 1929, Rubin went to Hollywood, where he ...

Book

Jokes by Lehr, Tinney, Bower and Rubin were collected in ''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'', a 1949

Permabook Permabooks was a paperback division of Doubleday, established by Doubleday in 1948. Although published by Doubleday's Garden City Publishing Company in Garden City, Long Island, the Permabooks editorial office was located at 14 West 49th Street i ...

published by Garden City Publishing. Permabooks were designed with an unusual format of a paperback bound with stiff cardboard covers (with a "special wear-resistant finish") to simulate the look and feel of a hardcover book and the company had previously published ''Best Jokes for All Occasions'', edited by Powers Moulton. The ''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'' Permabook featured a two-page foreword by Tinney, a one-page introduction by Bower, 66 pages of jokes by Bower, 85 pages of jokes by Tinney and 82 pages of jokes by Lehr. Under the heading, "P.S.", Rubin only had space for four jokes on two pages, as explained: "Benny Rubin was added to our show just before press time." Tinney's foreword offered some background on the radio program: :The idea for the program ''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'' did not come to me in an automat as has been rumored, but in bed. I scribbled a note about it on a nearby pad. The next morning I told the idea to my wife. She said it was no good. So I knew then I had a good idea. The William Morris Agency sold it to the Quaker Oats Company for 19 weeks (1939–1940) on NBC...The show went on ice while I was in the Army. I am happy Norman Livingston of WOR and Phil Carlin of the Mutual Broadcasting System saw fit to revive it. I am happy C.R. Smith of American Airlines provided a commuter service of DC-6's so I could fly back and forth between Oklahoma and New York and perform on it.Lehr, Lew; Cal Tinney, Roger Bower. ''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'', Permabook, 1949.

References

{{reflist American comedy radio programs 1930s American radio programs 1930s in comedy 1940s American radio programs 1939 radio programme debuts 1940 radio programme endings 1947 radio programme debuts 1948 radio programme endings 1948 American television series debuts 1949 American television series endings 1930s American comedy game shows 1940s American comedy game shows Black-and-white American television shows NBC original programming NBC radio programs

Production history

Post-war revival

Book

See also

References