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CAN you imagine the dapper, suave, and exceedingly funny Ben Bernie in the role of a village black¬ smith, forge-blowing, bending over a mule’s forefoot?1 That is what he might have been had he followed in his father’s footsteps.
Instead, he has followed nobody’s footsteps — and re¬ cently he was adjudged to be the overwhelmingly favorite master of ceremonies of the air.
He is a native New Yorker— born on the East Side, which means he started out in life with two strikes already called on him. Phil Baker and Eddie Cantor were his friends. The section was crowded with tenements and people. Ben liked to run wild with his gang, getting into mischief.
But his father, as wise a man as are most blacksmiths, bought Ben a fiddle. It was cheap and it squeaked, but it was the realization of young Bernie’s dreams. He stayed at home every afternoon, playing and practicing. That fiddle didn’t make beautiful music but it did what
the Bernie parent knew it would do : it kept Bennie off the streets until he entered Cooper Union.
Amateur collegiate theatricals attracted his attention. He joined all the student dramatic clubs. When the day came to decide upon the annual show that the students would give, Ben Bernie showed for the first time that he had an uncanny knack of knowing what the public wanted.
The school president and most of the other students wanted to produce Shakespeare. Ben held out for a minstrel show.
Not long after that he organized a dance orchestra and went into vaudeville writh Phil Baker. He called himself the “Young Maestro.’’ His method of “gagging” while conducting brought him quick fame. No matter where he played, he talked and soon audiences were be¬ lieving that there was no other band leader in the world quite like Ben Bernie.
The only creed of entertainment he knows is wrapped up in that simple phrase he made famous, “I hope you like it.”
BEN BERNIE was once the "Young Maestro"
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