Radio mirror (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

Left, below, fisherman Jeannie Lang said Arthur Lang was her brother. Next, fisherman Ruth Etting's husband has never been described. Little Jack Little who had a hidden business manager. Right, the Jack Bennys who have their own secret. Right, below, Annette Hanshaw whose relationship with her manager has never been disclosed. Wide World "hey lived — and they still live — in a modest two-room suite in New York's Piccadilly Hotel. I knocked on their door. A short man, in his thirties, reached out a hand that grabbed mine like a vice. "Hi! Come right in." In the next hour and thirty minutes, I" learned about hospitality from the man whom nine out of ten Broadwayites fear. Colonel Snyder. When I left, he loaded me down with an autographed photo of Ruth, a carton of cigarettes (remember when she was on the Chesterfield program?), a pint of very rare old whiskey (this was during Prohibition, too) and a gleaming necktie from a Fifth Avenue haberdashery. It has been something like that every time I have seen them. Ruth sits there, poised and sweet and sure of herself; while he bounces around talking, showing you things, shooting sparks with his incredibly fast mind. What about his reputed ability with his fists or any other weapon handy? His rough stuff tactics here and there around the town? I've never seen any of either, but lots of things happen I don't see. If he has used a roundhouse right or an uppercut to gain his ends, it's all right with me. Because he's doing it for a Cause, a Cause he's been supporting for ten years, a Cause with deep blue eyes that answers to the name of Ruth. You've never read about him before because he insists violently that he be kept out of the picture. Ruth Etting is the name to print in the headlines. Hers is the picture to take. This word picture won't please him at all. I'm sure of that. But it will please even less those radio gossips who say radio marriages can't last. M'M not so well acquainted with Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone but I do know something about Jack that shows clearly enough, I think, the sort of man he is, and why his marriage has always been the happiest I've ever encountered. This story starts with Harry Conn, his writer. Think back to the days when Broadway's top-hole comedians were just coming on the air. Jack's two-room apartment in a New York hotel was the scene of a bitter discussion. Jack had signed a contract to do thirteen weekly shows for a radio sponsor. Harry Conn, the writer, was there. So was I. jack declared with finality, "It can't be done. There just aren't enough gags in the world to keep feeding out new ones every week. 1 wish I'd never signed up." You know, of course, what happened. The shows were good, so good, indeed, that Jack Benny's programs have made him a greater star than he ever dreamed he'd be. But the story I want to tell is t It i> Jack Benny paid Harry $100 for each of those firsl scripts. Then, as his own salary increased, he added to Harry's pay check. It progressed from $250. to $500. to $750. Just before they went to Hollywood last year, Harry told me he was getting $1,200 for each script. No other writer in radio was getting anything like that figure. You might think Jack would figure he was doing all right by his script writer. But what he did next is typical of him. Hollywood offered him a contract, wanted him badly for a picture. Jack agreed to sign on one condition; on the condition that Harry Conn be employed to write all his dialogue in the movie at a salary of 81.800 a week. And that's the way the contract read when Jack and Harry and Mary went to Hollywood. All this leads to the point that (Continued mi page 70) HUSHED WEDDINGS AND MANY OTHER STARTLING FACTS ARE REVEALED m