Wanna buy a duck?

[TraditionalFrog]

I recently heard a clip of an old time radio program featuring Joe Penner. This fellow is great! I did an internet search for more info about him and aside from Wikipedia there was little else. It seems this once popular funny man is now all but forgotten, at least by the under 85 set. I'm wondering if someone on the forum might have some info on Joe, or could direct me toward that.

I'd also like to hear more of his programs, but alas I only could find downloads for a few. Any help here would also be appreciated.

[LizzieMaine]

Penner was the most popular radio performer in the USA during 1933-34, due largely to his array of catchphrases, which were inescapable on school playgrounds that winter. He had been a burlesque comedian in the twenties, moved up into vaudeville, and got his big break on radio as a guest on Rudy Vallee's program in the summer of 1933. His act was very simple at first -- he played a simpletonish child-man, a sort of thirties cross between Pinky Lee and Pee Wee Herman, usually presented in confrontations with an oppressive straight man. On the strength of this act he got his own program in the fall of 1933, where he was packaged with straight man Monk Purcell, Ozzie Nelson and his Orchestra, vocalist Harriet Hilliard, and announcer Ben Grauer. This show ran thru 1935, when Penner quit to make movies for a year. When he returned to radio in 1936, he developed a sitcom-oriented format presenting himself as "the black sheep of the Park Avenue Penners," but otherwise his simpering-goofball character was unchanged.

Penner's popularity faded thru the late thirties, although he continued to appear successfully in a string of B pictures at RKO, and his radio series ended in 1940. He went back to the stage, and was appearing in a touring company of the comic play "Yokel Boy" in Philadelphia when he died of a massive heart attack in 1941 at the age of 36.

Had Penner lived long enough to appear on television he would likely have been a major star all over again, probably as a children's-show host.

[TraditionalFrog]

Thank you, LizzieMaine! I'm leery of taking Wikipedia as a source of info as practically anyone can edit it.

I'll try the duck catchphrase on my grandparents next time I visit and see if they remember! Just wish I could find more recordings of his show.

[LizzieMaine]

About ten years ago, a block of original transcription discs of Penner programs from 1936-38 were auctioned off by a prominent dealer in 78s. Most of these programs were incomplete, however -- segments of programs rather than complete shows. A few complete programs from that era do exist, but they aren't in OTR circulation.

Very little audio survives from Penner's most popular era, the 1933-35 run. One complete program and two fragmentary shows are about it. Networks didn't record their own programming until 1935, and what recordings did exist were made by private studios hired by ad agencies or the performers themselves for post-broadcast evaluation. These recordings generally ended up disposed of when their purpose was completed, or ended up in wartime aluminum drives. What little pre-1935 radio survives exists by luck, not by design.

Penner's movies turn up on TCM from time to time, and once you're acclimatized to his persona they're breezy and entertaining -- there are usually some interesting musical interludes and good supporting casts to keep things moving along between Penner's comedy bits.

[Espee]

In several books and audio histories of radio, I'd run into names of early comics and their catchphrases. I learned of "Ya wanna buy a duck?" and said "okayyyy, whatever..." and moved on.
But a couple years ago I heard him on a Vallee show and at least I got a better picture of his act.
One of his other catchphrases is more useful in everyday life--
"DON'T ever DOOO that!"

[Shangas]

*cough*

[LizzieMaine]

Quack!

This is actually a very entertaining picture, as any picture with Lyda Roberti in it is bound to be.

[Espee]

Quack!

This is actually a very entertaining picture, as any picture with Lyda Roberti in it is bound to be.

"I meen ta tell ya, Hhoney!"

(That Hh is all I can think of to represent Lyda's somewhat gutteral H-sound.)

[V.C. Brunswick]

Quack!

This is actually a very entertaining picture, as any picture with Lyda Roberti in it is bound to be.

[RBH]

thats pretty Ffunny