TOM HOWARD & HIS "EXPERTS": GENE SHELTON, LULU McCONNELL & HARRY McNAUGHTON.
IT PAYS TOO BE IGNERINT
It would insult Bob and Ruth Howell to call their creation, It Pays To Be Ignorant, one of the dumbest and stupidest shows ever to hit the air. They’d contend that it was absolutely the dumbest and stupidest show ever, bar none. What’s more, they had the scripts to prove it!
Their path to Network Radio’s Hall of Shame began at WELI in New Haven, Connecticut, where Program Director Bob Howell brainstormed the idea of satirizing the intellectual panel show Information Please with writer Ruth Howard. Howard took the idea, then titled Crazy Quiz, to her father, Tom Howard, who at the time was “at liberty”.
Tom Howard, born Thomas Black in Ireland in 1885, came with his parents to the United States when he was an infant. In 1905 he changed his name to Tom Howard and went into vaudeville working the Columbia and American burlesque circuits. Howard began acting in one and two reel comedy shorts in 1929. Three years later he teamed with George Sheton in a dozen shorts for Paramount and Educational Film Corp. Howard‘s last film appearance was with Shelton in the 1936 two-reeler, Rail Birds. Howard and Shelton made frequent Network Radio guest shots on Rudy Vallee‘s Fleischmann Yeast Hour in the 1930‘s but Tom was 57 in 1942 and his career was seemingly over.
Howard welcomed his daughter’s idea, spiked up her scripts with a few gags from his burlesque days and suggested that a new name was needed. The most immediate need, however, was finding the cast to accurately portray the degree of intellectual inferiority that the script required. He picked up the phone and called three old friends.
George Shelton was born in 1884 in New York City and toured with a Midwest repertory company prior to serving in World War I. Shelton resumed his stage career in postwar Germany and U.S. vaudeville before teaming with straight man Tom Howard in 1932. When the Howard & Shelton team broke up, Shelton continued to work in films, appearing in twelve more two reel comedies from 1936 to 1938.
Lulu McConnell formed a comedy team with her husband George Simpson when she was 25 in 1907. The two toured in vaudeville then moved up to Broadway in 1920 where they appeared in a number of revues climaxing with Ballyhooo of 1932. Simpson died that year and the raspy voiced McConnell went on as a single appearing on Broadway, in several films and on radio guest shots. When Howard called in 1942 she was semi retired at age 60.
British born Harry McNaughton first came to the United States in 1919 when he was a 23 year old stage actor. His appearance as a butler in the 1932 Phil Baker two-reel comedy Poor Little Rich Boy led to a decade of work as Bottle The Butler in Baker’s Armour Jester, Gulf Headliners and Honolulu Bound radio shows.
The show was still without a title when it debuted on Mutual’s WOR/New York City for a five month run on June 25, 1942, replacing The American Opera Festival. By the following March 29th, however, It Pays To Be Ignorant made its official debut on Mutual. An episode from its Mutual shakedown period, October 4, 1943, is also posted below.
Meanwhile, Phillip Morris had controlled the CBS timeslot at 9:00 p.m. Friday since 1939. Russ Morgan’s sweet band won the time period in 1939-40, but was runner-up in 1940-41 to the gritty Gangbusters on Blue. The cigarette maker and its Biow ad agency replaced Morgan’s band in 1941-42 with Phillip Morris Playhouse, half-hour adaptations of popular movies that finished in Friday’s Top Ten for two and a half seasons, but at a heavy cost for stars and production.
The sponsor was looking for something new and less expensive when it found It Pays To Be Ignorant in the sustaining weeds of Mutual, The 59 year old Howard and his panel of aging zanies - Shelton (60), McConnell (62), and McNaughton (a youngster at 48) - replaced Philip Morris Playhouse on Friday, February 25, 1944 and settled in for a four year run that extended to February 6, 1948. (1)
The shows were almost painfully predictable but always funny. They always began with Howard's introducing his panel as a whole, ("And they belong in one!"), with an insult. He then segued into individual introductions beginning with, "That noted author, Mr. Harry McNaughton, who has just written the book, "They Were Married By Candlelight But It Only Lasted A Wick." There would obviously be a new "book" every week but McNaughton would invariably respond with, "I have a poem Mr. Howard," and follow that with something like, "The stork is one of the mystics who inhabits a number of districts. He doesn't wield plumes or carry tunes but he helps out the vital statistics."
Howard then proceeded to introduce McConnell and Shelton with insults to their looks and intelligence. The man hungry McConnell saved her catchphrase for occasional male guests, "What's your first name, Honey?" and Shelton had quick recognition to the mention of any city, "I used to work in that town!" The lines were repeated hundreds of times and never failed to get a laugh.
The questions Howard posed to his panel of "experts" - always formally addressed as Mister or Miss as they were on Information Please - were obviously ridiculous, ("What former President is buried in Grant's Tomb?" or "What beverage do we get from tea leaves?" and were never answered correctly. Instead, Shelton, McConnell and McNaughton would launch into a mass of tangents, arguments, insults and gags to the anger and frustration of Howard who vainly tried to bring his maniacs back under control.
It Pays To Be Ignorant was never a Top 50 show. It failed to break into Friday's Top Ten at 9:00 p.m. ET from 1943 to 1946. But when Phillip Morris moved the show ahead one hour to 10:00 p.m. on September 20, 1946, it broke into the night's Top Ten for the next two seasons
Shows from the first year of this run, September 15th and December 29th, are edited for Armed Forces Radio. Two complete shows for Philip Morris are also posted - January 24, 1947 in which Kate Smith substitutes for Lulu McConnell, and March 7, 1947. (2) The edited AFRS version of the final show for Phillip Morris, February 6, 1948, is also posted.
Ironically, that final Phillip Morris show produced the highest rating of It Pays To Be Ignorant’s entire CBS run - a 17.4 against NBC’s Mystery Theater, the Friday Night Fights on Blue and Mutual’s Meet The Press. It was no fluke. Tom Howard’s faux morons registered a 17.3 in January and a season average of 14.3.
Although the 14.3 rating resulted in a finish outside of the season’s Top 50 at 56th place, it was higher than more famous and higher priced names like Eddie Cantor, (a 14.0 rating), Bing Crosby, (13.9), Jimmy Durante, (13.9), Groucho Marx, (13.0), and Abbott & Costello, (10.4). (3)
Nevertheless, It Pays To Be Ignorant became a weekend nomad on the CBS schedule when Phillip Morris cancelled, appearing as a Saturday night spot carrier for the remainder of 1948.
In December it showed up as a one-reel RKO comedy short which proved to be an television audition for Tom Howard and his aging vaudevillians. While the CBS radio show moved to Sunday night at 10:30 on January 9, 1949 where it remained until September 13th , It Pays To Be Ignorant appeared on CBS-TV from June 6th until September 19th .
The show popped up again nine months later on July 5, 1950 as the 13 week summer replacement for the Groucho Marx comedy quiz You Bet Your Life. Groucho, his producer John Guedel and sponsor Chrysler were loyal to It Pays To Be Ignorant and gave the show a 13 week encore run as You Bet Your Life’s summer replacement on NBC radio and television beginning on July 4, 1951.
Tom Howard passed away four years later, Lulu McConnell followed in 1962, Harry McNaughton in 1967 and George Shelton in 1971. All were grateful for the opportunity Network Radio gave them for second careers. Nevertheless, critics still cringe at the mention of It Pays To Be Ignorant - dismissing the Howell and Howard program as a dumb show.
With nine years of success it was dumb alright - dumb like a fox.
(1) Bob Howell and Ruth Howard were married during the It Pays To Be Ignorant’s early years on Mutual. He died suddenly in 1944. Ruth Howard Howell and her father, Tom Howard, continued to write the show with contributions from Shelton, McConnell and McNaughton.
(2) During the 1946-47 1946-47 season It Pays To Be Ignorant’s 9.9 rating beat both Information Please, (7.9), and Quiz Kids, (7.3).
(3) It Pays To Be Ignorant was replaced by Phillip Morris with Call For Music starring Dinah Shore Johnny Mercer and the Harry James Orchestra. The expensive Music dropped to a 10.9 rating for the rest of the 1947-48 season.
(4) Chrysler’s DeSoto automobiles sponsored You Bet Your Life and It Pays To Be Ignorant on CBS until September 27, 1950. The car maker then moved the Marx show to NBC Radio and TV on October 4th. It Pays To Be Ignorant was replaced on CBS by Harold Peary’s ratings deprived sitcom Honest Harold.
Copyright © 2016, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
It would insult Bob and Ruth Howell to call their creation, It Pays To Be Ignorant, one of the dumbest and stupidest shows ever to hit the air. They’d contend that it was absolutely the dumbest and stupidest show ever, bar none. What’s more, they had the scripts to prove it!
Their path to Network Radio’s Hall of Shame began at WELI in New Haven, Connecticut, where Program Director Bob Howell brainstormed the idea of satirizing the intellectual panel show Information Please with writer Ruth Howard. Howard took the idea, then titled Crazy Quiz, to her father, Tom Howard, who at the time was “at liberty”.
Tom Howard, born Thomas Black in Ireland in 1885, came with his parents to the United States when he was an infant. In 1905 he changed his name to Tom Howard and went into vaudeville working the Columbia and American burlesque circuits. Howard began acting in one and two reel comedy shorts in 1929. Three years later he teamed with George Sheton in a dozen shorts for Paramount and Educational Film Corp. Howard‘s last film appearance was with Shelton in the 1936 two-reeler, Rail Birds. Howard and Shelton made frequent Network Radio guest shots on Rudy Vallee‘s Fleischmann Yeast Hour in the 1930‘s but Tom was 57 in 1942 and his career was seemingly over.
Howard welcomed his daughter’s idea, spiked up her scripts with a few gags from his burlesque days and suggested that a new name was needed. The most immediate need, however, was finding the cast to accurately portray the degree of intellectual inferiority that the script required. He picked up the phone and called three old friends.
George Shelton was born in 1884 in New York City and toured with a Midwest repertory company prior to serving in World War I. Shelton resumed his stage career in postwar Germany and U.S. vaudeville before teaming with straight man Tom Howard in 1932. When the Howard & Shelton team broke up, Shelton continued to work in films, appearing in twelve more two reel comedies from 1936 to 1938.
Lulu McConnell formed a comedy team with her husband George Simpson when she was 25 in 1907. The two toured in vaudeville then moved up to Broadway in 1920 where they appeared in a number of revues climaxing with Ballyhooo of 1932. Simpson died that year and the raspy voiced McConnell went on as a single appearing on Broadway, in several films and on radio guest shots. When Howard called in 1942 she was semi retired at age 60.
British born Harry McNaughton first came to the United States in 1919 when he was a 23 year old stage actor. His appearance as a butler in the 1932 Phil Baker two-reel comedy Poor Little Rich Boy led to a decade of work as Bottle The Butler in Baker’s Armour Jester, Gulf Headliners and Honolulu Bound radio shows.
The show was still without a title when it debuted on Mutual’s WOR/New York City for a five month run on June 25, 1942, replacing The American Opera Festival. By the following March 29th, however, It Pays To Be Ignorant made its official debut on Mutual. An episode from its Mutual shakedown period, October 4, 1943, is also posted below.
Meanwhile, Phillip Morris had controlled the CBS timeslot at 9:00 p.m. Friday since 1939. Russ Morgan’s sweet band won the time period in 1939-40, but was runner-up in 1940-41 to the gritty Gangbusters on Blue. The cigarette maker and its Biow ad agency replaced Morgan’s band in 1941-42 with Phillip Morris Playhouse, half-hour adaptations of popular movies that finished in Friday’s Top Ten for two and a half seasons, but at a heavy cost for stars and production.
The sponsor was looking for something new and less expensive when it found It Pays To Be Ignorant in the sustaining weeds of Mutual, The 59 year old Howard and his panel of aging zanies - Shelton (60), McConnell (62), and McNaughton (a youngster at 48) - replaced Philip Morris Playhouse on Friday, February 25, 1944 and settled in for a four year run that extended to February 6, 1948. (1)
The shows were almost painfully predictable but always funny. They always began with Howard's introducing his panel as a whole, ("And they belong in one!"), with an insult. He then segued into individual introductions beginning with, "That noted author, Mr. Harry McNaughton, who has just written the book, "They Were Married By Candlelight But It Only Lasted A Wick." There would obviously be a new "book" every week but McNaughton would invariably respond with, "I have a poem Mr. Howard," and follow that with something like, "The stork is one of the mystics who inhabits a number of districts. He doesn't wield plumes or carry tunes but he helps out the vital statistics."
Howard then proceeded to introduce McConnell and Shelton with insults to their looks and intelligence. The man hungry McConnell saved her catchphrase for occasional male guests, "What's your first name, Honey?" and Shelton had quick recognition to the mention of any city, "I used to work in that town!" The lines were repeated hundreds of times and never failed to get a laugh.
The questions Howard posed to his panel of "experts" - always formally addressed as Mister or Miss as they were on Information Please - were obviously ridiculous, ("What former President is buried in Grant's Tomb?" or "What beverage do we get from tea leaves?" and were never answered correctly. Instead, Shelton, McConnell and McNaughton would launch into a mass of tangents, arguments, insults and gags to the anger and frustration of Howard who vainly tried to bring his maniacs back under control.
It Pays To Be Ignorant was never a Top 50 show. It failed to break into Friday's Top Ten at 9:00 p.m. ET from 1943 to 1946. But when Phillip Morris moved the show ahead one hour to 10:00 p.m. on September 20, 1946, it broke into the night's Top Ten for the next two seasons
Shows from the first year of this run, September 15th and December 29th, are edited for Armed Forces Radio. Two complete shows for Philip Morris are also posted - January 24, 1947 in which Kate Smith substitutes for Lulu McConnell, and March 7, 1947. (2) The edited AFRS version of the final show for Phillip Morris, February 6, 1948, is also posted.
Ironically, that final Phillip Morris show produced the highest rating of It Pays To Be Ignorant’s entire CBS run - a 17.4 against NBC’s Mystery Theater, the Friday Night Fights on Blue and Mutual’s Meet The Press. It was no fluke. Tom Howard’s faux morons registered a 17.3 in January and a season average of 14.3.
Although the 14.3 rating resulted in a finish outside of the season’s Top 50 at 56th place, it was higher than more famous and higher priced names like Eddie Cantor, (a 14.0 rating), Bing Crosby, (13.9), Jimmy Durante, (13.9), Groucho Marx, (13.0), and Abbott & Costello, (10.4). (3)
Nevertheless, It Pays To Be Ignorant became a weekend nomad on the CBS schedule when Phillip Morris cancelled, appearing as a Saturday night spot carrier for the remainder of 1948.
In December it showed up as a one-reel RKO comedy short which proved to be an television audition for Tom Howard and his aging vaudevillians. While the CBS radio show moved to Sunday night at 10:30 on January 9, 1949 where it remained until September 13th , It Pays To Be Ignorant appeared on CBS-TV from June 6th until September 19th .
The show popped up again nine months later on July 5, 1950 as the 13 week summer replacement for the Groucho Marx comedy quiz You Bet Your Life. Groucho, his producer John Guedel and sponsor Chrysler were loyal to It Pays To Be Ignorant and gave the show a 13 week encore run as You Bet Your Life’s summer replacement on NBC radio and television beginning on July 4, 1951.
Tom Howard passed away four years later, Lulu McConnell followed in 1962, Harry McNaughton in 1967 and George Shelton in 1971. All were grateful for the opportunity Network Radio gave them for second careers. Nevertheless, critics still cringe at the mention of It Pays To Be Ignorant - dismissing the Howell and Howard program as a dumb show.
With nine years of success it was dumb alright - dumb like a fox.
(1) Bob Howell and Ruth Howard were married during the It Pays To Be Ignorant’s early years on Mutual. He died suddenly in 1944. Ruth Howard Howell and her father, Tom Howard, continued to write the show with contributions from Shelton, McConnell and McNaughton.
(2) During the 1946-47 1946-47 season It Pays To Be Ignorant’s 9.9 rating beat both Information Please, (7.9), and Quiz Kids, (7.3).
(3) It Pays To Be Ignorant was replaced by Phillip Morris with Call For Music starring Dinah Shore Johnny Mercer and the Harry James Orchestra. The expensive Music dropped to a 10.9 rating for the rest of the 1947-48 season.
(4) Chrysler’s DeSoto automobiles sponsored You Bet Your Life and It Pays To Be Ignorant on CBS until September 27, 1950. The car maker then moved the Marx show to NBC Radio and TV on October 4th. It Pays To Be Ignorant was replaced on CBS by Harold Peary’s ratings deprived sitcom Honest Harold.
Copyright © 2016, Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
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