OLD TIME RADIO - CD-ROM - 163 mp3 The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring comedienne and Ziegfeld Follies alumna Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl who was 40 years younger than the actress who played her when she first went on the air. The series began on CBS September 17, 1944, airing on Sunday evenings at 6:30pm as Post Toasties Time (for sponsor General Foods). The title soon changed to The Baby Snooks Show, and the series was sometimes called Baby Snooks and Daddy. In 1904, George McManus began his comic strip, The Newlyweds, about a couple and their child, Baby Snookums. Brice began doing her Baby Snooks character in vaudeville, as she recalled many years later: "I first did Snooks in 1912 when I was in vaudeville. At the time there was a juvenile actress named Baby Peggy and she was very popular. Her hair was all curled and bleached and she was always in pink or blue. She looked like a strawberry ice cream soda. When I started to do Baby Snooks, I really was a baby, because when I think about Baby Snooks it's really the way I was when I was a kid. On stage, I made Snooks a caricature of Baby Peggy."
Early on, Brice's character was sometimes called "Babykins." By 1934 she was wearing her baby costume while appearing on Broadway in the Follies show. On February 29, 1936, Brice was scheduled to appear on the Ziegfeld Follies of the Air, written and directed by Philip Rapp in 1935-37. Rapp and his writing partner David Freedman searched the closest bookcase, opened a public domain collection of sketches by Robert Jones Burdette, Chimes From a Jester’s Bells (1897) and adapted a humorous piece about a kid and his uncle, changing the boy to a girl named Snooks. Rapp continued to write the radio sketches when Brice played Snooks on the Good News Show the following year. In 1940, she became a regular character on Maxwell House Coffee Time, sharing the spotlight with actor Frank Morgan, who sometimes did a crossover into the Snooks sketches.
In 1944, the character was given her own show, and during the 1940s, it became one of the nation's favorite radio situation comedies, with a variety of sponsors (Post Cereals, Sanka, Spic-n-Span, Jell-O) being touted by a half-dozen announcers—John Conte, Tobe Reed, Harlow Willcox, Dick Joy, Don Wilson and Ken Wilson.
Hanley Stafford was best known for his portrayal of Snooks' long-suffering, often-cranky father, Lancelot “Daddy” Higgins, a role played earlier by Alan Reed on the 1936 Follies broadcasts. Lalive Brownell was Vera “Mommy” Higgins, also portrayed by Lois Corbet (mid-1940s) and Arlene Harris (after 1945). Beginning in 1945, child impersonator Leone Ledoux was first heard as Snook’s younger brother Robespierre, and Snooks returned full circle to the comics when comic book illustrator Graham Ingels and his wife Gertrude named their child Robby (born 1946) after listening to Ledoux's Robespierre baby voices.
Danny Thomas was "daydreaming postman" Jerry Dingle (1944-45) who imagined himself in other occupations, such as a circus owner or railroad conductor. Others in the cast were Ben Alexander, Elvia Allman, Sara Berner, Charlie Cantor, Ken Christy, Earl Lee, Frank Nelson, Lillian Randolph, Alan Reed (as Mr. Weemish, Daddy's boss) and Irene Tedrow.
The scripts by Bill Danch, Sid Dorfman, Robert Fisher, Everett Freeman, Jess Oppenheimer (later the producer and head writer of I Love Lucy), Philip Rapp (who often revised his scripts three times before airing) and Arthur Stander were produced and directed by Mann Holiner (early 1940s), Al Kaye (1944), Ted Bliss, Walter Bunker and Arthur Stander. Clark Casey and David Light handled the sound effects with music by Meredith Willson (1937-44), Carmen Dragon and vocalist Bob Graham. In 1945, when illness caused Brice to miss several episodes, her absence was incorporated into the show as a plot device in which top stars (including Robert Benchley, Sydney Greenstreet, Kay Kyser and Peter Lorre) took part in a prolonged search for Snooks. In the fall of 1946, the show moved to Friday nights at 8pm, continuing on CBS until May 28, 1948. On November 9, 1949, the series moved to NBC where it was heard Tuesdays at 8:30pm. Sponsored by Tums, The Baby Snooks Show continued on NBC until May 22, 1951. Two days later, Fanny Brice had a cerebral hemorrhage, and the show ended with her death at age 59.
One of the last shows in the series, "Report Card Blues" (May 1, 1951), is included in the CD set, The 60 Greatest Old-time Radio Shows of the 20th Century (1999), introduced by Walter Cronkite.
Radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim wrote this description of the devilish imp's pranks: "...planting a bees' nest at her mother's club meeting, cutting her father's fishing line into little pieces, ripping the fur off her mother's coat, inserting marbles into her father's piano and smearing glue on her baby brother."
Yet she was not a mean child. "The character may have seemed a noisy one-joke idea based on Snooks driving Daddy to a screaming fit," wrote Gerald Nachman in Raised on Radio. "Yet Brice was wonderfully adept at giving voice to her irritating moppet without making Snooks obnoxious." Nachman quoted Variety critic Hobe Morrison: "Snooks was not nasty or mean, spiteful or sadistic. She was at heart a nice kid. Similarly, Daddy was harried and desperate and occasionally was driven to spanking his impish daughter. But Daddy wasn't ill-tempered or unkind with the kid. He wasn't a crab."
Brice herself was so meticulous and fanatical about the character that, according to Nachman, "she dressed in a baby-doll dress for the studio audience," and she also appeared in the costume at parades and personal appearances. She also insisted on her script being printed in extremely large type so she could avoid having to use reading glasses when on the air live. She was self-conscious about wearing glasses in front of an audience and didn't believe they fit the Snooks image. By her own admission, Brice was a lackadaisical rehearser: "I can't do a show until it's on the air, kid," she was quoted as telling her writer/producer Everett Freeman. Yet she locked in tight when the show did go on---right down to Snooks-like "squirming, squinting, mugging, jumping up and down," as comedian George Burns remembered.
Snooks proved so universally appealing that Brice and Stafford were invited to perform in character on the second installment of The Big Show, NBC's big-budget, last-ditch bid to keep classic radio variety programming alive amidst the television onslaught. Snooks tapped on hostess Tallulah Bankhead's door to ask about a career in acting, despite Daddy's telling her she already didn't have what it took. Later in the show, Snooks and Daddy appeared with fellow guest star Groucho Marx in a spoof of Marx's popular quiz-and-comedy show, You Bet Your Life.
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SHOWS LIST Baby Snooks 37-06-17 Unknown skit - Royal Gelatin Hour Baby Snooks 37-12-23 New Hat for Christmas - begin Good News Of 1938 Baby Snooks 37-12-30 Daniel in the Lions Den Baby Snooks 38-06-09 At The Doctors Office Baby Snooks 39-01-00 Daddys-Boss-Comes-to-Dinner Baby Snooks 39-01-22 Daddy is An Elk Baby Snooks 39-04-04 House-Breaking Baby Snooks 39-04-11 No-Sleep Baby Snooks 39-05-05 Life Insurance Baby Snooks 39-05-11 Barking Rabbit Baby Snooks 39-05-18 Golf Tea Baby Snooks 39-05-25 Hugh What Baby Snooks 39-06-01 Gonefishing Baby Snooks 39-06-08 Violet Ray Baby Snooks 39-06-15 Living By Dyeing Baby Snooks 39-06-22 New Baby Baby Snooks 39-06-29 Jealousy Baby Snooks 39-07-29 Good News Of 1939 Baby Snooks 39-07-29 Wizard of Oz Baby Snooks 39-09-07 Pulling-Teeth Baby Snooks 39-09-21 Heat-Wave Baby Snooks 39-09-28 Airport-Meeting Baby Snooks 39-10-05 Mudneck Baby Snooks 39-10-19 Cake-Writing Baby Snooks 39-10-26 Abe-Lincoln Baby Snooks 39-11-09 Rich-Uncle Baby Snooks 39-11-16 Slapsie-Maxie Baby Snooks 39-11-23 Court-Case Baby Snooks 39-11-30 Insurance-Exam Baby Snooks 39-12-14 Psychoanalyzed Baby Snooks 39-12-21 Goodnews of 1940 pt1 Baby Snooks 39-12-21 Goodnews of 1940 pt2 Baby Snooks 39-12-21 Sneaky-Snooks Baby Snooks 39-12-28 Hunting-Trip Baby Snooks 40-01-04 Bungling Burglars Baby Snooks 40-01-11 Male Secretary Baby Snooks 40-01-18 Chemical-Catastrophe Baby Snooks 40-01-25 Shetland-Pony Baby Snooks 40-02-01 Family-Tree Baby Snooks 40-02-08 Anatomy Of A Robot Baby Snooks 40-02-15 Tax Returns Baby Snooks 40-02-22 Missing Dollar Baby Snooks 40-02-29 Wedding Cake Baby Snooks 40-03-07 Baby Snooks Has Amnesia Baby Snooks 40-03-14 Tom Thumb Baby Snooks 40-03-21 Snooks-Wants-a-Rabbit Baby Snooks 40-03-28 Baby Brother Baby Snooks 40-04-04 April Fools Baby Snooks 40-04-11 Baby-Fish-Story Baby Snooks 40-04-18 Magic Baby Snooks 40-04-25 The-Motel-Stop Baby Snooks 40-05-02 Auntie-Septic Baby Snooks 40-05-09 Lies Baby Snooks 40-05-16 Jokes-For-Jack Baby Snooks 40-05-28 Robespierre Gets First Tooth Baby Snooks 40-06-22 Tonsils Operation Baby Snooks 40-07-11 At The Beach Baby Snooks 40-07-18 Library Visit Baby Snooks 40-07-25 Port Hole Safe Baby Snooks 40-09-05 Magazine Scam Baby Snooks 40-09-12 New Car Baby Snooks 40-09-19 Playing Hooky Baby Snooks 40-09-26 Wheres The Medicine Baby Snooks 40-10-10 Football Game Baby Snooks 40-10-17 Wheres My Change Baby Snooks 40-10-24 Raising A Loan Baby Snooks 40-10-31 Ruined Suit Baby Snooks 40-11-01 Male Secretary Baby Snooks 40-11-07 Oil-Discovered Baby Snooks 40-11-14 Measles Baby Snooks 40-11-21 Baby Baby Snooks William P Baby Snooks 40-11-28 Stolen Turkey Baby Snooks 40-12-12 Haunted House Baby Snooks 40-12-19 Christmas-Skates Baby Snooks 40-12-26 Returning-Presents Baby Snooks 41-01-02 Sneaking-Out Baby Snooks 41-01-09 Art-Museum Baby Snooks 41-01-23 Flat-Tire Baby Snooks 41-01-30 Jury-Duty Baby Snooks 41-02-06 Flower-Gardens Baby Snooks 41-02-13 Taxes-Again Baby Snooks 41-02-27 All-The-Races Baby Snooks 41-03-20 Photographer Baby Snooks 41-03-27 Buying-Shoes Baby Snooks 41-04-03 Visit To Zoo Baby Snooks 41-04-10 Trout-Fishing Baby Snooks 41-04-17 Baseball-Game Baby Snooks 41-04-24 Fixing-Supper Baby Snooks 41-05-08 Riding-Academy Baby Snooks 41-05-22 Insomnia Baby Snooks 41-05-29 Antique-Auction Baby Snooks 41-06-05 Calisthenics Baby Snooks 41-06-12 X-Ray-Machine Baby Snooks 41-06-19 Dollar-Day Baby Snooks 41-06-26 Artist-Daddy Baby Snooks 41-07-10 Going-To-Camp Baby Snooks 41-10-02 Snooks-Returns Baby Snooks 41-10-09 New-School Baby Snooks 41-10-23 Duck-Hunt Baby Snooks 41-10-30 Halloween Baby Snooks 41-11-06 Defense-Stamps Baby Snooks 41-11-13 Mixed-Nuts Baby Snooks 41-11-27 The Opera Baby Snooks 41-12-18 Air-Raid-Warden Baby Snooks 42-01-01 Hangover Baby Snooks 42-01-08 Victory-Garden Baby Snooks 42-01-15 House Guest Baby Snooks 42-01-22 Hiccups Baby Snooks 42-01-29 Report Card Baby Snooks 42-02-05 Knitting-Lessons Baby Snooks 42-02-12 Camping-In Baby Snooks 42-02-22 Missingdollar Baby Snooks 42-02-26 Stealing-Chickens Baby Snooks 42-03-19 Fake-Measels Baby Snooks 42-03-26 Red-Cross-Exaime Baby Snooks 42-04-02 Easter-Suit Baby Snooks 42-04-09 Daddys-Birthday Baby Snooks 42-04-11 Baby Fish Story Baby Snooks 42-04-16 Poultice Baby Snooks 42-04-23 50-Raise Baby Snooks 42-04-30 Quiz-Kids Baby Snooks 42-05-07 The-New-Fishing-Rod Baby Snooks 42-05-19 Family Tree Baby Snooks 42-05-21 Sugar-From-Lemons Baby Snooks 42-05-28 Abnormal Psychology Baby Snooks 42-05-28 Daddy-the-Shrink Baby Snooks 42-06-04 10th-Wedding-Anniversary Baby Snooks 42-06-11 The-Twins Baby Snooks 42-06-18 The-Trade Baby Snooks 42-07-02 Baby-Buggy Baby Snooks 42-09-03 Camp-Report Baby Snooks 42-09-12 Newcar Baby Snooks 42-09-24 To-The-Movies Baby Snooks 42-10-01 Gozinta Baby Snooks 42-10-08 Charlie Baby Snooks 42-10-31 Ruinedsuit Baby Snooks 42-12-03 Getting-Gas Baby Snooks 42-12-18 Cinderella Baby Snooks 43-01-14 Stolen-Medal Baby Snooks 43-11-04 Gotocourt Baby Snooks 44-05-18 Teaching-Snooks-The-Piano Baby Snooks 44-06-01 Snooks-Screen-Test Baby Snooks 44-06-14 The Worlds Most Patient Father Baby Snooks 44-06-20 Stranded-In-Cactus-Bend Baby Snooks 44-10-08 Baby Baby Snooks Visits the Bumsteads Baby Snooks 44-12-03 Fanny Brice Show Baby Snooks 44-xx-xx The-Kangaroo Baby Snooks 45-05-13 Live Show At The Bijou Baby Snooks 45-09-16 Guest Star Eddie Cantor Baby Snooks 45-12-16 Baby snooks is lost Baby Snooks 46-04-28 Going On Vacation Baby Snooks 46-06-19 The Cat - Man's Revenge Baby Snooks 46-09-06 A-Substitute-For-Snooks Baby Snooks 46-09-29 At-The-Movie-House Baby Snooks 46-11-01 Halloween Baby Snooks 47-10-17 Charity-Auction Baby Snooks 47-10-17 Henriettas-Party Baby Snooks 47-10-24 Snooks Is Unpopular Baby Snooks 49-09-26 Where is the Medicine Baby Snooks 50-11-12 Snooks And Tallulah Baby Snooks 51-03-20 Easter Bonnet Baby Snooks 51-05-01 Reportcard Blues Baby Snooks 51-05-08 Daddys Old Flame |