New York Hick

A score of U.S. celebrities have gone as guests to Duffy's Tavern (Blue Network, Tues., 8:30 p.m., E.W.T.) and come away thoroughly buffooned. The buffoon is Barkeep Archie, a likable mug, strictly from Brooklyn, who shares the great American love of irreverent ribbing.

Last week Archie toyed with uncommunicative Cinecomic Roland Young ("I think his mother was frightened by a clam"). In its time Duffy's has found similar salutes for shapely Dancer Vera Zorina ("The terpsicorpse from the ballet"), Information Please' s Clifton Fadiman ("What do you know -- besides every thing?"), portly Elsa Maxwell ("Speaking of the Four Hundred, how're you and the other 398?"), and the Lone Ranger, whom Archie steadily addressed as Lone ("Lone, say hello to little Wilfred").

Archie is a lean, mischievous, battered six-footer named Ed Gardner, who declares : "Your true New York mug doesn't say toity-toid or erl. He's about halfway between oyster and erster." Gardner's in dignities are delivered with a kazoo-voiced good nature which keeps everybody happy, including his victims. Three writers turn out the original script, but the final version is practically all Gardner ("The boys do a rough draft and I tear it down"). The result is grade-A American foolery.

In two years Duffy's has acquired about 7,000,000 steady listeners. Prisoners at San Quentin (their warden's name is Duffy) like the show so much that they call their jail Duffy's Tavern. The program contains some of radio's oddest characters. Duffy, proprietor of a Third Avenue saloon where "the elite meet to eat," never shows up, is merely a stubborn Irish character on the telephone. Another off-stage character is a man with two heads named Two-Top Gruskin, who once attended a masquerade as a pair of book ends holding a book entitled My Son, My Son. Man-crazy Miss Duffy, the boss's daughter and pure Tenth Avenue, is Gardner's pretty, redheaded exwife, Actress Shirley Booth (My Sister Eileen, Tomorrow the World).

Poggenburg's Rise. Ed Gardner was born Eddie Poggenburg over a butcher shop in Astoria, L.I., 39 years ago, the only child of Irish-German parents. His father was an ornamental plasterer and semi-pro baseball player. Eddie's first job was playing piano in a saloon. He quit school at 16 because his parents did not want him overeducated.

Gardner was selling pianos when he met Shirley Booth at a friend's house. His opening was typical: "Little girl, you need awakening." She replied that apparently he needed sleep. They were soon married. Mrs. Gardner joined a stock company in Springfield, Mass., and her husband sold miniature golf courses. Mrs. Gardner began making money and a name for herself. Ed was distressed ("I'm a very buck-conscious fellow"). To one "dizzy dame" who tittered "And is this Mr. Booth?" |he snarled: "Yes, John Wilkes."

After the Bingo. But marriage introduced Gardner to the inside of show business. Gradually he worked into producing, directing and writing radio shows. Now the sole owner of Duffy's (where they catch the "after-Bingo crowd"), he nets about $2,000 a week. Gardner admits that he himself is indistinguishable from his character Archie. After a recent broadcast a woman towed her young son up to Gardner and pleaded : "Talk to him like Archie." Said the astonished Gardner: "How else?"

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