Dizzy Blonde

U.S. radio comedy leans heavily on dumb-belles. Last week, in the artfully stumbling footsteps of Gracie Allen, Jane Ace and other attractive dunderheads, a blonde newcomer was malapropping her way to the top. My Friend Irma (CBS, Mon. 10 p.m., E.S.T.), a situation comedy about a dumb stenographer and her smart roommate, was doing all right.

Irma was on the air for 20 weeks before a sponsor finally took it over. The wait was worth it: the sponsor, Lever Bros, (soap) is one of the biggest spenders in radio, and the time assigned to Irma, between Lever Bros.' big-time Lux Radio Theater and the only slightly less popular Screen Guild Players, is the second best in radio (the best: the expensive Sunday night half-hour between Jack Benny and Charlie McCarthy on NBC, now occupied by Alice Faye and Phil Harris).

Easy to Hate. Father and boss of Irma is 32-year-old Sy Howard, a breezy, gangly "threeheaded genius"* with a fondness for gaudy sport togs. In Irma's infancy, Sy handled everything, from the first line of script to the last directorial cue. Nowadays, he leaves much of the writing to scripters. But he still rules the show with a firm hand. "I'm an egomaniac," he says. "The cast hates me, but better they should hate me and give a good show than love me and we're off the air." For conventional radio comedy he has only a sneer: "Anybody with the price of a joke-book can write a gag, but only the best can write character. Character is gonna get people addicted to this show, and character is gonna keep Sy in convertibles."

Hard to Believe. Irma's characterizations are cut to the measure of the cast. Every one of the actors looks and acts his part in & out of the script. Most astonishing of all is Irma herself, Cinemactress Marie Wilson, who has been playing the role of a dumb blonde for so long that she now lives the part. Marie's fluffs at rehearsals and on the air are daffier than anything a scripter might imagine. "She is so much like Irma," says Sy, "that I have to rewrite the things she says to make them believable."

When Sy first asked Marie to be on his show, she squealed, "I'm scared. It's too hard for me to read." And it is: her lines in the script are all typed in capital letters. There are other difficulties, too. Once, when the program was on the air, Sy waved a frantic cue at her from the director's box, and Marie dazedly waved back. Another time, when a special speech by Senator Taft forced cancellation of an Irma broadcast, Sy broke the bad news: "Senator Taft's coming on in place of us." Marie stamped her foot and pouted: "You promised me, no guest stars."

*Showtalk for a man who writes, directs and produces.

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