Backnagle's Stoop

Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle long ago concluded that "people have more fun than anybody." Last week the colonel was having more fun than most, dishing out his own peculiar brand of nonsense on Vaughn Monroe's glittery variety show (Sat. 9:30 p.m., CBS).

Like Jolson, Chevalier and other old-timers who have lately bounced back into public favor, portly (195 Ibs.) Colonel Stoopnagle, 50, isn't quite sure how it happened. "It's funny," he says; "they just started laughing again. And this time they laugh right out loud--in the studio. Kinda scared me at first. I remember when they'd pull a long face at my act, and wouldn't double-take until they were at least three blocks away from the station."

Desperate Beginning. The colonel was christened Frederick Chase Taylor, but he has become so firmly attached to Stoopnagle (a name he "just happened to dream up") that he uses it nowadays for everything except signing checks. According to his friend, Fred Allen, Stoopnagle was born "in a small, prefabricated cabin, which he helped his father to send for," and was delivered, not by the stork, but "by a man from the Audubon Society, personally."

The colonel was a radio writer in 1930 when he and Budd Hulick, a studio announcer at Buffalo's WGR, were suddenly called on to ad-lib a desperate 15 minutes of silliness on the air. Before the show was over, the studio switchboard was jammed with calls from entranced listeners, and Stoopnagle & Budd were a top team in radio for the next eight years. In 1938 the partners went their separate ways,* and the vogue for Stoop's simpleton style of comedy vanished.

It wasn't until last summer, when the colonel took over the Bob Hawk quiz show for six weeks, that radio listeners noticed him again. The show zoomed up twelve places one week to the nation's top Hooperating. Bandleader Vaughn Monroe heard him, signed him to a seven-year contract.

Dependable Fooling. No gagman, the colonel still depends almost entirely on addleheaded whimsy, served with a heavy hand, an air of benign bewilderment, and some tried-&-true Stoopnagliana:

P: His "Spoonerisms,"/- and familiar fables in a gobbledygook of backtalk. (Examples: the Pee Little Thrigs, Wink van Ripple, the Beeping Sleauty, Paul Revide's Rear.)

P: His "inventions," which fall somewhere between Rube Goldbergian complexity and a shaggy dog story. (Example: a slot machine "which blows off steam, lights up, whistles, makes five minutes of loud silence when you put a dime in it, eventually returns your coin--it's for giving yourself a tip in a self-service restaurant.")

P: His foolish "fictionary" of Stoopnagle definitions.' (Examples: avoirduboys--stout fellows; majamas--what mother wears at night; porcuprone--a porcupine lying face down.)

* Budd drifted back to obscurity on small stations (from Asbury Park to Miami) and to odd jobs (from taxi driving to soda jerking). Last week he turned up in Buffalo, where he started, to audition for WGR.

/- So-called after William A. Spooner, (1844-1930), onetime Warden of New College, Oxford, who is credited with scores of mixed-up quotations (mostly legendary), including the granddaddy of all Spoonerisms: "Mardon me, padam, but I think you are occupewing my pie."

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