Life — July 12, 1928 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIFE THE RADIO The Happiness Boys : Art last an old wrong has been righted. |. Billy Jones and Ernest Hare, formerly confined merely to a local broadcast through WEAF, have been turned on the country at large and are progressing from New York popularity to national celebrity just like Al Smith. The Happi- ness Boys are now also the Flit Soldiers and you may hear them through WJZ and its sister stations at half-past ten on Monday nights. I commend them to your attention. If you don’t like them, you need never speak to me again. I have loved Jones and Hare ever since the days when they sang “Jump, Fritz, I gif you liver.” I can even keep some feeling for them when they sing ballads like “Wife of Mine” or tel jokes that I seem to have read somewhere before. Don't tell me that they are just a vaudeville team with ‘a merry line of songs and patter.” Any minute they are apt to break into “While strolling in the park one day, in the merry, merry month of May.” Nevertheless, the Happiness Boys are one of radio's meager contribu- tions to history and sentiment. Jones and Hare are the oldest feature on the air. Back in October, 1921, when the lower half of the Mississippi Valley was still part of the Gulf of Mexico, when lizards as big as trucks roamed over the New England streets and when there was only one speakeasy to the block, Jones and Hare made their radio début over WJZ. There were only two stations then in existence, WJZ and KDKA. Jones and Hare went over to the West- inghouse factory in Newark, N, J., in a coach. The journey took three days. Billy Jones wore side-whiskers, and Ernest Hare had a long beard, in those days con- sidered very natty. Newark was then a larger city than New York, which was just a sleepy little Dutch village. To give you more comical details about those funny old days, Jones and Hare were asked to sing for one hour and a half without stopping. The station was making experiments; it wanted to sec how far it could push the public. Jones and Hare sang thirty songs without stop- ping; they earned their money. Before their radio début, Jones and Hare had been teamed up in vaudeville and had been making phonograph rec- ords. Hare had been understudy for Al Jolson in “Sinbad” at the Winter Garden. Sometimes when you thought you were hearing Jolson, it was really Ernie Hare who was bending the knee. Billie Jones had been a choir singer in his early days. Combine an understudy with a choir singer and you get a star radio team. Wuy Nort Rewieve tHe Barner By Himinc A ProressionaL Gasper? “Wouldn't it be nice if we met some tim in New York?” Now for the art of Jones and Hare: as the Happiness Boys they have been mingling tears and laughter for years. Their jokes prey on our national weak- ness for puns. Their sentimental ballads are divided as solos between them. Billy Jones, the tenor, sings all the picces that represent a young man in search of love. The selections of more mature fecling fall to Ernie Hare, the baritone, who repre- sents the man who has discovered that there are Other Things in Life, such as mothers and wives. Their comic songs are the best things they do. And they manage to get the new ones while they are sull fresh. As the Happiness Boys, they are as sisted by Dave Kaplan at the piano, he being the Dormouse of the party. The Flit Soldiers are more pretentious because they have an orchestra to accom pany them. But either as sponsors of chocolates ot as patrons of something to massacre mos quitoes, Jones and Hare are worth your kind attention. To my prejudiced mind, their imitators should suffer the same fate as the imitators of Charlie Chaplin— oblivion and ignominy. Agnes Smith, POLITICIANS Tue Ship of State needs steady gales OF wind to fill its shining sails That it may steer past treacherous beaches. é Is that why Congressmen make speeches? Baron Ireland. comicbooks.com