The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring comedian 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 6:30 pm 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.
History In 1904, George McManus began his comic strip, The Newlyweds, about a couple and their child, Baby Snookums.Scoop: The Newlyweds (April 9, 2004) Brice began doing her Baby Snooks character in vaudeville, as she recalled in an interview shortly before her death: "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."Fanny Brice Collection: Baby Snooks.
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 and Span, Jell-O) being touted by a half-dozen announcers—John Conte, Tobe Reed, Harlow Willcox, Dick Joy, Don Wilson and Ken Wilson.
On screen, Brice portrayed Baby Snooks in the 1938 film Everybody Sing in a scene with Judy Garland as Little Lord Fauntleroy.
Hanley Stafford was best known for his portrayal of Snooks's 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, later portrayed by Lois Corbet (mid-1940s) and Arlene Harris (after 1945). Beginning in 1945, the child impersonator Leone Ledoux was first heard as Snooks's younger brother Robespierre, and Snooks returned full circle to the comics when comic book illustrator Graham Ingels and his wife Gertrude named their son Robespierre (born 1946) after listening to Ledoux's child voice.
Danny Thomas was the "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.University of California, Berkeley: Media Resources Center.
Radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim recalls a few of the character'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."Wertheim, Arthur Frank. Radio Comedy. Oxford University Press, 1979. Yet Snooks was not a mean-spirited 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.Goldman, Herbert G. Fanny Brice: The Original Funny Girl. Oxford University Press, 1992. 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."The Marx Brothers Radio Shows and Guest Appearances": The Big Show (November 12, 1950)
Television Brice and Stafford brought Baby Snooks and Daddy to television only once, an appearance on the June 12, 1950, edition of CBS-TV's Popsicle Parade of Stars. This was Fanny Brice's only appearance on television, with Baby Snooks portrayed by the adult Brice in a little girl's outfit. Brice later admitted that the character of Baby Snooks just didn't work properly when seen.
Death Fanny Brice died May 29, 1951, with her memoirs unfinished and with Baby Snooks due on the air that same night. The May 29 memorial broadcast, a musical tribute to Brice, ended with a short eulogy from Stafford: "We have lost a very real, a very warm, a very wonderful woman."Grossman, Barbara Wallace. Funny Woman: The Life and Times of Fanny Brice. Indiana University Press, 1991.
Books containing show scripts Philip Rapp's The Baby Snooks Scripts, edited by Ben Ohmart (BearManor Media, 2003), contains Rapp's original radio scripts from Maxwell House Coffee Time, the Good News Show and other programs.
The Baby Snooks Scripts, volume two (BearManor Media, 2007), includes an undated script by Rapp featuring Alfred Hitchcock in the unlikely role of Snooks.
Episodes
1937 12/30/37 Daniel in the Lion's Den
1938 02/17/38 Telling Time And Shaving 03/10/38 Income Tax 03/24/38 Rehearsing A Speech 03/31/38 At the Circus 04/14/38 Why? Because! (With Judy Garland) 05/05/38 Vitamins & Hiccups 05/19/38 Beach House 06/09/38 At the Doctors 09/01/38 A Tisket A Tasket 09/22/38 Aunt Sophie Having a Baby 10/20/38 Daddy Has An Hour to Kill 12/22/38 Visiting Santa Claus
1939 01/??/39 The Man Who Came to Dinner 01/22/39 Daddy's an Elk 01/29/39 Daddy's Boss Comes to Dinner 04/04/39 House Breaking 05/05/39 Life Insurance 05/11/39 Barking Rabbit 05/18/39 Golf Tea 05/25/39 Hugh What? 06/01/39 Gone Fishing 06/08/39 Violet Ray 06/15/39 Living by Dyeing 06/22/39 New Baby 06/29/39 Jealousy 09/07/39 Pulling Teeth 09/14/39 At the Dentist 09/22/39 Heat Wave 09/28/39 Airport Meeting 10/05/39 Mudneck 10/26/39 Cake Writing & Abe Lincoln 11/05/39 Barking Rabbit 11/16/39 Rich Uncle & Slapsie Maxie 11/23/39 Court Case 11/30/39 Insurance Exam 12/14/39 Psychoanalyzed 12/21/39 Sneaky Snooks 12/28/39 Hunting
1940 01/04/40 Bungling Burglars 01/11/40 Male Secretary 01/18/40 Chemical Catastrophe 01/25/40 Shetland Pony 02/01/40 Family Tree 02/08/40 Anatomy of a Robot 02/15/40 Tax Returns 02/22/40 The Missing Dollar 02/29/40 Wedding Cake 03/07/40 Baby Snooks Has Amnesia 03/14/40 Tom Thumb 03/21/40 Laying an Egg 03/28/40 Baby Brother (Wants Attention) 04/04/40 April Fools 04/11/40 Baby Fish Story 04/18/40 Magic 04/25/40 Motel 05/02/40 Auntie Septic 05/09/40 Lies 05/16/40 Jokes for Jack 06/22/40 Tonsils Operation 07/11/40 At the Beach 07/18/40 Library Visit 07/25/40 Port Hole Safe 09/05/40 Magazine Scam 09/12/40 New Car 09/19/40 Playing Hooky 09/26/40 Where's the Medicine? 10/10/40 Football Game 10/17/40 Where's My Change? 10/24/40 Raising a Loan 10/31/40 Ruined Suit 11/07/40 Oil Discovered 11/14/40 Measles 11/21/40 4 Fathers 11/28/40 Stolen Turkey 12/12/40 Haunted House 12/19/40 Christmas Skates 12/26/40 Returning Presents
1941 01/02/41 Sneaking Out 01/09/41 Art Museum 01/23/41 Flat Tire 01/30/41 Jury Duty 02/06/41 Flower Gardens 02/13/41 Taxes Again 02/27/41 At the Races 03/20/41 Photographer 03/27/41 Buying Shoes 04/03/41 At the Zoo 04/10/41 Trout Fishing 04/17/41 Baseball Game 04/24/41 Fixing Supper 05/08/41 Riding Academy 05/22/41 Insomnia 05/29/41 Antique Auction 06/05/41 Calisthenics 06/12/41 X-Ray Machine 06/19/41 Dollar Day 06/26/41 Artist Daddy 07/10/41 Going to Camp 10/02/41 Snooks Returns 10/09/41 New School 10/23/41 Duck Hunting 10/31/41 Halloween 11/06/41 Defense Stamps 11/13/41 Mixed Nuts 11/27/41 The Opera 12/18/41 Air Raid Warden
1942 01/01/42 Hangover 01/08/42 Victory Garden 01/15/42 House Guest 01/22/42 Hiccups 01/29/42 Report Card 02/05/42 Knitting Lessons 02/12/42 Camping In 02/26/42 Stealing Chickens 03/19/42 Fake Measles 03/26/42 Red Cross 04/02/42 Easter Suit 04/09/42 Daddy's Birthday 04/16/42 Poultice 04/23/42 $50.00 Raise 04/30/42 Quiz Kids 05/07/42 Fishing Rod 05/14/42 Driving Home From a Wedding 05/21/42 Sugar 05/28/42 Abnormal Psychology 06/04/42 10th Anniversary 06/11/42 The Twins 06/18/42 The Trade 07/02/42 Baby Buggy 09/03/42 Camp Report 09/24/42 Matinee 10/01/42 Gozinta 10/08/42 Charlie 12/03/42 Getting Gas 12/18/42 Cinderella
1943 01/14/43 Stolen Medal 11/04/43 The Trial
1944 06/15/44 The World's Most Patient Father