Beautiful Ohio

The Kraft Music Hall program has the reputation of going to considerable lengths for a gag. Not long ago its headliner Baritone Harry Lillis ("Bing") Crosby, observed, after a bazooka solo by Bob Burns, that the rendition had been "as dirty as the inside of a Russian horse doctor's valise." In somewhat the same free-style spirit, last week Kraft Announcer Ken Carpenter ad libbed at the end of the program during which Mr. Crosby had played Beautiful Ohio on a saw, that "Cuddle Up a Little Closer is from The Three Twins and Beautiful Ohio from hunger."

Outraged Clevelanders immediately protested to NBC's Red-network Cleveland station, WTAM, that the city's exhausted relief funds and long bread lines were not gagging matters. Bewildered, Station WTAM broadcast apologies, assured listeners that no reference to Ohio's relief headache had been intended. Residents of Beautiful Ohio needed to have it explained to them that in Broadwayese "from hunger" describes a performance so bad that it is done only because the performer must eat.

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