A Bah! from the Pooh-bah

// you want to know who we are, We're the hucksters of radio. . . . . We're vice presidents and clerks, Confidentially, we're all jerks. . . . There was no mistaking the tune. With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan, Fred Allen, radio's comic Pooh-bah, this week joined the growing ranks of the industry's flagellants with a withering burlesque: The Radio Mikado, written by Allen.

At rehearsal, the operetta opened in the office of Button, Burton, Bitten and Muchinfuss, where Philmore Updyke Muchinfuss ("known in the trade as old P.U.") was holding a staff conference. The advertising agency needed a sponsor.

In came Soap Tycoon F. A. Allen. Sang Allen, to the tune of A Wandering Minstrel I:

A wandering sponsor I;

My business is in trouble,

I make the soap with the built-in bubble

That nobody seems to buy.

The hucksters of B.B.B. & M. suggested a radio show for Allen. He shouted the idea down ("If you mention that . . . again, I'll have your entire agency barred from Toots Shor's!"). To the tune of As Some Day It May Happen, Allen told why he dislikes radio:

The day that I take over, I'll clean up radio

I've got a little list. I've got a little list

Of things that upset listeners, I'll see that they all go

(And they never will be missed. They never will be missed.

There's those fat off-key sopranos who keep singing Rinso White!

And that fellow Gabriel Whoosis, with his "Ah, there's news tonight." . . . There's those mournful serial programs, all unhappiness and grief,

Where the baby's a delinquent and the grandma is a thief. . . .

And those honeymoon atrocities, where the bride is always kissed;

They never will be missed. They never will be missed.

Finally, Allen suggested a "world symphony" to sell his soap ("We'll have 300 violins piped in from California . . . trombones from Texas . . . 90 French horns direct from Marseilles"). But it would not do, said Allen. To the tune of Tit-Willow, he explained why:

In all the excitement, there's one thing we forgot: Petrillo. Petrillo. Petrillo.

First we must learn if we can or cannot, From Petrillo. Petrillo. Petrillo.

If you want a musician to beat on a drum, Or a trumpet ta toot, or a banjo to strum, You can't do a single thing 'til you hear from Petrillo. Petrillo. Petrillo.

But radio listeners did not hear this version. Reason: after rehearsal NBC censors slashed Allen's script. Deleted by the thin-skinned network: all mention of hucksters, jerks, "old P.U.," etc. At the last minute, Allen had to write out some of his best lines to make his lyrics rhyme.

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