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38-425: 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

76-520: 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 . Radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim recalls a few of the devilish imp's pranks: "…planting a bees' nest at her mother's club meeting, cutting her father's fishing line into little pieces, ripping

114-549: 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

152-468: 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." 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

190-611: A regular classical music radio show broadcast on the Armed Forces Radio Network well into the 1980s. Dragon's concert band arrangement of America the Beautiful is played by bands across the country in concerts of patriotic music. By May 1935, Dragon had his own orchestra. A Santa Cruz, California, newspaper reported about the San Jose State freshman dance, "The dancers will travel over the world with

228-545: A song titled '"Row, Row, Row"', the tune of which has been adapted by football clubs in Brazil and Australia, where Melbourne 's Herald Sun ranked one of these adaptations, We're from Tigerland , as the best Australian Football League club song. Carmen Dragon Dragon was born in Antioch, California , the son of Rose and Frank Dragon, who were Italian immigrants. He attended Antioch High School and, while

266-561: A student there, composed a song for the school. Forward, Antioch! was performed between acts of a school play on February 28, 1930. (A newspaper article erroneously identified the composer as "a high school girl, Carmen Dragon".) He was very active in pop music conducting and composed scores for several films, including At Gunpoint (1955), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Night into Morning (1951), and Kiss Tomorrow Good-bye (1950). With Morris Stoloff , he shared

304-427: The 1940s, it became one of the nation's favorite radio situation comedies , with a variety of sponsors ( Post Cereals , Sanka , Spic-n-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

342-616: The 1944 Oscar for the popular Gene Kelly / Rita Hayworth musical Cover Girl , which featured songs by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin . He made a popular orchestral arrangement of "America the Beautiful" and also re-arranged it for symphonic band. In his obituary published March 29, 1984, the New York Times noted: "In 1964 he won an Emmy for producing the Glendale Symphony Orchestra Christmas Special on NBC." He played himself in

380-653: The 1979 film The In-Laws as the conductor of the fictitious Paramus Philharmonic Orchestra. Dragon conducted the Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, and they performed on The Standard School Broadcast , broadcast on NBC radio in the western U.S. for elementary schools from 1928 through the 1970s. The show was sponsored by the Standard Oil Company of California (now the Chevron Corporation ), but other than

418-747: The Follies era, many of the top entertainers, including W. C. Fields , Eddie Cantor , Josephine Baker , Fanny Brice , Ann Pennington , Bert Williams , Eva Tanguay , Bob Hope , Will Rogers , Ruth Etting , Ray Bolger , Helen Morgan , Louise Brooks , Marilyn Miller , Ed Wynn , Gilda Gray , Nora Bayes and Sophie Tucker appeared in the shows. The Ziegfeld Follies were known for displaying beautiful chorus girls, commonly called Ziegfeld Girls , who "paraded up and down flights of stairs as anything from birds to battleships." They usually wore elaborate costumes by designers such as Erté , Lady Duff-Gordon and Ben Ali Haggin . The " tableaux vivants " used in

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456-470: The Follies. The name was later used by other promoters in New York City, Philadelphia, and again on Broadway, with less connection to the original Follies. These later efforts failed miserably. When the show toured, the 1934 edition was recorded in its entirety, from the overture to play-out music, on a series of 78 rpm discs , which were edited by the record producer David Cunard to form an album of

494-484: 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. 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,

532-522: The Roof"). In The Drowsy Chaperone , the character Victor Feldzieg is the producer of Feldzieg's Follies , a parody of Ziegfeld Follies . The TV show Boardwalk Empire , about crime and corruption in 1920s Atlantic City, New Jersey , features a character that is a former Follies dancer, Lucy Danzige, portrayed by Paz de la Huerta . The 1912 version of the Ziegfeld Follies included

570-624: 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

608-415: The costume at parades and personal appearances. 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

646-408: The famed "Wedding Cake" set which had been used for Metro's earlier film, The Great Ziegfeld . Judy Garland was filmed on the top of the cake. Charles Winninger , who had performed in the Follies of 1920, appeared as " Ed Gallagher " with Gallagher's real-life partner, Al Shean to recreate the duo's famous song " Mister Gallagher and Mister Shean ". According to modern sources, Turner's character

684-525: The film gave a glimpse into what the Follies were really like. The show-stopper was the Irving Berlin -composed " A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody ", which, by itself, cost more to produce than one of Ziegfeld's entire stage shows. In 1941 MGM released Ziegfeld Girl , starring Judy Garland , Lana Turner , Hedy Lamarr , James Stewart and Tony Martin . The film was set in the 1920s. Celebrated numbers from Ziegfeld Revues were recreated, including

722-521: The fur off her mother's coat, inserting marbles into her father's piano and smearing glue on her baby brother." 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

760-399: The heyday of the revues, the musical includes many songs and production numbers that are intended to evoke the types of entertainment typically featured in the Ziegfeld Follies and other revues of the period. Examples include parade of showgirls ("Beautiful Girls"); a torch song (" Losing My Mind "); a baggy pants comic song ("The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues"); and a novelty song ("Rain on

798-722: The highlights of the production and which was released as a CD in 1997. In 1937, at the 9th Academy Awards , the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film, The Great Ziegfeld produced the previous year won the Best Picture (called "Outstanding Production"), starring William Powell as Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr. and co-starring Myrna Loy (as Ziegfeld's second wife Billie Burke ), Luise Rainer (as Anna Held , which won her an Academy Award for Best Actress ), and Frank Morgan as Jack Billings. Featuring numbers by Ray Bolger , Dennis Morgan , Virginia Bruce , and Harriet Hoctor ,

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836-441: The name there were no commercials. The program featured a high quality introduction to classical music for young people growing up in the 1940s and early 1950s. In the summer of 1947, Dragon and Frances Langford had a program on NBC . Langford sang, accompanied by Dragon and his 25-piece orchestra. The show began June 5 and ran for 13 weeks as a summer replacement for George Burns and Gracie Allen's program. Dragon also hosted

874-582: The orchestra of Carmen Dragon furnishing the appropriate music of each locality." A couple of months later, a Fresno, California, newspaper contained an advertisement promoting "Carmen Dragon, Ace Stanford Band, The Sensation of the Coast". Dragon made a series of popular light classical albums for Capitol Records during the 1950s with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra . Some of these recordings have been reissued on compact disc . Dragon has

912-673: The original Follies. Ziegfeld Follies was awarded the "Grand Prix de la Comedie Musicale" at the Cannes Film Festival in 1947, and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (black and white). The stage musical Funny Girl depicts Fanny Brice's success with the Follies. The musical debuted on Broadway in 1964 with Barbra Streisand playing Brice, Roger DeKoven as Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. and Brice's son-in-law Ray Stark producing. The 1968 Columbia Pictures film adaptation featuring Streisand reprising her role as Brice and Walter Pidgeon as Ziegfeld

950-472: 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

988-470: The revues were designed by Ben Ali Haggin from 1917 to 1925. Joseph Urban was the scenic designer for the Follies shows, starting in 1915, and Edward Royce directed the Follies in 1920 and 1921, in addition to several other Ziegfeld productions. After Ziegfeld's death his widow, actress Billie Burke , authorized use of his name for Ziegfeld Follies in 1934 and 1936 to Jake Shubert, who then produced

1026-411: The series was sometimes called Baby Snooks and Daddy . In 1904, George McManus began his comic strip, The Newlyweds , about a couple and their child, Baby Snookums. 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

1064-485: The suggestion of his then-wife, the actress and singer Anna Held . The shows' producers were turn-of-the-twentieth-century producing titans Klaw and Erlanger . The Follies were a series of lavish revues, something between later Broadway shows and the more elaborate high class vaudeville and variety show . The first follies, The Follies of 1907 , was produced that year at the Jardin de Paris roof theatre. During

1102-426: 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 . Brice and Stafford brought Baby Snooks and Daddy to television only once, an appearance on

1140-635: The unlikely role of Snooks. Ziegfeld Follies The Ziegfeld Follies were a series of elaborate theatrical revue productions on Broadway in New York City from 1907 to 1931, with renewals in 1934, 1936, 1943, and 1957. They became a radio program in 1932 and 1936 as The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air . Inspired by the Folies Bergère of Paris, the Ziegfeld Follies were conceived and mounted by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. , reportedly at

1178-444: 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

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1216-489: 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

1254-491: Was modeled after Ziegfeld Girl Lillian Lorraine , who suffered a drunken fall into the orchestra pit during an extravagant number. In 1946 MGM released a third feature film based on Ziegfeld's shows titled Ziegfeld Follies with Fred Astaire , Judy Garland , Lena Horne , William Powell (as Ziegfeld), Gene Kelly , Fanny Brice , Red Skelton , Esther Williams , Cyd Charisse , Lucille Ball , Kathryn Grayson , and others performing songs and sketches similar to those from

1292-431: 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

1330-464: 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

1368-490: Was the year's top-grossing movie. A subsequent Broadway revival in 2022 and 2023 featured Beanie Feldstein and later Lea Michele as Brice and Peter Francis James as Ziegfeld. The 1971 Stephen Sondheim musical Follies takes place at a reunion of showgirls from the Weissman Follies , a fictional revue inspired by the Ziegfeld Follies . In addition to featuring "ghosts" of statuesque showgirls from

1406-401: 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." Early on, Brice's character was sometimes called "Babykins." By 1934 she

1444-421: 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

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