Goodman Ace - Goodbye, Goody

Goodbye, Goody

Goodman Ace died eight years after his wife, in their New York City home in March 1982; the couple are interred together in a suburb of their native Kansas City. "Mr. Ace", wrote The New York Times's obituarist, David Bird, "liked to scoff at ratings. He said that neither the writer nor a star alone could make or break a comedy show. It took, he said, a good time spot and teamwork. 'The whole thing has to be a kind of partnership—a marriage between writer and performer,' he explained, 'If there is no marriage—well you know what the brainchild has to be'."

The author of CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, Robert Metz, recalled that, once, a relative of Ace's had wired him to say, "Send me $10,000 or I'll jump from the fourteenth floor of my building", and Ace was said to have wired back, "Jump from seven—I'll send $5,000." Whether or not this was a true story or an Ace gag, it was understatedly madcap enough that it could have been true.

When CBS fired Ace as the head of its "comedy workshop" in the late 1940s, according to Time, a sympathetic network vice president told him afterward, "I'll tell you a secret—we haven't got a man who understands comedy." Ace wryly replied, "I'll tell you a secret—that's no secret."

Ace himself offered his own best epitaph when Saturday Review ran a poll asking well-known Americans to nominate members of a contemporary Hall of Fame. "I respectfully suggest the name of Goodman Ace...if he's still around", Ace replied. "If he isn't, I wouldn't dig him up just for this." The National Radio Hall of Fame respectfully ignored that suggestion, inducting Easy Aces in 1990.