Goodman Ace - "You Gentlemen, The Authors"

"You Gentlemen, The Authors"

By this time, however, Ace began writing for other performers; Milton Berle, Perry Como, Danny Kaye, Robert Q. Lewis, and Bob Newhart were some who engaged this witty man with a winking inability to take himself too seriously. (He would be nominated for Emmy Awards twice during his term as Como's head writer, in 1956 and 1959.) Ace rationalized his work by saying, "I'm not in television. I'm with Perry Como." Perhaps his best turn of writing in these years, however, was his collaboration with Frank Wilson on The Big Show, considered NBC's last-gasp attempt to keep classic radio alive. This 90-minute variety program was hosted by Tallulah Bankhead and featured a rotating cast that included some of America's and the world's greatest entertainers, including Fred Allen, Groucho Marx, Jimmy Durante, Joan Davis, Bob Hope, Louis Armstrong, George Jessel, Ethel Merman, José Ferrer, Ed Wynn, Lauritz Melchior, Ezio Pinza, Édith Piaf, Ginger Rogers, Ethel Barrymore, Phil Silvers, Benny Goodman, and Danny Thomas. The show was ripened by Ace's wry style, adapted to Bankhead's diva-blunt style and the differing ways of the various guests who joined in the show. (Ace said years later that one of his secrets was isolating particular interests of the guests-for example, Ginger Rogers' passion for playing golf-and write comic routines around those interests.)

For his part Ace remembered working with Bankhead fondly in later years. "'You gentlemen, the authors,' she would say", Ace once told author Robert Metz. "We gag writers felt pretty good about that." What he didn't necessarily feel good about, as he told radio interviewers Richard Lamparski and John Dunning two decades later, was the writers' non-mention in Bankhead's memoir recollection about The Big Show.

Ace had known Jack Benny since his Kansas City years. Radio historian Arthur Frank Wertheim recorded (in Radio Comedy) that, as a young newspaper reporter and columnist, Ace had written a witty gossip column that moved Benny himself to ask the young writer for some jokes for his stage act. Benny asked for more and paid Ace $50 for one packet of jokes. "Your jokes got lots of laughs", said the note Benny sent with the check. "If you have any more, send them along". Ace, according to Wertheim, returned the check with a note: "Your check got lots of laughs. If you have any more, send them along". Ace ended up supplying Benny with gags on the house for years, Wertheim noted.

Benny was inadvertently responsible for a very funny exchange of letters between Ace and the owner of the Stork Club, Sherman Billingsley. Benny invited him to lunch at the Stork; when Ace got to the club, Benny had not yet arrived. The staff at the Stork Club did not recognize Ace and he received a very cool reception. When Benny finally did get to the Stork, he was told Ace didn't want to wait and left. Soon Billingsley's notes began to arrive in Ace's mailbox, inviting him to come to the club for the marvelous air conditioning. Ace wrote back that he was well aware of how cool it was at the Stork, having received the cold shoulder there. Billingsley's response was a gift—bow ties for Ace. Ace's reply was to ask Billingsley for some matching socks so he would be well-dressed when he was refused admittance again.

Ace wrote one screenplay, I Married a Woman, in 1957. Calling it the best thing he had ever written, but the worst thing he had ever seen after viewing the film, Ace never tried his hand at screenwriting again. When the couple's Miami hotel room was robbed in 1966, Ace managed to find humor in the situation.

Ace's influence went further. He revealed in the mid-1960s that CBS once developed a kind of school for young comedy writers, with Ace himself "placed in charge of a group of six or seven young writers who wanted to make all that easy money", as he recalled in a later magazine column. All became television writers and two eventually became successful playwrights: George Axelrod (The Seven Year Itch) and Neil Simon (Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, The Goodbye Girl).