Jane Ace - Radio Days

Radio Days

Conceived and written by Goodman Ace, Easy Aces graduated within two years from a strictly local show to a network offering (first from Chicago, then from New York). When the program was still at KMBC on a local level, the couple was contacted by a sponsor offering to bring them to Chicago for a network show on a trial basis. If the ratings for the show were good, the sponsor promised to then begin paying them salaries. Ace thought it was a wonderful offer, but Jane did not, saying that if the sponsor considered their show good enough for a network, it was also good enough for a salary. She went on to say that they needed $500 per week for their services and no less; the sponsor honored all of Jane's demands.

Goodman played himself as a put-upon realtor, and Jane played "his awfully-wedded wife" (and used the name Sherwood as her on-air character's maiden name) with an endearing mixture of sweet-natured meddlesomeness and language mangling. Her husband once swore that she was a natural malapropper, but in radio character Jane became the unchallenged mistress of the kind of malaprops that (unlike Gracie Allen's "illogical logic") substituted words in seemingly ordinary phrasing and still made perverse sense, after a fashion. And, after a listener laughed hysterically and invariably. The Aces signed with Educational Pictures to make Easy Aces two reel comedies in 1934. Dumb Luck made its debut January 18, 1935, with the couple on the screen in their radio roles.

Many years after Easy Aces ended, Goodman Ace revealed his wife had never had acting experience before the show. The Aces tried a short-lived, expanded revival on CBS Radio in 1948, known as mr. ace and JANE, before trying a television version of the original Easy Aces style on the DuMont Television Network from December 1949 to June 1950.

While doing Easy Aces, Jane was offered other radio roles in addition to the one on the couple's show. A radio producer wanted her to play the lead in a production of Dulcy, but she declined, reportedly believing she was unable to play other roles, because she did not consider the radio work she did as acting.

Jane Ace sought no further acting work after the show ended at last, mostly retiring to a quiet life, except for a brief spell as what her husband described (in a 1952 essay) as "a comedienne now making her come-down as a disc jockey." Jane came out of retirement to join her husband as an NBC Radio Monitor "Communicator" when the show premiered in 1955. The Aces were hired for the spot just after Dave Garroway's participation in the program was announced.

The couple was also part of the NBC Radio Weekday show which made its debut not long after Monitor. It aired Monday through Friday, and was intended to reach female radio listeners. They also began writing and performing in commercials. Husband Goodman continued a second career as a radio and television writer and regular essayist for Saturday Review, and his writings for that magazine frequently referenced Jane's doings, undoings, sayings, and unsayings.