Joe Penner

Mostly forgotten today, radio comic Joe Penner was a major craze back in Depression-era 1933 and 1934. There was no heavy social significance to his work and certainly no subtlety -- just a lot of slapstick silliness that helped audiences forget their troubles and get happy.

Born József Pintér in Hungary, he arrived as a child in New York City. He changed his name to Joe Penner and became fairly successful on the vaudeville and burlesque circuits as a Lou Costello-like patsy. His catchphrase "Wanna buy a duck?" started here. The story goes that in his routine he would customarily go out on stage with some sort of prop and say to his straight man, "Wanna buy a..." whatever the prop was. No laughs basically until one day when he went out on stage with a wooden decoy and said, "Wanna buy a duck?" The house went wild. Penner would parlay this one simple line into a major radio career. He was introduced to the air waves by Rudy Vallee and enjoyed a meteoric rise, quickly becoming a household name with his unabashed "anything for a joke" antics and other one-liners like "You naaaaasty man!" One of the earliest roles of voice talent Mel Blanc on national radio was as the voice of Goo-Goo, the duck that figured in Penner's famous catchphrase. Egghead, the forerunner of the Elmer Fudd character, was partly based on Penner too, which used a similar voice and mannerisms. Penner was one of the first to have a regular radio series regularly broadcast from Los Angeles.

His popularity and ability at singing novelty songs helped move him into minor leads in Hollywood "B" musical films during the 30s. Often the movies had college themes such as College Rhythm (1934), Collegiate (1935) and Mr. Doodle Kicks Off (1938). His talents were limited but the call seemed to be there. His best known film The Boys from Syracuse (1940), based on the Broadway musical, had him playing dual roles while hamming it up with Martha Raye.

Had he not died so young (of a heart attack at age 36 in 1941), Penner probably would have suffered an early decline anyway simply due to the repetitive nature of his shtick and faded into supporting character roles.