Vaudeville was almost dead in 1938 when Wilbert Lee O'Daniel, flour salesman, radio entertainer, composer of hymns and hillbilly songs, revived it in Texas to dramatize his campaign for Governor. In a sound truck with a speaker's stand on top, with a hillbilly band and singers, and an old-age pension slogan lifted from one of his songs ("Please pass the biscuits, Pappy!"), Lee O'Daniel won the Democratic nomination for Governor over eleven other hopefuls.
"Pappy's" pensions are dead in Texas, but vaudeville boomed again last week as six 1940 candidates for Governor, including...
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