Except for Fanny Brice, as Baby Snooks, no woman comic has ever seriously challenged radio's top funnymen. Most radio comediennes (Mary Livingstone, Portland Hoffa, Jane Ace, Gracie Allen) stick to mixed-doubles family comedy.
Last week, NBC (which had lost almost all of its comedy line-up to raiding CBS) launched a female counterattack with The Ethel Merman Show (Sun. 9:30 p.m., E.D.T.). The program's tenuous story line has dark, bouncy, 41-year-old Ethel Merman, ably assisted by ex-Juvenile Star Leon Janney, trying to sell a new revue to a somnolent backer—Homer Tubbs, the Syracuse floor-mop king.
Dead Cherokee. Essentially, the show is a platform for...
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