Jane Ace

Jane Ace (October 12, 1897 – November 11, 1974) was the high-voiced, malaprop-mastering wife on the legendary, low-keyed American radio comedy Easy Aces (1930–45). Playing herself opposite her real-life husband and the show's creator-writer, Goodman Ace (1899–1982), she delivered clever malapropisms over the air in each episode of the urbane serial comedy, and many became part of the American vernacular.[1]

Jane Ace
Jane Ace on Easy Aces, 1935
Born
Jane Epstein

(1897-10-12)October 12, 1897
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.
DiedNovember 11, 1974(1974-11-11) (aged 77)
New York City
Spouse(s)Goodman Ace
Career
ShowEasy Aces (radio and television)
mr. ace and JANE
Jane Ace, Disk Jockey
Monitor
Weekday
Station(s)KMBC
NetworkCBS
DuMont
NBC

Early years

Born as Jane Epstein in Kansas City, Missouri, she met Goodman Ace while both attended the same Kansas City high school and Goodman, hoping to make a writing career, edited the school newspaper.[2] In due course, he became a movie critic and columnist for the Kansas City Journal-Post.

Throughout high school, Jane Epstein did not even bother to glance at her future husband, even though his admiration for her was no secret. After Goodman became a newspaper reporter, his stock with Jane began to increase; he was able to get passes for various shows. Jane wanted to attend Al Jolson's Kansas City show, but none of her boyfriends could get tickets to the sold-out performance. Ace got his first date with Jane because of his press pass; it enabled him to take Jane to the sold out Jolson show.[3] Jane's father, Jacob Epstein, a Kansas City clothing store owner, had hoped for a son-in-law who would be an asset to his business; after learning that Ace was in the newspaper business, his comment was, "Where's your newsstand?"[4][5]

The couple, married in 1922, got off to a rocky start; soon after they were married, Ace lost his reporter's job. While Jane was a good manager of their savings (she made all her own clothing before going into radio), there were tensions because of the financial problems. The Aces found they could forget their worries when playing bridge. Ace was hired by the Kansas City Journal-Post as its drama critic.[3] They caught their big break a few years later, while Goodman gave his witty reviews once a week on Kansas City radio station KMBC as well. One night in 1930, the show following his slot failed to feed, and Ace had to fill the 15 minutes' air time. He invited Jane—who'd accompanied him to the studio that night—to join him on the air chatting about a murder case that had broken locally and a bridge game they played the previous weekend. The couple's witty impromptu (Jane: "Would you like to shoot a game of bridge, dear?") provoked such a response that the station invited them to develop their own domestic comedy.[4][6]

Radio days
Listener postcard from Easy Aces sponsor, Lavoris, about new episodes of the program beginning September 26, 1932. The couple appears to be returning from vacation by freight train.
Premiere of "Jane Ace, Disk Jockey", October 27, 1951.

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.[3]

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.[7] Hysterical laughter invariably ensued.[8][9] The Aces signed with Educational Pictures to make Easy Aces two reel comedies in 1934.[10] Dumb Luck made its debut January 18, 1935, with the couple on the screen in their radio roles.[11][12]

Many years after Easy Aces ended, Goodman Ace revealed his wife had never had acting experience before the show.[13] 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.[14][15]

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.[3][16] 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."[17] 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.[18][19]

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.[20][21] They also began writing and performing in commercials.[22][23][24][25][26] 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.

Death

Jane Ace died in New York City in 1974 from cancer, aged 77.[27][28] Goodman Ace composed a eulogy in a Saturday Review column:

Now alone at a funeral home ... the questions ... the softly spoken suggestions ... repeated, and repeated ... because... because during all the arrangements, through my mind there ran a constant rerun, a line she spoke on radio ... on the brotherhood of man ... in her casual, malapropian style ... "we are all cremated equal" ... they kept urging for an answer ... a wooden casket?... a metal casket?... it's the name of their game ... a tisket, a casket ... and then transporting it to Kansas City, Missouri ... the plane ride ... "smoking or non-smoking section?" somebody asked... the non-thinking section was what I wanted ... a soft sprinkle of snow as we huddled around her ... the first of the season, they told me ... lasted only through the short service ... snow stopped the instant the last words were spoken. He had the grace to celebrate her arrival with a handful of His confetti ...

That eulogy provoked hundreds of letters from current readers and old radio fans alike.[29] With several hundred episodes of Easy Aces now circulating among old-time radio collectors (episodes the Aces syndicated through the Frederick W. Ziv Company in 1945), Jane Ace has been discovered by fans who weren't even alive before her own death.[30] The National Radio Hall of Fame helped make sure of that, inducting Easy Aces and its co-stars in 1990.[31]

Jane-isms
  • Home wasn't built in a day.
  • Congress is back in season.
  • You could have knocked me down with a fender.
  • Up at the crank of dawn.
  • Time wounds all heels.[32][33][34]
  • Now, there's no use crying over spoiled milk.
  • I'm completely uninhabited.
  • Seems like only a year ago they were married nine years!
  • I am his awfully-wedded wife.
  • I've always wanted to see my name up in tights.
  • He blew up higher than a hall.
  • I look like the wrath of grapes.
  • I wasn't under the impersonation you meant me.
  • He shot out of here like a bat out of a belfry.
  • He has me sitting on pins and cushions waiting.
  • The coffee will be ready in a jitney.
  • This hangnail expression...
  • I'm a member of the weeper sex.
  • I don't drink, I'm a totalitarian.
  • Well, you've got to take the bitter with the batter.
  • The way things are these days, a girl's gotta play hard to take.

References
  1. Sterling, Christopher H., ed. (2003). Encyclopedia of Radio 3-Volume Set. Routledge. p. 1696. ISBN 1-57958-249-4. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  2. "Win With A Wife!". The Milwaukee Journal. March 30, 1941.
  3. Jacobs, Mary (June 25, 1939). "A Couple of Aces". The Milwaukee Journal.
  4. Singer, Mark, ed. (2005). Mr. Personality: Profiles and Talk Pieces from The New Yorker. Mariner Books. p. 432. ISBN 0-618-19726-5. Retrieved September 22, 2010.
  5. Christensen, Lawrence O.; Foley, William E.; Kremer, Gary R.; Winn, Kenneth H., eds. (1999). Dictionary of Missouri Biography. University of Missouri. p. 848. ISBN 0826212220. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  6. "Goodman's Gamble in Radio Wins Fortune on 'Aces Up'". The Milwaukee Journal. December 28, 1939.
  7. Horowitz, Susan, ed. (1997). Queens of comedy: Lucille Ball, Phyllis Diller, Carol Burnett, Joan Rivers, and the New Generation of Funny Women (Studies in Humor and Gender, volume 2). Routledge. p. 184. ISBN 2-88449-244-5. Retrieved March 1, 2010.
  8. Dunning, John (1998). On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. Oxford University Press USA. p. 840. ISBN 0-345-49773-2. Retrieved June 26, 2010.
  9. Horten, Gerd, ed. (2003). Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War I. University of California Press. p. 232. ISBN 0-520-24061-8. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  10. "Easy Aces On Screen". Reading Eagle. December 13, 1934. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  11. "Dumb Luck". Internet Movie Database. January 18, 1935. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  12. "Educational Pictures Film List". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  13. Epstein, Lawrence J., ed. (2004). Mixed Nuts: America's Love Affair With Comedy Teams From Burns And Allen To Belushi And Aykroyd. PublicAffairs. p. 320. ISBN 1-58648-190-8. Retrieved March 1, 2011.
  14. Brooks, Tim; Marsh, Earle F., eds. (1987), The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, Ballantine Books, pp. 1071–2, ISBN 0-345-49773-2, retrieved April 14, 2010
  15. "Show Within A Show Is Basis For Easy Aces TV Program". The Courier Journal. March 12, 1950. p. 88. Retrieved October 2, 2017 – via Newspapers.com.
  16. Sosin, Milt (February 1, 1945). "'Easy Aces' Lend Their Talents To Heroes' Phone Campaign". The Miami News. p. 1. Retrieved May 7, 2011 – via Newspapers.com.
  17. "'Jane Ace, Disk Jockey' premieres tonight". The Miami News. October 27, 1951. p. 4. Retrieved September 23, 2010 – via Newspapers.com.
  18. Hart, Dennis, ed. (2002). Monitor: The Last Great Radio Show. iUniverse, Inc. p. 254. ISBN 0-595-21395-2. Retrieved September 19, 2010.
  19. Cox, Jim, ed. (2002). Say Goodnight Gracie: The Last Years of Network Radio. McFarland and Company. p. 224. ISBN 0-7864-1168-6. Retrieved September 16, 2010.
  20. Miller, Leo (November 6, 1955). "'Weekday' (5 Times) NBC's Latest". Sunday Herald. Retrieved January 14, 2011.
  21. "Radio:Woman's Home Companion". Time. November 28, 1955. Retrieved January 14, 2011.
  22. Grace, Arthur (February 18, 1959). "Instant Brew By Real Ace". The Miami News. p. 24. Retrieved September 23, 2010 – via Newspapers.com.
  23. "Jane Ace Takes It Easy". The Miami News. January 9, 1959. p. 10. Retrieved September 23, 2010 – via Newspapers.com.
  24. Danzig, Fred (December 16, 1959). "A TV Commercial Steals Show". Beaver Valley Times. Retrieved September 23, 2010.
  25. Danzig, Fred (March 25, 1958). "Former Radio Comic Now Writes Perry Como Show". Middlesboro Daily News. Retrieved November 2, 2010.
  26. Lowry, Cynthia (December 14, 1959). "'Electronic Deceits' To Be Eliminated From TV Shows". Times Daily. Retrieved November 27, 2010.
  27. "Radio Star Jane Ace Is Dead". Ellensburg Daily Record. November 13, 1974. Retrieved November 10, 2010.
  28. O'Brian, Jack (March 21, 1974). "Gatsby is Great". Herald-Journal. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
  29. Beaupre, Walter. "Easy Aces: Radio's Original Comedy Couple". Old Time Radio. Retrieved November 17, 2010.
  30. "Aces Up". Time. September 8, 1947. Retrieved January 14, 2011.(subscription required)
  31. "Goodman and Jane Ace-Easy Aces". Radio Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on May 26, 2011. Retrieved July 20, 2010.
  32. De Ley, Gerd; Potter, David, eds. (2002). Do Unto Others ... Then Run: A Little Book of Twisted Proverbs. Andrews McMeel Publishing. p. 192. ISBN 0-7407-2738-9. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
  33. Nachman, Gerald, ed. (2000). Raised on Radio. University of California Press. p. 544. ISBN 0-520-22303-9. Retrieved December 12, 2011.
  34. Gabay, Jonathan, ed. (2012). Gabay's Copywriters' Compendium. Routledge. p. 522. ISBN 978-0750683203. Retrieved October 4, 2012.

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