Art Baker, John Guedel & Art Linkletter provided behind the scenes drama to People Are Funny.
PEOPLE ARE FUNNY
Art Linkletter and John Guedel were partners and friends for 61 years.
When the two first met, Linkletter was a 28 year old San Francisco radio personality with limited network experience who had a knack for ad-libbing audience participation programs. Guedel was 27 and working in the radio department of a Los Angeles advertising agency, having produced a 1938-39 local audience participation show, Pull Over, Neighbor starring West Coast radio personality and actor, Art Baker
The young producer and announcer liked each other immediately and remained close until Guedel’s death in 2001. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
Linkletter writes in his autobiography that their first meeting in 1940 was at a Hollywood Brown Derby lunch arranged by a Mutual Network executive who realized that both were developing audience participation shows with similar formats based on the psychological reactions of average people placed in abnormal situations.
Linkletter recalls that it was his idea to call the show Meet Yourself. But as they talked about pooling their ideas Guedel remarked, “Y’know…people are funny…,” and that’s how the show’s title was born.
Guedel & Linkletter Productions was also born that day with a handshake.
The two enlisted the help of a USC psychology professor and worked out the format for an audition record for People Are Funny in early 1941 featuring Linkletter and the psychologist as the show‘s resident expert. The audition cost $30 but Guedel considered it a dud - leaning too heavily on pseudo-psychology and not enough on fun.
A new audition record was prepared without the psychologist in which Baker and Linkletter put contestants through several of the stunts that Guedel had created for Pull Over, Neighbor. The second attempt satisfied Guedel and he began making the rounds to sell it - without success for over a year.
World War II was a few months old in early April, 1942, when the War Department ordered the NBC sitcom Captain Flagg & Sergeant Quirt off the air immediately because it gave the wrong impression of the officers and enlisted men who were fighting and dying for their country. Sponsor Brown and Williamson Tobacco had less than a week to find a replacement.
Guedel read about this situation in Variety and rushed a copy of the People Are Funny audition off to Russell Seeds, the tobacco company's ad agency in Chicago. He asked for $5,000 an episode and Seeds countered with $750 a week on a two week trial basis. Guedel and Linkletter took the offer and had two days to put the premiere broadcast of People Are Funny together.
Brown & Williamson bought the show for its Wings Cigarettes and placed it on NBC’s Friday schedule at 10:00 p.m. (ET) beginning on April 10, 1942. Within a month People Are Funny starring co-hosts Art Baker and Art LInkletter had a higher rating than Chesterfield cigarettes’ Glenn Miller band on CBS and Guedel negotiated a raise to $850 an episode for the rest of the season.
B&W was ready to renew the program for a full season for its premium cigarette brands, Raleigh and Kool, when Baker dropped a bomb - he resented sharing the host’s role with Linkletter, whom he considered a mere newcomer 15 years his junior. Baker threatened to quit if Linkletter wasn’t removed from the show. Guedel fought to fire Baker and give the show to his partner but the sponsor sided with Baker and Linkletter bowed out. He returned to San Francisco as the show’s co-producer in absentia, in continual consultation with Guedel.
The 1942-43 season was a ratings success. People Are Funny scored the first of its six consecutive seasons in Friday’s Top Ten and was NBC’s highest rated entertainment show of the night. (See Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
Behind the scenes it was a different story. Baker was continually sniping at Guedel and went over his young producer’s head to the sponsor with his complaints. Guedel let the situation go on through the season until the program was an established hit - then it was his turn to deliver an ultimatum - either Baker goes or he and Linkletter would take their successful program another sponsor.
The “new” People Are Funny starring Art Linkletter debuted on NBC at 9:30 on Friday, October 8, 1943. Brown & Williamson’s Raleigh and Kool cigarettes remained its sponsor for eight more seasons.
Linkletter said that the key to the program’s success was finding the right contestants from the show’s audience - average people usually culled from a lengthy pre-show warm-up interview process. The objective was to send them into unusual situations in public somewhere near the NBC studios at Sunset & Vine in Hollywood. They were accompanied in the background by Linkletter’s “outside man,” Irv Atkins, who made sure they got back to the show with reports of their experiences, often accompanied by witnesses who had no idea that they had become involved in a People Are Funny stunt.
That‘s when the cash and merchandise prizes - usually premiums available with Raleigh Cigarette coupons - were awarded to mollify any embarrassment or hard feelings..
For example, one contestant was dressed in workman’s clothes and provided with a gang of actual construction workers armed with blueprints and heavy equipment. They were dispatched to a local department store posing as a crew setting up its gear on the main floor for a major remodeling project due to begin the next morning. Frenzied store employees knew nothing of the project, “Ordered by headquarters.”
Another “crew” was sent with wrecking equipment to a residential neighborhood and called on homeowners with news that the entire area had been condemned for imminent freeway construction.
A contestant was given a bag of silver dollars and told to attempt to give them away, one by one, to passersby on a busy street without explaining why. Only three people accepted the free money.
Occasionally a contestant was double-crossed. One was given a book and sent to a nearby library with instructions to sit down and loudly rip out its pages, one by one. What Linkletter didn’t tell him is that the show had marked the back page of the book, Property of Los Angeles Public Library System. The librarian, who was in on the gag, pointed this out to the flabbergasted contestant turned victim. She summoned police - also part of the stunt - who promptly appeared to “arrest” him and haul him off to “jail”.
More elaborate stunts involved setting up both the situations and contestants. One dispatched a pre-selected honeymooning couple into the wilds of Oregon for three weeks to live in a covered wagon without any modern conveniences and cook over an open fire while searching for a hidden thousand dollar treasure - which they eventually found when they returned to the program to report on their pioneering experience.
Over its 18 years on the air People Are Funny used over 2,000 separate stunts and tests of human nature for the enjoyment of millions. Several of those stunts were duplicated on a special Linkletter-hosted telecast from NBC's WNBT/New York on June 11, 1946.
Guedel was also an early proponent of tape recording technology and introduced same week repeat programming during the 1950-51 season when People Are Funny’s Tuesday broadcasts were repeated the following Saturday nights. Although the repeats scored only single digits, the combined rating of the two broadcasts would have placed People Are Funny among the season’s Top Five programs.
The show moved to CBS for three seasons in 1951 where it became Tuesday’s top rated program and ranked among the season’s Top Ten. Guedel and Linkletter returned People Are Funny to NBC Radio and NBC-TV for its final six years in 1954.
John Guedel was the only producer to ever have two Top Ten programs in the same season. He did it twice with Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life and Art Linkletter’s People Are Funny. (See The One, The Only...Groucho!) In addition, Guedel and Linkletter had great success with House Party - a 26 year hit on daytime radio and television.
But the show that started the combined success and 61 year friendship for John Guedel and Art Linkletter was People Are Funny. Three shows from the 1949-50 season are posted - One, Two and Three - in which the program’s "search" for a modern day Cinderella reaches its climax. Enjoy!
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
Art Linkletter and John Guedel were partners and friends for 61 years.
When the two first met, Linkletter was a 28 year old San Francisco radio personality with limited network experience who had a knack for ad-libbing audience participation programs. Guedel was 27 and working in the radio department of a Los Angeles advertising agency, having produced a 1938-39 local audience participation show, Pull Over, Neighbor starring West Coast radio personality and actor, Art Baker
The young producer and announcer liked each other immediately and remained close until Guedel’s death in 2001. (See A John Guedel Production on this site.)
Linkletter writes in his autobiography that their first meeting in 1940 was at a Hollywood Brown Derby lunch arranged by a Mutual Network executive who realized that both were developing audience participation shows with similar formats based on the psychological reactions of average people placed in abnormal situations.
Linkletter recalls that it was his idea to call the show Meet Yourself. But as they talked about pooling their ideas Guedel remarked, “Y’know…people are funny…,” and that’s how the show’s title was born.
Guedel & Linkletter Productions was also born that day with a handshake.
The two enlisted the help of a USC psychology professor and worked out the format for an audition record for People Are Funny in early 1941 featuring Linkletter and the psychologist as the show‘s resident expert. The audition cost $30 but Guedel considered it a dud - leaning too heavily on pseudo-psychology and not enough on fun.
A new audition record was prepared without the psychologist in which Baker and Linkletter put contestants through several of the stunts that Guedel had created for Pull Over, Neighbor. The second attempt satisfied Guedel and he began making the rounds to sell it - without success for over a year.
World War II was a few months old in early April, 1942, when the War Department ordered the NBC sitcom Captain Flagg & Sergeant Quirt off the air immediately because it gave the wrong impression of the officers and enlisted men who were fighting and dying for their country. Sponsor Brown and Williamson Tobacco had less than a week to find a replacement.
Guedel read about this situation in Variety and rushed a copy of the People Are Funny audition off to Russell Seeds, the tobacco company's ad agency in Chicago. He asked for $5,000 an episode and Seeds countered with $750 a week on a two week trial basis. Guedel and Linkletter took the offer and had two days to put the premiere broadcast of People Are Funny together.
Brown & Williamson bought the show for its Wings Cigarettes and placed it on NBC’s Friday schedule at 10:00 p.m. (ET) beginning on April 10, 1942. Within a month People Are Funny starring co-hosts Art Baker and Art LInkletter had a higher rating than Chesterfield cigarettes’ Glenn Miller band on CBS and Guedel negotiated a raise to $850 an episode for the rest of the season.
B&W was ready to renew the program for a full season for its premium cigarette brands, Raleigh and Kool, when Baker dropped a bomb - he resented sharing the host’s role with Linkletter, whom he considered a mere newcomer 15 years his junior. Baker threatened to quit if Linkletter wasn’t removed from the show. Guedel fought to fire Baker and give the show to his partner but the sponsor sided with Baker and Linkletter bowed out. He returned to San Francisco as the show’s co-producer in absentia, in continual consultation with Guedel.
The 1942-43 season was a ratings success. People Are Funny scored the first of its six consecutive seasons in Friday’s Top Ten and was NBC’s highest rated entertainment show of the night. (See Friday's All Time Top Ten.)
Behind the scenes it was a different story. Baker was continually sniping at Guedel and went over his young producer’s head to the sponsor with his complaints. Guedel let the situation go on through the season until the program was an established hit - then it was his turn to deliver an ultimatum - either Baker goes or he and Linkletter would take their successful program another sponsor.
The “new” People Are Funny starring Art Linkletter debuted on NBC at 9:30 on Friday, October 8, 1943. Brown & Williamson’s Raleigh and Kool cigarettes remained its sponsor for eight more seasons.
Linkletter said that the key to the program’s success was finding the right contestants from the show’s audience - average people usually culled from a lengthy pre-show warm-up interview process. The objective was to send them into unusual situations in public somewhere near the NBC studios at Sunset & Vine in Hollywood. They were accompanied in the background by Linkletter’s “outside man,” Irv Atkins, who made sure they got back to the show with reports of their experiences, often accompanied by witnesses who had no idea that they had become involved in a People Are Funny stunt.
That‘s when the cash and merchandise prizes - usually premiums available with Raleigh Cigarette coupons - were awarded to mollify any embarrassment or hard feelings..
For example, one contestant was dressed in workman’s clothes and provided with a gang of actual construction workers armed with blueprints and heavy equipment. They were dispatched to a local department store posing as a crew setting up its gear on the main floor for a major remodeling project due to begin the next morning. Frenzied store employees knew nothing of the project, “Ordered by headquarters.”
Another “crew” was sent with wrecking equipment to a residential neighborhood and called on homeowners with news that the entire area had been condemned for imminent freeway construction.
A contestant was given a bag of silver dollars and told to attempt to give them away, one by one, to passersby on a busy street without explaining why. Only three people accepted the free money.
Occasionally a contestant was double-crossed. One was given a book and sent to a nearby library with instructions to sit down and loudly rip out its pages, one by one. What Linkletter didn’t tell him is that the show had marked the back page of the book, Property of Los Angeles Public Library System. The librarian, who was in on the gag, pointed this out to the flabbergasted contestant turned victim. She summoned police - also part of the stunt - who promptly appeared to “arrest” him and haul him off to “jail”.
More elaborate stunts involved setting up both the situations and contestants. One dispatched a pre-selected honeymooning couple into the wilds of Oregon for three weeks to live in a covered wagon without any modern conveniences and cook over an open fire while searching for a hidden thousand dollar treasure - which they eventually found when they returned to the program to report on their pioneering experience.
Over its 18 years on the air People Are Funny used over 2,000 separate stunts and tests of human nature for the enjoyment of millions. Several of those stunts were duplicated on a special Linkletter-hosted telecast from NBC's WNBT/New York on June 11, 1946.
Guedel was also an early proponent of tape recording technology and introduced same week repeat programming during the 1950-51 season when People Are Funny’s Tuesday broadcasts were repeated the following Saturday nights. Although the repeats scored only single digits, the combined rating of the two broadcasts would have placed People Are Funny among the season’s Top Five programs.
The show moved to CBS for three seasons in 1951 where it became Tuesday’s top rated program and ranked among the season’s Top Ten. Guedel and Linkletter returned People Are Funny to NBC Radio and NBC-TV for its final six years in 1954.
John Guedel was the only producer to ever have two Top Ten programs in the same season. He did it twice with Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life and Art Linkletter’s People Are Funny. (See The One, The Only...Groucho!) In addition, Guedel and Linkletter had great success with House Party - a 26 year hit on daytime radio and television.
But the show that started the combined success and 61 year friendship for John Guedel and Art Linkletter was People Are Funny. Three shows from the 1949-50 season are posted - One, Two and Three - in which the program’s "search" for a modern day Cinderella reaches its climax. Enjoy!
Copyright © 2015 Jim Ramsburg, Estero FL Email: tojimramsburg@gmail.com
| people_are_funny_1.mp3 |
| people_are_funny_2.mp3 |
| people_are_funny_3.mp3 |