Premium Only Content

Easy Aces 1945 (ep085) Jane Proves to Laura That Harry Only Wants Money
Easy Aces is an American serial radio comedy (1930–1945). It was trademarked by the low-keyed drollery of creator and writer Goodman Ace and his wife, Jane, as an urbane, put-upon realtor and his malaprop-prone wife.
A 15-minute program, airing as often as five times a week, Easy Aces wasn't quite the ratings smash that such concurrent 15-minute serial comedies as Amos 'n' Andy, The Goldbergs, Lum and Abner, or Vic and Sade were.
But its unobtrusive, conversational, and clever style, and the cheerful absurdism of its storylines, built a loyal enough audience of listeners and critics alike to keep it on the air for 15 years.
Accident of circumstance
Goodman Ace (b. Goodman Aiskowitz, 1899–1982) was a film critic for the Journal Post in his native Kansas City. On radio station KMBC, he read comic strips to children on Sunday mornings and reviewed films on Friday evenings. One night in 1930, the cast of the 15-minute show that followed his slot failed to show up, and Ace found himself having to fill in the time. His wife, Jane (b. Jane Epstein, 1897–1974), had accompanied him to the studio that night, and the two engaged in an impromptu chat about their weekend bridge game. This brought such a favorable response that the station invited Ace to create a domestic comedy—even though neither of the couple had ever really acted before.
At first, according to radio historian John Dunning (in On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio), the show oriented entirely around the couple's bridge playing, and nearly died the same way, when Jane Ace was said to have lost her temper over her husband's constant needling of her style of play, and threatened to quit the show entirely. Ace revamped the show into "a more universally based domestic comedy revolving around Jane's improbable situations and impossible turns of phrase." The result was one of radio's most respected comedies, going on to a fifteen-year air life despite its never being a ratings blockbuster. It was the first KMBC program to go on to become a network radio show.
"I am his awfully-wedded wife"
That and almost everything else could be forgotten amidst Jane Ace's linguistic mayhem, much of it provided by her wry husband's scripts and enough improvised by her. (Mary Hunter's real laughter, at Jane's malaprops or Ace's arch barbs, was practically the show's laugh track, years before anyone ever thought of using canned laughter.) Known as often as not as "Jane-isms," the better remembered of her twisted turns of phrase were more than a match for Gracie Allen's equally celebrated illogical logic, anticipating such later word and context manglers as Jimmy Durante, Lou Costello, Phil Harris, and, especially, All in the Family's Archie Bunker.
The famed Jane-isms included:
Perish forbid!
Congress is back in season.
You could have knocked me down with a fender.
Up at the crank of dawn.
Time wounds all heels.
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.
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.
I'm sitting on pins and cushions.
The coffee will be ready in a jitney.
This hangnail expression...
I don't drink, I'm a totalitarian.
We'll be together like Simonized twins.
Well, you've got to take the bitter with the better.
Jane Ace's malaprops were less limited in their word play than the Mrs. Malaprop of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals. She was scripted as having a knack for making right the muddled situations she made muddled in the first place, by stumbling into the solutions right before her original muddling might have blown everything to smithereens. Some critics such as the New York Herald-Tribune's John Crosby noted her language molestation betrayed a "crazy like a fox" intelligence with its own logical illogic, but as Crosby himself said, "There are a lot of Malaprops in radio but none of them scrambles a cliché quite so skillfully as Jane."
-
1:03:34
Donald Trump Jr.
14 hours agoZelensky Overplays His Hand, More Trump Wins, Plus Interview with Joe Bastardi | Triggered Ep.221
182K142 -
1:13:16
We Like Shooting
22 hours ago $6.99 earnedDouble Tap 399 (Gun Podcast)
65.1K2 -
1:00:20
The Tom Renz Show
1 day agoTrump Schools Zelensky, The Epstein Files FAIL, & What RFK Will Mean for Cancer
72.9K21 -
42:47
Kimberly Guilfoyle
15 hours agoThe Trump effect: More Major Investment, Plus America First at Home & Abroad. Live w/Ned Ryun & Brett Tolman | Ep. 201
150K40 -
1:29:23
Redacted News
14 hours agoWW3 ALERT! Europe pushes for war against Russia as Trump pushes peace and cutting off Zelensky
182K298 -
57:56
Candace Show Podcast
18 hours agoHarvey Speaks: The Project Runway Production | Ep 1
170K108 -
56:31
LFA TV
1 day agoEurope’s Relationship With America Is Over | TRUMPET DAILY 3.3.25 7PM
54.3K11 -
2:04:45
Quite Frankly
16 hours ago"European Deth Pact, Blackout Data Breach, Epstein" ft. Jason Bermas 3/3/25
53.2K22 -
1:32:46
2 MIKES LIVE
13 hours ago2 MIKES LIVE #187 Deep Dive Monday!
30.8K1 -
44:25
CatfishedOnline
14 hours ago $2.22 earnedRacist Lady Shocked After Sending Money to a Nigeria Romance Scammer
37.7K5