Jane Ace
Encyclopedia
Jane Ace (October 12, 1897 – November 11, 1974) was the high-voiced, malaprop-mastering wife on 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 malaprops over the air in each episode of the urbane serial comedy, and many became part of the American vernacular.
, Missouri
, Jane Epstein met Goodman Ace while both attended the same Kansas City high school and Goodman, hoping to make a writing career, edited the school newspaper. 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's press pass got him his first date with Jane. 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?"
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. 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.
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. And, after a listener laughed hysterically and invariably. Jane and her husband signed with Educational Pictures
to make Easy Aces two reel comedies in 1934. Dumb Luck made its debut January 18, 1935, with the couple on the screen in their radio roles.
Many years after Easy Aces ended at last, Goodman Ace revealed that Jane had never had any kind of acting experience before the show was born, though she was movie-star pretty as a young woman. (The Aces tried a short-lived, expanded revival on radio in 1948, known as mr. ace and JANE, before trying a television version of the original Easy Aces style in 1949.) 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
; Jane believed she was unable to play other roles, because she did not consider the radio work she did as acting.
A homebody at heart, she 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." 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. 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. They also began writing and performing in commercials. 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.
in 1974 following a long illness. Goodman Ace composed a eulogy in a Saturday Review column:
That eulogy provoked hundreds of letters from current readers and old radio fans alike. 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, never mind when she was radio's malaprop mistress. The National Radio Hall of Fame helped make sure of that, inducting Easy Aces and its co-stars in 1990.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
comedy Easy Aces
Easy Aces
Easy Aces, a long-running American serial radio comedy , 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...
(1930–45). Playing herself opposite her real-life husband and the show's creator-writer, Goodman Ace
Goodman Ace
Goodman Ace , born Goodman Aiskowitz, was an American humourist, working as a radio writer and comedian, a television writer, and a magazine columnist....
(1899–1982), she delivered clever malaprops over the air in each episode of the urbane serial comedy, and many became part of the American vernacular.
Early years
Born in Kansas CityKansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, Jane Epstein met Goodman Ace while both attended the same Kansas City high school and Goodman, hoping to make a writing career, edited the school newspaper. 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
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
's Kansas City show, but none of her boyfriends could get tickets to the sold-out performance. Ace's press pass got him his first date with Jane. 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?"
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. 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.
Radio days
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 progam 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.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
Gracie Allen
Grace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen , known as Gracie Allen, was an American comedian who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns...
's "illogical logic") substituted words in seemingly ordinary phrasing and still made perverse sense, after a fashion. And, after a listener laughed hysterically and invariably. Jane and her husband signed with Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures
Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...
to make Easy Aces two reel comedies in 1934. Dumb Luck made its debut January 18, 1935, with the couple on the screen in their radio roles.
Many years after Easy Aces ended at last, Goodman Ace revealed that Jane had never had any kind of acting experience before the show was born, though she was movie-star pretty as a young woman. (The Aces tried a short-lived, expanded revival on radio in 1948, known as mr. ace and JANE, before trying a television version of the original Easy Aces style in 1949.) 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
Dulcy (1923 film)
Dulcy is a 1923 American comedy film starring Constance Talmadge. The film was adapted from the Broadway production of the same name written by George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly. The play opened in New York in August 1921 and ran for 241 performances....
; Jane believed she was unable to play other roles, because she did not consider the radio work she did as acting.
A homebody at heart, she 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." Jane came out of retirement to join her husband as an NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
Radio Monitor
Monitor (NBC Radio)
NBC Monitor was an American weekend radio program broadcast from June 12, 1955, until January 26, 1975. Airing live and nationwide on the NBC Radio Network, it originally aired beginning Saturday morning at 8am and continuing through the weekend until 12 midnight on Sunday...
"Communicator" when the show premiered in 1955. The Aces were hired for the spot just after Dave Garroway
Dave Garroway
David Cunningham "Dave" Garroway was the founding host of NBC's Today from 1952 to 1961. His easygoing, relaxed, and relaxing style belied a battle with depression that may have contributed to the end of his days as a leading television personality—and, eventually, his life...
's participation in the program was announced. 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. They also began writing and performing in commercials. Husband Goodman continued a second career as a radio and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
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 CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in 1974 following a long illness. 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. 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, never mind when she was radio's malaprop mistress. The National Radio Hall of Fame helped make sure of that, inducting Easy Aces and its co-stars in 1990.
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.
- 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 better.
- The way things are these days, a girl's gotta play hard to take.
External links
- Encyclo Comedia
- They Were Past Friends The Modesto Bee, November 22, 1974