CAN YOU TOP THIS?

4 DECEMBER 1946

Internal evidence for broadcast date: Circus Saints & Sinners dinner for Eisenhower was 30 November 1946. Program aired on Saturdays. Possibly recorded 1 December and transcribed?

Syndication edit

Emcee: Ward Wilson

Joke teller: Peter Donald

Panel: Senator Ford, Harry Hershfield, Joe Laurie Jr.

(panhandler, conversation, courtship, annoyance)

CHARLES STARK: “Can You Top This?”

PETER DONALD: In the spring, a young man’s fancy turns to what the girls have been thinking about all year.

WARD WILSON: Can you top that, Harry Hershfield?

HARRY HERSHFIELD: I’ll try.

WW: How about you, Senator Ford?

SENATOR FORD: I really don’t know.

WW: And you, Joe Laurie Jr?

JOE LAURIE JR: Well, maybe.

CS: These guys who can needle you into stitches bring you another session of “Can You Top This?” And now for the man who lays down the law so you can pick up the chips, Ward Wilson.

WW: Thank you, Charles Stark. “Can You Top This?” is unrehearsed and spontaneous, and our top rule is “keep them laughing.” Anyone can send in a joke, and if your joke is told by the well-known actor and storyteller Peter Donald, you get ten dollars. Each of the three wits try to top it with another joke on the same subject. Each time they fail to top you, you get five dollars more, so you have a chance to win as much as twenty-five dollars.

ROGER BOWER: And this is your host, Roger Bower. “Can You Top This?” is made possible by our fine sponsor. Won’t you please listen to this?

WW: You ready?

HH and JL: Ready!

SF: I guess so.

WW: Three readies, one a little vague. Well, here’s the first joke this evening. Comes from technical sergeant and Mrs. Gerald M. Ferne of Tacoma, Washington, and it’s on the subject of “panhandler.” Panhandler. So, Pete, you put the bite on us and we’ll see what happens from there.

PD: Well, this is about a very, very wealthy man. Oh, he’s loaded with money. Even the water on his knee was Chanel Number 5. I mean this…Just awful, awful wealthy but very stingy. Very stingy guy, and one day he’s walking along Fifth Avenue in all his finest clothes and wearing a chinchilla toupee and all this kind of stuff, and up came Willy the Weasel, a well-known panhandler. He said, “Hey, buddy, could you spare twenty-five cents for a room tonight?” So the stingy guy says, “No, I couldn’t” And he says, “No twenty five cents, huh? Well, have you got a dime for a ham sandwich?” Fellow says, “No. I haven’t got a dime for a ham sandwich.” Says, “Umm. Gee that’s tough. You got a nickel for a cup of coffee?” He says, “No, I haven’t got a nickel for a cup of coffee.” He says, “You ain’t got a quarter for a room, no dime for a ham sandwich, no nickel for a cup of coffee.” He says, “Buddy, we better go into partnership. You’re as big a bum as I am.”

WW: Well, you weren’t much of a bum on that one, Pete.

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter.

WW: Automatically sending the twenty-five to technical sergeant and Mrs. Ferne and putting our three wits out strictly for laughs. The upraising of hands looked like Harry Hershfield first.

HH: Well, first I want to toss a quickie in. You know there are a lot of panhandler and beggar stories. But there was a beggar bowlegged as the deuce. Oh, terribly bowlegged. And one says, “Did you ever see such a bowlegged beggar?” Other one said, “He used to be on horseback, but a black market butcher stole his horse.” There was a big wedding. There’s a big wedding. Oh, there’s a tremendous wedding in a hall. And the groom was looking around the place, and he sees one guy eating away to beat the band. Oh boy, he’s eating and he looks at him. The guy needs a shave. He’s dirty looking. No clothes and anything And the groom walks over to him. Says, “Just a minute. Did you get an invitation to come here?” Said, “No” “Are you a friend of mine? The groom?” Said, “No.” “Are you a friend of the bride?” Said, “No” Says, “Well, you’ve got a nerve panhandling in here. Mooching here. Come on!” He took him out and he kicked the life out of him, knocked his teeth out, smashed his eye, knocked him down the stairs. When he got down there bleeding, the panhandler got himself a cop. He grabbed this groom, took him right to the station house. And they told the story before the judge, and the judge listened carefully to the testimony. He turned to this panhandler. He says, “Is it true that you came in there without an invitation? And he asked you if you had an invitation? You said no? Asked you if you were a friend of the groom? And you’re a friend of the bride? You said no? And he kicked you down the stairs and beat you up and knocked your teeth out?” He said, “Yes” Says, “You got any witnesses?” He says, “Yeah. The six guys that I invited.”

RB: Up, up, up! 1000 on the laugh meter, Ward.

WW: Cops six, seven, and eight on route there finally made the grade, and…

HH: Well, it’s the finish that counts.

WW: The preface got 700 too. However, it ties Mr. and Mrs.Ferne’s 1000 but doesn’t top it, needless to say, and Joe, we’d better hear from you.

JL: I got a very short one to put in. Pete reminded me of it. About a fellow who gets up to a guy in the street. He says, “Give me a hundred dollar, will you, buddy?” He says, “What’s the idea of asking for a hundred bucks? He says, “I’m putting all my begs in one ask-it.” The one I want to tell is about a fellow comes home. He comes home and right on the doorstep, right on the doorstep in front of his house is a fellow - a beggar there and he’s, oh, he’s yelling, he’s hollering, oh, he’s yelling and hollering, and his wife is right over the beggar. So he says, “What’s happened here? What’s happened here? What’s the matter?” So she says, she says, “What’s the matter? The man rang the bell, I opened the door, and he says to me, ‘Lady, would you please give me a bite?’ So I bit him.”

RB: Hey! 1000 on the laugh meter for that one, Ward.

WW: So, so far we have a perfect round, Senator.

SF: Well, I can go back that far to with one of those gags that he just told? I’ll throw in one too. I had enough time to think of four or five. A panhandler knocked at a farmhouse door, and a hatched-faced woman answered, and she said, “Are you here again? Aren’t you one of the three men I gave a pie last week?” He said, “Yes, lady, but I’m the sole survivor.” Pete’s kind of reminded me of one. A panhandler on the street asked me for a handout, and I thought I’d give him a lecture. Being Ford , I’d give him a lecture instead of a dime, you know? So I said, “What’s the matter with you? Why don’t you get wise to yourself? Look at you. You sleep on park benches. You’re hungry. You’re tattered. You’re tired. Why don’t you go to work?” He said, “Go to work? For what? To support a bum like me?”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter.

WW: Well, the facts and figures on that round are perfect, as a matter of fact. Everybody got a thousand.

RB: Another round of jokes will be coming up right after these important words from our fine sponsor.

WW: Now back to the contest of wit and humor. Here’s a joke which was sent in by Miss Evelyn Lilburgh of DeKalb, Illinois, and the subject of this joke -- if your wives are listening, I imagine they’ll be interested -- conversation. Conversation. So, Peter Donald, suppose we talk it over.

PD: This is a very, very intelligent joke, now. If you don’t laugh at this one, it just proves how ignorant you are. This is very, very highbrow, this joke. Seems that an investigator went to a state sanitarium. He was looking around to see what the conditions were, and while he was walking around the grounds, he saw an old man sitting under a tree. So he sat down next to the old man and he said, “Good evening, sir.” The old man said, “Ah, good evening. Say, you’re a stranger here, ain’t you?” He said, “Yes, I am.” He said, “I’m a visitor here. Are you a visitor?” He said, “No, sonny. I’m an inmate of the sanitarium.” Well, he said, “That’s too bad. I’m sorry. You didn’t look like one.” Well, he says, “I really shouldn’t be one, but I’m the victim of circumstances, see? My family -- they coveted all the property I had, so they pretended that I was insane and they had me sent up here and I’ve been here for years now and I’m perfectly sane. If only the truth were known, I’m doing a great scientific work -- something very important. It’s an undertaking that has taken me years and years, and if it’s ever done and completed it’ll make my name famous throughout the English-speaking world. Now, that shows you that I am sane.” Fellow said, “Well, you certainly sound like a sane man.” He said, “What is this great work you’re doing?” He said, “What is it? I am compiling a complete index of Webster’s dictionary.

RB: Up, up, up! 1000 on the laugh meter, Ward.

WW: There was a brief pause at 800 on there. So you’re in for Miss Lilburgh with an automatic twenty-five, and putting our three wits out for strictly laughs once again, and the first upraised hand, I think, belongs to Joe Laurie.

JL: I got a real short one. About this fellow trying to read his paper at home. His wife is one of those yada-yada-yada-yada-yada-yada-yada gals. You know. “(Imitates her inarticulately) You know, at the club [speaks inarticulately].” And gabbing and gabbing. And he’s turning his paper, looking at her, and he’s… Finally, he says, “I’m reading in the paper here about the zoo here, about the giraffe up at the zoo.” She says, “What about the giraffe at the zoo? What about the giraffe at the zoo?” Says, “Says here it has a tongue eighteen inches long.” She says, “A tongue eighteen inches long?” He says, “Yeah. Ain’t you jealous?”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter.

WW: And so far we haven’t hit anything but that except on a couple of prefaces, and Senator, I think your hand was raised second.

SF: Yeah, well, Pete’s story involved two people talking and Joe’s involved two. I have one with three carrying on conversation. It seems that one evening three florists lapped up Four Roses like five dollars worth of blue blotters, and then they decided to take a ride on the top of a Fifth Avenue bus to get some air. So they climbed up to the top of the bus. They had ridden about two blocks when the first one said, “It’s windy.” The second one said, “’Tain’t Wednesday. It’s Thursday.” The third one said, “I’m Thursday, too. Let’s get off and get a drink.”

WW: Well, you don’t need to be Thursday about that one, Senator.

RB: 1000 for that joke, Ward.

WW: Keeping the round intact at 1000 for the second time. And Harry and your cigar, you’re invited in.

HH: This is pretty recent. Yesterday the Circus Saints & Sinners gave one of the greatest luncheons I ever saw to General Eisenhower. And at that luncheon ex-Governor Hoffman and Colonel Hoffman told this story. He told about a goof soldier and he sees a lot of fellows going into a sort of a headquarters and he wanted to see what was going on there, and he was stopped by the sentry. And the sentry said, “Who goes there?” He says, “General Eisenhower.” So they got together and they beat the life out of him. Knocked his teeth out. He was an awful sight. So he got back to the camp and to his tent. They said, “What happened?” He said, “Well, I saw a lot of fellows going in there,” he said, “And he said to himself, “I’d like to go in there too, and the fellow says, the sentry said, ‘Who goes there?’ and I said, ‘General Eisenhower,’ and they beat me up something awful.” Guy says, “Certainly. Why didn’t you tell him your own name?” He said, “What? If they could do that do Eisenhower, can you imagine what they’ll do to me?”

WW: Well, I suppose he did have a conversation, Harry, after…

HH: Well, it is a conversation.

WW: That’s what I have to accede to.

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter, Ward.

HH: Define conversation to me. Certainly not what you’re saying to me.

WW: Harry, we only have a half hour program. Here’s our next one, however, and we’ll see what happens with a joke from We the Patients. That’s a group up at the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in Saranac Lake, New York, and the subject of this round is courtship. Courtship. So, Pete, hope you wind up happily wed to this one.

PD: Well, this is about a very, very nervous suitor. He’d been calling on this girl about three times a week for over six months, and he never mentioned marriage at all. Never mentioned getting engaged. And one evening they were seated on the porch swaying and they were very nervous and she was shaking and she was shaking and it’s kind of a shame they didn’t have a pair of dice with them they were wasting so much energy and they were kind of looking at each other and finally she blinked her big blue eyes and she says, “Oh Gregory.” He said, “Yeah.” She says, “It’s so romantic tonight. Say something soft.” He says, “Custard pudding.” Long pause. Nothing again. Finally, he says, “Fanny, I’ve been calling on you for over six months and I like you an awful lot and I want to say something.” She says, “Oh Gregory! Ooh, you’re giving me pheasant pimples! Ooh!” He says, “Well. I want to ask you a very important question.” She says, “Oh, Gregory. This is so sudden. What is it?” He says, “What I want to ask you is: Would you please let me know what date you and your mother have decided on for our wedding day?”

WW: Better brush that off slightly, Pete. I think you dropped something somewhere en route.

RB: The laugh meter says 550 on that one, Ward.

WW: Pete is now kicking it away from the stand. Well, for the first time this evening it looks like We the Patients are a little out of luck because our three wits have plenty of latitude. So let’s see. On the subject of courtship, who’s the first to volunteer.

HH: Well, I have a screwball gag if there ever was one. There was a fellow calling on a girl. He never had a chance to kiss her because little Tommy would stay in the room. And he didn’t know what to do, so he figured out a scheme. He says to her, “You know what I’ll do? I’ll put him on my shoulders and run around the room with him, and he won’t know what’s going on below him, and as I’m running around, every time I come around the room, I’ll kiss you, see?” So he put the kid on his shoulders and he started running around with the kid and as came around he’d give her a kiss. And he’d pounce around again with the kid, turn around, give her another kiss, and he pounced again around and the kid hit that wall. The kid hollered, “Ow! Ouch! With your fancy lovemaking you’ll make from me a cripple!”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter for that one, Ward.

WW: Tying Patients. Tying? Topping it by 450, as a matter of fact. They still have their original ten, though. Anybody going to try and duck under this? Joe, I think your hand was raised second.

JL: Talking about courtship, I got one about a dope too. By the way, We the Patients up in Saranac have a lot of great ex-actors and still actors and great troupers up there. Send my regards to them. But the one I want to tell is about this guy. Comes in all bandaged up. All his face is all bandaged and his hands and his legs and everything. Fellow says, “What happened to you? What happened?” He said, “What happened to me? Went to my girl’s house last night,” he says, “And we were sitting in the parlor,” he says, “And I asked her to marry me, and she said, ‘Yes.’ Just then her old man come in. I said to the old man, ‘I want to marry your daughter,’ and he looked and me and he punched me in the eyes. Blackened by eyes and broke my nose, then kicked me in the leg.” He says, “Then her brother came in. And her father told the brother that I want to marry the daughter. And he put me on the ground and kicked me in the stomach, broke my leg, broke my arms and everything else.” He says, “What did you do?” He says, “What did I do? I left. I’m no dope. I can take a hint.”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter.

WW: Once again topping We the Patients’ 550. The ten dollars is still intact. And Senator, so far you haven’t been in this round.

SF: Well, I had another gag but as long as these fellows are telling dope gags I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. Up in my hometown there’s a fellow by the name of Dismal Ondadonk. Well, Dismal -- the best way to describe Dismal is that he’s an old Mortimer Snerd. And for about twelve years every evening he would visit the Widow Brown and sit in the parlor. For twelve years he did this every evening. Finally Ocky Pop said to him, he says, “Hey, Dismal. Why don’t you marry the Widow Brown?” Dismal said, “Well, I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about marrying her. But if I did, where would I spend my evenings?”

WW: Well, it finally made the grade on 1000, Senator, eking up to 8, 9, and 10. And do you remember the one that you were going to tell before?

SF: Hm.

WW: Do you want to tell that one now?

SF: Why? I got a thousand and that one weren’t that…

WW: Well, I don’t blame you and the…

SF: Take a chance at ruining my record?

RB: More fun, more jokes coming up in a minute after this word from our sponsor.

WW: Jean Greenfield of Long Island City, Long Island, New York, and it’s on the subject of annoyance. Annoyance. So, Pete, I’m sure you won’t make any pest out of yourself as far as Miss Greenfield is concerned. Let’s find out.

PD: Well, a lady was out shopping for mittens and she walked into a very, very swanky store and the floorwalker said, “Yes, madam. May I have the article of clothing that you… [speaks inarticulately]” So the woman looked at him and she said, “What did you said? Why you don’t speak English like me? What’s the matter?” Well, he said, “Madam, I am only trying to say: May I help you in any way?” “I want to buy a pair of snazzy gloves. What would you recommend?” Well, he said, “We have the latest style here with some nice coffee colored gloves?” She said, “Yeah, about that. That’s alright. But what color are they?” “I told you. They’re coffee colored gloves.” She said, “You couldn’t be a little more specific about the color?” He said, “My dear madam, if they are coffee-colored gloves, they must be the color of coffee.” She said, “Yeah, yeah. But how can I tell whether you get your coffee with or without cream?”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter, Ward.

WW: They’ll have to equal Miss Greenfield. That automatically gives her the twenty-five. Third time tonight that that’s happened. Our three wits are working against it. Out for laughs, and Senator, I think your hand was raised first.

SF: Well, that gag was really about a department store. I got another one about a department store.

WW: Well, that’s good.

SF: A woman went into a department store and she asked to see a saleslady for a pair of South American slippers, and he gave her a pair of banana peels. [inaudible] But anyhow, I can tell you one on annoyance too, I think. A widower was courting a girl, and they went to the cemetery to look at the grave of the widow, of the wife of the widower, and on the tombstone, the girl read, “The light of my life has gone out.” And she became very much annoyed at this. She said, “What do you mean, ‘The light of my life has gone out?’” He says, “That’s true, but I lit another match.”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter for that one, Ward.

WW: Tying Miss Greenfield’s 1000 but not topping her. And Harry, your hand was raised second.

HH: On a hot July day, Popnikov was partnered with Petrov, and their store and they had worries on their mind. And in came one of those born rug peddlers. You know, head covered with rugs. All you could see was the head and the feet. Only the rugs. And he came in and he said, “Rugs.” He said, “No. We don’t want any rugs. Get out. Go on. Get out.” So the rug peddler left and he started cursing Popnikov. Oh, he called him everything under his breath. [inaudible] “One day I’ll get my revenge.”  One day in December in comes this rug peddler again covered with rugs, only his head and his feet sticking out. And he said, “Rugs?” Popnikov said, “Yeah, I’d like to buy your rugs.” Took off one rug, another rug. And his partner’s looking in amazement. The guy had insulted. He buys another rug, another, and he buys every rug. And he pulls out the last rug from him then this rug peddler’s stark naked except for little shorts. And his partner says, “What? After he insulted you in July? You now are buying all the rugs for him?” He says, “Listen. When he goes out now, will he get pneumonia?”

RB: 1000 on the laugh meter.

WW: So once again we have a perfect round going. Joe, and it’s up to you to..

JL: Guy goes into a restaurant. There’s a funny waiter there. He says, “Bring me some chopped liver. “ He brings it. “Don’t like it. Too salty.” Brings him some soup. “Don’t like it.” Finally he brings him, he says, “Bring me some chicken.” Waits about twenty minutes for it. He brings him the chicken. He starts eating. He says, “No good.” He says, “What’s the matter?”He says, “This chicken is cold.” He says, “What do you expect? It’s been dead three days?”

WW: Well, that seemed to be a live one, Joe.

RB: 1000 for that joke, Ward.

WW: Made it a perfect round for the third time today. But doesn’t matter what happens. Be sure and join us again next week, same time, same gang, other jokes, some new, some old. Until then we remain yours for bigger and better laughs:

SF: Senator Ford

HH: Harry Hershfield

JL: Joe Laurie Jr.

PD: Peter Donald.

WW: Ward Wilson

RB: And this is your host Roger Bower saying so long, and take care of yourself until we meet again next time.