A Homey Little Thing

In 14 years on radio, Easy Aces won some fanatically enthusiastic fans (including Comic Fred Allen and Humorist James Thurber), but it never climbed into the Hooperating Top Ten or struck most network executives as hilariously funny. When Goodman Ace, 50, was fired two years ago by CBS, a sympathetic vice president tried to soften the blow by saying : "I'll tell you a secret--we haven't got a man who understands comedy." Ace replied: "I'll tell you a secret--that's no secret."

This week, Goodman Ace and wife Jane brought a new version of their old Easy Aces to television (Wed. 7:45 p.m., Du Mont), complete with puns, malapropisms and humor aimed at grownups. "It's sort of a homey little thing," explained Ace. "We don't expect it to revolutionize the business."

The TV camera found the Aces in their living room, with Jane putting aside a book (Brain Surgery, Self-Taught) to watch a short film called This Was New

York on their TV set. The plotless show consisted entirely of Goodman's and Jane's comments on the film, of her misinterpretations of the obvious and his exasperated efforts to set her straight. In a typical gag, Ace says, wonderingly: "Imagine the Indians selling Manhattan for $24! And where are the Indians today!" Jane: "Playing baseball for Cleveland." Future shows will have only such subsidiary characters as an eight-year-old all-white West Highland terrier named Blackie and Ace's complaining, cliche-ridden mother-in-law (played by Betty Garde).

Since the TV version of Easy Aces is a filmed "package" show, produced by the Frederic W. Ziv Co., and since several sponsors will carry the show over 40 stations of the Du Mont network, Goodman Ace cautiously hopes to escape the twin furies which pursued him in radio--Hooperatings ("the rating system is a $50,000 tail wagging a $50 million dog") and vice presidents ("the only morons in radio are in the offices"). He suspects that he and Jane talk too much on the first few shows: "I've got to force myself to let a few minutes go by without saying anything, but a silence always makes me uneasy." As for radio, Ace says: "I don't think we'll ever go back to it--unless some silly sponsor wants to take a chance."

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