Stop Me If You've Heard This One

Stop Me If You've Heard This One was a comedy radio series, created by the actor-humorist Cal Tinney (February 2, 1908-December 2, 1993) and sponsored by Quaker Oats. Hosted by Milton Berle, it aired Saturday evenings at 8:30pm on NBC beginning October 7, 1939.

The premise was that listeners received prizes for jokes they submitted to the program. The panelists, Harry Hershfield and Jay C. Flippen, were known as "the gagbusters," and their job was to recognize the joke, interrupt Berle and finish telling the joke. If they failed, the listener received more prizes. The show's list of guest panelists included Tinney, cartoonist Peter Arno, Harry McNaughton (later a panelist on It Pays to Be Ignorant), character actor Lionel Stander and Ward Wilson. Dan Seymour was the announcer. The program's director was Joe Rines, and music was supplied by Del Courtney, Ben Cutler and Vincent Travers.

Hershfield was replaced by "Senator" Ed Ford shortly before the series ended on February 24, 1940. Nine months later, Ford, Hershfield and Wilson became regulars on the more popular panel show of joke-tellers, Can You Top This?, which had a long run of 14 years.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One was revived on the Mutual Radio Network on September 13, 1947, hosted by Roger Bower (1903-79). Jokes which were used could win $5 plus an additional $10 if the joke could not be completed by panelists Tinney, Lew Lehr, George Givot and Morey Amsterdam. Ted Brown was the announcer, and Harold Hoffman was an occasional guest panelist.

Comedian Lehr (1895-1950), once well known for his humorous contributions to Fox Movietone News and other film shorts, is mainly remembered today for his popular catch phrase, "Monkeys is the cwaziest peoples." The 1947 revival, which first aired on Saturdays at 9pm and then moved to 8:30pm, continued into the next year, ending on October 9, 1948. Around this time, Tinney lost the election in his bid to become the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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