One of the superstars of Los Angeles radio and TV in the fifties was a very funny, witty man named Jim Hawthorne, who hosted a wide array of programs in both venues. His work is treasured today by many who followed him back then, back when he was often mentioned in sentences that included the names of Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen. Mr. Allen was a special fan of Hawthorne's work and sometimes credited him for inspiring certain bits that turned up on The Tonight Show during its Allen years.
Hawthorne's radio style, which you'll see him employing to less advantage on TV in today's presentation, involved a steady stream of odd audio clips interrupting him or sometimes acting as punctuation marks to his monologues. I don't think he invented this but an awful lot of radio personalities picked it up from him and used the idea on their shows. They also used a lot of his comedy material. He was like Bob and Ray on the East Coast, doing great comedy for a local audience…so radio guys in other cities felt it was relatively safe to pilfer his routines and jokes.
Hawthorne had various TV shows, including one where he just gave the weather report. He also had a brief film career, mostly in the form of an early and unsuccessful attempt to make a new star comedy team out of him and Joe Besser. But mostly, he did radio and he did it very well…or so I remember. Vaguely. I'm just barely old enough to have experienced his later work.
Our clip today is not him at his best. It's a piece of a TV pilot he did in the early seventies, for some reason foregoing most of the visual humor of his earlier TV shows to do what is basically a televised version of his radio format. Still, it may be the only Hawthorne clip you'll ever see since, as he laments on his website (yes, he's still around), almost none of his radio or TV work still exists today…which may be the reason more people haven't heard of him. Here's Hawthorne…
