Radio: Hoosier Wheezer

Sixteen years ago, when Herb Shriner was a gangling Indiana schoolboy, radio's top comedians were Fred Allen, Amos 'n' Andy, and Jack Benny. Today, the aging comedians are still on top, but Herb Shriner, as gangling as ever at 30, is their newest competitor.

Herb brings to the air a nasal drawl, a collection of Hoosier wheezes, and a relaxed view of the news that is reminiscent of Will Rogers. His apprenticeship was served in traveling vaudeville shows ("I used to get $40 a week and all the road maps I could eat"), and as a front-line sergeant-entertainer with the Third Army in Germany. Through an interpreter, Shriner tried out his humor on the Russians. One joke they laughed at: "The mail service in our unit is very good. The mailman delivers packages to us as fast as he can smash them."

His radio show was developed from his act in the current Broadway hit, Inside U.S.A. Shriner was originally hired to do a five-minute monologue, but, in the half-year run of U.S.A., he has gradually edged his monologue up to a high of 18 minutes. "I'm kind of long-winded," he admits.

Gloomily aware of the failure of other young comedians (e.g., Danny Thomas, Jack Paar, Henry Morgan, Danny Kaye) who have tried to buck radio's Old Guard, Shriner feels that he has a few advantages: he can pre-test his radio gags from the stage of Inside U.S.A., and his program has been sponsored from the start, which allows him to hire a topflight script "collaborator." Though he has a complicated broadcast and rebroadcast time schedule (CBS, 5:45 p.m. E.S.T., from New York), Shriner also takes heart from the fact that his Hooperating, which had been a modest 2.5, has doubled in the last two weeks.