Billed as “radio’s laugh novelty”, Easy Aces was trademarked by the low-keyed drollery of creator and writer Goodman Ace and his wife, Jane, as an urbane, put-upon realtor and his malaprop-prone wife. Airing as often as three times a week, Easy Aces had an unobtrusive, conversational, and clever style, and the cheerful absurdism of its storylines, built a loyal audience of listeners and critics alike kept it on the air for 15 years.

Goodman Ace began his radio career at radio station KMBC in Kansas City by reading comic strips to children on Sunday mornings and reviewing films on Friday evenings. One night in 1930, the cast of the show that followed his slot failed to show up, and Ace found himself having to fill in the time. His wife, Jane had accompanied him to the studio that night, and the two engaged in an impromptu chat about their weekend bridge game. This brought such a favorable response from listeners that the station invited Ace to create a domestic comedy---even though neither of the couple had ever really acted before.

The result was one of radio's most respected comedies. Easy Aces moved to a Chicago base in 1930 on a trial basis; the Aces themselves launched a write-in appeal to test the size of their audience and tens of thousands of letters convinced original sponsor Lavoris to renew the deal for 1932-33. That summer, the Aces sought New York backing and found it in the Blackett, Sample and Hummert agency headed by Frank Hummert, soon to become radio's top soap opera producer.

Hummert liked the Aces' style and the show's low overhead and put them on CBS four times weekly as an afternoon offering, before Anacin moved them to 7 p.m. in 1935---right up against Amos 'n' Andy. The show later moved to the NBC Blue Network and a 7:30 p.m. time slot Mondays and Wednesdays, beginning in 1935, before returning to CBS in 1942, holding the same time slot on Wednesdays and Fridays. The show became a half-hour entry one night a week from 1943 through January 1945.

Easy Aces story lines often ran several episodes, though there were many single-episode stories, and the show was performed live on the air but in an isolated studio, without an audience, which made perfect sense considering its conversational style. Goodman Ace wrote the show's scripts and played the exasperated but loving husband of Jane Ace as his deceptively scatterbrained, language-molesting, more than periodically meddlesome wife. Radio legend Fred Allen was the show’s most frequent guest and contributed a wealth of written material but refused to take credit for any of the show’s success.

There were no sound effects beyond the almost ambient-like playing of normal life sounds, and the Aces' inexperience as actors probably worked in their favor: they simply played as though they were allowing listeners to eavesdrop on their own real-life conversations, allowing Easy Aces listeners more than those of many shows to believe the Aces really could have been their own unusual neighbors. In addition, as Arthur Frank Wertheim noted in his book Radio Comedy, Ace shunned belly laughs in favor of consistent character humor. "A lot of times, on the air," Wertheim quoted Ace as saying, "I noticed comics in a sketch do a joke that destroys the character because it gets a big laugh."

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CAST: Ace Goodman, Jane Epstein (Ace), Mary Hunter, Paul Stewart, Helene Dumas, Ken Roberts, Ann Thomas.

ANNOUNCER: Ford Bond

THEME: Louis Alter's "Manhattan Serenade”

PRODUCERS: Anne and Frank Hummert

Easy Aces – 1930-1945