As Aaron Neathery explains on his Third Banana blog (http://thirdbanana.blogspot.com/2006/08 ... e-joe.html): "Toto makes his entrance in a tiny clown car while [host Joe] Cook describes the action for the listening audience ("Here he comes now in his famous automobile! The smallest automobile you've ever seen! It's only two feet high! You could almost park it in your vest pocket!"). Toto, who is announced as speaking in public for the first time, is a true eccentric with a thick accent who throws Cook repeatedly by diverging from the script. It just doesn't get much stranger than this, folks".
Nor sadder. Within two years of the broadcast Toto would be dead.
Re: Toto
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:10 am
by Andrew Sholl
Profile from a 1926 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, but no mention whatsoever of his truncated career in pictures: PART ONE PART TWO PART THREE
Re: Toto
Posted: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:20 am
by Joe Moore
Andrew,
Thanks for posting this link to the Shell Chateau episode. I've been a fan of Joe Cook's for a number of years now since discovering his work in the shorts he made for Educational in the mid 1930s and while I knew he had done some radio work I didn't know that any of it had survived.
It's a double bonus getting this episode with both him and Toto on it.
Great find!
Joe Moore
Re: Toto
Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:13 am
by Uli Ruedel
Is it just me, or is Toto doing a Grock impersonation in the clip?