The Baby Snooks Show

The Baby Snooks Show was an American radio program starring comedian and Ziegfeld Follies alumna Fanny Brice as a mischievous young girl who was 40 years younger than the actress who played her when she first went on the air.

Rapp and his writing partner David Freedman searched the closest bookcase, opened a public domain collection of sketches by Robert Jones Burdette, Chimes From a Jester’s Bells (1897), and adapted a humorous piece about a kid and his uncle, changing the boy to a girl named Snooks.

[citation needed] On screen, Brice portrayed Baby Snooks in the 1938 film Everybody Sing in a scene with Judy Garland as Little Lord Fauntleroy.

[citation needed] Hanley Stafford was best known for his portrayal of Snooks's long-suffering, often-cranky father, Lancelot “Daddy” Higgins, a role played earlier by Alan Reed on the 1936 Follies broadcasts.

[citation needed] Others in the cast were Ben Alexander, Elvia Allman, Sara Berner, Charlie Cantor, Ken Christy, Earl Lee, Frank Nelson, Lillian Randolph, Alan Reed (as Mr. Weemish, Daddy's boss) and Irene Tedrow.

Clark Casey and David Light handled the sound effects with music by Meredith Willson (1937–44), Carmen Dragon, and vocalist Bob Graham.

[citation needed] In 1945, when illness caused Brice to miss several episodes, her absence was incorporated into the show as a plot device in which top stars (including Robert Benchley, Sydney Greenstreet, Kay Kyser and Peter Lorre) took part in a prolonged search for Snooks.

[citation needed] By her own admission, Brice was a lackadaisical rehearser: "I can't do a show until it's on the air, kid," she was quoted as telling her writer/producer Everett Freeman.

[5] Snooks proved so universally appealing that Brice and Stafford were invited to perform in character on the second installment of The Big Show, NBC's big-budget, last-ditch bid to keep classic radio variety programming alive amidst the television onslaught.

[7] Brice and Stafford brought Baby Snooks and Daddy to television only once, an appearance on the June 12, 1950, edition of CBS-TV's Popsicle Parade of Stars.

The May 29 memorial broadcast, a musical tribute to Brice, ended with a short eulogy from Stafford: "We have lost a very real, a very warm, a very wonderful woman.