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Moe FonerMoe Foner
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Session:         Page of 592

But anyway, we had a debate, and the debate was resolved that the Washington Senators will beat the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. This is the 1924 World Series because that's when they played. Because I knew the strategy of debates, of how it went, I remember when I got up for my thing. I remember all those things. Anyway, I started by saying -- you won't believe this -- I said, “Mr. Chairman, worthy opponents and ladies and gentlemen of the jury.” And everybody said it's not fair. Everybody. This is unfair because nobody started their debate like that. They hadn't been at a debate.

Q:

I see. You had an unfair advantage.

Foner:

Yes. This is unfair, it's not fair. But I remembered that. That was intellectual for us, keeping together, that kind of thing. But now it comes to going to New York. Let me try to figure this out because it was a very important thing for me.

Q:

You've got two stories running here. You've got New York and you've got Graham McNamee on the radio and the kids coming to listen.

Foner:

Okay. I think I know. My brothers were playing in a band in the Catskills, and y parents had a place in Mountaindale, and I would go there. Once my parents let me go for a day or two to the hotel, the Royalton Hotel, it was in Monticello. You didn't only play in the band, you did the show. I remember they had a very witty piano player who was very funny. And so I would watch them and I would admire them. That was the greatest thing to be able to be in a band and do the show and have fun and punch lines and skits and sketches. You had the Dr. Cronkites, the Smith and Dale stuff, and I was very interested in that kind of thing. I remember that I used to go with a friend of mine. This was high school because he was on the basketball team with me, Harry Krugman, and he was also interested in comedians. We used to go to the Palace. Every Saturday afternoon we would go to the Palace Theater where all of the big acts, Burns and Allen, or J.C. Flippin, all of the top comedians, Jack Benny, Gracie Allen, were there, the Marx Brothers. I would go and I would take notes on what they said, and then I would send letters to my brothers of what was the gags for them that they could use in their sketches.

Q:

Where is the Palace?

Foner:

It's the Palace now, the Palace Theater, 46th Street and Broadway. That was the mecca for a comedian. If an act could make it at the Palace, that was the highest rank you could go, to be at the Palace. I remember Milton Berle when he was a kid performing there,





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