Up for auction RARE! "Baron Munchausen" Jack Pearl Hand Signed 3X5 Card. 

ES-8293E

Jack

Pearl (born Jack

Perlman; October 29, 1894 – December 25, 1982) was a vaudeville performer

and a star of early radio. He was best known for his character Baron

Munchausen. Born

in New York, Pearl debuted as an entertainer in School Days, Gus Edwards's vaudeville

act.

 He made the transition from

vaudeville to broadcasting when he introduced his character Baron Munchausen

on The Ziegfeld Follies of

the Air in 1932. His creation was loosely based on

the Baron Munchausen literary

character. As the Baron, Pearl would tell far-fetched stories with a comic

German accent. When the straight man (originally Ben Bard, but later Cliff Hall) expressed skepticism, the

Baron replied with his familiar tagline and punchline: "Vass you dere,

Sharlie?" ("Was you there, Charlie?"). This catch phrase soon became part of the national lexicon. Pearl

played this character and others in Broadway musical revues of the 1920s and

1930s: The Dancing Girl (1923), Topics of 1923 (1923–1924), A

Night in Paris (1926), Artists and Models (1927–1928), Pleasure

Bound (1929), International Review (1930), Ziegfeld

Follies of 1931, Pardon My English (1933) and All

for All (1943). In 1923,

Pearl and Wilkie Bard appeared

in early tests of the Lee DeForest sound-on-film

process Phonofilm which are now in the UCLA Film and Television

Archive. Pearl's radio career included stints as the host of The Lucky Strike Hour (1932–34) and The Jack

Pearl Show,   which ran from late 1936 through early 1937,

sponsored by Raleigh and Kool Cigarettes. The success of his first radio series

brought him to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He

starred as his character in one feature film, Meet the Baron (1933) with Jimmy Durante, Edna May Oliver, ZaSu Pitts and the Three Stooges. He also appears in Ben Bard and Jack

Pearl (1926), a film of their vaudeville act made in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process,

and Hollywood Party (1934).

With the cancellation of his second radio series, Pearl found himself

struggling to find work. He continued in radio with shows like, Jack

and Cliff (1948), The Pet Milk Show (1950), and The

Baron and the Bee (1952), a quiz show, but he never recaptured his

mid-1930s fame. In 1934, a juvenile novel, Jack Pearl as Detective

Baron Munchausen, was based on his radio scripts. On February 8, 1960, he

received a star at 1680 Vine Street on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for

his radio work. Pearl died in New York in 1982. He was an uncle to the

agent and producer Bernie Brillstein.