LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Joe Penner
built 668 days ago
Mostly forgotten today, radio comic Joe Penner was a major craze back in Depression-era 1933 and 1934. There was no heavy social significance to his work and certainly no subtlety -- just alot of slapstick silliness that helped audiences forget their troubles and get happy. People today equate Penner's zany, simpering, man-child delivery to that of a Pee Wee Herman or Jerry Lewis. Born Josef Pinter in Hungary, he arrived as a child in New York City. He changed his name to Joe Penner and became fairly successful on the vaudeville and burlesque circuits as a Lou Costello-like patsy. His catchphrase "Wanna buy a duck?"
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Joe Penner (nee Josef Pinter), 1904-1941, was an American vaudeville and radio comic who enjoyed a brief but spectacularly large burst of fame during the years 1933 and 1934. His famous non sequiturs “Wanna buy a duck?” and “Oh, you NAS-ty man!”, as well as his nyuck-nyuck laugh, made him the first comedy star of the radio era. See his entry on The Internet Movie Database.
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Zany radio comedian Joe Penner delivers one of his best (and most believable) screen performances in the Runyonesque comedy The Day the Bookies Wept. Penner stars as Ernest, the trainer of a broken-down racehorse named Hiccup. It seems that the nag turns into a potential champion whenever he's promised a bucketful of beer.
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Allan Jones, Martha Raye and Joe Penner star in this wild comedy about twin brothers separated at birth in ancient Greece. Based on Shakespeare's 'Comedy of Errors.' Plenty of musical numbers courtesy or Rodgers and Hart. $19.95
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Joe Penner (11 November 1904 - 10 January 1941), a 1930s-era vaudeville, radio and film comedian, was born Josef Pinter in Nagechkereck, Hungary. He passed through Ellis Island as a child when his family emigrated to New York City.
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[I]f Penner was the immediate source of the "agony" catchphrase, where did he get it? Did he, as John Benson suggests, take it from the Fields film or from The Drunkard itself? Is the line present in the actual Drunkard? A Google search wasn't of any help here, to my surprise; I would have thought the script would be online, but I haven't found it. Could Penner have appeared in burlesques of The Drunkard when he was working in vaudeville in the 1920s, before he hit it big in radio? Or did he come up with "Agony! Agony!" on his own?
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