Dennis Day was one of those rare radio stars who had the distinction of appearing on two shows at the same time, on just as many networks.
After Day served in the Navy in World War II, he'd returned to The Jack Benny Program, continuing his on-air persona of a naive simpleton who seemingly took every expression literally. This carried over into his first starring gig, A Day in The Life of Dennis Day, which launched on NBC Radio in 1946 (Benny's program had been on CBS at the time), and ran for a few years. It seemed that nearly everything Dennis said was set up as a punch line.
Take this 1947 episode, for example.
A Day in The Life of Dennis Day usually started with Dennis singing a song, as we heard in the above sample. The rest of the show is a sitcom that plays off Day's simple everyman persona. To think that as I was growing up, I only knew about Dennis from his annual appearances at the Jerry Lewis MDA telethons and a Special K commercial he did for Kellogg's.
Rating: B.
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