Can You Top This?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Can You Top This? was a popular radio series in which comedians told jokes. The show, sponsored by Colgate, was created by veteran vaudevillian "Senator" Edward Ford who was taking part in a joke session at a New York theatrical club when he dreamed up the concept.
Listeners contributed approximately three thousand jokes a week. Host Peter Donald told the best of these jokes while a "laugh meter" took note of the audience reaction. The "Knights of the Clown Table" — Ford, cartoonist Harry Hershfield and Joe Laurie Jr. — would attempt to top listeners with their own jokes. Any submission used on the program won ten dollars. Each time a panelist failed to top the listener (as registered on the laugh meter), an additional five dollars was added, so a listener could potentially win $25. Further, listeners were also given phonograph recordings of Peter Donald telling their jokes.
Can You Top This? debuted on New York's WOR in 1940. NBC picked up the show in 1942, and it continued until 1954. Joe Laurie, Jr. died that year on April 29. Harry Hershfield died December 15, 1974.
The jokes were compiled into two book collections, Can You Top This? and Cream of the Crop, published by Grosset & Dunlap and Dell in 1947 and 1949.
