Herb Shriner

Herbert Arthur Shriner was born on May 29, 1918, in Toledo, Ohio, to Edith (née Rockwell) and Peter Schriner. After his mother separated from his father, the family relocated to Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Shriner spent his formative years. He took up the harmonica during grade school and by high school had organized a musical quintet that eventually grew into an octet, performing regularly in the local area. During one performance when a lip injury prevented him from playing, Shriner filled the time with storytelling, and the audience response to his deadpan, homespun humor proved more enthusiastic than his music. He subsequently built a comedy persona centered on fictional tales of small-town Hoosier life, drawing frequent comparisons to Will Rogers.

Shriner's professional career began in radio when NBC hired him for occasional appearances in 1940, leading to a regular role on the comedy-variety program Camel Caravan in 1942 and 1943. During World War II, he served in a United States Army special services unit, spending two years performing in USO shows for troops in Europe. Following the war, he appeared on several radio programs, among them The Philip Morris Follies of 1946 with Johnny Desmond and Margaret Whiting.

In 1947, Shriner appeared on Broadway in the musical revue Inside U.S.A. Although critics gave the production mixed notices, his monologues drew strong audience response and helped sustain the show for more than a year. From 1948 to 1949, he hosted Herb Shriner Time on CBS Radio, a weekday program featuring the Raymond Scott Quintet, singer Dorothy Collins, and announcer Durward Kirby. The program aired initially under the title Alka-Seltzer Time before Shriner chose to discontinue it in August 1949.

Shriner transitioned to television with a five-minute CBS comedy monologue that debuted on November 7, 1949, sponsored by Philip Morris and airing from 7:55 to 8 p.m. Eastern Time. The program ended in 1950, and subsequent versions expanded first to fifteen minutes and then to a half-hour format on ABC during the 1951–52 season. His most prominent television success came with Two for the Money, a game show that premiered on NBC in the 1952–53 season before moving to CBS for three additional seasons. The format gave Shriner room to deliver short monologues and harmonica solos, functioning as much as a vehicle for his humor as a conventional game show. A young Woody Allen, then seventeen years old, wrote jokes for Shriner's programs during this period. Shriner departed Two for the Money in 1956, after which Sam Levenson took over hosting duties. He subsequently hosted a CBS variety program that ran for nearly three months before being replaced by To Tell the Truth, and he later performed at nightclubs, state fairs, showboats, and similar venues.

Shriner's sole film appearance came in 1953, when he portrayed hardware store owner Frank Johnson in Main Street to Broadway. In 1955, he launched the Herb Shriner Harmonica Orchestra alongside Dominic Quagenti, Cham-Ber Huang, Charles Leighton, Frank Mitkowski, Victor Pankowitz, Alan Pogson, and Alan Schackner. The ensemble recorded "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and "Back Home Again in Indiana" for the Columbia LP Herb Shriner on Stage.

In his personal life, Shriner married Eileen "Pixie" McDermott, and the couple had three children: a daughter named Indy, after Indianapolis, Indiana, and twin sons Wil Shriner, named for Will Rogers, and Kin Shriner, named for Indiana folk humorist Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard. The family divided their time between Florida and Angola, Indiana. Shriner collected vintage automobiles and invested in real estate; a portion of his automobile collection is preserved at the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum in Auburn, Indiana. On April 23, 1970, Shriner and his wife were killed in Delray Beach, Florida, when the brakes failed on one of his vintage cars, a Studebaker Avanti.