Jack Pearl

Jack Pearl, born Jack Perlman on October 29, 1894, in New York, was an American vaudeville performer, radio star, and Broadway entertainer whose career spanned several decades. He died on December 25, 1982, in New York. His earliest work as an entertainer came through School Days, a vaudeville act produced by Gus Edwards.

Pearl's Broadway career ran from 1923 to 1943 and encompassed a range of musical revues. His stage credits included The Dancing Girl and Topics of 1923, both from 1923, followed by A Night in Paris in 1926 and Artists and Models, which ran from 1927 into 1928. He appeared in Pleasure Bound in 1929 and the International Review in 1930. His later Broadway work included the Ziegfeld Follies of 1931, the musical Pardon My English in 1933, and All for Her in 1943. In 1923, Pearl and Wilkie Bard participated in early tests of Lee DeForest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process, recordings that are now held in the UCLA Film and Television Archive.

Pearl became most widely recognized for his radio character Baron Munchausen, a comic figure loosely derived from the Baron Munchausen literary character. He introduced the Baron on The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air in 1932. Performing with a comic German accent, Pearl's Baron would recount implausible stories, and when his straight man — originally Ben Bard and later Cliff Hall — expressed doubt, Pearl would deliver the character's signature line: "Vass you dere, Sharlie?" The phrase entered broad popular usage. Pearl hosted The Lucky Strike Hour from 1932 to 1934 and The Jack Pearl Show, which ran from late 1936 through early 1937 under sponsorship from Raleigh and Kool Cigarettes. Later radio work included Jack and Cliff in 1948, The Pet Milk Show in 1950, and the quiz program The Baron and the Bee in 1952.

The popularity of his first radio series brought Pearl to the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He starred as Baron Munchausen in the 1933 feature film Meet the Baron, which also featured Jimmy Durante, Edna May Oliver, ZaSu Pitts, and the Three Stooges. He also appeared in Hollywood Party in 1934 and in Ben Bard and Jack Pearl, a 1926 film of their vaudeville act made using the DeForest Phonofilm process. In 1934, a juvenile novel titled Jack Pearl as Detective Baron Munchausen was published based on his radio scripts.

Pearl was married to Winifred Desborough and was an uncle to agent and producer Bernie Brillstein. On February 8, 1960, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1680 Vine Street, honoring his contributions to radio. His papers from 1899 to 1973 are held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.