Two Blocks Off the Old Chip

When two guys have names so similar, and work in the same industry, and have the same birthday, I’m sorry, but they’re going to have to share a blogpost. That’s just how it is. They are:

Ray Bloch (1902-1982) was a musician, composer, arranger, and bandleader for live performance, radio, and television.

Like Samuel Marx, Bloch was from Alsace-Lorraine. When he was still a child, his family moved to New York, where his father worked as a professional chef. Bloch’s first job was as an office boy at the paper Courier des Etats-Unis. But his real love was music. He found work as a piano player for music publishers and as a vaudeville accompanist. He worked with small hit jazz combos, and led bigger dance bands for ballrooms. For a time in the ’30s he was musical director for the popular act The Eton Brothers.

Bloch’s work with The Eton Brothers was perfect background to be the bandleader on the CBS radio program The Gay Nineties Revue (1939-46). This nostalgia program was produced by Al Rinker of The Rhythm Boys, hosted by songwriter Joe Howard, and featured performers like Beatrice Kay, and actor Frank Lovejoy, who played a guy called Broadway Harry. That same year, Block became musical director for Johnny Presents, which later evolved into Philip Morris Playhouse (1939-46), featuring Johnny Philip Morris (Johnny Roventini). Bloch and his orchestra also played for the radio shows  Take It or Leave It (CBS, 1940–1947), Here’s to Romance (1943-1956), Quick as a Flash (1944–1949), Let Yourself Go (CBS, 1944–1945), The Mary Small Revue (1945), The Continental Celebrity Club (1945-1946), The Milton Berle Show (NBC, 1948–1949), Sing It Again (1948–1951), The Bloch Party (1951), and numerous productions by Orson Welles. The Ray Bloch Orchestra also made popular recordings including several Christmas albums, and records by the DeMarco Sisters.

Today, Bloch will be remembered by some Baby Boomers for his television work. He was the arranger and bandleader for The Ed Sullivan Show throughout the whole run (1948-71), as well as The Jackie Gleason Show,Bob Hope specials, The Kate Smith Evening Hour, Toni Twin Time,The Robert Q. Lewis Show, Stage Show, Stop the Music, and tv versions of The Gay Nineties Revue and Philip Morris Playhouse. He also wrote the theme music for The Larry Storch Show!

Circa 1955 he founded Ray Bloch Productions, a major event planning company that is still very much a going concern to this day.

Also born on August 3 was radio comedy writer and TV personality Hal Block (1913-1981).

Block was a native Chicagoan who worked his way through the University of Chicago law school as the head writer of Phil Baker’s radio show. Throughout radio days he also supplied jokes and gags to most of the major comedians including Bob Hope, Eddie Cantor, Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, Ed Wynn, Milton Berle, and Burns and Allen. He also contributed to the scripts of the movies Charlie McCarthy, Detective (1939), I’m Nobody’s Sweetheart Now (1940), and Stage Door Canteen (1943), and the Broadway shows Let’s Face It! (1941), Olsen and Johnson’sSons o’ Fun (1941), By Jupiter (1942), and Follow the Girls (1943) with Jackie Gleason. During his Broadway period he dated Mitzi Green, and Diamond Horseshoe showgirl Dorothea Pinto, both of whom he had written stage material for. He wrote humor columns for Variety, Colliers, and the Chicago Daily News. Throughout the war years, he wrote U.S.O. revues for Hollywood’s stop stars, and created special material for BBC radio.

Heretofore, Block was well known in show business circles as one of radio’s top writers, but not necessarily a household name among the broader public. That changed during the years 1950-53 when he was a panelist on the popular game show What’s My Line? alongside such personalities as Dorothy Kilgallen and Arlene Francis. During this period he also hosted the game show Tag the Gag (1951), and made several other television appearances, and wrote for The Ken Murray Show and The Vaughn Monroe Show. Eventually he was let go from What’s My Line? for persisting in making off-color jokes. After his dismissal his comedic chores as panelist on the show were largely filled by Fred Allen (who was not long for this world at the time himself) and the unrelated Steve Allen (who was at the beginning of his career).

Riding on his naughty reputation, shortly after the firing, Block took a job hosting Minsky’s Burlesque in Detroit. By 1956 he was working for Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour. He also hosted some local tv shows in the ’50s, but these ventures were short lived, due to one mishap or another. His reputation also suffered on account of a couple of drunk driving incidents. By 1960s, he was retired from show biz and strictly focused on managing his investment wealth, which was substantial. He died in an apartment fire in 1981 at the age of 67.

For more on vaudevilleand show biz in generalconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.