TELEVETERANS' DAY - HONORING THE TOOBWORLD CHARACTERS WHO SERVED

For our O’Bservation of Veterans’ Day, we’re taking a look at one of the USO tours which starred one of our first official members in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame, Jack Benny.  But the focus is not on him, since he wasn’t a member of the Armed Forces, but instead on one of the enlisted men who helped him out during the performance in Okinawa.

And that TV character was Corporal Herman Glimpscher, best known as the suitor of Sally Rogers in ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’.

Glimpscher was still in his teens when he enlisted on December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  By 1944, he was 22 and he was stationed in Okinawa where he had been elevated to the rank of Corporal.  When Jack Benny and his troupe, including singer Martha Tilton, came to the island, Corporal Glimpscher was assigned to be the troupe’s liaison and to act as the stage manager/”producer” for the show. 

Herman acted as the straight man for Mr. Benny onstage but also pulled off his own gag at the expense of the comedian and almost at the cost of servicemen’s lives!  He presented Jack with a gift from the troops and it was a hand grenade.  Jack Benny thought it was fake and so he pulled the pin.  After a few seconds of playing with it, he tossed it off into the jungle where it exploded.

After Martha Tilton thrilled the girl-starved GIs with her singing, it was time for Jack Benny to pull out his violin to play for them.  But he noticed that one officer chose that moment to get up and leave the area quickly.  Jack called Corporal Glimpscher back onstage and asked who that officer was.  Turned out it was Genera MacArthur and as Herman observed, he was NOT going to return.

(O'Bservation: MacArthur was not seen in this episode, but he does have a televersion, thanks to 'Black Sheep Squadron'.

As Jack fiddled, the Japanese staged a surprise aerial attack and the troops scattered, including Corporal Glimpscher and his stage crew.  Jack was oblivious and kept playing, even when the bombs destroyed the stage around him.  But when the Japanese entered the area, it wasn’t to take command but to surrender to Jack Benny – if he would only cease his incessant scratching on his fiddle.

Bill Idelson played the corporal in that flashback on ‘The Jack Benny Show’ but he was not identified as being Herman Glimpscher.  On the flip side, it can’t be proven that he wasn’t Herman.  Toobworld Central is siding with the game of the name that he is indeed the future suitor of Sally Rogers. (They would eventually marry at some point after the cancellation of ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show’ but before the reunion special, probably after the death of Mother Glimpscher.)

After the war, Glimpscher bounced around California, taking on a variety of jobs – salesman, clerk, airline ticket agent, and a hotel bellhop.  While working that job, he met a Jack Benny impersonator named Jack Bowen, who became famous enough to become the Grand Marshall at the Pioneer Bowl parade.  Bowen gave him advice to seek his fortune in New York City and so, after saying goodbye to his sister, Mrs. Lorelei Brown, Herman moved to the Big Apple. 

There he got another job as a bellhop where he first met Rob and Laura Petrie, whom he would meet again once he met and started dating Sally Rogers.  It would be a long time before they married, but his persistence paid off.

Herman Glimpscher predeceased Sally by almost a decade.

Thank you for your service in Toobworld, Mr. Glimpscher.

BCnU!