The Jack Pearl Show, commonly known as Baron Munchhausen, streaked across the horizon of early radio and faded just as fast. It was a sensation in 1932 (leaping to a CAB-rated 47.2, and second only to Eddie Cantor in the January 1933 charts) but began its unprecedented plunge even before its first season was finished. Pearl was tagged early in his career as being one-dimensional. His meteoric fade was a heart-breaker, and decades later he was still somewhat resentful of what he saw as a fickle public.

Pearl was one of radio's earliest and best di-alecticians. He was born Oct. 29, 1895, a product of the Lower East Side ghetto that had served up Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, and other top talents. Pearl joined Gus Edwards's School Days company around 1910, worked in vaudeville and burlesque, graduated to Shubert revues, and finally became a Ziegfeld headliner. His first major radio exposure came on The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air (CBS, April 3-June 26, 1932). He was on vacation in England that summer when he received a cable from comedy writer Billy Wells: Lucky Strike was looking for a new act for its 60-minute Thursday-night variety hour.

The show had been running through the summer with the two Walters, O'Keefe and Winchell, as stars: Winchell was leaving, and Wells thought a dialect act built around tall tales might fill the bill. He had talked it over with an adman who happened to be reading the exploits of Baron von Munchhausen, an officer in the 18th-century German cavalry: in his later years, von Munchhausen had taken up writing, recording some of the wildest adventures (purportedly based on his own experiences in Russia) ever set to paper.