Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show by Daniel de Vise

gloves, flashlights, everything,” Ivan recalled. “They would get a lot of money. We would get nothing.”
    In spring 1950, the success of Bobby Benson spawned a local television program, shot at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Forty-Second Street and broadcast live on the brand-new WOR television station. The broadcast prominently featured Windy Wales, signaling the character’s rising currency with the Cracker Jack set. At the end of some broadcasts, no doubt to the delight of Manhattan parents, the station gave away a pony.
    In one early television episode, Bobby and the gang are trapped in a bunkhouse by the bad guys. As Ivan Cury recalled, the director cut back and forth between live shots of the imperiled friends and a recorded loop of horses galloping through dust, with Tex Mason shouting, “Watch out!” and “Keep your head down!” Bobby and his friends hatch a plan to light a fire and create a smoke screen, providing cover to escape the bad guys. The crew had rounded up some crude smoke bombs; TV was still in its infancy, and visual effects were not yet an exact science.
    â€œThey set off a smoke bomb in the studio, and Don was at the door, and there was not much smoke coming in,” Ivan recalled. Don began flapping the door open and shut to fan the smoke, which then engulfed the studio. “I couldn’t see Don standing next to me,” Ivan recalled. “Somebody came in and grabbed me by the arm and took me over to the next set.”
    The adjoining set was staged for the pony giveaway. The cameras rolled. “And this pony was hysterical, because of all the smoke,” Ivan recalled. “Well, this pony couldn’t bear it, and so it defecated and urinated at the same time, big, loud, and close to me. Don and the sound guys were hysterical with laughter. The guy on the boom fell off the boom.”
    By 1951, Ivan Cury’s voice was changing and the Mutual radio network began searching for a new Bobby Benson. By the time Clive Rice, Ivan’s replacement, joined the cast, Bobby Benson was a hit. The producers upgraded from the cheesy Hammond organ to a prerecorded score played by an actual orchestra. The promotional tours continued, with Clive replacing Ivan as the public face of Bobby Benson. Don and Clive traveled in a Boeing Stratocruiser emblazoned with the Bobby Benson logo.
    Don and Clive played to huge crowds, but Don loathed the journeys, and he was becoming increasingly paranoid about his health. “He had quite a collection of medications when he was on the road,” Clive recalled. “I can remember seeing, for the first time in my life, one of those throat-spray things. He had one of those, and he had this collection of pills he had to take for one reason or another. . . . He was very conscious of anyone who had a cold.” Don would fret daily about his health for the next five decades.
    Don’s Bobby Benson duties occupied about four hours of his day, from his arrival at the studio after lunch to the conclusion of the daily broadcast at five thirty. Don was free every morning. He spent those hours making the rounds, visiting casting offices, trolling for parts, and trying to make his mark on television. There was little money to be made, but “everything was up for grabs,” and Don sensed opportunity.
    He landed a few small parts on television dramas, such as a 1953 spot on Robert Montgomery Presents , but he could make no headway in comedies. He telephoned The Jackie Gleason Show . “I’d love to do your show,” he told the gruff man on the line. “I’m a comedian.” After a lengthy silence, the voice shot back, “We got a comedian.”
    But Don’s talent and his winsome personality were about to pay another dividend. Charles Irving, who portrayed ranch foreman Tex Mason on the B-Bar-B,was navigating his own migration to television. In 1953, Irving helped Don land a part on one of the