Turns out there are a lot of folks out there who remember Jackie Vernon. A lot of them wrote to say I should have reminded all that he was the voice of Frosty the Snowman in the popular Christmas special of the same name. I also probably should have linked you to this post, which I wrote back in '04 about Mr. Vernon. Unfortunately, the link in there to an article by his son no longer works.
Comedy writer Arnie Kogen writes to say…
Read your piece today about Jackie Vernon. I wrote for Jackie in the mid 1960's. Wrote material for his appearances on Paar and Ed Sullivan. He paid about as swiftly as he spoke. Verrrry slowly. His classic material was not mine. That of course was the "slide show" with his guide, Guido, also his pick up lines at the beach "Excuse me, Miss, I seem to have lost my Congressional Medal of Honor around here somewhere" and, for me, his greatest line of all: He was once arrested on New Year's Eve in Times Sguare — for loitering.
The best part of the Congressional Medal of Honor joke was the follow-up line: "Oh, well. I have another one at home."
I wish I could link to that classic "slide" routine but there doesn't seem to be a video of it online anywhere. He did a little of a later version of it in this ten minute hunk from that Young at Heart Comedians Special…
