Photo: Ed Gardner, Hazel Shermet, Gypsy Rose Lee and Charlie Cantor

"Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat. Archie the manager speaking. Duffy ain't here. Oh, hello Duffy.

Millions of radio listeners visited Duffy's Tavern each week, but Duffy himself was nowhere to be found. Perhaps Duffy was shy around celebrities, or maybe he had somewhere better to be than the run-down saloon that bore his name. Although he dutifully phoned Archie each week, he never once dropped by in the decade the show was aired. When asked in an interview, Ed Gardner described his character's unseen (and unheard) boss this way: "Duffy is a thick-headed old gent who might have started as a bartender and built up the place. ...He doesn't go in for fads and is, in fact, probably waiting for radio to blow over."

Duffy's Tavern first opened its doors to radio listeners on the CBS audition series Forecast on July 29, 1940. Ed Gardner, as "Archie the manager" welcomed his first guests, Gertrude Niesen and Colonel Samuel Q. Stoopnagle (F. Chase Taylor of Stoopnagle and Budd fame). Duffy's Tavern opened up for regular business on March 1, 1941. Duffy's Tavern was a fly-infested Third Avenue dive that featured terrible food, worse service and big-name celebrity guests. The low-life denizens of the tavern hobnobbed each week with the biggest stars in Hollywood. Guests like Bing Crosby, Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson, Dinah Shore, Basil Rathbone and Charles Laughton dropped by each week to visit with Archie, Miss Duffy and Finnegan. "The only thing that was kept at a consistently high level at Duffy's was the insanity," observed John Dunning in Tune in Yesterday. "When the format premiered on Forecast, it was quickly stamped as the most original new comedy of the year."

Ed Gardner was born Edward Poggenberg in the Astoria section of New York City on June 29, 1905, and worked for a time as a piano player in an old-fashioned saloon with sawdust on the floor and a blue-collar patronage. He was working as a piano salesman in 1929 when he met Shirley Booth, the young actress who would become his wife and the first "Miss Duffy." Inspired by his wife's theatrical activities, Gardner quit his job and began writing for small stock companies. Eventually he was hired as an agent for the powerful J. Walter Thompson advertising agency. "I was the guy who gave the radio actors the brush-off," he once explained. Over the next few years, Gardner gained prominence as a radio director, and was soon earning $750 weekly directing the Burns and Allen, AI Jolson, Fanny Brice, Rudy Vallee and Bing Crosby programs. Gardner's biggest break came when CBS began a sustaining series entitled Forecast devoted to showcasing new series for potential sponsorship. Gardner was living in Hollywood and directing The Texaco Star Theatre when he started developing a new program called This Is New York but couldn't find the right actor to play the lead character, a New York bartender named Archie. "Gardner knew exactly what he wanted but he couldn't find it," Jack Gaver and Dave Stanley wrote in There's Laughter in the Air! "He wanted someone who spoke New Yorkese as to the manner born a guy who was not a tough, yet on the unfinished side." Twenty minutes before airtime, Gardner still hadn't found the right actor to portray the bartender. "Ed was not an actor and it wasn't easy for him to get up before an audience, but he did have that natural twang of a New York bartender," recalls Larry Rhine, the head writer of the later Duffy's Tavern broadcasts. "He was still an agent for J. Walter Thompson and was in the sponsor's booth during the auditions. He called down to the stage, '"Can't nobody talk like a bartender?'" The writers and producers all pointed to Ed and that's how he got the show." The final three seasons of Duffy's Tavern were transcribed in Puerto Rico. "We went to Puerto Rico because of the Puerto Rico Development Act, a 12-year tax holiday program created by the Treasury Department to attract new industry to the island to build up the economy of the island," scriptwriter Jack Rhine recalled. "Ed Gardner came down to produce the movie The Man with My Face and got the tax deal. He moved the production of Duffy's Tavern from Los Angeles while he was filming the movie and remained on the island for the tax advantage. We made acetate disks of the show and sent them up to NBC. We brought the guest stars down and they received $500 plus expenses. We had Vincent Price, Sir Cedric Hardwick, Joan Bennett, Veronica Lake, Gypsy Rose Lee, Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, Margaret O'Brien, Hedda Hopper, Tony Curtis and many others." Duffy's Tavern closed its doors on January 18, 1952.