Herb Shriner: the Hoosier Humorist

Born 29 May 1918, Toledo — raised in Fort Wayne — died 23 April 1970

The tie: Herb Shriner — born Herbert Arthur Schriner in Toledo, Ohio, on May 29, 1918 — was brought to Fort Wayne as a small child and raised here, a stronger tie than birth alone: this was his hometown in the formative sense, and he made it the substance of his act. His full profile is in the People section of this history; this entry carries the comedy.

The act: Shriner began as a harmonica player, organizing a harmonica quintet at Central High School that grew into an octet, and the instrument stayed in his act for life — he fronted the Herb Shriner Harmonica Orchestra as late as 1955. The other half of the act was talk: homespun comedy monologues about Indiana small-town life, delivered deadpan, which made him a national figure billed as the "Hoosier Humorist." The News-Sentinel's television history records the local memory of it directly: the comedian Herb Shriner "grew up in Fort Wayne and based much of his comic material on life in Indiana's small towns." It was a constructed folksiness — the monologues name a fictional Indiana hometown — but it was built out of a real one, and Fort Wayne is the real one.

The career: Herb Shriner Time ran on CBS Radio in 1948–49. His television vehicle was Two for the Money, a quiz program built around his monologues, which ran on NBC from 1952 and then on CBS through 1956. He was, for the decade after the war, the national media's standing representative of Indiana humor — the role Will Rogers had filled for Oklahoma a generation before, in a quieter register. Shriner and his wife were killed in a car crash near Delray Beach, Florida, on April 23, 1970. In this history's arrangement he is the hinge between the stage era and the broadcast era: a Fort Wayne-raised act whose material was Fort Wayne's own world, carried to network audiences in both radio and television.

Sources:

1. People section of this history, "Herb Shriner" — the Toledo birth and Fort Wayne upbringing, the Central High School harmonica quintet and octet, Herb Shriner Time (CBS Radio, 1948–49), Two for the Money (NBC 1952, CBS to 1956), the Harmonica Orchestra of 1955, and the fatal crash of April 23, 1970; its sources: Indiana Historical Society, Traces, and Indiana Music Makers.
2. The News-Sentinel history project (egen.fortwayne.com) — Shriner grew up in Fort Wayne and based much of his comic material on life in Indiana's small towns.