Zeke Manners

Born: October 10, 1911 in San Francisco, California Died: October 14, 2000 in West Hollywood, California Zeke Manners was born (Leo Ezekiel Mannes) in San Francisco but raised in Los Angeles, where he attended Fairfax High School and learned to play fiddle, banjo, and piano. He played in a traveling revue for a time before joining several Western swing groups. His initial fame came from a publicity ploy in 1930, during the Depression. A radio station concocted the story of a group of hillbillies living in the hills around Los Angeles, then presented the ersatz bumpkins to large crowds at Grauman's Chinese Theater and elsewhere. The Beverly Hillbillies, led by Manners, produced a show that featured himself on accordion and organ and mixed comedy with Western swing. After the group broke up three years later, Mr. Manners rode his hillbilly persona to the top of the 1940's radio scene in New York. He appeared to be somewhere between a cowpoke just off the Chisholm Trail and Li'l Abner, though one who lived in a Manhattan penthouse with a valet. He appealed to country people pouring into the city. New York was then the headquarters of R.C.A. Victor, a major recorder of country music. Mr. Manners recorded most of his hits in New York, including his 1946 rendition of Dick Thomas's ''Sioux City Sue.'' Although the ''Grand Ole Opry'' had already made Nashville the capital of country radio, New York's country music scene was nothing to sneeze at, and in New York Mr. Manners, who called himself the Jewish hillbilly, ruled the roost. By the 1940s, he was appearing daily on three radio stations, WINS, WHN and WMCA, and intermittently on others. After World War II, he shuttled between the East and West Coasts. From 1950 to 1952, he was the host of one of television's earliest talk shows, on Channel 7, WJZ, which is now WABC. It was a two-hour free-for-all on which Eddie Cantor might pop up; Virginia Graham got her own start as a television host by serving as his sidekick. Back in Los Angeles, he became the nation's first cross-country radio disc jockey on the ABC network. Manners also penned more than 100 songs during his career. Best known is ''The Pennsylvania Polka,'' which was written with Lester Lee and introduced by the Andrews Sisters in 1942. It has since been performed innumerable times, including eight times in the 1993 movie ''Groundhog Day.''