Baby Snooks became a character for Fanny Brice at some point in the early 30s, nobody seems to know exactly when. What is for sure is that by 1934 Fanny was appearing on-stage in her baby costume as part of the Follies show on Broadway. In 1936, at 45 years of age, she used this baby persona to great effect on the CBS show The Ziegfield Follies of the Air and a radio legend was born.
After various format and slot changes Snooks eventually got her very own show in 1944. Lalive Brownell took on the role of Mommy Higgins alongside the now well entrenched part of Lancelot Daddy Higgins played by Hanley Stafford. The half-an-hour slot was initially aired at 6:30pm on Sundays, but later to moved to an 8pm slot on Friday and then in Nov 1949 to an 8:30pm slot on Tuesday evenings.
The shows revolved around the Snooks character creating vignettes through which the comedic potential of the Snooks chartacter could be fully exploited. Snooks specialized in making minor mishaps into major catastrophes and small parental disagreements into all out war.
In 1945 Fanny was forced to miss several episodes due to illness and her disappearance was covered up through a story-line involving a search for the missing Snooks involving leading stars of the time such as Robert Benchley, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, and Kay Kyser. The same year saw the first appearance of Leone Ledoux as Snooks brother Robespierre, who until then had been an off-mike character.
On May 24th, 1951, Fanny Brice suffered a cerebral haemorrhage and died five days later, at fifty-nine. The final broadcast was a memorial broadcast on May 29th, 1951.
The Baby Snooks Show can also be heard as part of The Good News (1937 - 1940) Show in the music and variety category.