Career
She was best known as the malaprop-prone Pansy Nussbaum in Fred Allen"s famous "" current-events skits. Born in Odessa, Czarist Russia, she spent the majority of her life and career in New York City. She worked extensively as a radio comedian, obtaining her first regular job as part of Allen"s Mighty Allen Art Players in the 1930s when Allen hosted the hour-long Town Hall Tonight.
Playing a number of dialect roles in Allen"s clever news spoofs and various other satires, Pious developed them into the Russian-Jewish housewife Mistress
Nussbaum by 1942, the year in which Allen"s news spoofs finally developed into the "" routines. Pious became a fixture in the routines until Allen"s show ended in 1949.
Invariably, she greeted Allen"s knock on her door with her Yiddish "Nuuuuuu," then answered Allen"s cheery "Mistress Nussbaum!" with lines like: "You are expectink maybe Veinstein Chuychill?" "You are expecting maybe Cecil B. Schlemeil?" "You are expecting maybe Tulalulalula Bankhead?" "You are expecting maybe Dinah Schnorra?" "You are expecting maybe Hoagy Carbunkle?" Pious"s portions of the "Alley" segments usually involved one or another joke at the expense of Mistress
Nussbaum"s never-heard husband, Pierre.
In one episode, Pierre had a bad cold, and one of the remedies involved vegetables of all types. According to Mistress Nussbaum, the vegetables included "Carrots, stringle-a-beans and rutta-bagels." Her distinctive accented voice and Jane Ace-like knack for malaprops made her a series trademark. Pious was often invited to play Nussbaum on other radio programs, such as The Jack Benny Program (inviting him to her new restaurant: "We feature soft lights and hard salami") and Duffy"s Tavern.
She was cast in the radio plays of Norman Corwin (especially playing a Brooklynese crime solver in Murder in Studio One) and on the Columbia Workshop.
In addition to comedy routines on Kate Smith"s series, she was heard on shows hosted by Editor Wynn and Bob Hope, along with roles on The Goldbergs and the soap opera Life Can Be Beautiful. She also was heard on The Alan Young Show.
"Minnie could do a million things," remembered Fred Allen Show writer Bob Weiskopf to author Jordan R. Young in The Laugh Crafters, a book gathering interviews with vintage radio comedy writers. "Nice lady. She had a physical affliction—she had a bad hip, a severe limp.
She was very concerned about television
She never worked very much. But radio was fine.".
