Van and Schenck.Van and Schenck horsing around in 1918
Van and Schenck were popular American entertainers in the 1910s and 1920s: Gus Van (born August Von Glahn, August 12, 1886 – March 12, 1968), baritone, and Joe Schenck (pronounced "skenk"; born Joseph Thuma Schenck, (June 2, 1891– June 28, 1930), tenor. They were vaudeville stars and made appearances in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918, 1919, 1920 and 1921. They made numerous phonograph records for the Emerson, Victor, and Columbia record companies.[1]
With Schenck on piano, the duo sang and performed comedy routines. Van was especially adept at dialect humor, and could imitate any number of regional and continental accents. One of the team's typical novelty hits was Pastafazoola, in praise of Italian food and sung in the appropriate style. Van's hearty baritone and Schenck's high tenor harmonized well, and the team became known as "the pennant-winning battery of songland." They performed on radio shows and appeared in early talking motion pictures, including several musical shorts—in both Vitaphone and MGM Movietone—and one feature, the MGM film They Learned About Women (1930).
During World War I, they recorded humorous songs such as "I Don't Want to Get Well" which told the tale of a wounded soldier who did not want to recover, as he was comfortable in hospital and in love with a nurse.
After Schenck's death in 1930 of heart disease, Van continued to perform as a solo artist on stage, screen, and radio. He appeared in many New York-produced Soundies in 1941. Schenck was buried in The Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.
Van and Schenck gained a modern-day resurgence after their 1920 recording of Irving Berlin's "After You Get What You Want, You Don't Want It" was sampled in the soundtrack of the indie video game Pizza Tower.
