This is half of a column (the other half is not Benny-related) from one of the newspaper syndicates. It appeared in papers starting November 22, 1964. The photo accompanied the story.
TV Notebook: Jack Benny Says He's Not Such Easy Audience
By JOAN CROSBY
Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
New York — (NEA) - Jack Benny, busy defending himself against the charge that he is such an easy audience he'll laugh at the answer to the question "Why does the chicken cross the road?," reached for his coffee cup and took a long draught. "As soon as they get those supersonic airplanes that can fly from Los Angeles to New York in one hour, I'm going to start hopping to New York to get a good cup of coffee, said the veteran entertainer.
"I am a good audience if someone is funny. But if I go to a night club, and someone isn't funny, and I'm sitting at a prominent table, I have to keep a silly grin on my face, because I know everyone is looking at me and saying, ‘He's such a good audience. It's murder.’"
Jack, whose long-running television show has moved to NBC-TV this season, chuckled as he thought of some of the lines for which he has been a GREAT audience. They came from George Burns, a man who does break up Jack.
"One time Burns and I were in a swank Beverly Hills restaurant. Now, George is a man who thinks that anything that is very hot if it is supposed to be hot, is great cooking. He ordered soup and said to the waiter, ‘I want the soup so hot that if you can carry it in, I don't want it.’
"Another time we were at a dinner party given by George and Grade Allen, God love her. Dinah Shore arrived late, upset because her daughter, considered by Dinah to be the best child in the world, had been naughty.
She apologized for being late, saying ‘My child was just so bad I had to punish her.’
"George took the cigar out of his mouth, knocked the ashes off the end, and said, ‘Dinah's idea of punishing her child is to sing her the chorus of song not in the Top Ten.’"
When Danny Kaye first appeared at the La Martinique night club in New York in 1940, Jack was sitting at one of the tables. And he laughed SO HARD, Danny noticed- and after the show, he angrily demanded, "Who's the big butter and egg man who was laughing in the wrong places?". When told it was Jack, his attitude changed to relief. "If I knew it was HIM, I would have been a nervous wreck!"
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