To the Front of the Line

Likely there are few people reading this post who saw Jack Benny live in person. He’s been dead for 43 years after all (or maybe that should be 39). But I imagine they probably saw him in a concert setting or at a fair, certainly not like in the situation below.

This story from the King Features Syndicate only cursorily deals with Jack Benny. It’s about seeing top entertainers as part of a tour package. It’s certainly different than just walking up to a window and buying a ticket.

I found this in a newspaper dated March 6, 1959. The picture of Gisele MacKenzie with a kind of pensive Jack comes from a fan magazine around that time.

TV KEYNOTES
Miami Night Tour Can Be Cheap
By HARVEY PACK
While I was vacationing in Miami, Jack Benny and Gisele MacKenzie were booked into Miami Beach's swankiest hotel for a one-week stand. Neither of these stars can be classified as night-club performers. Benny has been tops in radio and TV for about 39 years, and Miss MacKenzie is strictly a TV graduate. An evening for two in this hotel's night-club costs about 40 bucks and that's a lot of cash to lay out to see entertainers that come into the living room free.
As stars of mass medium, however, the Benny-MacKenzie combo was a must to the tourist vacationer. But for a budget-minded guy to spend 40 clams just for one quick evening is a rough order. Even when she shows up at his hotel he's-competing with the regular night-club patron who's willing to toss the captain a 20 to help locate a "reserved" table. Our tourist friend finds himself behind a pole in the back of the room wondering why he let the old lady con him into springing for this show.

In Miami things have changed, however, and the tourist is beating the sharpie to the good shows, thanks to a small group of promoters who have organized tours. For $22 a couple, you are picked up by a bus, taken to one night club where you are permitted one drink plus the show, then on to a second spot for a chicken sandwich and the show, finally, a third joint for dessert and another show and back to your hotel on the bus.
Super-Duper Party
The night Benny opened, I signed on for this super-duper excursion into the saloon world. Along with 44 strangers hailing from about 25 assorted states, and dressed all the way from casual to formal, my wife and I piled into the streamlined bus.
As we headed out of our low-rent district and toward the more fashionable beachfront palaces, the guide instructed us in tour rules. Our gratuities are already paid, but if we wish something not included in the package—like extra drinks—we are to take care of the waiters ourselves. We all sit together at one table, and leave as a unit.
I checked the baggage rack but my barracks bag was not there. It was on a civilian tour.
Benny's hotel was a madhouse. Every important member of Miami Beach's cafe set was there for the premiere. As our bus pulled up in front of the joint, we noticed about a dozen more buses dislodging assorted cargoes of tour customers. Our sergeants, I mean guides, lined us up and led us into the hotel lobby. Through the magnificent lobby, we trotted, advancing on the night club.
You could hear fee desperate screams of the sharpies as you approached the club's entrance. "OK, Eddie, what do you want for a table?" "Remember me, Eddie, I'm a friend of Anastasia." "One hundred bucks for a table—please take my dough." Everybody who was anybody had to be seen at that opening and these men knew it. Failure meant exile.
Suddenly above the din the voice of our guide cried out, "Make way for the tour! Make way for the tour!" Even Eddie responded and, as if by magic, the sharpies were pushed aside to permit us to get through. Once our beachhead was established, it was easy. We all sat at a long table, watched the show and left. Even as we made a sharp "column right" and headed back to our chariot the desperate were still pleading for attention." Here's fifty, Eddie, let me in so people can see me leaving. That might fool them."
One of our gang, a very pleasant TV fan from upstate New York, turned to the big spender and really summed up Miami Beach night life under the delightful, all-inclusive tour system when be said, "Why don't you join us, sir? We've just caught Benny and now we're en route to Betty Grable's show. It's easy when you know the right people."