Radio Time With Jack Benny

Jack Benny and his writers, at times, struggled over a single word on a script, so it’s odd to hear that he “often changes the script after the program has started.” But that was the claim in a feature story on the Benny radio show in its waning days in New York City.

It’s true Jack would ad-lib, and some of the cast members would as well, but it didn’t happen very often. If a show was falling apart (generally when someone blew a line), Jack would play that up to the audience with some comments and they’d laugh probably louder than they were if things were going according to the printed page.

This story was published on March 3, 1936. The show had returned from Los Angeles only a few weeks earlier and would leave its New York City base for good by the end of May (returning occasionally until the early ‘50s over the years for a week or two at a time). It mentions writer Harry Conn, who would soon walk away from Benny in a fit of ego that proved to be an incredible stupid career move but one that benefitted Benny in the long run.

Jack’s off-the-air life is abruptly summed up in the final paragraph.

Jack Benny Rehearses Little So Mary Livingstone Just Says Anything and Radio Fans Roar
Couple Voted First Place on All Air Programs Two Years
HOPE TO GET RICH AND END CLOWNING
This is the third of a series of articles by Dorothy Roe on the intimate personalities of America's leading radio entertainers.
By DOROTHY ROE
(Copyright, 1936, Universal Service. Inc.)
New York, March 3.—Jack Benny points his cigar severely at Mary Livingstone and demands:
"Woman, don't you know we have to go on the air in 20 minutes?"
Mary powders her nose, ruffles her script and trills:
"Wouldn't it be funny if we didn't go on tonight?" Jack replies severely:
"Whaddaya mean—funny?"
Mary widens her immense brown eves and says innocently:
"Well, I'll bet a lot of people would think we were funnier if we didn't say anything at all."
Everybody Happy

That is a sample of a Jack Benny rehearsal. Jack and Mary, who is his wife, always intend to rehearse. They go down to the N. B. C. studios sometimes a whole hour and a half before their program goes on the air. But then Don Wilson, their cherubic announcer; Kenny Baker, their youthful tenor: Johnny Green, their orchestra leader; Harry Conn, their script writer, and the other members of the cast always have a lot of new gags and, what with this and what with that, time marches on.
But nobody seems to care whether Jack and Mary rehearse or not. The fact that the radio public has just voted them first place over all air programs for the second year in succession proves that.
And if the sounds of merriment that come through your radio of a Sunday evening make you think Jack and Mary and the boys and girls are having a good time earning their daily bread you guessed right.
Radio's No. 1 comedian goes on the air with less preparation than probably any other artist of the air waves.
Benny, bland, carefree, chewing his eternal cigar, explains:
"If we rehearsed too much, the program would be wooden. You see, we gotta be in the mood."
Little Preparation
One reading of the script, with the entire cast, and one so-called "dress rehearsal" with the microphone takes care of the preparation for the program, and that, it is explained, is done chiefly for timing.
Benny often changes his script after the program has started on the air, and Mary knows how to keep up with his ad libs.
It was an accident, as a matter of fact, that launched Mary Livingstone on an air career along with her famous husband. One night the script ran short during a broadcast, and Jack had to improvise. He called to Mary, who was sitting with the audience, and started an argument over the mike. Mary kept saying in a scared voice: "Hush, Jack, you're on the air. All those people will hear you." And the radio audience loved it. An avalanche of telegrams and mail proved that. So from then on Mary Livingstone was a part of the act.
A "Dead-Pan" Voice
Jack explains:
"Mary doesn't have to act. She just naturally has a dead-pan voice. She not only is my best pal and severest critic, but my ideal deadpan straight man."
And that may be a new kind of romantic compliment, but it came from the heart.
While most radio script writers keep from two to six weeks ahead with their programs, the Benny rang never even thinks of what the Sunday night act is to be until along about Thursday. Then Benny gets together with Conn, and the two map out the rough outlines of the script.
Nothing more is done about it until Saturday morning, when Benny reads through the script with his director and sponsors—that's to be sure the script is safe—that there is no danger of libel or censorship or any of the bogey men of radio.
The only real rehearsal takes place just before the program goes on the air and that is a performance which usually has even the studio page boys holding their sides. It goes something like this:
Jack: "Where are you reading? I'm on page nine."
Mary: "Well, I'm on page three. Skip it."
1500 in Audience
During a broadcast Jack chews a cigar, makes faces at the audience, executes a few dance steps now and then, and hangs his head prettily during applause. Broadcasts are held in one of the huge N.B.C. studios, before an audience of 1500, admitted by cards from the sponsors or the broadcasting company.
Both Jack and Mary throw the pages of their script on the floor as the broadcast progresses, and if anybody reads the wrong lines, that's all right. It gives them a chance to ad lib, which they would rather do than eat.
Sometimes the announcer, Roly Poly Don Wilson, goes into such roars of laughter during a broadcast that he is unable to talk, whereupon Benny nobly pinch hits. All members of the company, including the orchestra leader and Jack's secretary, are pressed into service before the 30-minute period on the air is over. And they love it. So does the public.
Jack fell in love with Mary Livingstone one day in Los Angeles, when she called him a ham actor and hired six little boys to sit in the front row at his show and not laugh. They have an adopted baby, Joan Naomi, 21 months old. Their closest friends are George Burns and Gracie Allen and their ambition is to get a million dollars so they won't have to be funny any more.