The Age of Benny

What about comedy? What about comic timing?

Jack Benny seemed to be asked about those two things constantly.

There certainly was a good reason. Jack had spanned virtually the entire life of comedy/variety on network radio and plunged into television with continued success. His colleagues (if not his viewers) marvelled at Jack’s joke timing, some quoted they wouldn’t dare try to use silence the way Benny did.

The San Francisco Examiner focused on Jack a number of times over the years, and not only when he paid the City by the Bay a visit. Here’s a story from June 21, 1959, with an age comparison, the exaggerated story about his “first” radio appearance (it wasn’t but it can be argued it was his first influential one), and how CBS protected him in the TV ratings when Maverick on ABC started killing off the competition, including the erstwhile Buck Benny.

The Old Showman, Young Jack Benny
By Dwight Newton
SOMEBODY said television was a young man's game. Haw!
This year the TV academy awarded two Emmys (one for "best comedy series" and one for "best actor in a comedy series") to a man who is older than Utah. Everyone knows Jack Benny is only 39, yet he is older than the whole bloomin' motion picture industry. Jack was born on Valentine's Day, 1894, and not until two months later did Thomas Alva Edison present the first public showing of his Kinetoscope at 1155 Broadway, New York. That was the year of the Chinese-Japanese War, Coxey's march on Washington, the Dreyfus trial and the great Pullman strike. Grover Cleveland was President, Robert Louis Stevenson died and Arthur Fiedler was .born. So were Irene Castle, Jeanne Eagles, Fred Allen and Walter Brennan.
Jack and Walter (of "Real McCoys") and their 1894 colleagues were here before the airplane, the dirigible, the depth bomb and the disc plow. They preceded cellophane, wireless and the X-ray. In Illinois, they still haggle humorously about which came first—Waukegan or Jack Benny. Waukegan is currently celebrating its Centennial and Jack is the in-person head-liner for Jack Benny Day.
The incredible thing is that after all these years in fiercely competitive show business, old Jack still receives the highest awards in America's youngest entertainment medium.
The Benny story began when Meyer Kubelsky emigrated from Poland to peddle wares with a pack on his back in and around Chicago. He settled in Waukegan and his first born was Benny. Kubelsky gave his son a $50 violin when he was barely 5. At age 8, Benny was giving solo performances. At 17, he went into vaudeville with a pianist partner. He called himself Ben Benny, later changed it to Jack Benny to avoid confusion with better known Ben Bernie.
During World War I, he joined the Navy and was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Chicago. While there he reported for a Naval Relief Society show and during rehearsal, the story goes, he amused his fellow sailors with timely quips and funny sayings. The show's hard-pressed writers worked them into the script and that was the birth of Benny, the comedian.
"Up until then for six and a half years," Benny recalls, "I'd never opened my mouth on the stage. I'd been a violinist." After the war, he went back to vaudeville, doing a monologue as well as fiddling. He played the Palace in New York. He did musical comedies. Another fateful day in his life was March 29, 1932. He was in "Earl Carroll's Vanities" and Ed Sullivan, who was then doing a radio show, invited him to appear on it.
It was Jack's first radio appearance. His first words were, "Hello, folks, this is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for every one to say 'Who cares?' "A few weeks later NBC signed him as a Sunday night comedian. He became an overnight sensation.
By 1937, Jack was radio's most listened-to comic. In 1941, NBC gave him a lifetime option on Sunday night at 7. In 1949, he shifted to CBS for what was then the all-time biggest package deal. When reporters besieged him for details, Jack told them, 'They have free parking at CBS.'
When radio began to falter in 1950, the two highest rated shows were Jack's and "Lux Radio Theater." In October of that year, Jack did his first TV show and I predicted that "Benny, the Mr. Big of radio, will become the ditto of television."
He did—and he still is the Mr. Big of the comedy field.
But big as he is, Benny last season could not compete commercially with the newest television phenomenon—the action western. Mighty "Maverick" came on to soften Sullivan, drive off Steve Allen, then "Bachelor Father" and now Benny. Last week's rerun was Benny's last show in the old Sunday at 7:30 slot. Tonight he'll be temporarily replaced by "I Love Lucy" reruns and when he returns to CBS-TV, Oct. 4, he'll be scheduled at 10 p. m., with George Gobel as his alternate week running mate.
About the westerns that knocked him out, Benny told me, "I think people like westerns. I like them. I like anything good. But if comedians did everything the same like the westerns, everybody would be sore."
Though Benny is forever identified with numerous trademarks (the toupe, the Maxwell, the violin, the age 39 stunt, the stinginess), he probably has attempted more new things than any comedian of comparable stature. Sometimes they boomerang.
"But I'm never sorry about anything I do," he said. "If you have an idea, do it—otherwise you'll stagnate. If your idea flops, you won't be thrown out of show business. You gotta be brave, you gotta try everything."
Like him or not, Benny's record proves that he is one of America's greatest living showmen. He is the master of the pause that builds laughter. He can do with expressions what Bob Hope does with dialogue. His timing is unsurpassed.
"Timing is very difficult to define," he confided. "Gracie Allen has probably the greatest timing of anybody I know and she probably has no idea why. Perhaps it's best you never know why. Some people have it with fast talk, others with slow talk. Nobody can teach that. They can't say, 'Now I'll teach you timing.'
"Judy Holliday is just great. Ed Wynn was sensational with it. It's easier for me to time on a live show than on film, for I let the audience do it for me."
Next month, after his trip to Waukegan, Jack plans to throw his golf clubs in the car and drive wherever the urge takes him. Later he may go to England for a week or two. In mid-August he'll take a new, combination variety-symphony into the Los Angeles Greek Theater for two weeks. Then he'll resume filming TV shows, the first with Red Skelton. He already has filmed two for next season one with Ben Blue, the other with his regular crew, Dennis Day, Rochester, Mel Blanc and Frank Nelson.
In addition to his regular series next season, he tells me he'll do two or three CBS "specials" and he expects to make at least three road tours—in the East, the Northwest and definitely in Texas.
Have a swell vacation Jack, we'll be tele-seein' you in October.