The Young Benny

People will always be cheap. People will always have a high opinion of themselves.

That’s the reason Jack Benny’s “character” works today. You could take Jack’s character type—someone who would go to insane lengths to save a dollar, who felt he was a great star, ladies man and musician—put it on some streaming service and people would binge-watch (if the writing and acting were good). You can’t do it with most of his variety show contemporaries. They’re singers of old songs and tellers of old jokes. (Look how Bob Hope became a sad shell on TV specials at the end).

That premise was picked up by a columnist with the Herald Tribune News Service in 1958. Granted this was before the socially-conscious ‘60s when comedians felt obligated to try to do hip routines on television and looked like someone’s grandfather embarrassingly trying to act 18. It was published on November 16th.

GOOD OLD DAYS ARE TODAY
Through Jack Benny, Fans Thumb Nose at the Years
By BOB SALMAGGI
(Copyright 1958, N. Y. Herald Tribune)
NEW YORK—Curious as it seems, TV audiences are inclined to accept Jack Benny as nothing but a latter-day comedian, even in the face of a rumor that it was he who stood by George Washington when he crossed the Delaware.
Each time Benny attempts to pass himself off as a mere stripling, audiences nod assent and laugh with him. Through him, people vicariously thumb their noses at the passing years. It's almost as if they were saying, See? Jack Benny doesn't know the meaning of the word old. . . he'll always remain young, no matter how time flies. . .there'll always be Jack Benny.
For with Benny, the chronological element is quickly dismissed. It's as if he invented the adage, "You're as young as you feel."

In effect, Benny, like so many of his contemporaries—Sophie Tucker, Fred Astaire, Ed Wynn, Ted Lewis—thinks young. He lives young, acts young, and consequently feels young. So what if there are a few streaks of gray, a wrinkle or two where they shouldn't be—Benny and his confreres laugh at the years, and point the way to bigger things with each passing century.
In Benny's design for entertaining, however, there is one notable factor that sets him apart from Durante, Cantor and the rest. He guardedly steers clear of nostalgia in his act. He shuns saccharine sentiment, doesn't glorify the "good old days," nor does he deprecate today's show business standards. He doesn't throw verbal bouquets at his contemporaries without purpose, or adhere to the old-timer's practice of "sticking together."
Benny wisely stays aloof, plays it cool, and basks in the aura of modernism. The only major concession he makes to the bygone days is his show prop, the ancient Maxwell car, but this is strictly for effect, just for laughs. His act is as modern as sliced bread, and as wholesome. Although devoted to the proposition that Benny hates to part with a nickel, his television show and his nightclub act, even his concerts, are fast-paced, stylized and strictly up-to-date.
When you think of Sophie Tucker, you think of vaudeville, one-nighters, and torchy blues of yesteryear. So too with the Jessels, the Cantors, and others of his generation. But there's no kindling of old memories or old associations when Jack Benny strides on stage in that familiar style of his.
He is regarded as a latter-day comedian, period—a comedian who came up during the early days of radio and vaudeville, to be sure, but one who made the transition to the fearsome new television medium, without so much as a dropped decimal point in his Hooper, or Trendex, if you will. Many who starred with Benny years ago tried to hurdle the obstacle of time and make a place for themselves on TV, but they weren't attuned to the times. They couldn't adapt themselves as did Benny, who has been riding high, wide and lucrative on radio and/or TV steadily since 1932.
In essence, his credo is to "keep working if you want to keep young." To this he adds: "I really hate it when I'm not busy enough. I mean that. When I'm idle it's then I begin to feel a little older. Look at Fred Astaire . .if he's not working, he's at home practicing like mad. He's better than ever these days . . but if he ever stopped working, well. . ."
It wasn't too long ago that Benny announced to a bemused world that he was going to turn forty. But these days he's feeling so chipper that he is "thinking about going back" to 39 very soon now.
"I was 36, you know, for a little over a year," mused Benny, "and then I turned 37 for a few years, but I hung on to 39 the longest. I guess I'll always be 39," he said with a sly grin.
"It's such a comfortable age."