Jack Benny, His School and His Gang

Jack Benny accomplished many things in the entertainment world, but he remarked on several occasions his most proud moment (charity concerts notwithstanding) was having a junior high school named after him. Benny never considered himself a studious boy years earlier in Waukegan.

Benny talks about this and his age in a February 1960 article by United Press International. The rest is a biography and a few quotes from others.

You’ll notice the article says “Part Two.” You may be wondering about Part One. Well, to be honest, it was posted last December. However, the version I found didn’t indicate it was a Part One, otherwise these two parts would have been posted on consecutive Sundays. Both are stand-alone stories so newspapers could run one or both.

Jack Benny Flabbergasted, Jr. High Named After Him
(Editor's Note: This is the second of two dispatches about Jack Benny, one of America’s most beloved and enduring comedians.)
By RICK DU BROW
UPI Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Jack Benny, the pride of Waukegan, Ill., is flabbergasted that his home town has named a new junior high school after him.
“It's such an honor,” he said. “I could understand maybe a theater being named after me — or a bowling alley, but a HIGH SCHOOL!”
Benny, who began his show business career 49 years ago as doorman of the only theater in Waukegan, recalled that “I was so lousy in school, they almost threw me out.”
Now, however, he has equal billing in Waukegan with Thomas Jefferson end Daniel Webster, after whom the two other junior high schools are named.
“One thing we have in common is that we're all up there in age,” the 65-year-old CBS-TV star told the home folks at the ground-breaking ceremony.
Nicest Thing
“This is the nicest thing that has ever happened to me,” he added as he turned the first load of dirt on the $1,200,000 structure, which will spread over 17 acres.
When the comedian was born in 1894, he was christened Benny Kubelsky. As he grew up, he spent summers working in his father’s haberdashery shop. But he preferred to practice on the violin his father gave him.
In high school, he played with a small orchestra at local dances and firemen's balls. But Waukegan's Barrison Theater, which has a pit orchestra, would accept him only as a doorman.
Soon, however, he became a property man, and before long he became the only knickerbockered member of the pit orchestra.
When he was 17, Benny teamed up with a pianist named Cora Salisbury in a vaudeville act called “From Grand Opera to Ragtime.” His next partner was another pianist, Lyman Woods. They toured the nation until Benny joined the Navy in 1916.
In service, Benny traveled in a revue put on by the Great Lakes Naval Station.
His violin-playing failed to raise money for Navy relief, but he discovered his wisecracks did produce results. Soon he was a monologist.
After the war, he decided Ben K. Benny would be a better name for vaudeville than Benjamin Kubelsky. But he was confused with another fiddler —Ben Bernie—so he changed his name to Jack Benny.
In the next decade, his suave comedy made him a vaudeville favorite, and he did big musicals on Broadway for Earl Carroll and the Shuberts.
On Radio In 1932
His first words on radio — the medium that made him famous — were spoken in 1932 when he appeared as a guest on a show hosted by another up-and -coming personality, Ed Sullivan.
“Hello, folks!” he said. “This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for every one to say, ‘Who cares?’”

In a few years, however, the nation’s radio listeners cared very much. He and the members of his show—Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Mary Livingstone (his wife) and announcer Don Wilson—became household favorites.
“My cast,” he says with a grin, “has played a large part in the longevity of the program. Don has been with me since the old ‘Jello’ days—more than 25 years ago. Rochester has put in 24 years.
“I don't have to carry the ball. More often than not I give the funny lines to a supporting character and let them play the laughs off me.”
Rochester A Hit
Rochester was originally a character written in for one broadcast. That was when Benny moved his family and program to California. Rochester was supposed to be the Pullman porter in the radio enactment of the journey west.
But the public clamored for more of Rochester, and the script was written so that Benny hired him away from the Pullman Co. to be his valet.
Mary became a regular the same way. Benny had met her on a trip to Los Angeles, where she was a department store clerk named Sadye Marks.
Then she started playing the part of a young fan from Plainfield, N.J., who would burst into his program reading him “poems” and wisecracking. The public loved her lilting giggle, and she became a regular.
Rich Man Jack Benny
Today, Benny is one of Hollywood’s richest men. In addition to his own production company, he has “a little property in California and Florida, a little oil in Texas and here—and some cattle in several places.”
Many believe that Benny’s greatest strength as a comedian is his perfect timing — knowing exactly how long to pause before speaking his next line to get the maximum humorous effect.
It was his timing, coupled with his on-stage reputation as a miser, that made what may very well have been the funniest bit on any Jack Benny program. He was supposedly approached by a holdup-man who demanded, “Your money or your life.” The silence that followed while Benny was “thinking it over” produced howls of laughter.
Great Stamina
His greatest asset, however, is his stamina — which keeps him looking almost as young as the 39 he has pretended to be for a quarter of a century.
“He never slows down,” said a friend. “Recently, he flew from Rochester, N.Y., to Manhattan, changed his clothes, went to a cocktail party, then a Broadway opening, then a Rodgers and Hammerstein party, then Eddie Fisher’s opening at the Waldorf, then a party thrown by Liz Taylor for Eddie — and. finally, at 3 a.m., to a party Josh Logan was throwing for Mary Martin.”
Benny, who plays golf three times a week and has a good head of hair despite all the jokes on his program that he wears a toupee, says with a grin:
“I don't mind telling audiences my real age because they leave shaking their heads and saying,
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”