Guests and Gaslights

Imagine a TV show being told “You can’t parody that! We’re suing.”

It’s ridiculous. Especially when it came to one episode of the Jack Benny TV show.

Benny was a pioneer when it came to burlesques of movies. He did it regularly on radio in the ‘30s, less so as time went on. In the ‘40s, his radio show did a send-up of the film “Gaslight.” He tried to do it again with old friend Babs Stanwyck on TV in January 1952. Suddenly the author of the Gaslight story and MGM’s parent company were suing Benny, CBS and American Tobacco to stop it from airing, claiming copyright infringement. Benny’s argument was people are free to make fun of things. In fact, he’d been doing it for years.

Things were always uneasy between film producers and other media. Whenever Benny (or others) did parodies of films, the name of the movie company was always mentioned. Stars “appeared through the courtesy” of whatever studio they were working for. That’s when they appeared at all. Film studios owned them and told them if they would be permitted to appear on what they saw as competition instead of a free promotional tool.

Remarkably, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Benny in early 1958.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Here’s the New York Daily News from October 8th. There actually wasn’t a lot to say about “Gaslight,” so the Daily News’ reporter added something about landing a big-name Hollywood star, one who had appeared on his radio show.

Benny’s ‘Gaslight’ Parody May Yet Hit TV Screens
By MATT MESSINA
It’s been a long time coming, but Jack Benny’s TV parody of the 1944 MGM movie, “Gaslight,” may yet flicker into life on one of his upcoming laugh sessions. He is now negotiating with the company for a go-ahead signal, Benny told us.
The CBS star originally planned to screen the video burlesque in 1953 [sic]. MGM went to court and the hassle finally wound up in the Supreme Court earlier this year, where the comedian lost out to a four-four tie no decision (one Justice was absent). So a lower court ruling banning the skit remained in effect.
Oh, putting it on the air or not isn't going to change my life,” Benny said, "but the skit is prepared and it's funny — very funny."
In fact, Benny's Sept. 21 season opener included an amusing takeoff on Westerns, in which guest star Gary Cooper was featured.
How He Got Cooper
How did he snare Cooper, who has been as elusive as a good rating for most TV impresarios?
"That goes back a couple of years," Benny related. "Gary, an old friend of mine, wanted to appear in a live TV show and he said he would do it with me. I thought of a good idea, but when my writers and I started to work on it, we saw it wasn’t right for Gary. So I called him and said: ‘I'm not going to let you do this show—it's not right for you.’
"I've never asked a star to come on unless I have a good idea for him. Not only does he suffer, I suffer. Anyway, getting back to Gary, before the season started, I thought of something that was good for him, and he came on. Now, I can get him any time I want to." And Cooper may be back with Benny before the summer rolls around—"If I get a great idea for him."
Cooper, according to Benny, was very happy over the results. “A couple of days after his appearance, I saw Gary and he told me: ‘Jack, I've been in pictures all my life, but I never got the reaction I did with your show.’ I said: ‘Why not? More people saw you in one night on TV than see your big hit pictures ever.’” And that, kiddies, is why they call it a mass medium.

Hollywood’s attempts to play power moves against television were failing. Benny got to air his old film of “Gaslight.” But it may have been a case of the film industry, after corporate upheavals in some cases, realised a fight was stupid and there was money to be made in television. Warner Bros. and Columbia (through Screen Gems), in particular, produced all kinds of shows starting in the late ‘50s.

Read more about the “Gaslight” show here.