Go, Go, Go

By the late 1950s, Jack Benny had two careers going. One was his television show. The other was the violin concerts he gave all over North America. He was still doing both up until he died in late 1974.

Jack talks about both of them in this feature interview with Margaret McManus, who interviewed him a number of times over her career; here’s a link to a piece she wrote in 1957. She talked with him the following year, yet another of those hotel/bathrobe chats he liked to do when on the road. This appeared in the weekend magazine sections of papers on November 2, 1958.

Jack Benny Is A Legend, His Laughs Come Naturally
BY MARGARET McMANUS
NEW YORK—In the dim, red-carpeted hallways of the Sherry-Netherland at noontime of this chill but sunny fall day, there came the sound of violin music. As we were admitted into the parlor of the hotel suite, Jack Benny, wearing a print dressing gown over his blue pajamas, walked out of the bedroom, still playing his violin. The scene was half for laughs, but also very much in character.
Since Benny has been giving his concerts with the leading symphony orchestras all over the country, he practices his violin every day, willingly and with love. Jack Benny, so successful a comedian that he has almost become a legend in his time, is, in truth, a frustrated musician.
Guest Soloist At Benefits
“I only wish I'd practiced this hard forty years ago,” he said. “I get such pleasure out of doing these concerts, I can’t take money for it. They’re always benefits, usually for the symphony.” Symphonies always need funds you know.”
Benny, who gave a concert with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall here last winter, will appear with the New Orleans and the San Francisco Symphonies this season, and will give three concerts in Great Britain in the spring, in London, Glasgow and Edinburgh.
“It’s all done very legitimately,” he said. “It’s done as if the guest soloist were Heifetz or Isaac Stern, with great dignity and formality. Music critics review it on the basis of a musical evening. The only difference is that it’s lousy playing. I stink.
“The late Mike Todd used to say about my concerts that their appeal isn’t that I have the guts to do this, that the appeal is in the utter pathos of it, the Chaplinesque quality.
“Of course, two thirds of the evening is devoted to good music. I only come on at the end.”
Proud Of His Stradivarius
And, of course, when Benny does come on to perform, he performs on his Stradivarius.
“It was one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me, buying that Strad.” he said. “The one I have was made in 1729 which is one of the good years of a Strad. I was exactly like a kid with a toy he had wanted all his life. I couldn’t put the darned thing down.”
This preoccupation of Jack Benny’s with his more recent career as a concert violinist does not mean that he is less concerned with his career as a television comedian.
In the endless analysis that has gone on as to how and why Benny has maintained his position in this most mercurial of mediums, after 20 years of comparable success on the radio, it seems to me that one obvious reason has always been lightly passed over.
No matter with what he is involved, Jack has an instinctive taste for quality and perfection, a most subtle compliment to his audience. He shuns the shoddy and the second rate, wants only the best, always does his best.
Even Handful Gets His Best

There is a popular story about Benny that on one occasion he and a number of the Hollywood stars had been scheduled to appear at a benefit fund-raising drive and, due to some lack of publicity, only a handful of people showed up at a large theater.
All the other stars cut their acts to the bone, did two or three minutes and beat it. Jack Benny did the entire 15 minutes he had planned to do for a packed house. His explanation was simple.
“Why should we disappoint these people? They’re the ones who came.”
Modest Explanation
The question of how he has survived for so long a time is a question he has been asked more times than he can count. It has become a standard question and he can count on its coming up.
His own explanation is a very modest one.
He thinks that because he has established certain character traits his conceit, his stinginess, his pride in his big, blue eyes he has an easier time getting laughs than comedians who must depend always on fresh, new gags.
“I can depend on reaction to certain standard stuff and the audience almost anticipates me,” he said. “They’re so kind to me, they’re ready to laugh before I finish the line. I can jingle some change in my pocket and its good for a laugh.
“I’ve also been very lucky. I wasn’t so farsighted that twenty years ago I sat down and planned this all out. Things happened, often by accident, and we latched onto them one at a time, as they came along. My feud with Fred Allen started with one show and it got so much attention, we kept it up for years. The old Maxwell was just intended for one show and it’s still going.”
Obviously, there is no such thing as a simple analysis of anything, or of anybody. Success is a complicated business, compounded of many factor, facts and fancies, shaded and colored like a glorious rainbow.
Jack Benny has attained the kind of substantial success in his business that is comparable to a chairman of the board, or a professor emeritus. Yet he never rests on last year’s laurels, he never finds his work dull and his plans are always for the future.
“I’m so happy about the television show so far this season,” he said (7:30 p.m. this Sunday, CBS-TV). “We got off to such a good start. That’s important. Every single show can’t possibly be as good as you would like it to be, but you can’t die with each show. You have to be concerned with the shows as a series. But it was great to get off well. It’s reassuring.”
Likes Reassurance
And therein might also be a clue. Jack Benny, the master likes reassurance, even as you and I. This man, who has climbed a steep ladder and has been able to hold onto the top, is a very human guy.
He dotes on his only daughter and on his grandchildren. He likes applause and the excitement of the competitive fight. He is proud of the beautiful house where he and his wife, Mary Livingston, live in Beverly Hills, and where they are remodeling the living room so that they can show Cinemascope movies.
“It won’t surprise you,” he said, “to hear that we are not getting any younger. Mary and I have always had a lot of fun spending money and I said to her the other day, right before I came East, if there’s anything you want girl, go, go, go. Let’s enjoy it!”
Spoken like a man who owns a Stradivarius, but he’d better watch that talk or those chains clanking while Benny makes his way to the money vault will have to go, go, go.