Yes, Virginia, There is a Carmichael

There were people who believed that Jack Benny actually had an overworked, underpaid help-of-all-trades named Rochester. And Eddie Anderson apparently didn’t want people to think otherwise.

At least, that’s if you wish to believe what he told the October 1950 edition of Radio and TV Mirror. Anderson kind of stays in character through the interview, but he also lets readers know it’s all in fun as he talks about the real Jack Benny as well.

Rochester was a unique character on radio. He was the hired help who only behaved like it when absolutely necessary. He smoked Benny’s cigars, ate Benny’s food, wore Benny’s clothes, partied in Benny’s house, sabotaged Benny’s violin and zinged one-liners at him like the rest of the cast. He did to his boss what, I suspect, listeners would do to theirs if they had the courage. By the time Benny was on TV regularly, they were more like an old couple than boss and employee. Judging by audience applause, Rochester was the most popular person on the show next to Benny.

NO BOSS—NOT ME
The toupee, "The Bee", the perpetual age of thirty-nine, the Maxwell—put them all together and they spell Jack Benny. Here Rochester brushes away the moths and takes you into the vault to show you what's truth, what's fiction concerning his boss
as told to GLADYS HALL

Editor's Note: What's the real story behind Jack Benny? Where does myth leave off and man begin? Millions of Benny fans want to know — the editors of Radio Mirror decided to find out. The logical person to ask, of course, was Benny's man Rochester. And the logical person to send was ace interviewer, Gladys Hall. Such a collaboration was bound to reveal one thing, and here it is — the real story behind Jack Benny.

Coming out of a restaurant one day, Jack Benny handed the hat-check girl a dollar bill. But she handed it right back to him, saying, "Please, Mr. Benny, leave me some illusions!" Benny's man Rochester feels the same way.
"I like the Boss stingy," says he. "I like him the way he is on his radio show, all the way. If the Boss just suddenly became generous overnight, I'd be out of business!"
Bearing this in mind, Rochester has a lot of fun telling fibs about the Boss. He lets people think that Jack really is the character he plays on the air.
"When I'm asked — and I often am — whether Mr. Benny is really cheap, I say, 'Well, he's never hurt his arm throwing money away!' When a fan wants to know whether Mr. Benny collects anything, like stamps, for instance, or first editions, or antique firearms, I say 'Money. The Boss does very well collecting money.'
"Believe it or not, I've even been asked whether it's true that poor Dennis Day gets only twelve dollars a week for the radio show and, in addition, has to mow Mr. Benny's lawn. But I never let on that Dennis makes enough to hire a staff of gardeners and never lays hand to a lawnmower on his own place, let alone Mr. Benny's."
Rochester travels around the country with the Boss — to Waukegan which, as everyone knows, is Jack's home, to Plainfield, which is Mary Livingstone's home town and to the big cities for personal appearance tours.
"I meet hundreds and hundreds of people and most of them seem serious in believing that the Boss, in real life, is the same as the character they listen to over CBS every Sunday night at seven. And with all the work he's done building this character in the mind of the public, I feel he should stay with it. I believe his fans feel likewise.

"I know that when people ask me is there really a Maxwell, they get a kick when I tell them there sure enough is that claptrap old vintage '24 Maxwell, that I drive Mr. Benny around in that old creak, park it alongside all those Cadillacs in Hollywood, and the parking attendant wants to know if the Joad family back in town. It doesn't seem necessary to me to mention the Packard job the Boss really drives.
"And when I'm asked is there sure enough that bear, Carmichael, roaming around the set, I say, 'There sure enough is that ornery fur rug!'
"Why, if I was to let on there isn't any Carmichael or that the Boss doesn't own a toupee and has his own hair (at least some of it) and his own teeth (most of them), and that the Ronald Colmans don't live next door, it would be like finding out there isn't any Santa Claus, wouldn't it?
"In my considered opinion it would. Yet I may be wrong because, well, it's funny the way people feel about Mr. Benny. As I say, I believe they want to believe he's the character he plays on his show yet they're always trying to get the low down on him. Like hardly a week passes that a number of people don't go to the house next door trying to get the low down on the Boss from Mr. and Mrs. Ronald Colman. The doorbell of that house rings so often that the people who live there, a business couple, have been obliged to put a sign over the doorbell: 'Ronald Colman Does Not Live Here.' "

Rochester's right-hand man in keeping the Boss in his radio character is Fred Allen, who writes things like this about Jack:
"Before shoes were invented, Jack was a heel. His false teeth are so loose, they are always clicking. Jack has no more hair than an elbow. He is so anemic that if he stays out at night he has to get a transfusion so his eyes will be bloodshot in the morning."
"But," says Rochester, "you won't catch Mr. Allen letting on that when he is in Hollywood, he and his Missus, Portland Hoffa, go to dinner at the Bennys' house always once, sometimes twice, in exchange for which the Allens take the Bennys out to dinner every other night they are in town. And I try not to give away that although the Boss and Mary Livingstone are not married on the show, they've been happily married for twenty-three years. Even though Hollywood is supposed to be a wild place for divorce and rumors of divorce, there has never been a rumor about the Boss and his boss, Miss Livingstone."
Rochester has another assistant in Mary. She does her bit to keep Jack in character on the air — and in the home, too.
"The Boss likes to tell about the time right after he and Miss Livingstone were married. The Friars in New York gave a big stag dinner in his honor. It was the first time the Boss was a guest of honor and he says he felt very important. Then, right in the middle of the eulogizings, a telegram arrived from Miss Livingstone, which was read to the guests. It said 'When you come home tonight, be sure to put out the garbage.'
"But Miss Livingstone will come to the defense of the Boss at the drop of his toupee. She never wanted to be an actress. She just stepped in the show one night to help the Boss out, and after that the audience wouldn't let her go. But she prefers her real life roles of Mrs. Jack Benny, housewife, and the mother of Joan Benny, fifteen years old, to the part she plays on the air.
"Being so disposed, she doesn't go for publicity and interviews and the such. But one day she did bust loose and tell a reporter, 'My husband, Jack Benny, is the most maligned man in town — and all by his own doing. Lest any of my fiddling husband's fans believe any of this self-inflicted abuse, I'd like to go on record and say that Jack is not anemic, is in perfect physical condition, has his own teeth and hair, can play a pretty good violin, and, in my opinion, is the greatest guy in the world.' "

Rochester himself confirms that a more generous man than Jack Benny never lived. "When he goes to a restaurant, or a night club or a drive-in," says Rochester, "he always overtips. He pays out five thousand dollars a year in tips alone, just out of the bigness of that out-sized heart of his — and to prove that he isn't the stingiest man in town. He pays the people on his show, even the bit players, more than radio actors are paid on comparable shows— that is, if there are any shows on the air comparable to Mr. Benny's show. It's still No. 1 on the networks — and that's after eighteen consecutive years!
"When the high cost of his cast is called to his attention, the Boss always says, 'I get a lot of money, why shouldn't those who work with me get likewise?' There's one instance where I don't mind revealing Mr. Benny out of character!
"But when I ask the Boss what is the definition of likewise,' he just says 'Rochester!' in such a hurt tone I say no more, I haven't the heart.
"But you can always kid with the Boss, that's the point I'm making — and did you notice that he says 'those who work with me?' This may be a small point to make but there's a big difference, for my money, between the man who says 'those who work with me' and the man who says 'those who work for me . . .'
"Another fib I tell about Mr. Benny is when I'm asked whether I enjoy hearing him play the violin to which I reply, 'By all means, no!'
"The fact is, Mr. Benny started out in life to be a concert violinist. To play the violin, and play it well, was his serious ambition and his cherished dream. He does play it well, too, or did before he started to use the instrument as just a gag. The great Jascha Heifetz once said of Mr. Benny that he has a wonderful wrist action and could have made a great violinist. Mr. Heifetz meant it, too. But since the only thing we on the show ever hear the Boss play is that awful 'Love In Bloom' and I say 'By all means, no!'
"Everyone who knows the Boss or hears him on the air admires his wonderful showmanship, his faultless timing. But no one admires him so much as those who work with him. To work with him, especially at rehearsals, is to see the Boss at his super-duperest. To begin with, he's very prompt. He's so prompt that although the rest of us are on time, he's ahead of time! He is also the most considerate man I have ever met. If the Boss wants me, or any member of the cast to meet him at an off time, it's always, 'What time will be good for you?' There's never any of this 'Be here at nine sharp' stuff.
"He just loves the show, the Boss does. He's that conscientious, that sincere about it that he never says 'Good enough' to a single line, one bit of business, unless it's better than that. He'll throw a whole script away, if he has to, and work all weekend on a new one. He works as hard on the show now, after eighteen years on the air, as if next Sunday was his first broadcast. Yet it's all relaxed, all easy-does-it, with us all having fun just like we sound like we're having on the air.
"For the warm-up Sundays, the Boss always plays his violin. Members of the cast throw pennies at him, he picks them up, puts them in his pocket and never gives them back neither — no Boss, not you!

"There's not a lazy bone in Mr. Benny's body. He is an inveterate early riser. On the Coast he gets up at seven o'clock, has breakfast in the kitchen with the cook, goes to the Hillcrest Golf Club and has shot nine holes of golf before Phil Harris wakes up enough to remember what it is he likes about the South.
"Mr. Benny wishes he could shoot below par like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. In fact, he'd rather be sixty-fourth on the Hooper rating, so he says, and first in golf. But his only real frustration is that he didn't become a great violinist. The Boss really takes this to heart. He loves the violin. Any town he's in, if there's a great violinist playing there, he'll drop anything — even a golf club — to rush off to hear him.
"If ever I should cut loose and unveil the truth about the Boss as he is in private life, I'd speak particularly, I believe, about his home life which goes along like one of those old sweet songs he sometimes plays when he's alone, on his violin. They live a very quiet life, the Boss and Miss Livingstone. Especially quiet now that Joan, the pretty little apple of her Daddy's eye, is in boarding school. They have a circle of good friends, among which are Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor, the Bill Goetzs, the Gary Coopers, and, of course, the Ronald Colmans and the Fred Allens.
"When they invite their friends over they usually run a picture in their projection room — even 'The Horn Blew At Midnight' which, in my opinion, is sabotaging hospitality. Or they play gin rummy. On trips, such as when we take the show to New York, the Boss and Miss Livingstone, or maybe it'll be the Boss and Don Wilson, play gin rummy all the way, the whole way!
"But if I want to keep Mr. Benny in his radio character, I can't go on about his home life. If I do, I'll disillusion the people who actually believe I live in Mr. Benny's house as the man's man-of-all-work I am every Sunday night on the show. Some people believe it so much they take it to heart. Like the time I had a letter from a woman trying to persuade me to sue the Boss because of the amount of compensation I get for the amount of work I do. She was so indignant, she felt so sorry for me, she said that if I'd sue she'd help pay for the lawyer!
"I didn't answer the letter. I just let the matter drop. I ain't never going to peach on the Boss, not even to my own praise and glory — no Boss, not me!"