Even at the start of his career, that was doubtful. Benny worked closely with all his writers, one of them relating in later years how they would spend time debating whether one word was funnier than another during story conferences at the Benny home (or, sometimes, in Palm Springs).
A writer for the Universal News Service profiled Benny and his show in her feature column of March 4, 1936 as part of a series on radio stars (she also profiled Burns and Allen). We transcribe it below. Universal, by the way, merged with Hearst’s International News Service the following year.
The script for the first appearance of Mary Livingstone on the show exists and it is hardly the ad-lib fest described below. Her debut was carefully integrated into the broadcast.
It appears newspapers used archived photos to accompany this article; I’ve found several different ones. The photos you see with this post are from other sources. You’ll note a cast photo. It is from later in 1936 when Phil Harris took over from Johnny Green at the start of the 1936-37 season. I’m using it because I like it and the one I found with Green is very fuzzy.
Nobody Cares If Jack Benny Doesn’t Rehearse—He's 'Tops'
Radio Comedian Prefers to 'Get in the Mood’
By Dorothy Roe.
NEW YORK, N. Y. (U.N.S.)—Jack Benny points his cigar severely at Mary Livingstone and demands: “Woman, don't you know we have to go on the air in 20 minutes?” Mary powders her nose, ruffles her script and trills: "Wouldn't it be funny if we didn't go on tonight?"
Jack replies severely: “Whaddaya mean funny?”
Rehearsal.
Mary widens her immense brown eyes and says innocently: “Well, I'll bet a lot of people would think we were funnier if we didn't say anything at all.” That is a sample of a Jack Benny rehearsal. Jack and Mary, who is his wife, always intend to rehearse. They go down to the NBC studios sometimes a whole hour and a half before their program goes on the air. But then Don Wilson, their cherubic announcer; Kenny Baker, their youthful tenor; Johnny Green, their orchestra leader; Harry Conn, their script writer, and the other members of the cast always have a lot of new gags and what with this and what with that, time marches on.
First Place.
But nobody seems to care whether Jack and Mary rehearse or not. The fact that the radio public has just voted them first place over all air programs for the second year in succession proves that.
And if the sounds of merriment that come through your radio of a Sunday evening make you think Jack and Mary and the boys and girls are having a good time earning their daily bread, you guessed right.
Radio's Number 1 comedian goes on the air with less preparation than probably any other artist of the air waves.
"In The Mood."
Benny, bland, carefree, chewing his eternal cigar, explains: “If we rehearse too much, the program would be wooden. You see, we gotta be in the mood.”
One reading of the script, with the entire cast, and one so-called "dress rehearsal" with the micro phone takes care of the preparation for the program, and that, it is explained, is done chiefly for timing.
Benny often changes his script after the program has started on the air, and Mary knows how to keep up with his ad libs.
Accident.
It was an accident, as a matter of fact, that launched Mary Livingstone on an air career along with her famous husband. One night the script ran short during a broadcast, and Jack had to improvise. He called to Mary, who was sitting with the audience, and started an argument over the mike! Mary kept saying in scared voice: “Hush, Jack, you're on the air. All those people will hear you.”
And the radio audience loved it. An avalanche of telegrams and mail proved that. So from then on Mary Livingstone was a part of the act.
Jack explains:
“Mary doesn't have to act. She just naturally has a deadpan voice. She not only is my best pal and severest critic, but my ideal deadpan straight man.”
From the Heart.
And that may be a new kind of romantic compliment, but it came from the heart.
While most radio script writers keep from two to six weeks ahead with their programs, the Benny gang never even thinks of what the Sunday night act is to be until along about Thursday.
Then Benny gets together with Conn, and the two map out the rough outlines of the script.
Nothing more is done about it until Saturday morning, when Benny reads through the script with his director and sponsors; that's to be sure the script is safe—that there is no danger of libel or censorship or any of the bogey men of radio.
“Skip It.”
Jack: “Where are you reading? I'm on Page 9.”
Mary: “Well, I’m on Page 3. Skip it.”
During a broadcast Jack chews a cigar, makes faces at the audience, executes a few dance steps now and then, and hangs his head prettily during applause.
Broadcasts are held in one of the huge N.B.C. studios, before an audience of 1,500, admitted by cards from the sponsors or the broadcasting company.
Both Jack and Mary throw the pages of their script on the floor as the broadcast progresses, and if anybody reads the wrong lines, that's all right. It gives them a chance at ad lib, which they would rather do than eat.
Pinch Hitting.
Sometimes the announcer, roly poly Don Wilson, goes into such roars of laughter during a broadcast that he is unable to talk, whereupon Benny nobly pinch hits. All members of the company, including the orchestra leader and Jack's secretary, are pressed into service before the 30-minute period on the air is over. And they love it. So does the public.
Jack fell in love with Mary Livingstone one day in Los Angeles, when she called him a ham actor and hired six little boys to sit in the front row at his show and not laugh. They have an adopted baby, Joan Naomi, 21 months old.
Their closest friends are George Burns and Gracie Allen and their ambition is to get a million dollars so they won't have to be funny any more.
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