That question—a quite logical one, in my mind—was once raised by Jack Benny. Whether he got an answer, we may never know.
The response is not revealed in Charlie Einstein’s “Top of the Town” column in the San Francisco Examiner of August 28, 1960. But he does reveal some of the goings-on at a Benny stage show rehearsal and why Jack continued to work and work until his death in late 1974.
The column is interesting, but not as much as Einstein himself. Wallace Stroby wrote this wonderful remembrance in this blog post. Charlie’s father was radio’s Parkyakarkas, Harry Einstein. Read the blog for more.
Jack Benny's Three-Fold Reason for Hard Work
The Comedian Rehearses for A Cabaret Act
“WHY,” SAID somebody with awe in his voice, “does a man with so much money want to work so hard?”
He was talking about Jack Benny, who was knocking himself out in a marathon rehearsal for his new stage show at Harrah's South Shore Room at Lake Tahoe.
The question was relayed to Mr. Benny.
He seemed puzzled.
“Why work so hard?” he said, and reflected for a time. “Well, maybe there are three reasons. One is that I don't know any other way to work. One is that people are paying money that they worked hard for to watch my show. And one is there's a face I have to look at in the mirror the next morning.”
Those three reasons in combination are good enough. Matter of fact, any one of those three reasons would be good enough.
The man in charge of the rehearsals that makes the Benny show as top-flight as any in the business is a gentleman named Jack Benny. He has forgotten considerably more about his job than any two of his high-priced floor men ever knew.
“Jack,” one of the floor men said at rehearsal, “at what point on their way down the aisle do you want the spotlight to pick them up?”
“At no point,” Benny said. “It's an audience gag. People are supposed to think it's real. If it's the genuine thing, who’s going to be ready with a spotlight?”
At another point in the show, Benny is supposed to think aloud. He does this through the medium of a recording of his voice, which is played as he saws at his fiddle.
The first time they tried it in rehearsal, Benny thought the record should be played a trifle louder.
“Just a smell louder,” one of the floor men agreed.
“Wait a minute,” Benny said. “A smell louder? What precisely, if I may ask, is a smell louder? What is the sound of a smell?”
He delivered these lines exactly the way you might imagine a Jack Benny delivering those lines. This is not his secret, but it is one of the things that makes up his secret. Jack Benny is Jack Benny, offstage as well as on. And when a few hardened professionals, and a vaguely dressed orchestra, sitting in on a tech rehearsal in the nakedness of a swank supper club at 1 o'clock in the afternoon, find themselves laughing at the same things the audience will laugh at in the tinseled surroundings that night—and laughing just as hard—then the fellow in charge has got to be pretty good.
He is pretty good. He and his wife came to Tahoe accompanied by their lifelong friends, George Burns and Gracie Allen.
“Where's Burns?” Benny said, looking around the empty room during rehearsal.
“He said you'd kill him if he showed up,” a friend answered. It's true. Burns looks at Benny and Benny collapses.
“He's probably at the blackjack table,” Benny said. “He'll win $40 and give it to Gracie.”
Burns was located at the swimming pool.
“What've you been doing?” he was asked.
“Not much of anything,” he replied. “Taking it easy, getting a little sun.”
“Play any blackjack?”
“Just a little.” “Do any good?”
Burns took the cigar out of his mouth. “Won $42.”
“What'd you do with it?”
The cigar went back in the mouth. “I gave it to Gracie.”
How loud is a smell? Ask Mel Brooks.
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