Look For the Big Red Letters on the Box Again

Some Jack Benny radio fans will tell you they liked the Jell-O years better than the Lucky Strike era. The shows weren’t really quite the same. The Lucky Strike Shows settled into a sitcom format and the pace really slowed down. Jack wouldn’t think twice about having three or four seconds of nothing but sound effects in the sitcom era. In the Jell-O period, certainly in the ‘30s, he’s be using that time to crack as many jokes as possible.

Despite the creativity of many of the musical spots for the cigarette maker, Jell-O may have fit the Benny show better. It just seemed natural for announcer Don Wilson to bubble over with enthusiasm about those “six delicious flavours” (Jell-O may have had as many repetitive sales lines as Lucky Strike).

Somebody at General Foods must have thought so, too. It decided to pick up Benny’s sponsorship in the later TV period (the two didn’t exactly part amicably in the radio days). Here’s a column about it from June 3, 1962.

Benny was quite correct at the end. He finished his career doing specials and worked until cancer killed him in 1974.

Jack Benny To Quit Night Spot After 12
By HAL HUMPHREY
HOLLYWOOD—That familiar sing-song salutation, "Jell-O Again," will be bouncing off your walls again next fall. That is, it's familiar to you if you were born sometime between the Johnstown Flood and Atwater Kent's invention of the horn loudspeaker on top of the radio to replace earphones.
When Jack Benny first called out "Jell-O Again" on his radio show in 1934, it also marked the birth of what now is what called we integrated commercial. After eight years of Jell-O's sponsoring Benny, radio audiences got so used to it that many Benny fans still think he's peddling the shimmying dessert.
Now that they've had a free ride for all those intervening years, the Jell-O people are signing on for co-sponsorship of Benny's TV show next fall. Maybe they figured it's time to get a booster shot.
"In the old radio days there were six delicious flavors," Benny recalls. "Now they have 12."
YOU MAY have noticed there how automatically Benny slipped in that word "delicious." His brain has been washed, too.
Benny and his writers worked out all kinds of elaborate gags for Jell-O's middle-of-the-program commercial on radio. When Benny was Jesse James, his brother Frank (Don Wilson) warned him not to shoot until he counted to six. "Okay, okay—strawberry, raspberry, cherry, orange, lemon and lime," counted Jesse. On another occasion, Dennis Day was lost in the desert for days without food but was ready to pass up Benny's roadside oasis unless he served Jell-O.
On his initial TV show for Jell-O next September, Benny intends to have a kind of homecoming welcome for his ex-sponsor. It probably won't be as big as the writers would like, because executive producer Irving Fein (who is paid to worry) is afraid the insurance company sponsor who picks up half the tab for Benny's show might not appreciate any undue treatment for Jell-O.

Besides celebrating his 30th year with his own air show (he started in 1932), Benny will have another "first" next season. He is leaving his Sunday night spot for the first time in 12 years of TV. Benny moves to Tuesday opposite Dick Powell's drama series and "The Untouchables." Those are tough competitors, but at least he starts even with them at the same hour.
"This season I've had 'Bonanza' against me. It started a half-hour ahead of my show, and who is going to switch over to something else in the middle of the show? One Sunday I decided to watch 'Bonanza' myself, and do you know what? I never went back to my show," said Benny, while a CBS man with us at the time almost broke down and wept.
Benny makes it a point not to worry about ratings or critics who each year insist that Benny keeps doing the same old thing. Had he worried or panicked over them, Benny might never have survived as one of the country's top comics and personalities.
"Should I suddenly become a spendthrift character because some critic says he is tired of me playing a tightwad?" Benny wants to know. "If I did, the critic might be happy, but my fans wouldn't. I've heard critics ask how Bob Hope has lasted so long, when all he does is one-line gags. They miss the point that Hope has a characterization all of his own, a kind of Peck's bad boy approach to everything he does. A comedian has to have a characterization to last."
BOB NEWHART, Joey Bishop, George Gobel and many other of our newer comics might ponder that advice that is, if they want to be operating as comics 30 years from now.
When a comedian has been around as long as Benny, it's always a standard question to ask if he's thinking of retiring.
"I've got two more seasons on my current contract," said Benny. "After that, I'd like to freelance. You know, just do a few specials each season, and maybe a movie. I'll never really retire."
He can't now, because as Phil Silvers once observed, "Jack isn't a comedian, he's a way of life."

Among the Benny/Jell-O tie-ins at the start were these ads in the Sunday comic sections of newspapers. This is from April 11, 1937.