Stuntman Benny

“Inert” is a good way of describing Jack Benny on stage.

Anyone who saw him on television knows his standard expressions. Basically, he stood there and stared. He moved his hands into a few different positions and that was about it. But only some of the time.

Benny was hardly a physical comedian, and certainly not a slapstick one, but there were times he had to rise to the occasion.

Faye Emerson was a columnist in addition to a TV personality, and here she is talking about Jack in newspapers starting around April 11, 1957.

RADIO AND TELEVISION
Bouncing Benny Beats 'Age' Battle
By FAYE EMERSON
Jack Benny, the perennial "39-year-old" dean of comedians, could well be a living testimonial for a health club, what with his strenuous schedule and his amazing physical agility.
Those who know Benny — and realize he fudges a year or two on his birth date — are constantly amazed at some of the physical contortions he puts himself through in presenting his show for CBS Television.
Recently Benny was rehearsing a show in which he and Ginger Rogers do an extremely athletic dance routine. Benny confessed to the cast and crew, with a rueful grin, that he had trouble putting on his overcoat, but a few minutes later he disproved this when he lifted Ginger clear off the floor at the end of a swirling turn.
"I did that?" Benny asked. "George Burns will never believe it for that matter, even I don't believe it!"
But actually Benny, despite his admitted 39 years, is in excellent shape. In a "Shower of Stars" show, for example, he did a 10-minute skit in which he played football in his living room, he jumped over chairs and couches and tumbled about the floor like a two-month-old kitten.
In a more recent show, he did a fencing scene in the Tower of London that actually had touches of such dashing hero-types as Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
The amazing thing is that Benny has to learn each of these feats of physical legerdemain as they are written into the script. He had never even held a fencing foil before he was called upon to learn the art well enough to make his fencing scene in the London show believable.
This, at anyone who has ever fenced knows, means countless hours of hard work.
But apparently Benny thrives on it and anything he can do himself he never relegates to a stunt man. In his Venice show, for example, broadcast in March, he falls into a canal. Jack said, not without a touch of pride, that he really did the fall, but added with his famous dead-pan expression. "After all, how much talent does it take to fall into the water?"
Whether or not it takes talent to fall in the water is a matter of some conjecture, but it does take a man in excellent shape to maintain Benny's schedule.
He does his own "Jack Benny Show" every other week; a once-a-month "Shower of Stars," plays, benefits and violin concerts, and still finds time to make records. He recently made a children's record for Isaac Stern.
In addition to all this, he takes an active part in writing his scripts, he helps direct the activities of his own company, J and M Productions, which produces the "Marge and Gower Champion Show" for CBS Televison. and still manages to cet in a few rounds of golf from time to time.
A busy schedule — even for a man who is "only 39."