Writing For Jack Benny, 1941

There’s a bit of there’s-more-to-this-story in an article about Jack Benny’s writers published by the Dayton Daily News on January 13, 1941.

The article mentions Jack Benny decided in 1936 he needed an assistant writer. It neglects to mention why and leaves the impression Jack was all alone writing his show for the first four years. That wasn’t the case at all, as Benny fans should know. Harry Conn was hired at a top salary to write the show but flamed out in a fit of ego.

Morrow and Beloin did some great things on the show, and some lousy things. To me, it seems like they were at it too long and ran out of ideas. Jack was saddled with animals—a polar bear, then an ostrich, then a camel, and then a horse. They added an insurance salesman character played by Mel Blanc who was uncomfortably wimpy (whereas over at Fibber McGee and Molly, Bill Thompson did a milquetoast guy who was funny). And Jack seemed to be yelling at everyone an awful lot.

On the plus side, they invented the Maxwell and, for that matter, invented Phil Harris; decided two dopes were one too many, so Mary became a sarcastic, insulting foil; developed the Fred Allen feud; modified the Kenny Baker character to fit Dennis Day (throwing in Verna Felton as a motherly bonus); and came up with some funny movie parodies (along with the Buck Benny Westerns). Oh, and Rochester. He arguably became the most popular person on the show next to Jack, and the writers (and Jack) eventually moved him away from a switchblade-chicken stealing stereotype. Fortunately, for the brief period he drawled he wasn't near Stepin Fetchit territory.

One other note about the article: the writers talk about up to 11 pages of changes for the repeat broadcast. Besides the spurious reasons (accommodating a couple of hundred people in a studio?), wouldn’t changes have to be run by the NBC censor? I can see a line or two, but more than five minutes of air time? I’ve never heard that extensive of a change in any of the east/west broadcasts available for listening on the internet.

Social Notes Of Interest For Gags Is Benny Woe
BY BETH TWIGGAR
NEW YORK, Jan. 13.— "Well you see," began Edward Beloin. "It's this way," continued William Morrow.
These two, Beloin and Morrow, have much to do with concocting Jack Benny's radio broadcasts on Sunday nights and they have worked together so much that they talk often as one man.
"It's a tough life," said Morrow. "As gentle as being the rear gunner on a bomber," Beloin added.
But it's hard to feel too sorry about their tough lives; they looked happy as they sat in the living room of their hotel suite, here, joking into the telephone, which jangled chronically, and finishing each other's sentences as they discussed their mutual job. Laughs were spaced about every two minutes, effortlessly. They were in the city from Hollywood for the opening of "Love Thy Neighbor," a large portion of which they wrote.
"Writing for the screen is a cinch," Beloin said, "compared to radio work. You can work the script over and revise." "Yeah, and when it's done you don't have to do it all over again for next Sunday," added Morrow.
For the radio programs the collaborators work on a flexible schedule. "But never in advance. Every once in a while Benny gets the idea it might be a good thing to have two or three programs piled up ahead, but like most of these things, it ends right there. We're last-minute men. We work under pressure."
Sometimes it gets to be Thursday, with the Sunday hour approaching like inevitable doom, and neither Beloin nor Morrow has an inspiration. "But one of us always snatches an idea out of the air from the window we open to jump out. So then we jump for the typewriter instead."
As a rule, even though the script is not written out in advance, one or the other, or both, have thoughts stored up for the future, Monday is supposed to be a day off. On Tuesday, Sunday is still a relaxingly long way off and they seldom do more than discuss the possibilities. Wednesday maybe they settle down to work, and maybe not until Thursday.
"Sometimes Benny will get ornery and wants to see what we've done before we've done anything. Then all three of us go through a little act. I'll insist Eddie has the first draft, and he claims he gave it to me. One of us says, 'Anyway, Jack, it goes like this,' and starts ad libbing. The other plays up. And Jack, having gotten us going, tiptoes away."
The Benny program is broadcast twice on Sunday nights. In New York, for instance, it goes on the air at 7 p. m. for the east and 11 p. m, for the west. In Hollywood, whence the program usually comes, the first broadcast is in the early afternoon, California time, and the second in the early evening. The double airing complicates the script-writers' chore, but not enough to feeze [sic] them.
Generally, by Friday, the first draft is ready. It'll be written four times before the two publics hear it. First Benny himself blue-pencils. After the second writing there's rehearsal and the lines are smoothed out. Sunday morning after the mike rehearsal, there is a third revision. Between the early broadcast and the late one the show is actually rewritten, with as many as 11 pages of changes put in.
"Why? Several reasons. New lines keep the cast up to scratch. If they repeated the same show verbatim, they might get lazy. Or it might throw them off, if the second studio audience didn't laugh where the first one had. Then it's a good thing for the audience to see the band enjoying the program, which they wouldn't do very obviously if it were all stale stuff. Occasionally, people want to listen to the first show at home, over their own radios, and see the second at the studio theater. They don't want to hear the same thing twice. So we write them a new program." Just like that.
Beloin and Morrow never put a gag in the script that they haven't laughed at first. "You see, we never write down to the audience. If we can't make each other smile even faintly, we know no one else will smile at all."
With one of the pair at the typewriter, they "talk" their creations, taking all the part and making up the lines are they go along. They're likely to start at it any time of the day or night, and keep on until the first draft is finished, regardless of food, sleep and social engagements. The "last-minute men" have found their tardiness advantageous more than once.
"If we had the show all rehearsed and set by Tuesday, and then one of the cast couldn't show up Sunday, we'd probably be in a devilish dither."
As it is, they can turn an emergency into fuel for comedy. Rochester's absence a few weeks ago is an example. Rochester is Jack Benny's famous butler, a mainstay of the program; Fred Allen says he's the star of the show. Anyway, Rochester was unavoidably detained, but the boys made a rousing asset out of what might have been a liability. The show centered around his whereabouts, with a telephone search through Harlem. When Jack Benny had a cold, Beloin and Morrow refused to ignore it. Instead of pretending he really wasn't sniffling at all, they made Benny's ailment the theme of the program. "Anything's funny, if you use it right," remarked Bill. "Even cliches." "Especially cliches," assented Eddie. "You [go with] a joke as long as it lasts, and drop it just before people get tired of it," said Bill. "That's the trick, knowing when to drop it," said Eddie. It's no trick at all, apparently, thinking them up.
It was five years ago that Benny decided he needed an assistant to help with the program. Individually Beloin and Morrow, who did not know each other, got in touch with him. Eddie had been writing pulp stories and finding that $12 a week was riot quite enough to live on. "Twelve-fifty is about the minimum," he observed, "to maintain our American ideals." Bill, among other things, had worked on the old "College Humor." "Fitted in just as though I'd gone to college, too," he remembered. They met by accident in a Chicago hotel, and started collaborating right off the bat.
"We’ve been doing it ever since," Bill said. "Both working together and living in hotels," finished Eddie.
Three weeks after the meeting, it was all settled. Benny found, somewhat to his surprise, that he had not one assistant, but two. And in the year since, their Sunday program has kept its popularity.