One wouldn’t think that is a description of Jack Benny, but that’s how his business manager Myrt Blum described him to the man who later managed Benny’s career, Irving Fein.
Understandably, newspaper and magazine articles about Benny didn’t talk this all that often. It’s not good publicity, you know. But besides Fein’s book, there’s a reference to it in an article in the June 30, 1939 edition of Radio Guide. In it, we see a not-so-perfect Benny, as well as a candid revelation that his wife was quite enthralled with the finer things in life. “High strung” is an interesting way to refer to her.
It starts off by looking at some of the silly restrictions placed on what he could say on his radio show (with a bit of a side journey about a moose). And there’s plenty of trivia, too.
I don’t believe I’ve either read or posted the previous chapters of this series, unless one of them involves his oft-told tale of growing up, vaudeville, meeting Mary, going into radio, and such.
THE MELANCHOLY CLOWN
This concluding chapter in the story of Brother Benny tells you how serious he is —and how funny!
By James Street
BENNY is a serious man. Tom Harrington, his radio boss, says he's the most serious man in show business, possibly excepting Fred Allen. He talks shop all the time. Mary buzzes around, but Jack is apt to get you in a corner and pound your ear with his woes and talk ideas.
“It’s impossible for Jack to relax,” Harrington said.
He’ll talk for hours about censorship. He believes the public should be protected from obscene shows, but he thinks too much censorship is dangerous and that it can wreck comedy. Rules regarding controversial subjects are rather silly at times and Benny is penalized particularly because so much of his humor is based on today's happenings.
After the Orson Welles' Mars program, Jack was going to use some cracks about Mars, but he was blocked. A week later he was allowed to do so, but the punch was gone. Maybe Mars is controversial. Unquestionably, radio is childish about "controversies" and in straining at a gnat often swallows a camel.
Along that line, this little recent incident may tickle even Mr. Benny, who is not the only radio man with woes. Phil Stong's "Honk the Moose" was broadcast recently, and Phil was asked to take the part of the moose he made famous. His job was to honk. The moose story is for children and thousands of them have read it. But some minute-man of radio came up with the startling information that mooses honk only during mating-season, therefore Phil's honk would be out of order. There was quite a to-do about it. Maybe the FCC and some of the bigwigs would be offended if there were a nasty old honk on the air. Phil Stong was too amused to be offended, even at such ignorance. He simply pointed out that a moose honks as a cow moos, a duck quacks, a sheep bleats and a dog barks. He went on and honked for his moose. America's morals were not soiled.
Benny is a cooperative soul and he's willing to cut his show to conform to good taste. Recently he had a school room scene in his tentative show. A day or so before broadcast date, a school bus was wrecked, and Benny cut the scene rather than remind America of the tragedy.
HE IS not allowed to get by with gags that Allen can use. Jack is prohibited from saying anything about a bad appetite, and he can't kid about taste. His agency handles many food accounts, and they fear that if Jack kids about foods somebody might not buy some of General Foods products. We hazard the suggestion that is very funny. Brother Benny can work miracles but we do not believe he can wreck America's appetite.
Benny is never temperamental, but he gets irked. He was in Boston one day and it had been arranged that he call on the Governor of Massachusetts. He went to the executive's reception room and waited. The Governor was busy. Jack waited a long time, then got up to leave. A stooge of the Governor's said, "Don't go, his excellency will see you in a minute."
JACK said, "I've got to go. My option comes up in thirteen weeks. The Governor is good for four years."
Benny has had trouble only once with his program, and that was when he hired Michael Bartlett as his tenor. Bartlett's voice didn't fit the tone of the program. The contract was canceled in friendly fashion and Benny hired Kenny Baker, who now ranks next to Bing Crosby in popularity. Don Wilson also rose to fame after joining Benny. However, Benny's hired hands are "typed," and in years to come that may cause trouble for them.
Burns and Allen are the Bennys' best friends and have been socially associated with them for at least twelve years, ever since Jack and Mary married.
They play Friars "Around the Corner" and rummy together. Jack and George play pocket billiards while Mary and Gracie concentrate on backgammon. The two women favor the same shops but avoid duplicating clothes because they are together so much.
Jack thinks George Burns, Eddie Anderson—the Rochester of the show—and Andy Devine are the funniest men alive.
Although Benny is moody. he'll laugh himself sick if he's really amused.
"He'd laugh at a red hat." Burns said. "His friends enjoy punching in his presence because Jack is such a good audience. He'll literally roll on the floor when highly amused.
Once he fell down and crawled on the sidewalks of New York because he got tickled at Burns. The two were waiting along and Burns said something unimportant. Benny doubled up.
"What's so funny?" Burns asked.
"It's not what you said," Jack replied, “but I know what you are planning.”
Burns didn't.
The two clowns used to have a telephone game that was very funny to them. Burns would call Jack and say he had some important information. Then right in the middle of a sentence he would hang up. Benny would roar. Once Jack wired George to meet him on the nine-thirty train that would arrive at a certain station. George wired back. "What time will you arrive?" Benny then wired friends all over the country and they wired Burns "Benny will arrive at nine-thirty."
George didn't meet the train. He posted the telegrams all over the walls of his room, and when Jack asked why he didn't meet him, Bums said, "I didn't know what time you would arrive."
Jack rolled on the floor. Gracie and Mary put a stop to such doings.
When Benny and his writers are working on a script, he will act the whole thing. If the script calls for him to climb a ladder, he'll climb one. He gets peeved at Beloin and Morrow, the ace gag-men, at times, but never bawls them out. Instead, he scolds Baldwin, his secretary for eight years, for not "reminding the boys to do such and such."
He loses his temper with his radio cast if they don't put their whole heart in rehearsals. But after bawling them out he'll say, "I'm sorry I was a bit harsh."
Benny has been accused of being absent minded and reserved. Morrow says his brain is preoccupied, that he's always thinking about his work, and that many persons mistake his preoccupation for snootiness. He's a generous and fair boss and gets his hands extra jobs when ha can. He even pays his cast and writers when they do benefits, although Benny is not paid for such work.
His feud with Fred Allen, of course, is just a gag. They really are good friends.
Benny reads detective stories and other frothy stuff. He likes to think of himself as a gourmet, but actually his appetite is very easy to please. He does know good coffee, and makes his own. He also enjoys malted milks and likes to cat at drive-in restaurants—those places where you park and eat in your car. He eats anything, but is apt to sample your food. He eats when he gets hungry and eats what he wants.
His favorite exercise is walking, and he takes long jaunts with his trainer, Harvey Cooper. He plays golf, too. And terribly! He makes fun of the game while he plays it, and usually knocks off about the tenth hole.
He enjoys driving his own car, and owns three. On his recent trip to Europe, he left his Buick in Chicago, and all during his European jaunt he kept talking about how much fun he would have driving from Chicago to California.
Benny can sleep anywhere and in anything. If he's tired after a party, he'll sleep a few winks on the divan in his clothes before he heeds Mary's order to undress and relax. He never uses a pillow. Mary buys a new hat every week and each is more radical than the other. Those gags of Benny's about his wife's hats are from his heart.
Mary is a very vital person and interested in everything, particularly hats. She smokes moderately and is generous to a fault. She loves movies and attends every preview possible.
She loves fine nightgowns and negligees and is afraid of the dark. She won't be alone for five minutes if she can help it. They have some half a dozen servants, but when Jack is away, her sister or Gracie must stay with her.
Mary is essentially high-strung. Jack pays her a salary and she spends half of it on clothes. She loves tailored underthings and silken doodads. She buys a new dress for each weekly show and her wardrobe is filled with fine clothes and furs.
She sometimes bobbles a line in the show, but the audience never knows it, and the bobbles give Benny some swell ad-lib material. Recently she said, "Can't I be boat's Don" instead of "Don's boat." Jack squeezed five extra laughs out of the mistake and the audience thought the line was planted.
Jack is allergic to roses. They make him sneeze. A fan sent him a basket of roses at a recent broadcast and Benny was on a spot. He didn't want to seem ungrateful and he knew the sender was in the audience. So he smelled the flowers, and sneezed so often that his show almost was late.
As a dresser he's inconsistent. He has been voted the second-best-dressed man in America, but he's apt to be mussy at times, with cigar ashes on his front. Robert Taylor asked Benny the name and address of his tailor, and now Taylor goes to Jack's tailor. Phil Harris also is a smooth dresser and goes for hand-embroidered robes.
The Jack Benny Club of Perry, Iowa, voted him the only star who can look handsome in his shirt-sleeves. It’s well enough that his fans can't see him at Saturday rehearsals. The cast meets at Benny's house and sits around a long table. Jack is at the head of the table, dressed in a pair of gabardine slacks, a tan camel's-hair sweater and a tweed coat. Morrow and Beloin wear rumpled sports clothes. Mary probably will be dressed in a navy blue blouse and slacks, with a bandana on her head. Andy Devine will be in blue dungarees and Don Wilson will wear flannel golf slacks and a polo shirt. Phil Harris probably will be the best-dressed of the pack, with a bright sweater and glen-plaid trousers.
When Benny began his gags about his Maxwell automobile, he had no idea so many of the cars still are in operation. Bui owners of the orphan cars have sent him more than a hundred hub-caps from old Maxwells.
Every room in the Benny home, except the dining-room, has a fireplace.
A Benny joke seldom fails, but Jack tells of the time he flopped.
"I was at the Academy of Music," he said. "I walked onto the stage and said, 'Hello, everybody." I got the raspberry. So I said, ‘Good-by, everybody,’ and walked off and kept right on walking until I got home."
Jack poses as a tightwad in his show, but he's really a soft touch. He gave away $1,500 in two days to not-so-lucky friends during a recent visit to New York.
Several years ago he and Mary adopted a daughter, Joan Naomi, who now is about five. Jack's funniest act is seen only by her and Mary. He romps and yells with her and converts his home into a madhouse. She went to one of his rehearsals and saw him do a line several times. Finally she said, "Why didn't you do it right the first time?"
Benny is not a joiner. He belongs to the American Legion, however. He was slated to fiddle while Rome burned at the Los Angeles American Legion convention. He had his fiddle and was ready. Rome was to be a pyrotechnic display. But something went haywire and the fireworks went off too soon. Jack barely escaped injury.
His radio income is approximately $15,000 a week for thirty-nine weeks. He gels $170,000 a picture and has two slated for this year.
His net income, therefore, is one of the highest in the United States. His income tax runs eighty-five percent.
"I don't give a hang how much money Uncle Sam takes in income taxes," Benny said, "as long as he leaves me enough to live on comfortably, as I do now. Uncle Sam can have the rest, and more, if I am able to make it."
Noble sentiments, Brother Benny. He has proved that if a man speaks a better gag the world will beat a pathway lo his door. But he knows something else that's far more important—that the same path leads away from the door, and the world will retrace its steps if a man is not worthy.
Jack Benny may be heard Sunday night on NBC at:
7:00 p.m. EDT – 6:00 p.m. EST
6:00 p.m. CDT – 5:00 p.m. CST
8:30 p.m. MST – 7:30 p.m. PST
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