Larry Adler on Jack Benny

Jack Benny had his radio gang—Mary, Phil, Dennis, Rochester—but he had another gang, too.

During the war, Jack entertained troops in various spots around the world, but his radio cast didn’t come with him. He had singers and others, but one person stood out—harmonica player Larry Adler.

Adler did several tours with Jack, so Benny must have liked him. Adler seemed to have liked Jack; he wanted to tour in Korea with him in the ‘50s but was rejected by the U.S. government as Adler had fallen under the Blacklist and moved to England.

Not surprisingly, Adler wrote about Jack in several places his autobiography “It Ain’t Necessarily So” (1985, published in London by Fontana). One story has been repeated in other publications, but Adler was a witness.

In general Jack Benny was mild-mannered, anything for peace and quiet. I saw him angry just once, after we had done an open-air show in Benghazi. Halfway through, a sand storm started, blowing directly into our faces and completely ruining one of my few good mouth-organs. (They were made in Germany and, once the war began, the supply of mouth-organs stopped.) After the show we had coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross canteen. After such an unpleasant experience, coffee and doughnuts lacked something. A lieutenant came over and, without invitation, sat at our table. When he opened his mouth his heavy Southern accent made Stepin Fetchit sound like Abe Lincoln.
‘Hiya, Jack’, he said, pronouncing it ‘jay-yuck’.
‘Hi’, said Jack, wearily.
‘Hey, Jay-yuck, how come y all didn’t bring Rochestah?’ (The black man who was Jack’s butler on his radio show.)
Jack said that Rochester had commitments at home.
‘Thay-yuts a goddam shame, pahdon mah French’, he ‘said. ‘Y’know, back home in Tallahassee, m’wife and me, ‘we listen in evah Sunday night, wouldn’t miss it foh the world. But s**t, man, that Rochestah, whah, he’s ninety percent of yoah show.’
‘Sure do! Not to say y’all ain’t veh funny, Miz Benny, but s** man, m’wife and me, we just crazy ‘bout that Rochestah.’
‘Okay’, said Jack, ‘now let’s suppose we had brought him. He'd be sitting at this table with us. How would you like that?’
‘Now just you hold on one minute’, said the lieutenant. ‘Ah’m from the South!’
‘That’, said Jack, ‘is why I didn’t bring Rochester.’

One story shows that the line about Jack needing his writers to respond is a canard. Adler was hired for Sensations of 1944, got into high dudgeon and walked off the picture.

That summer, at Guadalcanal, I saw Sensations scheduled for an afternoon showing for the troops. Jack Benny came with me to see what the film world had lost by my obstinacy. There was a circus scene that featured Pallenberg’s Bears. At one point a bear kept riding a motorcycle around a ring.
‘Look at that,’ I said to Jack, ‘that poor bear’s in a rut.’
‘It’s worse than you think’, said Jack. ‘That animal, through no fault of his, is now type-cast. In every picture, he’ll have to be a bear.’

Here are three stories Adler tells in succession. The first one is prefaced with a long story involving two typical Jack Benny traits: he fell down laughing at other people’s jokes, and he thought everything was the best. There are all kinds of tales about “this is the best coffee I ever had” or “these are the softest sheets I ever had.” Adler made a quip that Jack decided made him the funniest man in the world. Adler wasn’t crazy about it, but George Burns seized on the lame line and Jack’s reaction, and added that to his talk-show repertoire. The story concludes with Jack trying to help Adler, again something he did for friends.
The second story is typical off-mike Mary.
The third story is a downside of Jack’s many, many attempts to reach friends and families of servicemen overseas to reassure them they’re okay. Adler knows his readers can read between the lines.

When we returned from the African trip in 1943 Jack Benny told John Royal, a vice-president of NBC, that I should write and star in my own comedy programme. Because it was Jack who said it, Royal had to take it seriously. He phoned me, I met him at his office in Radio City, and when he told me what he proposed, in line with Jack’s suggestion, I panicked.
‘My God’, I said, ‘I can’t do that! It’s one thing to write a programme around Jack. Hell, anybody could do it, with all his stereotypes, the stinginess, the bear, Rochester, and stuff. But I couldn’t write for me — I haven't any personality.’
John Royal didn’t press the idea. I may well have been an idiot but I do not think I could have done it.
In Omdurman, during the African trip, Jack and I visited the best PX (Post Exchange) I’ve ever come across. Julie Horowitz, an Army captain, who was in charge of it, had ivory, African wood-carvings, Egyptian sandals, all sorts of things such as I’ve never seen in any other PX. We bought things for our wives and Julie arranged to have them shipped back.
At the Stork Club in New York, several months later, Mary Benny asked Eileen, ‘Tell me, honey, did Larry send you back the same lot of s**t that Jack sent me?’
Jack had promised Horowitz he’d phone his fiancée who worked at Macy’s in New York. I was with Jack when he phoned her.
‘Miss Cohen? This is Jack Benny.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said.
‘I’ve just returned from the Middle East. I ran into your fiancé, Julie, in Omdurman.’
‘Oh, did you?’ said Miss Cohen. She was making it tough going.
‘Julie’s looking fine’, said Jack, ‘and he sends you his love.’
‘That’s nice’, said Miss Cohen. ‘Was there anything else?’
“Well – uh – no, I don’t think so.’
‘Thank you’, said Miss Cohen. ‘Nice of you to call. Goodbye.’
Jack just looked at me after he hung up.

Naturally, Adler spends a fair portion of the book dealing with the ridiculous and odious blacklist. He decided to sue a woman who wrote a letter to her local paper that he was pro-Communist and his pay from a local event would go to Moscow to be used to destroy America.
The blacklist intimidated just about everyone (except people making money from it). Including Jack Benny when it came to Adler’s court case.

But Jack Benny called me to his house to tell me that he had been advised by his business manager — who was also his brother-in-law — that he must not appear. He was commercially sponsored and could lose that, were he seen to be lending support to a leftie - a pinko - a Red, or whatever. Jack seemed distressed as he said this; I think he would rather not have said it and, on his own, | don’t think he would have said it. But I had never intended to call Jack, I knew how vulnerable he was. Sponsors don’t like knocking letters and just a few can cause a performer to be taken off the air. I doubt whether that would have happened to Jack Benny, but I wouldn’t put him on the spot.

Adler lost the case.

There is another reference to Jack, though it mainly involves his wife Mary Livingstone. There are fans of the Benny show who "know" her solely based on her radio performances. They think she’s wonderful and angrily dismiss any untoward comments about her life off-the-air. Mary was not popular among some people who actually knew her personally. Adler was one.

I took Ingrid [Bergman] to a party at Jack Benny’s. She came to me in a panic. L. B. Mayer kept trying to paw her and she couldn’t stand it. She wanted to leave but Jack’s wife, Mary, made such a scene about it that we stayed.
Jack Benny had the idea of ‘love me, love my friends’, and often tried to bring me together with his group, really Mary’s, who were mainly right-wing. After a preview in Jack’s projection room, showing Double Indemnity, I started to congratulate Barbara Stanwyck (for British readers that is Stan-Wick, not Stannick). She cut me short. ‘Jack’s told me about you and your liberal bulls**t; I hope we're not going to have to listen to that crap all evening.’ . . .
Jack, Mary, Eileen and I went to a Jerome Kern concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Eileen drove in Jack’s car, Mary with me. Mary asked: ‘Tell me, Larry, when you were with Jack on these tours, did he cheat?’ I was appalled. ‘Oh, come on, it’s just between us. I’d never say a word to Jack.’ I said the question was revolting, she should never have asked it and, were she not Jack’s wife, I'd have asked her to get out of the car. Relations were distant after that. Some time before, she was in her car with the top down; I in mine, also with the top down. At a traffic stop, our cars side by side, she bellowed an intimate question about Ingrid to me. A lot of people must have heard her and I’m certain she did it deliberately. Not a nice lady.

Perhaps the most interesting revelation about Jack’s character goes back to one of the war-time excursions. An emergency signal came from a military base in Africa for the Benny plane to land. The plane was too big for the airstrip and there was a crash landing. Everyone was okay. Then the signallers revealed that there was no emergency; they knew Benny was on the plane and they wanted to see his show. Adler was outraged because everyone on the plane could have been killed. He refused to perform. But Jack did. Adler pointed out that Jack was always good-natured.

It simply confirms what his fans have thought all along.