Benny at 39 for the 30th Time

What was Jack Benny doing on his 39th birthday in 1963?

What else? Working.

He was working out the bugs in a show that he was taking to Broadway. Instead of New Haven, where stage extravaganas of old made their mistakes and revisions before heading to the Great White Way, his location was Toronto.

Singer Jane Morgan was part of his show. So was 14-year-old Toni Marcus, perfecting her version of the “Getting To Know You” violin duet with Benny that she performed on his TV show that year.

For years, Jack gathered with the press upon his arrival in a city for an extended period. One reporter covering the Toronto arrival was Jim Coleman. No entertainment writer was Coleman. He was a sports columnist, spending time in Vancouver before (like a number of actors and print journalists) answering the call of Toronto the Good. When common sense prevailed, he returned to the West Coast and wrote for the Vancouver Province before retiring. At the time, Coleman also had a programme on the nascent CTV network.

This column appeared in the Southam papers starting on Feb. 11, 1963. Coleman doesn’t hide the fact the media (generally male back then, unless there were “women’s” things to be covered) were a bunch of horny liquor pigs. Canadians of a certain vintage will recognise Clyde Gilmour’s name. He was a music reviewer on the CBC for many years. His earlier career included a stop at the Province after time as the Canadian Navy PR officer in Vancouver beginning not long after V-E Day.

Jack Benny, a gentleman who has made a career of genuine urbanity and spurious parsimony, drew a crowd which would have taxed Maple Leaf Gardens when he starred at a press conference in a Toronto hotel suite the other afternoon.
The SRO sign was on the door an hour before Mr. Benny made his appearance, shrouded in a grey gabardine trench coat and a tired look.
Mr. Benny's arrival wasn't noticed immediately by the representatives of press, television and radio, who were up to their elbows in hors d'oeuvres.
Mr. Benny wasn't noticed because he was preceded by Miss Jane Morgan, a lady whose personal architecture causes the mind to boggle. Miss Morgan was wearing a mink coat and, when she began to slide the mink from her shoulders, I feared, for an instant, that she wasn't wearing anything underneath the coat.
Clyde Gilmour, the motion picture critic, was the first greeter as the official party pressed through the bulging doorway. Miss Morgan gave him her full 50,000 kilowatts.
"You and I have met before," she murmured, speaking through her clenched cleavage.
Mr. Gilmour, who normally is as sophisticated as David Niven, stammered some inane acknowledgment and squirmed back into the crowd.
"I have met her before," Mr. Gilmour explained, dabbing the perspiration from his brow, "but, she makes it sound so INTIMATE."
The nature of the entrance was a clever ruse conceived by David Palmer and Hazel Forbes, the press agents for the theatre where, Mr. Benny and his troupe will perform for the next two weeks. Miss Morgan swept into a sitting room, followed by 75 per cent of those interviewers who weren't moored to the bar.
Taking advantage of these diversionary tactics, Mr. Benny ghosted his way into a pair of adjoining rooms where the television and radio crews were ready with batteries of cameras and tape-recorders.
Strangely enough, I found myself among those following Miss Morgan. I didn't go of my own accord—I was shoved from behind. Wishing to describe her costume, in print, I sought some assistance from Helen Beattie Palmer.
Mrs. Palmer now is a dignified editor, but when I knew her first in Western Canada, she was a first-class, no-nonsense reporter who used to sit up all night, drinking bad whisky with the boys in the backroom.
"She's wearing a Don Loper full-skirted deep blue satin cocktail gown," said Mrs. Palmer, giving a genteel body-check to a radio-type, who was crowding us too closely. "If you want to describe the cleavage, you can look for yourself."
The radio type had his chin resting between Mrs. Palmer's shoulder and my shoulder. "Bro-ther," sighed the radio-type, as he peered at Miss Morgan.
Mrs. Palmer turned to glare at him. "Would you," she purred, "mind taking your necktie out of my drink. Oh, it isn't your necktie—it's your tongue."
The young Mr. Benny
When Mr. Benny eventually escaped from the television and radio room and was circled by reporters, he demonstrated quickly why he has dominated his branch of the entertainment industry for 35 years. His travel-weariness left him and, speaking in a voice which sounded exactly like Jack Benny, he warmed to the questioners who crushed around him.
He proved to be a bit shorter than I had expected—about five feet nine. Although he will be 69 on Thursday, he could pass as a man 15 years younger. That’s his own hair, although it's thin on top. The only really grey hairs are on his neckline and sideburns.
He explained why each year he has refused to appear on the vast open-air stage at the Canadian National Exhibition. "I have to have intimacy. I can't do one-line jokes," he said. "I'd be miserable trying to perform on a stage where I was so far from the audience."
With mock passion, he continued: "There isn't enough money in Canada to pay me to make myself so miserable. I'd come to Toronto and give a charity concert for nothing—but I wouldn't take all the money in the country to work on that open-air stage."
In answer to a question, he dragged up the immortal bon mot, credited to the late Fred Allen. To honor Mr. Benny, the City of Waukegan planted a tree on the lawn of the court house. The tree died within a few months. On his radio show the following week, Fred rasped: "No wonder the tree died—the tree was in Waukegan, but the sap was in Hollywood."
The ever-present Strad
Mr. Benny brought along his Stradivarius, an instrument which he plays on very slight provocation. A genuine music lover, he spent Saturday evening attending a piano recital by Arthur Rubinstein at Massey Hall.
I asked the management of the Royal York Hotel if they had received any complaints from other guests when Mr. Benny practised on his Stradivarius in his suite.
A hotel spokesman appeared wounded by the question.
But, all old newspaper reporters have spies. Mr. Benny has been quartered in a suite at one end of a corridor.
And although the hotel won't admit it, none of the adjacent rooms have been rented to guests—just in case Mr. Benny decides to play Love in Bloom on his Stradivarius in the middle of the night.

Oh, in case you’re not aware, Jack Benny’s birthday is February 14th.

Since a sports reporter covered a show biz star, it was only fair that a radio/TV arts student turned social reporter cover a sports star. The Toronto Star’s story on the post-premiere party didn’t initially focus on Benny or Morgan. It opened by pointing out that among the 400 guests was an unexpected appearance by Toronto Maple Leafs defenceman Tim Horton.