The cancellation of Benny’s weekly TV show in 1965 gave him a chance to do something he really liked—play his violin with symphony orchestras. In February 1966, he embarked on a three-city tour in Texas, playing in Austin, Fort Worth and Corpus Christi. The papers in Austin seem the most enthused; they had stories about Jack’s show almost daily for several weeks.
We won’t reprise all of them. I’m just going to pick out a couple. This one, from the Austin American of Feb. 20, 1966, gives you an idea of Benny’s schedule. It was more than a news conference and a concert.
Symphony Benefit With Jack Benny
By KAY POWERS
If you had your "druthers" between lounging around a California swimming pool and playing golf at a fancy Beverly Hills club—or packing your best bib and tucker and trodding the old showbiz boards after more than 50 years of same—what would you do?
Silly question, isn't it? Almost anyone would choose the easy life, especially if he were listed in Dun & Bradstreet and Who's Who and had plenty of hard-earned money laid aside from just that kind of living. And that's the category in which Jack Benny falls—wealthy and eminently successful.
Unless you are both deaf and blind, you know by now that Jack Benny is coming to Austin—tomorrow, in fact. Why? After more than fifty years of footlights and funnin' around, why is he coming to Austin, Texas instead of taking it easy back home?
Because Jack Benny happens to love good music, and because he knows that today, more than ever before, good music has to compete—with television and movies, with good and "sick" nightclub comedians—for the audience which it must have for survival—and too often comes up on the minus side of the ledger.
Jack's been in television and movies. He has been one of the good nightclub comedians. He still likes good music, and he thinks that a whole lot of people do, too. So this happens to be his personal way of promoting it. "Symphonies always operate to a deficit," says the famous comedian who made jokes about penny-pinching and parsimonious thrift standard among his colleagues, "so I just try to help them pay their bills and maybe get ahead a little." His modus operandi is ridiculously simple and completely charming. He plays a benefit concert with a symphony and instead of taking maybe 40 per cent or even 60 per cent of the boxoffice, he gives it all to the symphony with which he is playing. Clever, isn't it? And so very nice!
A comedian with a violin is something to see—and even more, something to hear. Comedian Jack Benny with his $40,000 Stradivarius violin is something you will see one time, and one time only, here in Austin. You'll never see it on television—unless, perchance, Jack can figure out some way in which it can be done solely for the benefit of symphony music and not for the benefit of a sponsor!
Jack's schedule for his Austin visit is a rigorous one. He'll arrive at Municipal Airport at 12:27 p.m., to be met by Austin Symphony officers, Mayor Lester Palmer and members of the City Council, members of the Longhorn Band (can they play "Love In Bloom," I wonder?) and a whole bunch of Austin citizenry who have loved the comedian with the wide baby-blue eyes through many years of radio, television and movies.
From his red-carpet arrival at the airport, Benny will be escorted by motorcycle police to his Austin quarters, the Presidential Suite of the Wilbur Clark Crest Hotel. He will hold a news conference there, in the Madrid Room, at 2 p.m. and will rehearse shortly thereafter with some members of the Austin Symphony.
At 7:30 Monday evening, Illinois-born Benny will be made an honorary Texas citizen by Gov. John Connally at a dinner at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Richard F. Brown. He will also be presented his own personal Texas brand, the "Lasting 39," with a branding iron and registration papers for the brand by Huber Hughes, president of Dillard's of Austin.
The day of the concert will be a busy one for Benny, too. A full rehearsal with the orchestra will occupy most of the morning (he's a serious musician, even if in his own words he's not a "real" musician). He will see a bit of the LBJ Country and get some rest Tuesday afternoon.
Curtain time for the benefit concert is 8 p.m. Tuesday and Jack will be in the star's dressing room at Municipal Auditorium even before Maestro Ezra Rachlin leads the Austin Symphony Orchestra in "Merry Wives of Windsor" overture, the first number on the program.
Just before the house lights dim after intermission, take time to look around you and notice that there is a full house. Some of the audience will have paid as high as $100 for seats. Some will have paid $3.50. But the applause will all sound the same and applause is what makes the man on stage know he's touching base.
Wherever you are applauding from, Jack Benny and the Austin Symphony will love you for it.
The press reported the certificate stating Benny was an honorary Texan gave his age as 39.
You should be able to discern Jack’s generosity from the story above, but instead of me reprinting the review of the Austin concert (I should point out a snowfall that evening hurt attendance a bit), let’s give you another example from the pages of the American. This was published Feb. 21. As a former high school newspaper and radio reporter, I can empathise with this woman and appreciate Benny’s kindness.
Cub Reporter Gets a Scoop
Sentimental Over Benny
By JERRI VEIDT
Staff Writer
Others in Municipal Auditorium Tuesday night will applaud Jack Benny for his truly great comedic talents and near great musical abilities.
Not me. I'll be remembering a Sunday morning too many years ago when Benny went out of his way to be nice to a stringy haired 16-year-old college sophomore.
My radio class assignment had been to get an interview with the famous comedian as he left the Wichita, Kansas, airport.
Armed with the college radio station's only recorder (an old wire job), I appeared at the airport one hour ahead of time. And nearly went back home.
I had only an old carbon mike with a too-short cord and a beat up recorder—the case still showed it had originally contained apples. Besides, I didn't know where to plug the thing in.
Soon Benny and his troupe arrived at a side door escorted by a retinue of city officials.
The press hadn't seen him but I couldn't move.
Benny watched the scene for a moment or two and then turned those startling blue eyes on me. I grinned weakly.
Ambling slowly out of the doorway, Benny began heading my way. The reporters saw him and scurried to circle around him. The entire circle kept moving until he was in front of me.
"Hi," said the familiar voice. "I'm Jack Benny. Who are you?"
"I'm Jerri Whan and I go to Wichita [My radio class assignment had been to] University and I'm supposed to get an interview with you but I can't remember how to turn the recorder on," I said tearfully.
Benny turned to the reporters. "Hey I've got an important interview here. How about leaving us alone for awhile? I'll get to you fellas later."
And I did get that interview.
Not only with Benny but with the rest of the entertainers—Rochester, Phil Harris, Vivian Blaine and the Wier[e] Brothers. That old wire recording still has the place of honor in rows and rows of tapes made since.
Funny I hate sticky, sentimental "I Remember" stories. But I get sentimental over Benny.
Interestingly, at the time of that teenaged interview, Jerri Veidt’s family owned a radio station that broadcast the Benny show on Sunday nights. She died in Dallas in 2003.
The Texas swing wasn’t Jack’s only tour that year. He dug out his revue, including singer Wayne Newton, and performed to delighted audiences in the U.S. It’s clear reading newspaper stories of the last decade of Jack Benny’s life, that he was one of the most beloved entertainers around.
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