Jack launched his radio career on May 2, 1932. His show quickly found a growing audience and on August 8, 1932, what may be his first column appeared in the Pittsburgh Press.
Benny didn’t necessarily write the columns. Some were from the typewriter of Harry Conn, his writer. There are a number that feature the same gag-lines and seem to be trying awfully hard to be a panic. I suspect those were Conn’s handiwork.
The Press is much more toned down and, at times, contemplative. With the exception of the appearance of Mary Livingstone, the Jack Benny programme of 1932 bore very little resemblance to the show known by fans today and took years to develop. For those unfamiliar with the earliest Benny, the musical director was bandleader George Olsen, with solos by Olsen’s wife Ethel Shutta (photo to right). Benny went through a series of staff announcers. His show, for some reason, was originally heard on the NBC Blue network twice a week, on Monday and Wednesdays.
Then there are Jack’s comments about the lack of a studio audience. His debut broadcast can be found on various sites on-line and the lack of an audience is noticeable. Other studios that month in the Press indicate that the show prior to Jack’s, featuring Weiner’s Minstrels, had a studio audience. Ed Wynn and Eddie Cantor insisted on one for their shows. The situation evidently was short-lived. The paper’s radio columnist on May 29, 1932 refers to Jack getting audience laughs with an ad-lib on a programme two days earlier; in reality, he had been on the air four days before.
Jack Benny Tries Hand At Writing
By JACK BENNY
“WRITE me a column," said Si Steinhauser. So, gentle reader, to help a guy enjoy his vacation, I now take I stenographer in my lap and prepare to wear out the letter ‘I,’ in an endeavor to outwinchell Walter, eclipse a Cal Coolidge and best Heywood Broun.
To begin with, I used to be dumb. That is. I used to be I began my short but intensely interesting career by playing a fiddle while a nice looking blond girl thumped the piano. That was before radio became popular, or unpopular, according to the way you look at it.
I realize now that had I any sense I would have remained dumb. Wasn't it Emerson who said "Ambition makes fools of us all?" I got ambitious and wanted to talk. My ruination came when Mr. Marconi invented the radio. Oh, if I'd only kept my trap shut, how many sleepless nights I would have avoided. Trying to funny twice a week over the radio is at times an infernally trying ordeal.
The main trouble with radio is that it's so public. It is the toughest task I ever tackled. The road to radio has been a Iong one and at times, as all roads are, somewhat rocky.
The evolution from fiddling to wise-cracking covered many stages. There were those nights with Earl Carroll's Vanities, where it fell upon the shoulders of your humble scribe, the job of hanging the many and varied scenes of the big review together and at the same time playing parts in most of the acts. But that was easy compared to broadcasting.
In a show you learn one part that's good for 40 weeks. You can tinker with it and change what doesn't go at the matinee for the night show. But with radio it must be a new show every time you face the "mike." Once it's played
it's gone to glory and those side-splitting gags can never be used again. George Olsen can play the same old songs "by special request," but the wisecracker must dig deep down into his inner consciousness for something that will make them laugh. At times the digging process strikes rock and the going is hard. It takes two professional gag men to keep each program running. One works while the other recuperates. And there are times when all three of us border insanity.
I'll never forget my radio debut even if I live to be a million . . . Coming from vaudeville, where you can gauge your comedy by the laughs, where a gesture gets a snicker, and a gag a roar. Always an audience . . . Coming from that into the deadly seriousness of the studio, with its depressing silence, its split-second time clocks and its solemn-faced announcers. It was different and terrifying.
I missed the laughs, the comedian's stock and trade. Reading scripts was new. I had always memorized the lines before. I knew that without laughs I was lost. So we worked out a system whereby I could rehearse in private and let George's band boys be the audience. Since then things have gone fine.
Comedian or no comedian, I am just an advertisement . . . or a vocal sandwich man. The difference between the fellow who carries a sign and myself is that he can remain comfortably quiet. Being quiet, few of his audience ever take time to write to his sponsors to ask what's the idea of putting a fellow like that on the street to advertise for them. Mine, I am sorry to say, sometimes do this very thing.
It’s odd that Jack would call Cora Salisbury “a nice looking blond girl.” She was more matronly than anything else and the act broke up because she had to stay at home and care for a sick parent.
Jack also refers to two writers in addition to himself, but doesn’t name names. I don’t know when he hired Harry Conn to write for him, but the Press column from May 29 mentions a man named Jack Bunn who was recommended to Jack by Burns and Allen. It could be the paper botched Conn’s name (Conn had been recommended by Burns and Allen) but we don’t know at this late date.
Regardless, Benny overcame the endless pit wherein radio material was constantly dumped, along the way coming with things he could re-use on the air. Jack’s show included running gags, and switches on time-tested situations and characters that appealed to audiences, even past the first two decades of network television.
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