Jack Benny For Christmas

What’s your idea of the perfect radio show?

The answer for a number of people was Jack Benny.

We’re talking about radio in 1935 here. This is the Jack Benny before Phil Harris, before Rochester, before Dennis Day, before Mel Blanc, before age 39, before the Fred Allen feud, before Frank Nelson going “Yeeehhhhs?” It was during the time Harry Conn was still writing the Benny show.

I can’t think of anyone who believes this era of Benny is better than the Murrow-Beloin years or the post-war era for American Tobacco. But, in its day, it was popular with audiences.

It may be too early for Christmas decorations in stores, but it’s never too early for a Jack Benny Christmas-time story. This one comes from the January 1936 edition of “Redbook,” and randomly surveys people about the perfect radio show. Fittingly, Jack is one of the people interviewed. (The drawing of radio listeners is from a different edition of "Redbook."

RIGHT now, in the inner sanctums of all the “creative geniuses” who provide you with your radio programs, the conferences are going on far into the night. Wires and phone-calls flash between New York and Hollywood. Pencils are gnawed to the stub, and fingers to the bone. The boys are straining, groaning, struggling, pondering, desk-pounding, conferring, fighting and generally raising up a terrific furor in trying to answer that ever-puzzling question: “What does the public want for its Christmas radio program?”
In our big-hearted fashion we thought we’d help the sweating toilers a little bit. So we called on a lot of very bright people, and others not so bright—a goodly cross section of the minds of the country, and spoke to them in this fashion:
“If, among your Christmas presents, you could have your own personal hand-tailored radio program, what would you want? In other words — your idea of the perfect radio program.”
We found out; we found out a lot of funny things we never knew before. We found out that Jack Benny is certainly walking off with the honors. We found a few answers that we couldn’t print because this is a nice respectable family magazine, we’ll have you know. We found that if some sponsor were able to give the radio Christmas present most people ask for, it would probably cost him no less than fifty thousand dollars a broadcast.
How does your taste check with Ben Hecht’s, Peter Arno’s, Helen Hayes’, Walter Winchell’s, Beatrice Lillie’s and all the others represented here?

PETER ARNO
He doesn’t want much — only a full-hour show with Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd for comedy. (It oughtn’t to take more than twelve thousand dollars to pay for this little comic present.) Also under the same heading he’d like Parkyakarkas—without Canton He then goes on to say he would like Alexander Woollcott without his bulging bay window, and Johnny Green’s music without all of those dialects he’s attempting. He also would like to include in his Christmas program Boake Carter, also without dialect.

HELEN HAYES
“Among this group of experts on radio programing, it seems the better part of valor to confine myself to a field in which I have had some experience — dramatics. Some day I should like to hear a series of really great plays in which fine and beautiful language is the most important element. For the Christmas season I think Bruce Gordon and Frankie Thomas in ‘The Blue Bird’ would be pretty fine.”

DOOR-MAN AT THE WALDORF
“I’d like Jack Benny for some real good laughs — and why has nobody ever put Charlie Chaplin on the radio?”

BEATRICE LILLIE
“Either Uncle Don announcing a March of Time with ‘hurry’ music by Paul Whiteman—
“Or Alexander Woollcott as Cap’n Henry and a cast including Helen Hayes, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Fred Allen, Burns and Allen, Col. Stoopnagle and Budd, and Grace Moore, giving their own idea of Showboat, with music by Rudy Vallee. Or, neither.”

WALTER WINCHELL
“Any program would be marvelous without Ben Bernie.”

JACK BENNY
“The radio has great music, brilliant drama and outstanding news-commentators. Sports events and political speakers fill the loud-speakers. What the broad casting industry needs are some good comedy programs. we don’t know why this field of entertainment has been neglected. If any sponsors are reading this, REDBOOK will be glad to notify them how to get in touch with a very funny guy. Modesty prohibits my mentioning his name. What have you people got that I haven’t got? Possibly aching sides from tuning in on Jack B--- Sunday nights. I wish I could sympathize with you, but I can’t. I have never been able to hear him, though they say he’s terrific.”

BEN HECHT
“Myself and Alexander Woollcott. Myself for the comedy and Woollcott for the heavier and more dramatic part of the program.”

A TAXI-DRIVER ON FIFTH AVENUE
“Business is kind of lousy, and I got plenty of time to hear the radio in my cab. Poisonally, I like Jack Benny, Showboat, Bing Crosby and Al Jolson. It’s funny what people listen to in my cab. Sweet old ladies go for the blood-and-thunder stuff. Guys wit’ faces chipped outta concrete will listen to Kate Smith’s mush, and like it. While you’re at it, what about a Christmas program with Shoiley Temple? Why don’t somebody put her on the air?”

LAWRENCE TIBBETT
“A Christmas evening broadcast might well include an orchestral arrangement of ‘March of the Toys’ between vocal renditions of ‘Evening Star’ and ‘Tannhäuser,’ and ‘The Sleigh’ by Kountz.”

ONE of the advantages of writing this column for Redbook is the privilege of including one’s own opinion among those of the celebrities above. Rubbing shoulders with the great, in print, so to speak.
If anyone were to ask me what radio program I’d want for Christmas (nobody has, but I’ll answer it anyway), I would say that I’m in the happy position of being able to hear just what I want.
At five-thirty on Christmas day I shall tune in my radio to Lionel Barrymore and Freddie Bartholomew. They will be doing “Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. It will be tender and poignant and very lovely, precisely in the Christmas spirit. Barrymore as Scrooge will be superb. And Freddie Bartholomew’s gentle charm and juvenile Oxonian accents have ever been a delight. As a matter of fact, my problem has been settled for a full five years. A far-sighted sponsor has contracted for the services of these two performers that far ahead. And each year at Christmas they will bring you this dramatic ornament to shine in your living-room.
God bless you, one and all!
Reeve Morrow