Jack Benny Pays For a Baby

One of the best ways to get people to tune into your radio show week after week is to have a running storyline. Jack Benny’s writers figured that out.

A great one was the “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” contest, which ran from Nov. 25, 1945 to Feb. 3, 1946. In fact, Jack continued to make references to it into the 1950s.

It was a smash success. The United Press reported there were 277,000 entries. The names of some of the winners were announced on Jan. 27, 1946 and Ronald Colman read the first-place entry the following Sunday. We posted the first-prize winner from Carroll P. Craig, Sr., of Pacific Palisades, California here. We also passed along something about the third-place winner, Joyce O’Hara of Detroit in this post.

We haven’t said anything about the second-place winner, who turns out to have an interesting future connection to Benny. Charles S. “Bud” Doherty, a University of Nevada grad from Las Vegas living at the Hotel Boulton Square, Cleveland 6, was awarded $1500 in Victory Bonds.

Let us jump ahead to April 11, 1964. This syndicated story comes from the Binghamton Press

Her Daddy Hated Jack Benny
Seventeen years ago a baby was born in Cleveland, one of thousands in 1946. But this baby was unique in that her birth and all attendant expenses were paid for by Jack Benny and he didn't even know it.
The occasion was a contest tied in with Jack's then-radio series. It was titled "Why I Hate Jack Benny" and the judge was the late Fred Allen, with whom Jack had a running (in fun) feud.
Winner of the second prize of $1,500 was Charles Doherty, of Cleveland, attending law school on the GI Bill of Rights, whose wife worked as a beauty operator in a department store and for whom money was scarce, to put it mildly. "The $1,500 paid not only for Charla's birth, but we paid six month's rent on our apartment," recalls Doherty.
In 1955 the Doherty moved to southern California, where Charla decided to become an actress.
Several television shows and a movie, (“Take Her, She's Mine”) later, Charla's agent sent her out on another casting call. And it was a dream come true.
It was a part on The Jack Benny Program. And, of course, she got it. No one knew, at the time, that she was the baby for whom Jack's contest had paid. Only when executive producer Irving Fein told her she had the role did she tell them who she was. "And first day on the set, I brought the photostated copy of the check my Daddy had made when he got it," says Charla. "I think Mr. Benny looked sort of nostalgic when he saw it," she giggled.



The story is in correct about “hate.” Jack himself disliked the word when the writers were kicking around the idea of a contest, and settled for the less harsh “can’t stand.” Charla’s story ends sadly. She was 41 when she died of natural causes at her mother’s home in Woodland Hills, California, in May 1988. Her biggest role was on the soap Days of Our Lives; she appeared on the show for 2 ½ years in the early ‘60s. Her father, Charles Squires Doherty, passed away in Los Angeles on April 26, 1980. The family is in the 1950 Census for Montgomery, Ohio, where Charles was a law clerk. He went into the insurance business in Dayton before moving to California.

Out of curiosity, I thought I’d check on the first name of the $100 Victory Bond winners named by Jack. It was Helena Williams of 1809 West Sherman, Phoenix. There’s an article from a 1955 edition of the Arizona Republic about her, you can click on it to the right. She lived with her mother and one of their accomplishments came in 1947 when they constructed their own 16-by-18 foot house. A story in the Republic reported parts of the home were in various shades of pink (the photo in the paper was still in the black-and-white era).

Williams, who had served with the WACs in the war, died in Phoenix on Jan. 12, 1967 at age 67.