Unreal Benny

Perhaps it’s a tribute to his acting ability, but Jack Benny was able—quite easily, it seems—to convince listeners what they heard on his show was a biography, not a sitcom full of fiction.

On more than one occasion, he was dumbstruck by how intelligent people really thought Rochester was his butler and Dennis Day mowed his lawn as part of his weekly salary.

He complained in print a number of times that he was forced to leave huge tips so people wouldn’t think he was really a cheapskate.

Here’s a piece from the Detroit Free Press of May 27, 1950. Jack was whistle-stopping in the Midwest in the latter half of the month.

Air Role Embarrasses Lots-of-Jack Benny
BY JAMES S. POOLER
Free Press Staff Writer
Jack Benny the comedian embarrasses Jack Benny the man.
As a comedian known for throwing a fast half-nelson on a dime, he causes waitresses to faint when he lays down a buck tip in real life.
They are slow to pick it up. They think Benny has it attached to a rubber band up his sleeve. So fine has Benny etched his radio character of the tightwad, the feudist with Fred Allen, the perennial 39-year-old, that everybody takes that for the real Benny.
BENNY, AN affable, easy-going guy, related when he visited the Free Press Friday how he is haunted by his radio ghost—like Scrooge by Marley—wherever he goes.
When he gave a hat check girl in Earl Carroll's cafe a buck tip she pushed it back. "Please, Mr. Benny," she said, "leave me with one illusion."
Everybody assumes he really drives around in a Maxwell and every press agent thinks he is the first to meet Benny at the station with a beat-up Maxwell. Detroit-ers, undoubtedly, would like to know that the real Benny travels in a Cadillac convertible, for which he paid.
PEOPLE THINK Rochester works in Benny's house. Rochester's got a house—and butler—of his own. Every novelty manufacturer in the country keeps writing Benny that he's got a great idea for a toy—a little safe that creaks and makes a sounds like Benny's radio vault.
When he toured the fronts in the war his hardest job was mustering up a "big take" and a big laugh for the same gag: Every outpost thought it was the first to put up a sign saying "Welcome, Fred Allen."
"I don't think I ever disappointed the kids," he said. "But after a few hundred times it was rugged always being surprised by the same old thing."
OLDSTERS ALWAYS cackle when they meet him and say, "I'm the same age as you—39." Even the Veep, although he varied it, was guilty of giving Benny the same old stuff.
When they met recently in Washington, Vice President Alben W. Barkley cracked, "If you're 39, I won't be vice president for 12 more years."
Halfway around a swing of 21 cities in 21 days with his Detroit appearance, Benny admitted he was weary. Maybe you have an idea now of what helps make him tired.