Remembering Jack Benny

Jack Benny’s death on December 26, 1974 affected a nation.

Newspapers in big cities and small towns reported it on their front pages. Days later, countless editorial sections across the U.S. (and Canada and other countries) included something on Benny’s character and his comedic touch. There were feature stories, some radio-era reminiscences from columnists, thoughts by others like Alan King, Goody Ace and Larry Adler, all of whom knew Jack personally for a long time. There were photos, some dug up by papers from their morgue, and all kinds of others supplied by wire services.

Here are some editorials, picked purely at random, from Sunday papers three days later. First, from the Lansing State Journal:

Master of Laughs
In a not so funny world where "big star" comedians rise briefly and then disappear, Jack Benny was a rare exception who stayed on top nearly a half-century and brought laughter to generations.
Jack Benny's rise to fame through vaudeville and then radio centered on a pose as the world's tightest tightwad and embraced his outrageous violin solos, and he succesfully [sic] carried his act over into television when many others failed. He continued to star until his death.
Something about Jack Benny—his mastery of timing, the violin, the Maxwell, the vault in the basement—made millions laugh in the dark depression days of the thirties. The grandchildren of that era found humor in the same routines a generation later.
Perhaps Comedian Steve Allen summed it up best when he said Jack Benny was "to humor what Arthur Rubenstein was to music." His "laugh-at-me" posture made him "straight man for the whole world." The world will miss him in these times when laughs again are not easy to come by.

The Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wisconsin:

Sunday belongs to Benny
We are saddened and much impoverished by the passing Friday of the beloved Jack Benny, whose very special gift it was to make us laugh and forget our troubles for more than 40 years.
His unexpected death of cancer darkens this holiday season. There are other comedians, but there was only one Jack Benny.
Younger people may recall him only from an occasional television special or for his frequent appearances on TV talk shows. But to most older Americans Jack Benny was an important part of the flavor and joy of life back in what we call today the ''golden age" of radio. Sunday nights belonged to Jack Benny, and Jack Benny belonged to all of America.
Miss a Benny show? As well think of missing Sunday dinner.

We remember his wife, sharp-tongued Mary Livingstone, and the major domo of the Benny menage, Eddie (Rochester) Anderson. And jolly Don Wilson, Benny's announcer, and his dim-bulb vocalist, Dennis Day. And the musical directors, Don Bestor, and, later, Phil Harris. The ancient Maxwell car, the creaky old money vault in the basement, the supercilious floorwalker in the department store where Jack did his miserly Christmas shopping, and the famous "feud" with the late Fred Allen.
With that air of perpetual indignation, Jack Benny was forever the butt of his own jokes. He was a gentle and amiable comedian, hurting no one and offending no one. We saw our own human foibles though his eyes and his art, and we are the better for having lived and laughed with him.
And now Jack Benny is gone. The obituaries say he was 80 years old, but Jack insisted he was only 39. Let him never grow a day older in our memory.

The Anniston [Alabama] Star:

Jack Benny, 39
The deceptive simplicity of Jack Benny's humor almost concealed the genius behind it—his pose of the vain, stingy, somewhat pompous man who was a natural target for a con artist, who was endlessly the butt of his friends' practical Jokes and wisecracks.
Benny masterfully surrounded himself with a first-rate stable of talented players, gave them all the funny lines and, as often as not, topped them with his exquisite sense of timing, his pained stares, his patented rejoinder: "Welll!"
The long-running Jack Benny Show—radio first through the Thirties and Forties, later on television—left millions with memories that still make them smile: Singer Dennis Day's perpetual bubbly adolescent; all those characters brought to life by Mel Blanc's vocal mastery; Phil Harris' whiskied misadventures; Mary Livingston's gentle put-downs; Rochester's gravelly croaked insubordinations.
All of them bounced arrows of needles of deflation off the Benny character in loving but knowing fondness, and in Benny Americans saw themselves and all their foibles, vanities, pretensions. We saw, through Jack Benny, that people, all people, can be funny, and Americans loved him dearly for that gift.
With a small handful of others, who must include Fred Allen and George Burns and Gracie Allen and Fibber McGee and Molly, Jack Benny gave the world a marvelous and too brief golden age of comedy, and as one of the newsmen reporting his death last week remarked, he will always remain Jack Benny, 39.

Peter D. Bunzel of the Los Angeles Times:

Last Call for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga. . .
It is appropriate to write a memorial to Jack Benny without ever having met him or having seen him perform on stage except a couple of times. Benny entered the American consciousness as a voice, a pause, a “Well!” For those of us who grew up in the great days of radio, his self-deprecating comedy, punctuated by quiet exasperation, will remain in our ears long after his interment today in Hillside Cemetery.
Benny's stock in trade was poking fun at himself. Indeed, among all the standup comedians of his era, he played a genuine character that became more indelibly etched in our awareness than his own. He was the middle-aged skinflint the incompetent fiddler who could barely play "Love in Bloom" but who, by his own insistence; magically never grew older than 39.
The laughs—not jokes, really—grew out of this parsimonious character, and his humor was always subservient to it. His radio family—Mary Livingstone, Rochester, Don Wilson, Kenny Baker (later Dennis Day)—all fell into the rhythm of this mythical Silas Marner, feeding him the lines or, more often, being fed them by him.
This essential generosity was a tipoff that the real Jack Benny was exactly, the reverse of the character he played. It was this knowledge we all intuitively shared that made the portrayal so endearing. The foibles he ridiculed were more ours than his, but being, a gentleman, he would never come out and say so.

His radio "family" became an extension of all the actual families out there listening. We saw the same pinch-penny qualities in our own fathers, and when Mary cried, in her Plainfield, N. J. voice, "Oh, Jack," that was the sound of own mothers losing patience.
So every Sunday night at 7 o'clock we gathered around the radio as Don Wilson intoned "Jello again, it's the Jack Benny Show," The sounds of that program are the sounds of our childhood: the growling bear guarding Benny's vault, his sputtering Maxwell, the train announcer calling out "Anaheim, Azusa, Cucamonga" towns that, in later years, many of us were surprised to find were real.
Those were the years when Sunday night required a family vigil by the radio. Jack Benny at 7, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy at 8, Fred Allen at 8:30, with everyone getting their comeuppance at 9 as Walter Winchell informed Mr. and Mrs. North America and all the ships at sea that the real world was filled not with "Love in Bloom" but with gossip, gangsters and meanness.
The world etched by Jack Benny was infinitely preferable. It made us laugh, but it also spread a certain sweetness and decency.
It is a wonder that Benny made this kind of impact just by being heard, for as we came to know from his television and stage appearances, seeing him added a whole new dimension. He had an almost cat-like elegance that was feminine as well as masculine the embodiment of everyone's vulnerability and, with luck, grace under pressure.
Now, as he makes his final trip, we join in calling out the stops along that memorable route: “Anaheim! Azusa! Cucamonga."

There are so many more we could post, but we’ll conclude with an editorial from the city where loved him. This is from the St. Joseph News-Press:

Jack Benny Got Enthusiastic Welcome on 1945 Visit Here
ORIGINALLY, WE had planned to do a column such as this next February, which would have been the 30th anniversary of Jack Benny's radio broadcast from St. Joseph. But the death Friday of the 80-year-old comedian has moved up the date for this article.
Jack Benny was perennially 39 years old and a tightwad; that was the image he had given himself, one that he parlayed into fame and fortune. As a comedian, he was in a class by himself. His strong point was his timing. He could stretch a mild titter into a belly laugh by dragging it out.
For some reason never explained, Jack started using the line, "They love me in St. Joseph" on his radio programs some time around 1940. It got laughs for some still unknown reason, and Jack capitalized on it.
St. Joseph people didn't mind, and eventually they invited Jack here for a broadcast. This was in World War II days and travel was greatly curtailed, but finally Jack's management accepted and the date was set for Feb. 18, 1945. That was a Sunday, the day of all of Benny's broadcasts and Jack and company arrived in town on Thursday the 15th. It was a festive day in St. Joseph and school kids didn't have to attend class. Business men were called in to a briefing session at the Chamber of Commerce to be told how to act in the presence of such an eminent character as Jack Benny.
The general impression was that Jack was more of a businessman than a comic. But he got a good reception.
A luncheon was held at Hotel Robidoux in Jack's honor and only those at the head table got steaks. As we said before, there was a war on. Nobody told Benny that only he and the other top guests were getting steak and in his remarks he indicated he thought everyone was feasting on prime St. Joseph T-bones.
The committee had heard Jack's favorite salad was cold asparagus, and that is what he got. It turned out that except on the stage, he never touched the stuff. But Jack apparently enjoyed his lunch, though he indicated he was in a hurry to get on to a study of his show.

Phil Harris was the orchestra leader. He brought a few key musicians and relied on Local No. 50 to provide the others. Don Wilson was the announcer.
The actual broadcast was from the stage of the Auditorium. Admission was by ticket only and tickets were given to those who donated to the blood bank. Jack made an appearance at the Red Cross and was photographed purportedly in the act of giving. Actually, he suffered from a cold and was forbidden to donate blood on that day, but the pictures were made anyway.
There were two shows at the Auditorium, the second being the actual broadcast. The place was packed to the rafters and many had to sit on the balcony steps. The crowd was enthusiastic, though some of the script seemed a bit derisive of St. Joseph, making it appear as a hick cow town.
A typical joke: During the show, somebody pulled off one of Jack's boots. "Look, toes!" shouted the puller. Replied Jack: "What did you expect, a bunch of bananas?" Yet people laughed at such humor in those days.
Jack, Rochester, Mary Livingstone and the others stayed over to Monday, when another and smaller luncheon was held at the Robidoux. Then they left and so far as we know Jack never returned to the town that he said loved him. But he would have been welcome and we can't help but believe our town was a little better by his having been here.

Said the Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls: “Jack Benny dead? No, not really. Jack Benny will live forever: in the hearts and minds of millions of Americans who laughed with him and at him.” The Columbian of Vancouver, Washington, summed up its opinion column with “In short, just about everyone will miss him.” Today, almost 50 years after his death, many people still do.