Another Oops

Radio audiences liked it when actors blew a line. Sometimes, the mistake got bigger laughs than what was in the script.

On the Jack Benny show, Bea Benaderet organised a pool, taking bets about which line announcer Don Wilson would mangle. His most famous one was when he tried to explain he read about Jack’s new suit in Drew Pearson’s column, but it came out “Dreer Pooson.” The writers pounced on it, and later in the show, when Jack asked Frank Nelson, standing in front of Romanoff’s, if he was the doorman, Nelson blurted out “Who do you think I am, Dreer Pooson?” It came out of nowhere and the audience—and Benny—went into convulsions.

Mary Livingstone had her problems getting out lines, too. My favourite is a lesser-known one. She was talking to Eddie Anderson and said “That’s okay, Mr. Rochester,” then fumbled afterward, realising the character’s FIRST name was “Rochester.” Jack ad-libbed a response to the extent that in the studio, she could call him “Rochester,” but outside she could call him “Mr. Anderson.”

Two of her better-known ones among Benny fans are when she substituted “grass reek” for “grease rack” (which had a wonderful post-script in a later broadcast when the police chief of Palm Springs talked about a skunk fight on a lawn and ended with “Boy, did that grass reek!”), and when she ordered a “chiss sweeze” sandwich.

We pass along this tale of one you don’t know about. The reason is it is from 1935. Only 2 1/2 recordings of the shows from that year exist, none when Michael Bartlett was Jack’s vocalist. This was documented in K.L. Ecksan’s column in the Sunday Oakland Tribune on November 10, 1935.

Glum-visaged, low-spirited folk wouldn't last long around the Jack Benny rehearsals and broadcasts in the NBC studios in Hollywood. Why? Because that's the time and place for spontaneous laughter—ad lib gags, practical jokes and the gentle art of "ribbing."
It's a fact that the Benny clan stumbles onto more good hearty laughs than the average script writer who gets paid for originating just that sort of thing. Writer Harry Conn, one of the wittiest wits who ever owned a typewriter, liberally sprinkles his continuity with usable jokes, but by the time Benny and his stooges wade through one rehearsal at least two jokes grow where one stood before.
For instance, on a recent broadcast Benny had a line in which he said, in effect, "That guy Michael Bartlett isn't such a much," and Mary Livingstone was supposed to answer, "Well, fifty million women can't be wrong." When Mary came to her line she read, "Well, fifty willion momen," which was spontaneous enough to "break up" the entire cast. Patient practice throughout the balance of Saturday night and Sunday made Mary letter-perfect in the line. But when it came broadcast time she still couldn't unscramble her m's and w's. Mistake or no, it proved the biggest laugh of the program.
An occurrence of similar spontaneity took place on the first broadcast of the new series when Bartlett and Benny were engaged in a bit of rube dialogue. As the conversation went on, Bartlett—doing the first rural dialect of his life—kept pitching his voice higher and higher. Unconsciously, Benny kept railing up on his toes and boosting his own voice, until he was stretched to his full height.
Then Benny's sense of humor got the better of him and he called across stage to Bartlett, "Mike, I'll come down, if you will." And Mike did, but not without having created the best laugh of the show.
The Benny-ites have got to be good-natured. Else how would hefty Announcer Don Wilson be able to take it when Benny describes him in uncomplimentary terms?
The same goes for Mary Livingstone, who really does like poetry. Every time she composes a rhyming gem her fellow-troupers point significantly at their heads and move one hand around in a circular motion. Whenever Johnny Green and Michael Bartlett do a particularly effective musical number their co-workers walk away. It's all part of an act, of course, for underneath, every member of the cast is sure that the other one is tops in his particular endeavor, Benny wouldn't trade his stooges for a tentfull of another comedian's helpers. And the stooges wouldn't trade Benny, either.

Did someone ask about the Benny-ites away from the microphone? Well, they're a busy crew. Every waking hour and some of the dozing ones, too, Benny spends at M-G-M, where he is regarded as the current sensation. Jack came to Hollywood six months ago to do "Broadway Melody of 1936" and took a short lease on Lita Grey Chaplin's former home in Beverly Hills. It's really the first home life the Bennys have had, after all these years in vaudeville, and living in hotels and apartments. The climate clicked with Jack, and Jack clicked with M-G-M, so M-G-M renewed Jack, and Jack renewed the lease. Benny figured on leaving after his second film, "It's in the Air," but his picture bosses figured otherwise, so Benny has taken an indefinite lease on the home, and Mary is even planting flowers in the back yard.
Speaking of the home, it was a big laugh the other night when the Bennys had a house full of guests and Jack turned on the electric organ. The selection was "Love in Bloom." Half way through the number the organ stuck. Benny and all the guests took turns at turning switches on and off, pushing and pulling pedals and pounding the back and front of the console. After two hours of the same high note, slightly off-key, Jack managed to get an organ technician over from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the recalcitrant console was repaired.
Michael Bartlett, who is no longer with Jack Benny, is no less busy. He is another sensational newcomer to films, having been a smashing success in Grace Moore's latest picture, "Love Me Forever." He is starting production on another movie this week. Incidentally, an odd note of a Hollywood coincidence is that Writer Harry Conn just took a new apartment and found that it was the one Bartlett had vacated a few weeks before.
Johnny Green hasn't got his Hollywood legs He still misses his New York, but is so busy arranging music for the broadcast he doesn't have much time to notice his loneliness. As for Don Wilson, Los Angeles is his home. He started on the NBC station, KFI there, as a sports announcer.
So that's a quick and candid camera shot of the Jack Benny cast in Hollywood. They're a swell lot of folks, and very busy, as well as happy.

Bartlett was replaced by Kenny Baker, who stayed until walking away the show one broadcast before the end of the 1938-39 season. Green stayed for a year, then Benny had the great fortune in 1936 to hire Phil Harris as his bandleader. Wilson stayed until the Benny show ended on television in 1965. Conn’s ego caused him to flame out before the end of the season and Jack brought in Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to write. Incidentally, this blurb popped up in the Sunday Oregonian on November 17:

Harry Conn, the Jack Benny script writer, says the days of radio gags are over, and that hereafter the big comedy programs will have to depend on original situation routines and travesties of current plays and motion pictures.
Harry considers “The Bennys of Wimpole Street” the funniest script he has ever written.

That was heard October 28, 1934. About two-thirds of the broadcast still exist; it is missing the opening commercial and the musical numbers, including “Easter Parade,” written by Irving Berlin in 1933. Blanche Stewart plays golfer “Masha Niblick” and Elizabeth’s maid, while Mary Kelley is Maureen. You can listen to it below.