A Jack, a WAC and a Camel

Jack Benny couldn’t make it happen again.

He had success on his radio show when a pet polar bear became a part of it. Carmichael even played a role in the feature Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Benny and his writers decided to bring other animals onto the show, but they didn’t last very long. Audiences didn’t seem to connect with them. One was an ostrich. Another was a horse that replaced Benny’s Maxwell (which reappeared after the war years). Another was a camel.

Unlike the others, the camel had some basis in reality. Jack, Larry Adler and others toured the Middle East in 1943, entertaining soldiers in the sweltering heat, afterward going to Italy. The Los Angeles Daily News had some information in its edition of Oct. 22, 1943.

WACS 'draft' Jack Benny as he returns with head unbombed
Jack Benny, the only entertainer to return from an overseas tour without claiming he had been subjected to gunfire, was met at Union station yesterday [21] by a mob scene that included a detachment of WACS and a stuffed camel. The WACS were on hand to “swear" Benny in as an honorary recruiting officer in the current campaign, while the camel's presence was explained to be in connection with a "gag” Benny had broadcast from Cairo.
It seems that while the entertainer was entertaining in that Egyptian city he let loose with the remark that he had bought a two humped camel, the two hump model on the ground that “you can get a better tradein deal, and besides you can keep dry ice in one."
Press agents from the broadcasting company here, hanging on every word, immediately instituted a search for a two humped camel, which was located by a safari at Goebel's Lion farm on Ventura blvd.
It was thought best to rent a stuffed camel, rather than a live one, it was explained, the latter being “a little unpredictable, front and back."
Benny, when he got off Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe's Chief and stood in the midst of an admiring group, said he had had a fine time on his trip.
“But, kids,” he cautioned, “if you want to make a Frank Merriwell story out of this, I can't help you. I had a wonderful, exciting time, practically a vacation.”
In 10 weeks and 15,000 miles, Benny played 150 shows in Africa, Sicily and Italy, points on the Persian gulf, and Iceland on the way home.
“The big thing was the trip to Italy," Benny said. “It was the only place we made a hazardous trip, where we had no business going.”
Though he had been in what the army designated as combat zones, Benny said, he hadn’t been up at the front. No bombs, no shells.
The comic, who said that he had put on 15 pounds which he would have to take off for his next picture, ran into a lot of people “over there."
“I ran into Bruce Cabot in Tunis, and, what’s the name of that fellow who was married to Joan Bennett and Hedy Lamarr?”
"Gene Markey?" somebody said.
“Yeah, Gene Markey,” Benny continued. “And then I ran into people like my caddy from Hillcrest. That was in Tunis, too."
Asked what he thought the troops overseas needed by way of entertainment Benny said “More live entertainment, they could stand. Especially in places where there isn’t any combat duty."
When Benny arrived in New York, he was quoted as having said that some of the pictures being shown the boys were so old that Shirley Temple hasn’t been born yet and Francis X. Bushman is the lending man."
Yesterday he explained that he hadn’t meant it quite that way.
“I don’t like to start a thing all ever again," he said. “My statement was that in two places, Sicily and Persia, I saw old pictures. But in other places I saw very late pictures."
Among the military present to greet the homecomer was Lt. Col. Clifford Henderson, staff officer to Maj. Gen. Jimmie Doolittle, on detached service with the air transport command.
Benny and the colonel had missed seeing each other in Benghazi by about 10 minutes, and if the colonel had gone away mad when the train didn't come in on time yesterday, he would have missed him again.
The reason the colonel was there was that he is giving some indirect help on the WAC recruiting drive, and what with some WACS being at the station to meet Benny it all adds somehow.
In New York Benny picked up his radio troupe for the return home.
With him were his wife, Mary Livingstone; Phil Harris and Mrs. Harris (Alice Faye), Rochester (Eddie Anderson), Dennis Day and Don Wilson.
Day got off at Pasadena and Harris and Miss Faye at Union station, the latter two availing themselves of invisibility to avoid the crush.
A station passenger agent, long since used to anything Hollywood can spring on him, was unimpressed by the presence of the stuffed camel. “That's not so bad,” he said. “When Fred Allen came in they brought him a calf."
And before that, when a consignment of Cover Girls was shipped to a local movie studio they were met at the station by a Russian wolfhound.
The presence of live or stuffed stock is rapidly becoming standard equipment at these trainside events.

The Cairo broadcast was a special programme on NBC on Sept. 13, 1943. You can listen to it below.



Benny’s pet camel debuted on his show of January 9, 1944. You would think the role would have been given to Mel Blanc, who had been appearing with Jack. Instead, it was handed to 17-year-old Alhambra High School student Stan Freberg, who went on to a career in the public relations department of McCormack General Hospital (and a few other things).

Freberg did the one thing you never did on the Jack Benny show. He pissed off Jack Benny. In his anxiousness during a rehearsal, he rushed to the microphone to do his camel voice (supporting players sat on chairs on stage) and threw off Benny. Benny then threw off Freberg. He never appeared on the Benny radio show again, and evidently took the camel with him.