What Made Jack Benny a Star?

World War Two changed the professional lives of many performers. Some saw action in military service, while others who signed up were only involved in entertainment of some kind.

Then there were people like Jack Benny who were not in the service, but took their radio shows to bases and camps, or to war bond drives, and performed with special stage troupes overseas. Jack was on the road for several years, in southeast Asia, the Middle East and Italy.

One of his bond drives took him down the West Coast in 1944. It was a bit of a throwback to 20 years earlier when Jack played the Orpheum circuit in Vancouver, Victoria, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and so on.

Here’s a weekend feature story from that period from one of the newspapers in Portland. It isn’t altogether accurate—Jack had his own radio show starting May 2, 1932. And, perhaps to make it a better story, it tells a tale of how Jack was a nobody before radio. That’s not the case at all. In the Orpheum days, he was held over as a headliner in Los Angeles. He emceed at the Palace in New York. He was one of the stars of Earl Carroll’s Vanities and quit to go into radio.

“No great shakes” as a stage comedian? Benny’s appearances set box office records.

The idea of “friction” between Jack and his supporting players because they got the laughs is preposterous. The article itself admits Jack came up with the concept. Why would he be resentful?

There are several other subtle slants in this article I’d dispute, but you can read it for yourself. It was published May 14, 1944.

13 Unlucky? Not for Jack Benny
12 Years of Top Billing Is a Long Time, But Camp Adair Boys Who See the Comedian In Person Today Are Hep to Show's Success
BY VIRGIL SMITH
Staff Writer, The Oregonian
ON MAY 9, Jack Benny started his 13th year in radio.
Show people are notoriously superstitious. But not all of them consider "13" unlucky. Jack Benny doesn't.
Anyway, 12 years is a long time for anybody to be tops in the entertainment field, especially as a comedian, and extra-especially in radio, where the audience is always the same, the only difference from week to week and year to year being in the size.
The same people have listened to Jack Benny week after week, year after year. The fact that they still do it, that they still like him, is phenomenal. As a matter of fact it isn't true. It is, strictly speaking, the Jack Benny show that has retained its popularity for so long. And despite the assertion made in the script, this show does not invariably star Jack Benny. That is one of the secrets of his success.
In the past, the May 9th [sic] anniversary has been made an event. But not this year. This year the anniversary came while the Benny troupe on tour, playing military and navy in the Pacific northwest. On April 23 their radio show was put on at Vancouver, B. C. On April 30 it was from the Bremerton navy yard. Last Sunday, May 7, it was at Whidby island in Washington, and today, May 14, the show comes from Camp Adair.
BENNY TROUPE:
Has Given Many Shows for Soldiers
On the way to Hollywood from Corvallis, the troupe will stop off at the Marine base hospital, Mare island, San Francisco, for a special show for wounded men.
In between radio performances the Benny troupe is giving literally dozens of special performances in camps, hospitals, stations. Nearly all of these are solely for the benefit of men and women in the armed services.

Rumor has it that performances for civilians, outside of the regular broadcast, don't interest the comedian any more. Of course there is the matter of time. But then it may well be that Jack Benny is getting just a little tired of it all. He has been at the top. He was up there a long time. And once a fellow gets to the top, there is no way to go but down. Descent is inevitable, and it isn't likely to be as satisfying as the upward climb.
It took this comedian a long time to get to the top. He has been in the show business since he was 15. His press releases never tell his age, but he was 15 quite some time before the last war. It was in the last war, in fact, that he started to become a comedian.
Jack Benny is a comedian who was made and not born.
STAR:
Resembles Executive Personally, Rather Than Gag Man
Personally, there isn't anything of the funny man about him. He looks more like a business executive, accustomed to making decisions for others to carry out, than a comedian. He isn't a mugger like Red Skelton, he doesn't have a funny nose like Bob Hope, or popeyes like Eddie Cantor, nor a strange voice like Ed Wynn, nor any physical characteristic or mannerism which would mark him as a comedian.
That is one of the reasons he was no great shakes as a stage comedian, where people could see as well as hear him.
Even now, if his reputation could be stripped from him, I doubt that his performances in person would funny. As it is, his audience is conditioned to laugh by the mention of his name. Announce Jack Benny is going to appear, and the audience will stir and fix their faces to grin, and the belly muscles get set to shake up some laughs.
The first laugh is the hardest. After that they come easy. The comedian who can get people to believe a comedian has smooth sailings from there on.
Jack Benny is a radio comedian by accident. He got a laugh the first time he opened his mouth before an open mike.
He started out in the entertainment world to be a violinist. He had started to study the violin at the age of six, because his father, a Waukegan tailor, made him do it. He failed at school, and against his father's wishes left home to go on the stage.
He first teamed with a pianist named Coral [sic] Salisbury, with $15 a week as share of the earnings. He was more successful when he teamed with Lyman Woods, another pianist. This team made $125 week, now and then. They never were tops. Jack's fiddle playing was so bad that the people laughed at him. He took advantage of this to wring a few more chuckles. But he flopped in New York.
Then came the old world war, and Jack joined the navy. Because he had stage experience, he was assigned to the "Great Lakes Review," a sailors' road show. He spoke a couple of comedy lines that made a bunch of his fellow gobs laugh. They were not ad lib lines. They were lines written by somebody else. Benny put them over. He has been putting over lines written by someone else ever since.
After the old world war, Benny made vaudeville runs for many years. Always getting by, never really first-rate. He became discouraged. And out of this came his success. He hit on the idea of poking fun at himself.
That type of humor was new to radio, when Benny came on the scene.
Broadway Columnist Ed Sullivan on May 9, 1932, presented Benny as a guest over a New York station. Jack came on like this:
“This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say “Who cares?”
There was more in the same vein. It went over big.
Benny soon had his own show. And he never has departed from that formula—making himself the butt of all the jokes and gags. This type of humor is difficult. It calls for situations.
WRITERS:
Given Much Credit For Show's Rating
Jack Benny got himself some writers to create these situations. It apparently is not good show business, or not good radio, to give great credit to writers, but Jack couldn't have got where he is without some of the best gag writers in the business.

Even so, one man can't stay at the top in radio for ten years at a stretch. Benny hasn't. He knows the ropes. And he shared and still shares the spotlight with others. They have helped to keep him up.
He brought his wife, Mary Livingstone, into the picture. And others, Schlepperman, Andy Devine, Rochester, Dennis Day's "mother." and more recently, Butterfly McQueen. He has chosen tenors, Kenny Baker and Dennis Day, for instance, as much for their ability to work out gags in the show as for their voices.
I don’t know whether any friction has ever developed when these characters got more laughs than the star and threatened to outshine him. It would not be surprising, for such things are common in Hollywood, where one of the devices used to keep being a star is to prevent somebody else from coming a star. It may be that some actors have departed the Benny show because they were too good, but personally I doubt it. And I never heard any such tales when I was in Hollywood. My guess is that some of these people wanted to leave, and others were replaced because their abilities were pretty narrow, and because it is good show business to bring in fresh faces and voices.
Don Wilson, the commercial announcer, is the one character besides Mary Livingstone, who has been kept straight through. There are two reasons for that. Don is a top-notch commercial announcer. He sells the sponsor's product. And Benny has changed sponsor and product enough to keep Wilson fresh. Then Wilson has a belly laugh: which is real and infectious over the microphone. He is a find. Mary Livingstone has a laugh, too. The audience may laugh at Mary's laugh occasionally; it will laugh when Wilson laughs simply because Wilson is laughing.
Benny has won more popularity polls than any other comedian. And he has led the procession of big-time stars more often than any other.
Currently, he is rated among the leaders, but not at the top. And my guess is, that bothers Jack Benny not in the least. There are no laurels left for him to win in the civilian entertainment field.
How much longer he can last as a top-notch comedian is a guess. He'll be top notch with the servicemen as long as the war lasts. After that—maybe the old business about 13 being unlucky will collect another piece of evidence.

As it turned out, Jack Benny was more popular than ever with radio audiences after the war. He moved seamlessly into television, where his series remained until 1965, and then with specials until his death in 1974. In the meantime, his violin performances with symphony orchestras across North America attracted huge audiences who wanted to see him in person.

13 may be unlucky to some, but not to someone whose number was 39.