Your Money Or Your Life

One of the most famous routines on radio was this:

Robber: I said, “Your money or your life.”
Jack Benny: I’m thinking it over.

Jack did it a number of times, and his fans likely know the exchange happened at the end of an episode when the hold-up man not only took Jack’s money, but a package with Ronald Colman’s Oscar. This set up a story-line for a number of shows where Jack tried to borrow someone else’s Oscar to replace it.

The running gag sounds perfect. Stunningly, it was not the original intention of Jack and his writers.

The Colman episode aired on March 28, 1948. A week before, the second half of the Benny show was taken up with Jack addressing his Beverly Hills Beavers boys club on the advantages of thrift. The show ends with the self-satisfied Jack walking and singing to himself “For I’m a jolly good Beaver,” followed by the final commercial.

But that isn’t how it was supposed to end.

Many of Jack’s scripts for American Tobacco are on line. The “final” script for this episode is one of them, and it shows the stick-up routine was supposed to be on this show after Jack started singing. It’s crossed out in grease pencil. You can see the pages below and click on them to enlarge them.


Both George Balzer and Milt Josefsberg, who were there when the dialogue was created, never mentioned it was supposed to be the conclusion of the Beavers episode.

Here’s Josefsberg’s recollection from his book on Jack and his show:

The joke was first aired on the radio program of March 28, 1948. It was actually created accidentally, and John Tackaberry and I happened to be the midwives. We were writing a program where Jack was supposed to have borrowed Ronald Colman's Oscar and then a crook stole it from him. This was to lead to programs on subsequent weeks when we'd do shows with other Academy Award winners as guest stars, with Jack borrowing each one's Oscar and returning it to the preceding week's guest — but always leaving him one Oscar behind.
As we started to write the scene with the holdup man, I paced the floor while Tackaberry reclined on the sofa. We threw a few tentative lines at each other, none worthy of discussion. Then I thought of a funny feed line but couldn't get a suitable punch to finish it. I told this to "Tack," saying, "Suppose we have the crook pull the classic threat on Jack, 'Your money or your life.' Jack will get screams just staring at the crook and the audience — and if we get a good snapper on it, it'll be great."
Tackaberry seemingly ignored me. I kept thinking of lines and discarding them as mediocre or worse. Finally one line seemed better than the rest, and I threw it at him, half-confidently: "Look, John, the crook says, 'Your money or your life,' and Jack stares at him and then at the audience, and then the crook repeats it and says, 'Come on, you heard me — your money or your life?' and Jack says, 'You mean I have a choice?' "
Now frankly that wasn't too bad an answer, but Tackaberry made no comment, good or bad. I got angry and yelled, "Dammit, if you don't like my lines, throw a couple of your own. Don't just lay there on your fat butt daydreaming. There's got to be a great answer to 'Your money or your life.' "
In reply, Tackaberry angrily snapped at me, "I'm thinking it over."
In a split second we were both hysterical. We knew we could never top that.

Why did the routine get cut from the Beaver show? Was it because the show was running late? That seems quite possible. And considering all the effort that went into the bit, there was no way the writers were going to abandon it entirely; they had found places for cut dialogue before. As it turned out, the Colman episode was the better place for it. Using it there opened up a potential for weeks’ worth of gags, more so than the Beaver episode. Benny and the writers took full advantage of it.

You’ll notice in the March 21st show, the crossed-out lines indicate Benny Rubin was supposed to play the hold-up man. Benny had a small-time hood voice that was perfect for it, But when the routine appeared on March 28th, the actor was, instead, Eddie Marr. Why the change? All we can do is speculate. This was not a good period for Rubin. On March 17, he was ordered by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to pay $80 a week to his separated wife and seven-year-old daughter. Rubin had been dumped by Eagle-Lion, where he had been dialogue director for 16 months, and tried to make ends meet with radio comedy appearances (his last gig, he told the court, was for $50 working for Abbott and Costello).

The routine ended with the revelation that Colman put up his chauffeur to “steal” the Oscar to teach Benny a lesson. Marr appears as the chauffeur when the gag finally played out in a funny episode including one of Jack’s tall tales (though the funniest thing may have been a botched sound effect).

Something else not mentioned is the money-or-your-life routine originated in the minds of Jack’s earlier writers, Ed Beloin and Bill Morrow, in the radio show broadcast November 24, 1940. In this one, Jack is robbed outside of Don Wilson’s home, where he is forced to wait because Wilson decided he didn’t want the whole gang to “barge in on the little woman.” Jack’s response to “Gimme your dough” (the crook doesn’t say “Your money or your life”) was to rant on and on to the robber about how he had suggested to Don to call his wife in advance, and Wilson ignored him, and that’s what led to his misfortunate situation.

This particular version was repeated on the Benny TV show of January 15, 1956. Joe Downing plays the robber; Rubin appears as a cab driver.

Kathy Fuller-Seeley mentions there was another robbed-while-walking episode of the Benny show, going back to the General Tire days on May 11, 1934. Only part of the broadcast is available, but Kathy is doggedly going through the early Benny scripts. They’re being published in a series of books by Bear Manor Media. You can find out about them here.