Comedians Stay Out of Brawls, Says Jack Benny

Do comedians have happy lives?

The public Jack Benny said “yes.” At least in 1952.

Later in life, Benny admitted he had his emotional ups and downs, confirmed by manager Irving Fein in his Benny biography.

He talked with the United Press about the life of a comedian, and nixed the idea of an autobiography. It turns out he started one and hefty portions of it were used in Joan Benny’s book about her life with her father. The ad next to the article is there for decoration, and to show that Jack and Arthur Godfrey shilled for the network's TV-manufacturing subsidiary in the press. Its failure is a whole other story.

Jack Benny Says Comedians Don't Have Time For Grief
By EDITH KERMIT ROOSEVELT
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 2—(UP)—Jack Benny said Tuesday comedians are the goody-goodies of show business because they don't have time to get into mischief. "You don't find as many comedians getting divorces, signing papers they wish they hadn't or getting in night club brawls," he said. "You know why? We work too hard."
Benny said his love life had never been a problem. He's been happily married to the same woman for 26 years. Motion picture actors, he said, don't work every day. They have lots of time between pictures—and while they're making them. But comedians, he said, are on the go every moment. Benny himself, when he's not working on his CBS television show, is giving countless numbers of benefit performances.
HE SAID he even wakes up at 3 a.m. to write material for his shows. He doesn't leave it all to his writers.
"That's the headache with comedians—getting new material," he sighed.
"A guy like Jimmy Durante is such a lovable guy he doesn't have to worry so much as the rest of us," he said. "But getting new gags is always a problem—except for Milton Berle, of course," he wisecracked.
Another reason Benny gave for comedians being happy-go-lucky in their private lives is "we aren't intellectuals. I don't think a college man would make a good comedian," he said. "You've got to be down-to-earth in this business. You can't be highbrow."
THINKING too much gets a lot of people into trouble, he commented.
Benny said he guessed most people would say he had lived a rather dull life.
"Now that the life story of Eddie Cantor's being made into a movie and Tallulah's a best seller, they're telling me I should write the story of my life," he said. "But I don't want to. First place, it would be conceited to do it and then there's nothing to write about. I was never really down on my luck. Ever since I started it was a slow steady rise, earning more money every year."
Benny said the only trouble he ever had was once when he had pneumonia.
Although he came from a poor family, he said, he always had enough to eat and wear and his dad encouraged him in show business.

As a side-note, the Edith Kermit Roosevelt who wrote the column was not the former First Lady of the U.S. Teddy’s wife died in 1948. This was one of their granddaughters. She gave up show business reporting within two months of writing this story and found employment with a paper in Yreka in northern California. In 1954, she was back at the United Press in its Washington, D.C. bureau and later because a self-syndicated columnist. She died on July 22, 2003 in Miami.