He's No Bing

Back in the network radio days, word when around that Jack Benny was dependent on his writers. Jack joked about it. Harry Conn actually believed it.

But you’ll find a number of newspaper articles in the Golden Age that spoke of the collaborative nature of the writing on the show. While Jack didn’t do the writing, he sat in with the writers as they dissected the script. He was his show’s script editor and approved every word, even those the writers talked him into that he didn’t particularly like.

This story appeared in the Springfield Sunday Union and Republican, July 3, 1938. There is no byline.

Jack Benny Goes to Town In Sustained Popularity
Radio's Ace Comedian Leans On His ‘Gag’ Writers But Not So Completely as Do Bing Crosby and the ‘Good News’ Performers—Sets Own Pace for Writers and Cast Alike
Radio's consistent No 1 feature—the Jack Benny show—left the air waves last Sunday night but will be back in its accustomed spot on the same network 13 weeks hence, or on October 2. The comedian, voted for three years running as tops in his field, and his wife, Mary Livingstone. and the rest of their troupe take this leave of the radio audience annually to enjoy a well-deserved vacation—more than often a vacation fraught with even more intensive movie and other work.
But they're off the air for the summer, now, so there can be no press agentry suspected in a postlude devoted to a diagnosis of their success on the radio. Recently this column accredited the writer of Bing Crosby's show and the writers and producers of "Good News of 1938," which precedes it every Thursday night on the Red network, with a fairer share of the success of the show than the "big name" performers themselves contributed. Does the same hold true for Benny's performances?
Probably not. Jack Benny's program hasn't the pace of Bing Crosby's nor the variety of "Good News of 1938." But it has a peculiarly individualistic style of humor and presentation that is Jack Benny's—and his alone. It succeeded when Harry Conn, the noted gag writer, was doing his scripts; it succeeded just as well in the recent months when Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin were writing his gags.
Individual Style
The reason simply is—Jack Benny. He knows precisely what he wants in the way of program structure; he personally sets the pace for the whole show; he is perfectly willing to be ribbed unmercifully by his cast (something few other star comedians will stand for), and he has a peculiar style of humor that is debonair New York and Hollywood and at the same time naive Waukegan, Ill.
Assuredly the former fiddler-trouper from Waukegan has come a long way in radio and the films, thanks to a peculiar popular appeal that must set him to wondering himself how long it can last. That he was just another comedian and master-of-ceremonies before he struck the responsive chord on the wave lengths three or four years ago, everyone along the Rialto recalls.
One of the little known facts about the Benny shows, which have lately been staged chiefly in Hollywood because of his new domicile there, is that even his orchestra does not hear the script rehearsal. Thus the sallies of laughter from the audience get a spontaneous spark from the cast itself. More than that, everyone in the cast likes working with Jack Benny, though he is as serious in preparation and rehearsal as he in funny in actual performance. Every line is studied intensively for the right build-up; every situation gauged for the proper reaction. Jack and his scripters work the full week to prepare for each week's end performance; while in New York at least, they spent the whole of Sunday afternoon in rehearsal.
All of this is not to detract from Jack Benny's writers, two extremely well paid young men to whom he is perfectly willing to give credit and kudos. That the writers are less the mainsprings in the Benny show than they are in the Crosby and "Good News" shows is no reflection on the talents of Messrs Morrow and Beloin.
Bill Morrow is a 29-year-old Chicagoan, not many years out of Northwestern university. He became a press agent upon graduation, traveling the circuits with many shows. While at this work he submitted suggestions for material to Jack Benny, Phil Baker and others. In March, 1938, after Harry Conn had left him, Benny needed a gag writer badly and invited Morrow to join him in Hollywood. There he teamed Morrow up with Ed Beloin, a 27-year-old graduate of Columbia university, who had been a humor magazine writer while in college.
Beloin's hookup with Benny was fortuitous. He had submitted a script to Fred Allen, who couldn't use it at the time. Fred, being an intimate friend of Jack Benny, sent Beloin and his script over to Benny. The comedian didn't call upon Beloin until some months later when he sent him a hurry call to join him in Detroit. Thence they went on to Hollywood together.
The Morrow-Beloin team now has a three-year contract through 1940 to write for Jack Benny, doing the dialog for his pictures as well as his radio shows. Together they conceive the situations, write the gags, see the shows through rehearsals. But always at their side is the indefatigable Benny himself, with probably the keenest sense of radio audience appeal and the shrewdest ability to edit and present "copy" of any comedian in the business.

Morrow and Beloin did more than come up with gags. Jack’s on-air “gang” was changing and they had to invent new characters for each of them. Phil Harris, Rochester and Dennis Day joined the show. Andy Devine was used frequently for a couple of years. There was Carmichael the polar bear (other animals were short-lived) and Mr. Billingsley the boarder. They all added something to the programme, thanks to their acting abilities, the writers and, through his oversight, Jack himself.