It likely won’t surprise you to learn that Radio Guide, in June 1935, announced that a poll with 1,256,328 votes had picked Jack Benny as their favourite radio performer. What will likely surprise the casual fan is the Jack Benny show wasn’t the Jack Benny show you’ve come to know and love.
In 1935, there was no Rochester, no Phil Harris, no Dennis Day, no Mel Blanc (or a Maxwell or violin teacher or harassed Christmas-time store clerk), no Frank Nelson going “Yehhhhhhs?”, no Sheldon Leonard touting, no Fred Allen feud.
What there was, was Mary Livingstone, in almost a Dumb Dora role spouting poems, Don Wilson cheerily telling the world about six delicious flavors contained in a box with big red letters, and Sam Hearn’s Schlepperman doing Yiddish dialect.
Only two broadcasts from 1935 survive (one is Kenny Baker’s debut late in the year) but, fortunately, Laura Leibowitz crafted two wonderful books containing a summary of each Benny radio show, with complete cast and music lists. The Benny estate still has scripts for each show and Kathy Fuller-Seeley is making her way through them to have them published. These are admirable literary efforts and deserve your full $upport.
The other thing the show had in 1935 was writer Harry Conn, no doubt stewing that he was the real brains behind it and anyone could get laughs with his lines (he soon proved to himself how wrong he was).
Benny had signed a movie contract, which forced him to move the show to Los Angeles.
The San Francisco Examiner looked at the show in its June 9, 1935 edition. NBC hadn’t built the lovely studios at Sunset and Vine at this point. Whether this is mere P.R. hokum, we will let you decide.
BENNY’S HOUR EFFULGENT
Jack Benny's Sunday broadcasts originating at the NBC studios in Hollywood and heard locally over KPO at 7:30 p. m., have taken on all the glamour that used to be attached to film premiers at Graunmann's [sic] Chinese Theater, with famous picture stars, stage favorites, noted composers, visiting royalty, society matrons and other "who's who" in attendance.
Firm executives are always among those on hand. Fashion writers are present to see what the stars are wearing. Autograph collectors hover about the entrance of the studio and candid camera men snap pictures of the notables. Jack and Mary get away from the crowd as soon as they can after the broadcasts are over. After the first show, which is broadcast east of the Rockies, they return to fashionable Beverly Hills and take a dip in their private swimming pool. Following the evening broadcast they go home and catch up on the Sunday papers.
During tonight's broadcast, by the way, Jack Benny will introduce one of the latest screen "finds," 8-year-old Bobbie Breen. The program will mark the first radio appearance of Bobbie, who is under contract to Sol Lesser, noted movie producer. Benny believes he will be a sensation on the air.
Breen would become a regular with Jack’s buddy Eddie Cantor. The “Hollywood pearls” routine was a running story-line. Radio columns of the time noted it climaxed on the June 16 broadcast, which also included “a young girl who recently won the $1,000 award of the Allied Arts Festival of California as that state’s outstanding girl vocalist. Her name is Wynn Davis, she is 22 years old, and will make her radio debut this afternoon.” (unbylined, The Nashville Tennessean).
One of Jack’s running gags some years later involved his stardom in an odd film, The Horn Blows at Midnight. He talks about some film experiences in this 1935 column in the San Francisco News. Again, we leave it to you to decide if the idea of a piano-playing Jack Benny, or anything else, is true.
JACK BENNY FINDS MOVIES SO DIFFERENT!
BY LEICESTER WAGNER
HOLLYWOOD, June 1 —When is a mouse trap not a mouse trap? asks Jack Benny, who then falls all over himself in his haste to declare a mouse trap is a sound effect in a radio station.
But Hollywood’s realism has Jack baffled. In the broadcasting station you put over the idea of eating by munching a stale cracker in front of the microphone.
"In pictures,” he sighed, you sit down to a steaming meal and do a ‘Jack Spratt and his wife’ the first time the scene is filmed. After six ‘retakes’ you begin to long for the old cracker sound effect where a crunch will put over the idea instead of two dozen helpings of herring and weiner-schnizel [sic].
Shower of Perfume
"I had my first contact with studio realism in ‘Hollywood Revue of 1928’," Benny went on. “I almost lost my wife and friends because of it. We were shooting the ‘orange blossom time’ number. To give the scene realism, gallons of perfume were blown through the ventilators. It took me months to explain to my wife and the boys at the smoker refused to let me in the clubroom. Too Many Tricks
“Being a musician or note—some claim it’s a sour one, but you know how jealous my competitors are—I sat down at the grand piano to dash off a little selection of my own writing.
“Director Roy Del Ruth—some kidder—pushed a button and presto!—the piano disappeared, which left me playing on thin air.
“He pushed another button and the piano stool vanished, which momentarily left me sitting on thin air.
“Yes, everything's real in Hollywood except the weather. If I decide to settle down in California. I'll have a tombstone made for my grave which bears this inscription:
“ ‘Killed by unusual weather.’
“And I hope my mourners will be able to read it through the fog.”
While it’s true Jack Benny “composed” a song later in life, the music for “When I Say ‘I Beg Your Pardon’ (Then I’ll Come Back to You)” was written by Mahlon Merrick. Jack got credit for the lyrics. It was his show, you know.
If there’s any doubt about the popularity and pull Jack had in 1935, here’s a piece from the Superior, Wisconsin Evening Telegram of June 19:
WEBC's scout heard a new Jack Benny story in Chicago. It seems Benny entered a well-known music publishing house to pick up a professional copy of a recent song-hit,
issued free to all in show-business. The bright young fellow at the counter asked curtly who he was. Benny stated mildly that he was with NBC. "Then," says the bright young fellow, "you must have a copy, since we always send a lot over there for distribution."
When Benny insisted that he wanted a copy, the B. Y. F. says further, “Next, you'll be telling me you're Jack Benny.”
“Why, I am,” says Benny, in surprise.
“Ha! Ha! No, you aren't. I guess I know Benny,” retorts the B. Y. F.
“You do, eh?” Benny asks, and turns, and walks into the office of the head of the music-house, returning almost immediately with a furious man waving his arms and calling upon heaven to witness if ever he had known such a stupid clerk.
Fortunately, for the clerk's job, the clerk was the man's son.
“This is Jack Benny,” he shouted. “Give him anything he wants.”
To a music publisher, Jack Benny is mightier than the prince of Wales. His plug of a song would send the sales shooting skyward.
By the way, if you want the top ten winners in the five categories that involved Jack’s show, here they are. Frank Parker was on the Benny show during the poll. The photo comes from the June 24, 1935 edition of the Evansville Journal.
Teams — 1, Amos ‘n’ Andy; 2, Burns and Allen; 3, Jack Benny and Mary; 4, Myrt and Marge; 5, Lum and Abner; 6, Hitz and Dawson; 7. Mary Lou and Lanny Ross; 8, Block and Sully; 9, Marion and Jim Jordan; 10, Easy Aces.
Musical Program — 1, Show Boat; 2, Rudy Vallee’s program; 3, Jack Benny’s program; Himber’s Champions; 5, Fred Waring’s program; 6, WLS Barn Dance; 7, Beauty Box Theater; 8, Town Hall Tonight; 9, Breakfast Club; 10, Pleasure Island (Lombardoland).
Orchestra — 1, Wayne King; 2, Guy Lombardo; 3, Richard Himber; 4, Ben Bernie; 5, Jan Garber; 6, Kay Kyser; 7, Don Bestor; 8, Fred Waring; 9, Rudy Vallee; 10, Walter Blaufuss.
Announcers — 1, Jimmy Wallington; 2, Don Wilson; 3, Harry Von Zell; 4, Ted Husing; 5, David Ross; 6, Milton J. Cross; 7, Phil Stewart; 8, Don McNeills; 9, Tiny Ruffner; 10, Jean Paul King.
Three notes on Don Wilson. One is that in this period, he also broadcast college football for NBC, most notably the Rose Bowl. He had played football in college.
ReplyDeleteAnother is that George Burns said that basically Don Wilson made Ed McMahon possible--the bigger sidekick announcer laughing along.
And finally Burns said Benny told him the biggest laugh he ever got was not from the mugger, but from a guest spot with Dorothy Kirsten. Wilson loved opera so the two of them were discussing sostenutos and who knows what all, and as Burns described it, everybody knew Benny would have to jump in. Finally he said, "Well, I think," and Mary said, "Oh, shut up!" So Wilson was crucial to the big laugh, if not the biggest.
Thanks, Michael. I can't remember what the last year was when Wilson and McNamee called the Bowl.
DeleteI think Carson liked the idea of his own Don Wilson.
I've never timed the laughs; other people have. Mel Blanc as a jackass rates up there, too.