No TV for Benny in 1949

Jack Benny was supposed to saunter onto TV screens a year before he actually did.

Erskine Johnson’s column for the Newspaper Enterprise Association on July 4, 1949 had this item:

“Only part of his radio cast will be with Jack Benny when he plunges into television this fall. Too expensive.”

It would appear CBS broached the idea of Jack doing some network television in the 1949-50 season. It never happened.

Jack Shafer in the Newark Star-Ledger reported in his column the day before:

Benny ponders video; calls style too subtle
Jack Benny was in town on another business jaunt this week. He has a new publicity gimmick. It used to be the semi-annual word of his impending retirement (a device which Fred Allen still uses—and insists he means this time). Now Benny is aboard the television wagon, riding it hell-bend-for-newspaper mentions.
On his last trip east this spring, for example, teevee was Jack's alleged oyster. His years in vaudeville were just what video needed. The matter of memorizing scripts? Why, that wasn't too formidable. He'd go on every other week, maybe, to start, and then increase the schedule. Get the cameras all set by September. Television was Jake with Jack.
Now Jack isn't so sure. In a quickie interview this week, he told me his mind is open on the question. He still thinks he's ready for television, but he's not so sure of the vice-versa angle!
"SUBTLETY doesn't register well as television now stands," he explained. "You can get the slapstick stuff across in television, sure, like hitting people with pies or buckling up like Leon Errol, but that's not my style, you know. I haven't gone in for slapstick in radio, and it wasn't my style in vaudeville, either. It seems to me that the comedians who are clicking in television have always been the noise-and-nonsense type. That's the only type television is ready for."
"I doubt that particular style will last (heaven help the poor psychiatrists if it does!), but why buck a passing fancy? What I'd do on teevee might seem so strange that people would laugh AT me instead of with me. So why take the risk when I'm doing all right in radio? Maybe I'll sit this season out. I won't really know until September."
Unlike a lot of other radio stars who are similarly on Indecision Street, Jack doesn't mind the dilemma.
"Why worry about it,” he insists. “The entertainment business is just the tinsel of life, anyway. Look underneath that tinsel and find the REAL tinsel."

There was another reason for Jack's skittishness which he expressed to the North American Newspaper Alliance. This was published starting June 30, 1949.

Benny in N. Y. Talking Video
By DAN ANDERSON
NEW YORK (NANA).—It all depends on the quality of kinescope recordings whether Jack Benny will be seen regularly on television, at least in the east, beginning in the fall, the comedian said recently. If the filmed versions of T. V. shows don't improve markedly above their present technical level, he won't be on.
* * *
Benny is here for conferences with executives of the Columbia Broadcasting system, to which he recently switched, and of the American Tobacco company, his sponsor, about television. He'll start back for the west coast soon, but probably will make no decision about going on television until early September.
Foregoing comedy, he explained, "it depends entirely on how much improvement there is in the quality of kinescope.
"It will have to improve to great deal. But some of the engineers say that it may in a very short time. I’ll make up my mind a few weeks before my radio show resumes. Early September probably is the dead line.
"Kinescope will have to be almost as good as live presentation for me to want to go on television with a regular program, probably half an hour every two weeks. It will have to be kinescoped to be shown here. It would be a physical impossibility for me to fly to New York every couple of weeks for a show and back to the Coast for my radio program.
"If I don't do a regular program, I might come here every two months or so for a big special program.
"I like television. I've been on once, when the CBS station opened in Los Angeles. That was live, of course.
* * *
"It was fine. It took me back to the days on the stage.
"The regular show, it I do it, will be a variety program, bringing in acts from the radio program. It will have to be done in Los Angeles, and if it isn't going to show well on kinescope, then my regular television appearances will have to be postponed for a year, anyway, even though I like it."

September rolled around. TV was on the air. Jack Benny wasn’t on it. The Los Angeles Daily News talked about it in its Sept. 10, 1949 issue.

New Jack Benny program Sunday full of vim, vigor
By WALT TALIAFERRO
(Radio and Television Editor)
Jack Benny proved to us he still has his mind concentrated on maintaining a top radio show rather than worry about television. We saw the rehearsal of the first Benny show of the season to be aired Sunday.
Instead of spoiling the fun for you by reviewing the show in advance we'll just tell you that the rehearsal was so good we are going to listen to the show too.
The vacations must have done the whole Benny gang good. They are in fine spirits and the writers gave out with a lively script to which you'll have to seep listening closely to keep up with the gags . . . if the audience doesn't drown them out.
Before Jack left on his vacation he told us—and we reported to you then—that he was not going to worry about television, but produce a top radio show.
We asked him yesterday if he had changed his mind.
"Definitely not. We’re going to get this show back on the air with the best of everything we have before we even think about television," Jackson said.
"Not that we've anything against television, but this will be our 18th consecutive year on this show . . . this is no time to split our efforts and do two things partly good instead of one really good," he added.
Benny emphasizes the fact that he has no commitments for any TV shows this season.
"If I do any at all . . . and that's not even certain . . . they will only be special occasions, not a regular show," he declared.
Even though this was the rehearsal of the first show of the season, the Benny gang had that same feeling of all being one big family that is reflected in the ease and happiness of their performances.
Even the violin virtuoso himself seemed happy they were all back to work again. And we got that impression we have often had while listening to Jack . . . he doesn't hog or steal the whole show.
We've watched rehearsals of some shown—with top performers too—and then listened to them and found that some of the good gag lines had been switched to the "star" because they were "too good" for the member of the cast for whom they had been written into the script.
If someone else in a Benny show can steal a scene with good lines . . . even an ad-lib, Jack doesn't highjack it. (And that was no pun either.) He leaves it in and lets the full benefit of the laughs go to the guy or gal who puts it over . . . or perhaps suggested it for the script.
Incidentally, one gag you won't hear on Sunday's show is the one Rochester pulled on yours truly . . . and he didn't mean it as a gag either, he just didn't know.
When he was introduced to Taliaferro, he said he'd been trying to get out and watch the games for a long time and still hoped to sometime. It threw us for a minute, but then it dawned that he was thinking he was meeting the great football player by that name.
We just aren't the same Taliaferro . . . as we have said before, we'll be happy if we can write as good as that one plays football. But as for physical effort . . . it's taken us a day to recover from landing a 25-pound white sea bass from the boat Alalunga on our day off Thursday.
Rochester, Mary Livingstone, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Don (fat as ever) Wilson, and the rest of the cast will really be throwing their best at you Sunday afternoon at 4:00 p. m. and again at 9:30 p. m. over CBS-KNX.

To paraphrase the old song title, what a difference a year makes. Jack’s consternation about splitting efforts and flying to and from New York evaporated. Concern about kinescopes did, too. It was a matter of practicality (until Desi Arnaz, in a brilliant bargaining move, convinced CBS to allow him to film his TV show in Los Angeles in 1951). Jack began his TV career on Oct. 28, 1950, periodic at first. But his series remained on the air in 1965, done in at CBS by executive Jim Aubrey and then at NBC by competition down the dial.