Laughing at the Concert

After Jack Benny’s success on radio and TV, he took to the stage again. Not necessarily with a variety revue like he had in the 1940s and ‘50s. He performed benefit violin concerts across North America with symphony orchestras and the world’s greatest violin players. One benefit months before he died in 1974 was to save the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, where he had played on his birthday in 1928. (Yes, that is the same Don Bestor who led the musicians on his show).

How much did Jack raise? Let’s find out from this story from the Associated Press, appearing in papers starting around Jan. 28, 1964 (of course, he had almost 11 more years to go).

Musician Jack Benny Has Made $3.5 Million For U.S. Symphones
By MURRAY CHASS
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Jack Benny, whose comic tightwad image has helped make him rich, draws still more money these days with his violin.
The money, however doesn't go into the mythical vault fictitiously located in the depths of Benny's Beverly Hills home.
Rather, it goes primarily into the treasuries of many of the nation's symphony orchestras with which Benny has appeared as guest soloist in benefit concerts, where he is in as much demand as he ever has been as a comic.
BENNY, WHO played violin professionally as a teen-ager, performs the concerts in complete sincerity. At the same time he is humorous about them.
"I'm not good enough to be a concert violinist," Benny says frankly, "but I'm good enough to do a comedy concert. The playing is as good as I can do—which isn't too good."
"I am only a fair violinist—not even a good one — who would not be able to give a legitimate concert."
Now at 70—far from his legendary 39 — Benny has appeared with most of the major orchestras in the country in the past seven years, receiving no salary for his performances, just expenses.
In all, he has played with about 35 orchestras and has helped raise nearly $3.5 million for various benefits. About half of the money has gone to maintenance and pension funds of the orchestras.
"I THINK I get about as much satisfaction out of this as anything," Benny explained before a recent appearance with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. "I have a lot of fun doing it. It's very much like a stage performance, and I like it very much.
"It's a satire on a world-famous violinist. I'm supposed to think that I am a great violinist.
"The audiences have been great. Some don't know what to expect. The easiest audiences to make laugh are concert-goers because they don't get a chance to laugh at concerts."
The critics have "been great about it," he added. “They've always loved it. I expected just once that some critic would say, 'It's funny, but it shouldn't be done.' But it's never happened. I play as good as I can. They (the critics) wouldn't like it if they thought I was making a monkey of the music. They know I wish I could play better."
THE COMEDIAN does not appear in the first half of the Benny concerts but takes the spotlight after the intermission. He works his colleagues into the act — in Pittshurgh, conductor William Steinberg arid concert master Samuel Thaviu served as his chief straight men, acting more than performing at times.
The program opens with Sarasate's "Gypsy Airs." Benny becomes enraged at the concertmaster for playing part of Benny's solo and has the conductor banish him. Somehow, near the end of the piece, the melody slides over into Benny's famous trademark, "Love In Bloom."
The second item (which varies from city to city) is a condensed version of one of the major classics, during which a couple more distractions occur. Benny and the conductor start heckling each other.
Finally in "Capriccio Espagnol" Benny serves as concertmaster. The music goes faster and faster, and at the end the distraught Benny stalks off the stage. He returns, however, for some informal encores.
THOUGH STEINBERG is a serious-minded director, he was quite taken by Benny.
"I feel that the fact he's so enormously musically makes the whole thing so pleasurable," he said. "Everything he does comes out of the spirit of the music, and that's what important."
Thaviu also admired Benny for his sincerity and his timing.
"When it (the performance) done in the spirit in which does it, it can't be anything but good," said the consertmaster.

A story in the Lompoc Record of Oct. 16, 1974 said Jack had appeared with 88 symphony orchestras as of Sept. 14 (after a show in New Orleans) and had raised an estimated 5.9 million dollars.

The paper advertised an engagement with the Santa Barbara Symphony on Nov. 26. He never made. Cancer had taken told. Jack Benny was dead in a month.