The Friars, Pennies and Benny

Jack Benny died on December 26, 1974 and, for a number of years, around the anniversary of his death, I've posted a newspaper editorial or column from the next day or so where the writer outlines what Jack meant to people and to comedy.

This time, I’m just going to pass along a few clippings of tribute. These are from 20 years earlier.

Eddie Cantor had a syndicated newspaper column. He had been a huge vaudeville star before Jack (growing up in New York helped) and made a mark in the early days of talking pictures. Jack evidently liked Cantor, who appeared a number of times with him on radio and TV. Jack also lobbied for him after Camels cancelled his radio show for speaking out against bigoted broadcast haranguer Father Coughlin. Stingy jokes stuck with Benny until the day he died:

Here’s Eddie’s note about Jack in a column of Dec. 8, 1954.

“I don’t think Jack Benny got his money just from saving pennies. Of course, that helped. I’ll never forget a part at his house a few years ago. Several of us were kidding around with each other’s theme songs. Rudy Vallee sang “Love in Bloom”; I sang “My Time is Your Time”; Jack Benny sang “I Love to Spend—.” That’s as far as he got—he had to be put to bed, hysterical!”
As the MC’s say, “Seriously Folks,” it’s surprising that Jack Benny can remain a millionaire, what with all the contributions he made to worthwhile causes. You can take it from Cantor, the old “chnorrer” (beggar, to you). No one in show business, but no one, gives more than Mary Livingston’s [sic] husband. I know. That’s the “jack” in Benny you never heard about.

Hy Gardner had a show on WPIX in New York and became one of the principals in the disastrous replacement for Steve Allen’s Tonight show in 1957. He went on to To Tell the Truth until Mark Goodson or someone realised Tom Poston was funnier. But he was, by profession, a New York newspaper columnist whose work was syndicated.

One of his columns dealt with that venerable New York institution of the first half of the twentieth century: the celebrity testimonial dinner. Jack Benny (and others of his vintage) referred to them on their radio shows. Here’s a snippet from Gardner’s column of Dec. 8, 1954. I can’t help but wonder if Benny’s writers came up with the first-mentioned joke.

Mary Steals the Spot
All the thunder of a shindig the New York Friars threw for Jack Benny, when Jack moved to Hollywood, was stolen by his wife, Mary Livingstone, even though she wasn't present.
She was home, but her telegram, read aloud, got the biggest laugh of the night. Milton Berle, Harry Hershfield, Doc Rockwell, Jay C. Flippen, Lou Holtz — all the regulars were on the dais; one after another they eulogized Benny until he began growing a third head. At the height of his flight into the clouds, a Western Union messenger arrived with a telegram. The toastmaster read the wire to himself, then stood up, put his hand solemnly on Jack's shoulder and read the message aloud: "Dear Jack," it said, "when you come home tonight, don't forget to put the garbage in the incinerator. Lovingly, Mary.” . . .
On George Washington's birthday this year, Jack Benny flew in from Hollywood to turn the tables on [George] Jessel and act as toastmaster at a testimonial dinner. Introducing Mayor Wagner of New York, Jack said that Bob had the third most important job in the country. "Being President, of course, is first, the second," he explained, "is being head waiter at the Copacabana when Martin and Lewis are appearing there."

Erskine Johnson was another columnist, syndicated by the Newspaper Enterprise Association. In December, he had a few brief notes about Jack:

Jack Benny had lunch in a Fairfax Avenue delicatessen and the owner hastily scribbled this sign for his window: “Jack Benny is eating lunch here.”

Jack Benny about movies on TV: “They’re like furniture—either early American or old English.”

And there came this unusual complaint Johnson reported on Dec. 4:

Jack Benny can do no wrong as far as I’m concerned, but TViewers are complaining to me about his smug “isn’t this funny” smiles directed to the camera in the midst of his laugh ploys. They say they don’t mind Jack playing to the camera in his opening monolog, but that his lens-peeking between plot lines is irritating and unnecessary.
“Never look at the camera,” is rule No. 1 in the ABC’s of movie emoting.
Maybe it should apply to TV laugh-getting, too.

Some viewers don’t seem to have understood Jack’s expression was facetious. And it was his expressions that helped build his television career and kept him on the air until he died.

Jack Benny's Gift to War Vets

Christmas is a time of giving, the cliché goes, and one person who knew that was Jack Benny.

It seems every time I look up what Jack was doing over the holiday season, he was performing, often for charity.

75 years ago, he was one of a number of entertainers who went to San Francisco in December to perform for wounded veterans. He told columnist Herb Caen “When I saw then, I could have cried—except that I was supposed to make them laugh.”

Caen’s paper, the Examiner, sponsored the shows. This story appeared in the Dec. 22, 1950 edition.

Wounded Vets Cheered By Jack Benny, Troupe
Comedian Joins Examiner Fund Show For Bay Region War Hero Patients
The kid in the wheel chair didn't feel much like smiling.
None of the guys lying on beds, or sitting in wheel chairs, in the ward at Letterman Hospital yesterday felt much like smiling.
They were all just back from Korea. And they were all amputees, some with one, some, like the kid in the wheel chair, with two legs missing.
They were waiting, their expressions solemn, yesterday afternoon, to see the Examiners War Wounded Fund Show. Jack Benny, they had heard, was coming, and Constance Moore, the musical comedy star, and a lot of other top entertainers.
FAMILIES THERE
The wives and children of some of the wounded men were there. A tall blond sergeant who lost his right leg in the battle near Yongdang on September 24, sat quietly on his bed, his arm around his 4 1/2 year old daughter. The pretty blonde little girl sat gingerly on the big hospital bed, looking from time to time to her father for reassurance.
Suddenly, somebody shouted, "here he comes" and the wounded soldier applauded as Jack Benny stepped to the microphone in the center of the ward.
"Hiya, fellas," Benny said and the show was on.
Slowly the atmosphere of tension, of solemnity, began to break. The kid in the wheel chair rolled himself up closer to the entertainers, a small smile on his face.
ALL LAUGHING
Before long Benny had the whole ward shouting with laughter.
And when Constance Moore invited her audience to join in on the chorus of "Harvest Moon," they did, even the kid in the wheel chair.
It was a big show. Besides Benny and Miss Moore there was the impressionist, Arthur Blake; singers Katy Lee, Bob Hamma, Russ Byrd and Harry "Woo Woo" Stevens; dancers Charlie Aaron, Tony Wing, Toy and Wing, and Earl "Happy Feet" Burrows with the Four Naturals. The wounded soldiers cheered for more.
SHOWS TODAY
Benny and The Examiner troupe played the wards at Letterman yesterday afternoon, then gave an evening performance at the Letterman Theater for ambulatory patients last night with Walt Roesner and his band joining the show cast.
Benny will journey this morning to the Travis Air Force Base at Fairfield for a 10 a. m. show. He will entertain at 2 p. m. at Matte Island Hospital and will give a third performance at the Marine Hospital tonight. His final performance with The Examiner troupe will be tomorrow afternoon at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital at 2 o'clock.
Harold Peary, "The Great Gildersleeve," and Movie Starlet Marylou Gray will join the troupe for an extra noon show tomorrow in the wards and the theater at Travis Air Base.
Benny was met on his arrival here yesterday by Col. John S. Mallory, special service officer of the Sixth Army; Lt. Cmdr. William G. Palmer of division of welfare of the Twelfth Naval District, and George Heinz, producer-director of The Examiner shows. Also with Benny are Charlie Bagby and Frankie Remley of his CBS radio show.

Benny and his troupe whirled through three more performances the next day, cheering audiences at the Travis Air Force Base, Mare Island and Marine Hospitals. The next afternoon, on December 23, he put on his act at the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital.

Out of curiosity, I looked up what Jack was doing 100 years ago at Christmas. That week, he was appearing at the Orpheum in Kansas City. Among the other acts was Benny Rubin. The Journal-Post reviewed him on Dec. 20, 1925.

A few minutes with Jack Benny are as many minutes of hearty humor. His comedy is of a lingering kind. There is so much real humor and such a variety of fun in his work that the result is not merely passing laughs but laughs his audiences take home with them.

As for charity work, sure enough, I found this in the Star of December 24, 1925:

Actors from various Kansas City theaters will join tonight in an entertainment for the United States veterans hospital. The entertainment, which will begin at 6:30 o’clock, will be preceded by a dance and the distribution of gifts given by patriotic organizations associated with the veterans’ hospital.
Among the actors who will entertain the veterans are Jack Benny, who is appearing at the Orpheum theatre, and the Marcell Sisters from the Pantages theatre, Ray Stinson’s orchestra will play. The Red Cross at the hospital is in charge of the program.

The next day, the Kansas City Times reported he “jested and played the violin.”

(Did Rubin appear? I dunno).

After K.C., Jack was off to Madison, Wisconsin for another vaudeville stop—and more of a long career that included giving morale to those who needed it.

SIDE NOTE:
Jack was mentioned in Dorothy Kilgallen's Christmas column of 1954. Oddly, fellow What's My Line? panellist Fred Allen was omitted.

The Departure of Phil Harris

It took the better part of a decade for the Jack Benny radio show to settle down with the main cast we remember best. If you think of Benny’s announcer and bandleader, you don’t think of Howard Claney and Frank Black.

Benny debuted on May 2, 1932. By the start of the 1939-40 season, everything was in place with the addition of Dennis Day as the replacement for tenor Kenny Baker. Mary Livingstone came first (as a new character), followed by Don Wilson as a replacement announcer, Phil Harris as a replacement orchestra leader and Eddie Anderson as Rochester.

They were together for a long time (Harris and Day took time off for war duties) but the demise of network radio in the 1950s included the Benny radio show. The growth of television took away listeners from radio’s prime time. That took away advertisers’ money that paid for the shows. Gradually, Benny dismantled his regular cast.

Mary Livingstone stopped appearing live and her lines, unenthusiastically delivered, were edited into the tapes of the show. By the end of the show in 1955, there were episodes where she didn’t appear at all and Veola Vonn was brought in as a female lead. Dennis Day had other projects and he was not appearing every week. And even Bob Crosby had vanished as band leader and his spot was taken by arranger Mahlon Merrick or musicians Charlie Bagby or Sammy Weiss.

Crosby, himself, was a replacement for Harris, who was hired in 1936 when Johnny Green moved to the Packard broadcast. More than Mary, more than Dennis, Harris’ departure was, to me at least, a real blow.

Just as it took some time for the Benny show to develop, it took time for Harris’ character to develop. Originally, he and Benny were antagonists because of Jack’s jealousy over Phil’s popularity with the big female stars of Hollywood (in real life, Harris was married with a son). That resulted in pettiness and yelling, neither of which is very comedic. But the writers came up with some additions that made Harris funny. He became self-confident and self-loving, despite being practically illiterate, with a gang of reprobates as musicians. Audiences ate it up when Harris, ignoring Benny altogether, came on stage and egged on the audience to give him a noisy reception.

The Harris character talked a lot about alcohol, but was never drunk on the air. Talking about it was funny enough. His character became so popular the F.W. Fitch Co. decided to have him replace Cass Daley as the star of The Fitch Bandwagon in the fall of 1946. Joining him was wife Alice Faye and, later, a cast including Elliott Lewis, Walter Tetley and Robert North, as well as two fine child actresses playing his daughters, Jeanine Roose and Anne Whitfield. His show became, like all others, a casualty of the rise of television and left the air on June 18, 1954 (though Harris told his audience that evening they would be back next fall).

Meanwhile, back on the Benny show, something was happening behind the scenes. The Associated Press made the story national on Apr. 1, 1952.

Benny, Harris Reported Near Parting of Ways
HOLLYWOOD, April 1 (AP)—One of radio’s longest and funniest associations—Jack Benny and Phil Harris—may end at the close of this season.
A spokesman for Benny today confirmed a trade report that such a move is under consideration next autumn. The relationship reportedly became strained when Harris refused to make a guest appearance with Benny on the latter’s television show.
Benny chose Bob Crosby instead. Crosby is reported under consideration to replace Harris. But—
“Crosby has not been signed, nor has Harris been dropped,” the spokesman added.
Both Benny and Harris were unreachable.



Harris couldn’t do anything but refuse. He had signed an exclusive television deal with NBC. Benny was on CBS. On April 27, the AP wire quoted Benny as saying Harris was being replaced with Crosby.

The Trenton Sunday Times-Advertiser published this story on May 4, 1952. It is likely a product of the CBS PR department.

Benny Signs New Radio Pact; Bob Crosby Replaces Harris
Jack Benny announced that he will continue on CBS Radio next season at the request of his sponsor. This is the earliest date this decision has been reached in recent years.
"I am very gratified," said Benny, "that my sponsor wanted us to stay on next season. After all, it would have been very difficult to say farewell to an audience that they estimate as 18,575,000 people a week. And I am sure that with Mary, Dennis, Rochester, Don, the Sportsmen Quartet and my regular radio writers with us again, we will broadcast as funny a show as we possibly can for the listeners to this country's 105,000,000 radio sets who tune us in."
The only change in the program will be the substitution of Bob Crosby for Phil Harris. The reason for the switch was because Phil Harris was not available for the Benny television program. Bob Crosby will appear on the Benny television show, as well as the radio program.
"To continue with CBS Radio," Benny went on, "it was necessary to limit my television appearances to a one-every-four-weeks basis. This, I think, is a good balance."
The "Jack Benny Program" is a veritable Sunday evening institution in American radio homes and one of radio's all-time top-rated shows. The comedy series switched to CBS Radio on January 2, 1949. Benny himself made his radio debut in 1932 on CBS' New York radio station, then WABC, and shortly after launched his own program on the network. He has been the recipient of some of the greatest honors in show business, including the coveted Peabody Award.

Harris spent the summer touring and not talking about Benny. Crosby was a little more chatty. Columnist Hal Humphrey reported on June 13:

Bob’s inclined to be somewhat sensitive about the fact that he replaces Phil Harris on the radio show.
“It was just a combination of circumstances,” he explains. “Phil’s own radio show on another network conflicted with Benny’s TV time, making it impossible to use him.

Crosby also wanted the exposure. Humphrey added:

Despite the fact that he’s also set to begin his sixth year on CBS Radio’s “Club 15” series, Bob is hep enough to know that TV is going to make him a bigger name, and that it’s a tough medium for band leaders to crack.

Another factor in the change may have been revealed by Variety, which revealed Benny had “been forced to make salary concessions” and then mentioned the Crosby hiring.

All this took place before the end of the Benny radio show for the season on June 1. One columnist noted there was not so much as a goodbye or thank-you by Jack on Phil’s final broadcast.

There was something else that became a source of discomfort. Hollywood columnist Harrison Carroll wrote on June 12 that Harris’ guitarist and long-time friend Frank Remley would be staying with the Benny show. Remley and Benny had become personal friends and travelling buddies. Benny’s letters to Remley survive and the language wasn’t exactly suitable for a radio broadcast.

Mentions of Remley had been made for years on the Benny show so when Harris got his own show, Elliott Lewis was hired to play him. That changed after the real Remley remained with Jack. When Harris’ show returned to the air on October 5, the Remley character got a name change. In fact, what had been Harris’ band remained with Jack, on radio and television.

Financially, Phil and Alice did well. Toronto Star columnist Gordon Sinclair wrote on June 5 that when the pair’s contract expired, NBC couldn’t sell their show. But they played what Sinclair called “an ‘on-again off-again’ routine” and wound up with more money and a five-year contract.

On the air, Harris was larger than life. Crosby was not. The Spokane Chronicle’s Bob Emahiser interviewed him and reported on June 25 “no attempt would be made to made to imitate Harris and that a new role is being created for him.” Crosby was hamstrung somewhat by being known to audiences through Club 15 and it would have been awkward to deviate from his casual nature. There wasn’t much else to do outside “Bing is my brother” and “I’m not Phil” jokes (some of which were repurposed from earlier shows with Harris). The writers then seized on his mispronunciation of a kosher brand and squeezed what they could out of that. When Club 15 ended, Crosby’s appearances with Benny became fewer and fewer.

As it turned out, Harris (and Faye) had little interest in a television series. He was assigned to NBC’s All-Star Revue at the start of the 1952-53 season and his contract called for eight appearances on the network that year. The contract ran out and he reunited with Benny on the small screen on October 5, 1958. But he preferred to go golfing, fishing and spending time with his family in Rancho Mirage. He and Faye were married for 54 years until his death in 1995.

What? Worry About Television?

The beginning of the end of network radio was nigh. And everyone knew it.

Americans had been pretty much promised there would be television after World War Two and it slowly, but surely, happened.

A stream of stations signed on in 1947 and 1948. More transmitter construction permits were approved by the FCC. Coaxial cable was being laid in the East to bring more live programmes to more cities. The broadcast day was being expanded. All of this happened before the huge popularity of the Texaco Star Theatre with Milton Berle on television.

More, importantly, sponsor money was slowly being siphoned toward television. It was leaving network radio.

During 1948, newspaper columnists made a to-do about the top radio comedians and how television would affect them. It wasn’t quite like going back to vaudeville. There were hot lights, cameras getting in the way of the audience and, worse still, dialogue that changed with every programme; a vaudeville act went from city to city with maybe minor tinkering along the way.

Perhaps the most successful comedian to move into television from radio was Jack Benny. His TV show remained on the air from 1950 to 1965, and he followed that with periodic specials until his death in 1974. This was even as the style of comedy evolved.

The Bridgeport Port of August 2, 1948 took up the situation in a column supposed written by Jack himself. Whoever penned it made fun of the trepidation that newspaper columnists seemed to feel was eating away at comedians.

Video No Worry To Benny! Oh, No?
(Editor’s Note: While Rocky Clark is on vacation, his column is being written by guests from the radio and entertainment world. Today’s guest columnist is Jack Benny, comedian).
It seems that every radio comedian I bump into these days is worried sick about television. What will it be like? How will it affect them? What will be the reaction of the public when it can see as well as hear these comedians?
For the actor, it means learning a new medium, mastering a different technique. No more reading from scripts—every line must he memorized. The sudden transition will not be easy.
We few, who won't be affected by television, can't help but notice the fear in the faces of those less fortunate actors. It's like a Frankenstein monster that haunts them until they can't see or think straight.
Recently I had lunch with Eddie Cantor, a case in point. He spoke about Ida, his five daughters, the new picture he's producing, a play he has coming up on Broadway. He told me a few stories (which I had already heard from Jessel) and raved about some song he was doing next week on the air. But not once did he mention what was uppermost in his mind—television.
Cantor is always acting, but he couldn't fool me. I knew that underneath his apparent gaiety—the handclapping, the eye-rolling, the jumping up and down—he was trying to find escape, escape from the morbid fear that was sapping his strength and confidence.
Of course, with me, it's different. But I couldn't help wondering how I would feel if I were in poor Eddie's spot.
As we left the restaurant, I tried to cheer him up. I shook hands with him and said, "Don't worry, Eddie."
He said, "Worry about what?" Pathetically, he pretended he didn't know what I was talking about. And as the chauffeur opened the door and little Eddie stepped into his big Cadillac. I knew that during that long drive to his 40-room home in Beverly Hills the one thing in his mind was that terrible dread of television.
Burns And Allen, Too
Then, there are Burns and Allen. I played golf with George Burns and he pulled the same act as Cantor. He made out that he didn't have a worry in the world. He purposely played a better game of golf than I did, just so I wouldn't see how upset he was.
On the way back to the club-house he kept laughing and telling me the same jokes Cantor told me (which I had already heard from Jessel) and all the while I knew his nerves were at the breaking point, that the specter of television gnawed at every fibre of his being. I kept thinking how fortunate I was—that I wasn't in the same position. Poor George, and Eddie, and Bob Hope, too!
I met Hope the other day, and he was carrying on worse than Burns and Cantor. Naturally, Bob is younger. He's just getting his break, and television will hit him harder than the others. There he was, standing in the lobby surrounded by a crowd of GI's signing autographs and cracking the same jokes that George Burns told me, that Cantor told me (which already heard from Jessel).
And when Bob called out, "Hello, Jack, I'll be with you in a second," I knew immediately from the timbre of his voice that television was making a nervous wreck out of him, too.
But I've got to hand it to Hope. In spite of the heartbreak, the fear inside of him, not once did he let down and allow his actions to betray his real feelings. He was brash and breezy, eyes sparkling, fall of pep, but when I inadvertently mentioned what television would do to some radio comedians, that got him.
His reaction was instantaneous. His face sobered. His manner softened. He put his arm around my shoulder, and for a brief moment I thought I saw a tear in his eye. At that instant, I hated myself for having let these words slip out. How it must have hurt the boy!
He said, "Buck up, Jack. It'll work out somehow." Poor Bob! He didn't want me to worry about him.
Poor Mr. Allen!
Then I got to thinking about the others. Fred Allen, for instance. What must be going on in his mind? In spite of what everybody thinks about Allen, we must admit he is intelligent. He realizes what television will mean to him. He shaves every morning. He knows what he looks like.
I tuned in on his program accidentally recently, and it was pitiful. He told the same jokes that Bob Hope told those GIs that George Burns told me after Cantor told me (which I had already heard from Jessel). I never felt so embarrassed for anybody in my life. The only thing that saved Allen's program was the audience. They were so sorry for him, they laughed continuously all through the show. You can't fool the American public. The people know television is just around the corner, and it was just their way of saying, "So long, Fred. You did a great job."
Last night I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes I saw poor little Eddie Cantor, Burns and Allen, Bob Hope, Fred Allen and all those other radio comedians less fortunate than I. It was a never-ending parade, Fibber McGee and Molly, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton, Jack Carson, the Great Gildersleeve—all potential victims of television.
And as I lay there wide awake in bed, I knew what they were going through—sleepless nights, tossing and turning, wondering what the future held in store for them. The uncertainty—the agony of waiting! The feeling of complete helplessness as, moving ever closer, television crept to engulf them and relegate them to the past.

Some radio comedians weren’t all that interested in television. The most surprising of the lot was Edgar Bergen, who was president of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences until mid-1947, and had appeared in a short film on W6XAO in Los Angeles in 1940. I still think Burns and Allen were better on television and radio. And networks tried to find something that fit Fred Allen but never really did.

Jack Benny, however, had created such a strong, laughable persona for himself that, even without Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris and Dennis Day (for the most part) that he was able to move from the microphone to in front of the camera with ease.

Battle of the Comedy Sexes

While scrolling on line, I spotted the caricatures you see below that were sent on the Associated Press wire. So I decided to post the drawing and the article that went along with it.

This appears to be one of those stories where the writer asked a number of celebrities being interviewed some side questions, then banked them for a compilation feature piece for later publication.

This story appeared in papers in 1948. As it was written on the East Coast, it is devoid of opinions of West Coast radio comediennes or comic actresses, such as Gracie Allen, Cass Daley, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Marian Jordan and many others (this is not an excuse for you to comment “You forgot {insert name here}.”).

There is validity in the points raised. People will listen to old radio shows or watch aged animated cartoons and won’t laugh because they don’t get the references. I imagine gags on Bob Hope’s shows about ensigns or top sergeants went over big with his military audiences in World War Two, but they do nothing for me.

I chuckle about the columnist’s disdain for Henry Morgan. Morgan expressed disdain for women, especially ex-wives who wanted his money.

Cynthia Lowry spent years in Los Angeles reviewing television shows, but she was no fluff reporter. She was assigned to France by the A.P. during the war and got a first-hand look at the horrors of the Belsen concentration camp in Germany in March 1946. She died in 1991.

Comedians Differ on Why Women Laugh, or Don't
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
(Associated Press Newsfeatures)
New York, June 26.—Women laugh at jokes because they have sense of humor.
Just a minute, now, let me finish. This isn't my opinion. I'm just reporting it. It's what some of America's top comedians think. Except Henry Morgan: He thinks women just laugh at things men don't think are funny. I don't think Henry Morgan is funny.
A couple of lady comics think women laugh quicker, sooner and harder. Maybe you think they are prejudiced, so we'll amplify that later.
Jack Benny does not think questions about women's sense of humor calls for gag answers.
"Men and women respond to about the same things in the way of humor," he said. "I'd go a little heavier in the sex angle with an audience of women. But not too rough. That would embarrass them."
Fred Allen, another veteran of vaudeville, puts it somewhat differently. He thinks the world is quite simply divided into people with a sense of humor and people without a sense of humor.
"If they have one, they laugh," said, "If they don't, they don't. But it isn't question of whether it's woman or a man.
"Women will laugh at gags about styles or stocking shortages," he continued thoughtfully. "Men will laugh at golf jokes, gags about horse racing. But they're just laughing at things they know about. Women don't play the horses much.
"A college professor will snicker it someone trips over some ivy by a university building. A garbage man will laugh if someone slips in the swill. They're both laughing at basic thing—only in settings they are familiar with. But they laugh because they think it's funny—not because they are men.”
Jack Haley, one of the stars of "Inside U. S. A.,” agrees that it is familiar things that make people laugh. But he thinks women are more likely to laugh at "light things" than men.
"Men like heavy humor you can put your teeth in," he says. "Women go for more frivolous stuff. There's no better, more responsive audience in the world than bunch of women—all women."
He thinks there are many men more comedians than women because "humor is an aggressive thing." He didn't explain that.
Paul Hartman, a master of humor in dancing and now starring in "Angel in the Wings," said women laugh as hard as men, but are likely to laugh at different jokes.
"For instance, women in an audience will always go for the classic burlesque: A man pantomiming a woman adjusting her girdle or trying to find an unfastened garter. We've got a sketch in our show built around some military slang, but it never goes over to a matinee audience. Women just don't understand military slang."
Then there's this Henry Morgan.
"I've often noticed women laughing," said Morgan, "but usually only at the minor calamities that befall men. If women had sense of humor why should they on being women?"
Gracie Fields thinks men and women laugh equally hard at the same jokes—it they're familiar with the subject matter.
"But," she adds, "women catch on to a gag faster every time."
Nancy Walker, star of the musical comedy hit "Look Ma, I'm Dancin'," is the summer-upper.
"Dames," she said, "are the quickest, smartest people in the world, but they spend most of their lives trying to keep men from knowing it. Just about the only time they don't have to cover up and let their hair down is when they're all together at matinee.
"Then they'll laugh and whoop louder than anything you ever heard at anything that strikes them funny. They get the gags quicker. But just at matinees. They don't act that way when they go to the theater with their men in the evening."

Has Jack Got a Rumour

When gossip magazines have written about someone for 20 years, it’s likely difficult trying to find something new to publish.

Evidently, this was the situation the Radio-TV Mirror found itself in.

The magazine gave Jack Benny its Best Comedian in Radio award in 1952. At that point, he had been in radio for 20 years. What could it write that was different?

Cleverly, one writer found a way. Rather conveniently, a “rumour” surfaced that Jack was going to quit radio.

While network radio was slowly sinking into the sunset, Jack had no intention of getting out radio. Even at the end of his radio run in 1955, attempts were being made to keep his show on the air. By then, the sponsor money wasn’t there.

The rest of the information in the magazine’s gush-job was nothing new. Most of it seems accurate. Whether the mother quotes are, is your guess. The story of how Mary got on the radio was oft-told but not true. The script for her debut exists and her real name is on it. And Jack was born in Chicago, not Waukegan as he said frequently.

Jack Benny — Mr. Showbusiness Himself
By PAULINE SWANSON
EVERYBODY loves a rumor. And a guaranteed gasp-provoker going the rounds in Hollywood at the moment is that Jack Benny—Jack Benny!—will quit radio for good to devote all his time to television.
It’s a monstrous notion. Jack Benny, after all, is radio, on the top for at least eighteen of the twenty years he has been hello-ing everybody within earshot on Sunday nights—some 25,000,000 everybodies, at latest count.
Two thousand of his show business pals crowded into the New York Friars Club last November, on the occasion of his twentieth anniversary on the airways, to call him the greatest—Mr. Show Business himself. You readers of Radio-TELEvision Mirror have been voicing this sentiment in your own way, year after year voting him your Favorite Radio Comedian.
Why, Jack Benny even has an Act of Congress to guarantee that the 7 P.M. Sunday night hour on the air is his forevermore.
Jack Benny quit radio? It’s a nasty rumor, and it shocks everybody—everybody, that is, who doesn’t know Jack Benny.
His close friends aren’t. Most of them have known Jack for almost all of the 43 years he has been in show business (he’s been entertaining people, you know, for four years more than the 39 he grudgingly admits to—Who’s Who says he’s 58). Friends have seen him do some crazy things. Crazy like a fox. Like quitting vaudeville, when nobody could top his earnings or his audiences, to take a flyer in the new “talkies”—then as immature and brassy a medium as a lot of people think television is today. Like quitting films in turn, when he had an ironclad, gold-lined contract for something approximating life, to go back to the stage because he couldn’t stand being cut off from direct contact with the audience, with the people out there in front.
And, of course, everybody knows by now the legend of Jack’s third big walkout—when he left the stage where he commanded a weekly salary in four figures and the biggest, brightest lights on the marquee, to “go into radio.”
Legend by now, too, his first broadcast back in 1932—a guest shot, for free, with Commentator Ed Sullivan. Jack walked up to the terrifying mike, his jitters concealed by dint of heroic effort, and said, “Hello, folks. This is Jack Benny talking. ... There will now be a brief pause | while you all say ‘Who cares?’”
Twenty-five million of you cared, it turned out ... Jack Benny floated, with apparent ease, to the top of the heap again. Radio was his. His mother, had she lived to see it, would have been pleased. It was she who had dinned into her young son’s head the maxim he has lived by: “It is not enough, Benny, to be good enough. It has to be as good as you can make it.”
The last words she said to him, as he sat beside her deathbed, were: “You'll keep on studying.”
A new medium, new techniques, a whole field of younger, fresh competitors ... of course he would have to accept the challenge, and never stop “studying” until he had licked it—not just when it was good enough, but when it was as good as he could make it.
Mrs. Kubelsky would have understood. So, for the record, does the other woman who has molded Jack Benny’s life . . . his wife for twenty-five years, Mary Livingston.


It was for Mary, really, that Jack in the early thirties took his first flyer in films. They lived a normal life for a while. They had a house—rented, but it stayed in one place—and they actually went to bed at night for a change, and got up in the morning! Mary was in seventh heaven, until she began to feel that Jack was not. “You'd better go and see Mr. Mayer,” she said, “and tell him ‘thanks so much but I quit.’”
He did.
Mary’s place in the radio show came about even more accidentally than her bit in the vaudeville act. An actress failed to show up for a broadcast, and Mary was on.
That was twenty years ago, and Mary has been a fixture on the show ever since. ‘ It could have been twenty minutes ago to Mary’s stomach. She has never gotten over her stage fright, her show-time jitters—original source of her now famous giggle.
Mary would have begged off radio years ago if Jack—and their audiences—had permitted it. Now, especially, that their daughter Joan is a Stanford freshman, all pal and no problem, Mary would like to be free to enjoy their new comradeship.
Mary could see Jack go into television—and without her—without a pang. And the rumors that he might don’t shock her one bit.
And, let it be said without further ado, they don’t shock Jack.
They couldn’t, inasmuch as he started them!
From the day he made his first TV appearance—those first shows, incidentally, may have delighted the audience, but they didn’t satisfy Jack; they weren’t “as good as he could make it”—Jack has hammered at everybody who would listen to him that he is fascinated with television.
“It’s like going back to the theatre .. . you know you make contact .. . the audience is there,” he says.
It’s the old, intimate show business again, and Jack Benny feels thirty-nine again, experiencing it. But there are a few problems. A sponsor, a contract ... to say nothing of his high-powered and highpriced staff. Some of them have been with him for eighteen years. And TV doesn’t pay their kind of prices.
It wouldn’t surprise anybody who really knows Benny if Jack made the leap, anyway, and shelled out the money himself to keep his co-workers in the style to which they have grown accustomed.
People who buy the picture of Jack Benny—which he has created himself, of course—of the nickel-pinching skinflint, who exacts a lawn-mowing as well as a solo for Dennis Day’s weekly twenty-five dollars, would simply never believe that Jack Benny is unmindful of the importance of the dollar. They would never believe he could exchange radio’s lush profits for television’s comparative peanuts cheerfully once he was convinced that, in the new medium, he could entertain more people more effectively. But it’s true.
Some of his greatest shows he has done for considerably less than nothing—in Iran, for instance, and Egypt, and Sicily, Italy, New Guinea, Australia, the Marianas, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, the Solomons and Kwajalein, where he took his troupe during World War II. Ask any G.I. if Jack Benny was funny under front-line pressure? And even they, probably, wouldn’t believe the actual fact that Jack spent $100,000 of his own money in telephone line charges in order to be able to get the show to them.
But he did; entertainment is giving.
Last summer, he took a troupe to Korea—when many a younger, hardier man was begging off—traveled 30,000 miles in everything from a jeep to a helicopter, slept— no more than four hours a night—in a dirt-floored tent, and gave.
He came home, a friend says, “Looking like hell broken physically and mentally.”
But he caught up on his sleep, told the world that it was the greatest experience of his life and he would go again at the drop of a hat.
He talked of nothing but “those wonderful guys” slugging it up and down Korean mountains.
And their wonderful jokes.
Their jokes—just as on the air it’s always Rochester, or Phil Harris, or Mary, or Dennis Day who grabs off the big laugh, while the boss brings down the house with “We... ll.” A great entertainer, Jack Benny.
A giver.
And once he decides, if he does, that he can give you more on television than on radio—which has called him the Greatest and made him rich—you’ll be seeing him regularly in your living rooms.

Jack Benny's Comedy and Violin

Perhaps it was the vaudevillian in him, but Jack Benny always liked being on stage.

Yes, there was an audience in front of him in the radio days, but he went city-to-city with a company in the 1930s, did the same thing during the war, performed at the Palladium in London, appeared in Vegas in the ‘50s and then began to perform concerts all over North America until his death in 1974.

One of his stops in 1965 was at Harrah’s in Lake Tahoe. The usual chat with the media took place. By this time, it must have been tough finding original questions to ask. Jack was moody and could get dismissive with reporters who asked him trite things like “Are you really cheap?” An entertainment writer for the Reno Evening Gazette put together this story for the Aug. 7 edition.

Benny Describes the 'Benny' Character
Aphorisms are usually hokum or are contradicted by other aphorisms. But sometimes one finds the mark, as "You're only as old as you feel" does in the case of Jack Benny.
"You know I'm past 70," Benny mused, "but I'm darned if I feel like a man that age. As a matter of fact, I feel better now than I did when I really was 39."
Benny was relaxing in his Harrah's Tahoe South Shore Room dressing room, his hands poking out of a shantung robe to busily work on a between-shows snack of pancakes and milk.
"Things were hectic in the old days," Benny said between bites, his famed blue eyes gaining in sparkle. "Every show seemed so important. Now, I take things in my stride." Then he smiled and added, "After all, at my age, where am I gonna go?"
The famed comedian is starring in Harrah's through Aug. 22 with singer, Wayne Newton, and dancers, Brascia and Tybee.

Resting in his dressing room, Benny fails on all counts as a Benny has helped form many temperamental star.
He's a gracious man, slightly more serious in demeanor off-stage than on, totally lacking in the mock pomposity he has indulged in for years in the entertainment world. Speaking with him is like speaking with someone you've known for decades. And you do speak with him. He isn't out to "prove" anything to anyone. Benny has the ease and humility of a man who knows himself well.
Of course, the unmistakable voice, the innocent blue eyes, the casual gestures are the same backstage or on.
"I stay young I suppose because I just can't stop working,” he said. "This is a youthful business, and I have young people on my tv shows and on-stage here, like Wayne (Newton), a fine young man and great talent," Benny said.
"Retire? I honestly don't think I ever will, though I would like to devote a whole season to giving concerts. I dearly love giving concerts.”
Benny has helped for many symphony orchestras and kept others financially afloat by taking part in fund-raising appearances in all parts of the country.
"The whole thing is satire on the concert musician," Benny, a serious musician and violinist in his own right, said. "I come out in white tie and tails and everything deteriorates from there.
"Of course, I don't charge a fee for the appearances, only my traveling expenses. It's my hobby and the thing I get the biggest kick out of."
The comedian practices playing violin to the tune of two hours a day. "Sometimes here at Harrah's, I get together with some of the boys in Leighton Noble's band and we have impromptu musicales down in the band room." Finishing his pancakes, Benny leaned back in a soft, overstuffed chair and spoke of comedy.
"Most of the jokes flow out of the characters themselves," he said. "Like on a radio show a long time ago, we did a few gags about my being stingy. It seemed to go over, so we did more the next week. And that's the way a character evolves."
Other jokes come from "real life," Benny said.
"There's a story I tell about my great friend, George Burns. In the story, I'm waiting for George in my hotel room, standing on one foot, stark naked, with a book balanced on my head, a glass of water in one hand and a rose in the other," he recounted. "As I tell it in show, George suspected something and sent the maid in ahead of him!
"Actually, the joke really happened, except that George wasn't expecting anything and it was a bellhop who came into the room first. You have to embellish a little, he said.
And what of the radio-tv-stage character, "Jack Benny?" Has the creator ever grown weary of his creation?
Benny thought for a moment, then shook his head, "No," he said, "I don't think so. The 'Jack Benny' character has lot of facets. It includes stinginess, vanity, all the human frailties. No, I think I like ‘Jack Benny.’

What was the show like? Here’s a review from the San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 10.

The Incomparable Jack Benny
By STANLEY EICHELBAUM
No comedian is quite like Jack Benny. There is certainly no one around with his sense of dignified, subtle clowning, or with his ability to play the straight man, by unleashing an outrageous barrage of dry, dead-pan wisecracks, which break up an audience even before it realizes that he intends to be funny.
In his current show Harrah's Club on Lake Tahoe, Benny saunters on stage at a leisurely, rolling gait, looking rather like a nattily-groomed stockbroker. His poise and posture are impeccable. And his timing is no less perfect than Big Ben's.
To an obviously rapt mob of admirers, he comments on his phenomenal youthfulness and then confides that he is finished pretending to be only 39. "I've now reached he declares, with a murderous, baby blue glare. Then, he confides that he, too, has a clan--like Sinatra--but that at his coterie is called Ovaltine a-Go-Go. It consists of Edward Everett Horton, Ed Wynn, Walter Brennan and Spring Byington, who meet regularly for a game of whist. "And whatever money we win pays for our visits to the Mayo Clinic," he explains.
SIXTH SUMMER

Since this is Benny's sixth summer pilgrimage to Harrah's-Tahoe, he has every right to indulge in family matters—to talk about his wife Mary and their recent 38th anniversary. "It can happen," he remarks, with a certain nonchalance, "even in show business. And I wouldn't trade Mary for Elizabeth Taylor, or Richard Burton.”
The quips are relentless, ticked off with supreme aloofness and tempered with that Jack Benny look of righteous indignation, specially when he invokes his celebrated trademark—being the most confirmed cheapskate in public life.
As always, he surrounds himself with proteges—formers who are led to believe that they would be washing dishes, were it not for Benny's helping hand. But they are permitted (even encouraged) to insult their immortal employer, to have the last word in a stabbing exchange of wits.
DANCE TEAM
So when a lithe and attractive dance team, Brascia and Tybee, complete their impressive acrobatic whirls, Benny is ready to make a pass at Miss Tybee, but is outsmarted by Brascia, who happens to be her husband.
Benny then cedes the spotlight to Wayne Newton, a tall, boyish and enterprising pop singer with an exuberant and folksy style that goes directly to the heart of an audience, particularly those who are won over by clean-cut youth and boundless vitality. With the energy of a windmill, he swoops down on such sure-fire old favorites as "Swanee" and "Rockabye My Baby," until the crowd whimpers for more.
'RED ROSES'
And after a bouncing rendition of "Red Roses for a Blue Lady," he throws himself at the first rank of tables, shaking hands at random (with exultations of "God bless you!”). He simply bubbles over with inexhaustible humility. And frankly, his light-up-the-sky charm wore me out.
But if you happen to drive up to Tahoe, you should drop in on Jack Benny and his companions, who also include the Moro-Landis Dancers and Leighton Noble's orchestra. His show is remarkably pleasant and ingratiatingly funny. And he'll be there through August 22nd.

After Tahoe, Jack returned to television. NBC had cancelled his series but signed him to a number of specials every year. And there were always his concerts. The “Jack Benny character” wasn’t far out of view.

The English Loved His Drawling Legs

Jack Benny and his writers never wasted a lot of potential material. They managed to wring laughs out of all kinds of things.

One was Jack’s sojourns to the Palladium in London. Afterwards, listeners to his radio show would hear gags about how Jack ridiculously puffed up opinions about his performances. The fact was the English enjoyed Jack as much as American audiences.

He set sail for England after the end of the 1947-48 season, the first time he had appeared there since 1931. The United Press reported he got a ten-minute ovation from a capacity audience on opening night. Beverly Baxter reviewed it for the Evening Standard of July 23, 1948 and took a nationalistic slight at something rather innocuous.

MISSING FROM HOME --the star turns of ENGLAND
On Monday of this week Mr. Jack Benny, of the U.S.A., arrived at the Palladium with his radio colleagues, Mr. Phil Harris, Miss Mary Livingstone and Miss Marilyn Maxwell.
A great crowd assembled to give them welcome, and Mr. Val Parnell was able to congratulate himself again on the great success of his star-spangled season.
Mr. Benny, with his drawling legs, his wistful imperturbability expression, and his pleasant voice, is a considerable artist. Anyone who can reduce the vast spaces of the Palladium to the intimacy of a morning room must be taken seriously. Nor was he content merely to reproduce the personal badinage which a corps of script writers supply for his weekly radio programmes.
It is true we heard about his meanness, and his age, as well as his low opinion of Mr. Fred Allen—all pleasant reminders of his war-time programmes—but he did try to brings us into the picture. I liked particularly his explanation of why he had left Claridges and gone to the Savoy: ”They're so stuffy at Claridges that you've got to be shaved before you can go into the barber shop.”
BRAVO, BENNY
WHEN he asked Miss Livingstone, who, as all Western Civilisation knows, is Mrs. Benny, to sing a kissing duet with Mr. Harris we had a glimpse of his powers as a mime. Utterly effortless, and with the very minimum of movement and expression, he conveyed what might be described as the commercial torment of a producer who has placed his wife in another man's arms. Let there be no mistake about it. The Big Shot in the Benny Show is Jack Benny.
Nevertheless Mr. Harris is a notable American import. He is one of those big, nimble-footed men with enough vitality for a battalion, and possessed of a contagious sense of fun. In fact, a perfect foil to his senior partner.
But now I must mention something creditable yet disturbing in connection with Mr. Harris. He had just completed a number when he leaned over the microphone and said words something like these: "Ladies and gentlemen, last week Jack and I discovered a dancing team of two English boys. We think they're fine and I hope you will think so too. So let's give a big hand to these English boys."
IN OUR TEMPLE
THERE was nothing but generosity in the Harris gesture, but it sounded in my ears like a colonial governor introducing a pair of dancing coolies at his garden party. Here in the Palladium, the shrine and temple of British variety, we are asked to give a hand to two of our own countrymen. Not for them our discrimination or criticism, but just—kindness. After all, Mr. Parnell, who is a most able producer, cannot escape his share of the responsibility. Week after week the headliners arrive from New York or Hollywood, thus proclaiming to the listening world that there are no stars in the English skies. Yet it was in this very theatre that the late George Black put British variety on a pinnacle again after it seemed to have gone into a hopeless decline.
It may be that our music hall artists need a New Look. Certainly the Americans have proved that they do not have to descend to “blue jokes” and embarrassing gestures to draw the crowd. The excuse is made that in the provinces a comic cannot survive unless he gives the people vulgarity, and that possible it is not to have one version for the provinces and another for London.
Let the case of Sid Field be the answer. He was a favourite for years in the provinces before Mr. Black discovered him, and he never trafficked in dirt.
I am sorry that, the pleasantries of Benny and company should have me into this serious vein, but periodically, in politics and the arts, there has to be a campaign to revive a pro-British feeling in Britain. Clearly this such a moment. Perhaps Mr. Phil Harris lit a beacon in Oxford-circus.

The Observer of July 25 had these words:

Jack Benny
ON Monday, to the delight of a packed house, the Palladium became a temple for the worship of visiting film stars. Jack Benny, the presiding deity on the stage, disarmed us immediately by remarking that he knew he looked much younger on the screen! Mr Benny is not a red-nosed comedian; he is a charming, polished, comic actor with a deceptively easy style and cumulative effect. He jokes gravely in a deliberate, lazy voice, and—rare feat among funny-men—he listens beautifully. He gives an air of spontaneity to a cunningly-arranged act; this includes Phil Harris, who is so full of himself he quite fills the theatre, and is great fun. But though his associates stand in the limelight, it is Mr. Benny, with deprecating shrug and resigned expression, who always manages to be at the centre of things. He and his company are here for two weeks only; Nota Benny. P.F.

As for the rest of the cast, Dennis Day appears to have taken most of the summer 1948 off; he was heard in the Disney film Melody Time. Don Wilson stayed in Hollywood as his wife headed for Hawaii; she divorced him next year. Eddie Anderson went on the road, including a trip to Canada. We’ll have more on that next weekend.

A Date With a Date

Jack Benny’s radio show made stops outside of Los Angeles after moving there from New York in the mid-1930s. It even returned to New York, especially if Fred Allen could be booked for mutual visits on the air.

One of Jack’s fairly regular destinations was Palm Springs, starting in 1941 and ending at Christmas time in 1954 during the final radio season. Jack’s writers seemed to find inspiration there, even using it for one of his Christmas shows where he harasses clerk Mel Blanc through indecision. There were jokes about dates, the quickly-changing climate and high prices. And there were several variations on the “Murder at the Racquet Club” story, no doubt pleasing Charlie Farrell, whose club got plenty of free publicity. (One wonders if Farrell’s appearances revived his career, as he filmed My Little Margie on TV in the mid-‘50s).

The Desert Sun published stories about Jack and the show in its Feb. 21 and 28, 1941 issues, and took advantage of the situation by selling “Welcome Jack” ad space to various businesses. Here’s what the paper of the 28th said about the broadcast; this was the final season Jack did a second live broadcast for the West Coast.

Benny Broadcasts Give Palm Springs Fine Publicity and Entertainment; Will Repeat Programs Next Sunday
Jack Benny and his crowd of inimitable entertainers had Palm Springs literally sitting in the aisles last Sunday. What's more he's repeating the process next Sunday. And while stores, newspapers, Chamber of Commerce, hotels and others are fully appreciative of the wonderful publicity and entertainment he is giving the town, they will breathe a collective sigh of relief when it's all over. This ticket demand, all concede, has been too, too tough.
Next Sunday’s national broadcasts will take place, as did last Sunday’s, at the Plaza Theatre at 4 p. m. and 8:30 p. m. It is anticipated that Ed Beloin and Bill Morrow, Benny’s writers, again will devote a good part of the script to Palm Springs. Certainly Palm Springs got its full share of notice last Sunday. Jello may have been paying for the program, but Palm Springs got most of the attention.
Nothing Like It Before
This village has never witnessed anything like the Benny broadcasts. Accustomed to celebrities of every kind and supposedly blase, it went into a dither about Benny. And the comedian did well by the town. So great was the demand to see the broadcasts that the theatre was jammed half an hour before each broadcast. People were even sitting in the aisles.
For the half hour before actual broadcast, Benny wise-cracked, smoked his cigar, strolled up the aisles. Phil Harris and his orchestra helped out in the impromptu entertainment. The actual broadcasts were perfect half hours of comedy and music. Denny Day’s singing entitles him to his top ranking as a singer of popular songs. Don Wilson, Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Rochester and the rest all provided superb entertainment.

Columnist Roy Medby of The Desert Sun pronounced the following in the same issue:

JUST TO AVOID being accused of taking advantage of defenseless readers we are announcing here and now that we are going to say a little something about Benny. You know, Jack Benny. So, if you’ve heard enough about the guy, better check out right here.
* * *
WE WISH we would follow our impulse to write about things, such as the broadcast, right after they happen. We are all stirred up then and bubbling over with pretty words. But, as usual, we’ve waited a few days. The warm enthusiasm is still there, but we’ve lost the fancy words. They were only two-bitters anyhow, so you haven’t missed anything. But to get back to Benny. What a show-man that guy is!
* * *
PERHAPS WE ARE a little naive in our pleasures and enthusiasms. But we will say forthrightly and without equivocation that we enjoyed that Benny show about as much as anything in the way of entertainment that we have ever come across. And we cannot ever remember any instances in which Palm Springs got even remotely so much good publicity, whether it paid for it or not.
* * *
WE FIGURE THAT any guy who likes this village well enough to hand it publicity worth twenty thousand bucks, at a conservative estimate, can come around and play in our yard any time. We figure too, that when he does the thing twice in order not to disappoint a lot of people who couldn’t get into the first broadcasts, he ought to have at least a vote of thanks.
* * *
AND AS A LAST little word, just to you personally, Mr. Benny, when you get around to passing out permanent ducats or something, to all of your broadcasts, don’t forget to put our name down good and heavy. You have long had our vote for the best and cleanest entertainment in radio.

There were some pretty enjoyable shows from Palm Springs. And a couple that were disjointed. The broadcast of Apr. 11, 1948 not only suffered a drop out that was filled with studio music, but ran so long that a scene with Paul Lukas was cut short because of time. The following week, Sam Goldwyn and Jack broke each other up, and then Goldwyn unexpectedly changed a line, getting laughs from the audience as Jack explained what had happened.

After Mary Livingstone twisted a line from “grease rack” into “grass reek,” Jack berated her the following week on the Dec. 10, 1950 show from Palm Springs, saying there was no such thing. The police chief of the city showed up to prove otherwise to the delight of listeners.

The gang spent part of Dec. 1951, 1953 and 1954 in Palm Springs.

Writer Milt Josefsberg goes into a number of Palm Springs stories in his book, including one about something that happened off the air.

Jack's favorite night spot was Charles Farrell's Racquet Club. One night he drove there alone to have some coffee and talk with a few friends. After a couple of hours he left and started to drive back to his hotel at a leisurely pace. Jack was an extremely careful driver, so as he drove down Indian Avenue and heard a police car's siren and saw the flashing red lights behind him, he was sure that the law was after someone else, not him.
He was wrong. The police car pulled alongside and Jack realized that he was their quarry, so he drove his car into an open parking space, wondering what law he had violated. His wonder turned to fear as one of the two policemen in the black-and-white car jumped out, drew his gun, and sharply ordered him out of his car with his hands up.
When Jack opened his door to exit, the cop got his first clear look at Jack and he gasped in recognition and amazement, "Mr. Benny!"
Jack said, "Y-y-yes. What did I do?"
The policeman carefully put his gun away and said, half-amazed and half-apologetic, "You stole this car." Jack smiled at this and thought it might be some sort of practical joke. He told the policeman, "Look, it's mine. I drive a black Cadillac Coupe De Ville." Then he told him the license number. The policeman motioned Jack to the front of the car and pointed to the license plate. It was an entirely different number.
What had happened could only have happened to Jack. Another man driving a car that was identical in make, year, model, and color had parked alongside of Jack at The Racquet Club. Jack came out, walked to where his car was parked, got in, put the key in the ignition, and it fit perfectly. However, when the other man came out, he got into Jack's car, which was an exact duplicate of his, but for some reason his key didn't fit Jack's ignition. He phoned the police, and they spotted Jack a few seconds later.
Jack then drove back to The Racquet Club with the police, and they told the worried victim that they had apprehended the car thief. Then Jack came in and the man's eyes nearly popped out of his head. He kept saying, "They'll never believe this, they'll never believe this."
Jack laughed and said, "They will because I'll give you an autographed picture which says 'To the man whose car I stole.' You won't even have to pay me for the picture if you'll drop the charges."

Not only did Jack broadcast from Palm Springs, he and his writers came up with set-up shows on both radio and TV with the plot revolving around him on his way to the city.

Carnegie Hall in Bloom

Jack Benny’s radio show began in New York, but when the film capital beckoned, he packed up and moved to Los Angeles. He and his cast made periodic returns to city—for personal appearances, war-time morale-boosting shows for the military, and in the early days of TV when network shows came out of Big Town (there was also the jewellery smuggling trial, but we’ll skip that).

In January 1943, Jack was in the east for several reasons. Wherever he went, reporters would follow.

Billboard assigned someone to a rather large news conference to push a charity event. Jack never failed to give reporters some kind of amusing angle to put in their stories. This one appeared on January 16th.

Benny Ad Lib Session Launches Drive
NEW YORK, Jan. 9.—If there were any doubts left in the trade as to whether or not Jack Benny could show his face in public without a script, they were dispelled Wednesday (6) when Benny treated upwards of 500 cohorts, hangers-on and lunch time expendables to an ad lib session which marked the opening gun of the drive of the amusement division of the Federation of Jewish Charities.
Benny, guests of honor at the two-buck-a-head feed at the Hotel Astor, threw plenty of good-natured but well-aimed needles at Paramount (Barney Balaban is chairman of the drive), and there were enough Para big shots on the dias [sic] to cringe with laughter.
Louis Nizer, Paramount attorney and banquet orator, in introducing Benny with the eloquence these affairs always seem to bring out, cited the comedian's contribution to the morale of the armed forces and even quoted Sigmund Freud on humor and the will to carry on.
Benny, however, said that even Freud couldn't ask him to be funny after signing a donation pledge. There isn't a worthier cause, said Benny, but he suspected that Balaban, in his letter asking him to appear, addressed him as "Dear Jake," so that "If I didn't appear it would make me feel as tho I were turning down a relative."
One of the reasons for Benny's coming to New York, in addition to appearing at eastern army camps, is to arrange a deal for him to produce his own pictures. Said he's working on a deal with United Artists now to "write, produce, direct, finance and blow my brains out." Paramount came in for a bit of heckling in his reasons for switching to Warners. Not only, he related, did he get tired of trying to steal his pictures from Rochester, but the straw that broke his back was that his next picture was to be The Life of Booker T. Washington. Said that under his first independent schedule he hoped to star Bob Hope and Fred Allen in The Road to Grossingers.
Only other speakers were Judge Samuel Proskauer and Davis Bernstein, Loew executive. Advice from the judge was to give plenty this year and deduct it from income taxes. Bernstein said that naval officers at Lakehurst Air Station, where Benny made an appearance, told him that nothing done so far has built up the morale and efficiency of the men stationed there as much as Benny's visit.
Benny, in a more serious vein, told the gathering that he was really honored to have this clambake tossed for him, because it's the first testimonial dinner in New York where he was the guest of honor. Back in the old days, he related, he was always toastmaster at the Friars, but couldn't get the top spot because the two people who had the guest of honor racket tied up were J. C. Flippen and Doc Michel.

There was a bit of inconvenience for the Benny gang during one military stop. The Hollywood Reporter told readers on Jan. 12th:

Jack Benny Certain Sherman Was Right
Rigors of war-time traveling for theatrical troupes were impressed upon Jack Benny and his troupe on their present tour of eastern Army camps. Arriving in Bangor, Me., recently in sub-zero weather, Benny's gang could find no red caps or taxicabs at the depot, so the company of 39 carried their luggage for six blocks to a hotel.
They ran the gauntlet of autograph seekers, who clamored for the frozen-fingered Benny to sign his name, but none offered to carry his bags. Next day they rehearsed in a cold theatre because of the fuel oil shortage, and that night did three shows to accommodate all the men at Dow Air Field.
Returning to Boston the following day, the blue-nosed performers rode all day in an unheated coach, with no dining car attached. They missed lunch and didn't have dinner until after 11, when their show at the Boston Navy Yard was over. They left Boston at 1 a. m. that night, arriving in New York in the cold dawn.
The Benny troupe has scheduled future shows at the Maritime Service Training Station at Sheepshead Bay, New York; Camp Lee, Virginia; Fort Mead, Maryland; Quantico, Virginia; Norfolk Navy Yard, and then around Toronto, Chicago, Great Lakes and St. Joseph, Mo. Transportation expenses of the troupe are being paid personally by Benny.

There was another reason for Benny to surface in New York City in January 1943. It found its way into the plot of one of his radio shows. The New York Times of January 14th had this story:

JACK BENNY SET FOR VIOLIN DEBUT
Comedian Will Invade Carnegie Hall at Concert on Sunday to Help Paralysis Fund
TO PLAY 'LOVE IN BLOOM'
Oscar Levant Will Be the Piano Accompanist in Super-Special Arrangement of Favorite
Jack Benny's prowess as a violinist will undergo its most severe public test on Sunday evening, when he invades New York's shrine of classical music, Carnegie Hall. This was announced yesterday by Basil O'Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, under whose sponsorship Mr. Benny's performance will be held.
The occasion for his appearance is a concert for the benefit of victims of infantile paralysis, in which Metropolitan Opera and concert stars will participate. The other artists will be Marjorie Lawrence, who recently recovered from paralysis; Gladys Swarthout, Jarmila Novotna, Jan Peerce, Ezio Pinza and John Charles Thomas of the Metropolitan Opera; Josef and Rozina Lhevinne and Oscar Levant, pianists, and Isaac Stern, violinist. Deems Taylor will be master of ceremonies.
The first announcement that Mr. Benny would "do his stuff" came several days ago. But when the foundation's publicity department sent out a release giving the news there was an unexpected reaction from some of the recipients. Three of them telephoned excitedly demanding explanations and accusing the organization of pulling their legs.
E. A. Powers, campaign director for Greater New York, realized the seriousness of the situation. He told all and sundry to come to his office yesterday afternoon and they would see for themselves that it was no joke.
Skeptical, reporters turned up. So did Jack Benny. And Oscar Levant, too. There was no kidding. And each bought—and paid for—five tickets. Photographers took pictures to prove that to the world, too.
But, you may ask, why was Oscar Levant there ? The answer is Simple. He will be Mr. Benny's accompanist.
The press was told that the performance will be the comedian's "much discussed, long awaited debut as a concert violinist." But no one need take that too seriously. Jack says it will be both serious and funny.
What is he going to play? "Love in Bloom," of course. Persons close to Fred Allen say he does not dare try anything else. Anyway, this time it will be a super-special arrangement for piano and violin.

Ben Gross of the Daily News Ben Gross didn’t review the concert, but he waxed about the Benny radio broadcast in his column of Jan. 18th:

The Jack Benny broadcast last evening (WEAF-7) abounded in laughter again. Oscar Levant proved an amusing guest star, even if the burlesque on "Information Please" was not so funny as it might have been. A new comic to radio, a funster named Besser, made his bow in a wacky stooge role. His rather effeminate spoof was a veritable riot with the studio audience. Being present at the broadcast, I naturally wondered how he sounded over the loudspeaker. On returning to the office, my assistant, Bill Levinson, remarked: "That fellow Besser was very funny, but not quite the howl over on the air that he seemed to the visible audience." Benny's easy going, casual technique improves with the years, and, as for Dennis Day, the singer, he, too, is becoming more and more of an outstanding comedy attraction. P.S.— All of the aforegoing was but the prelude to the real wow of the evening, Jack's appearance as a violin soloist at a benefit show in Carnegie Hall.

Three thousand packed Carnegie Hall. The Times story on the 18th about the concert mentioned “sporadic clashings of a cymbal” during the Benny/Levant performance. But we’ll leave the final word to Jack’s “foe” as reported by Ed Sullivan in the Daily News on Jan. 20th:

After Jack Benny tied up the Carnegie Hall show in a knot, with Oscar Levant at the piano, Fred Allen sneered to Alfred Hitchcock: “First time a violinist combined his debut with his farewell performance.”

Allen, of course, was joshing. And years after his death in 1956, Jack was still on stage with his violin, raising millions of dollars for various causes. They were stopped only by Benny’s passing in late 1974.

Indestructible Benny

There may not have been a comedian who was analysed so much during his time as Jack Benny.

Over the years, we’ve posted a number of articles from columnists explaining the appeal of Benny and his show. Jack talked about it himself at the time as well.

This article is from Leon Gutterman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. What may be interesting is a great deal of credit was given to his irregular supporting cast. Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Phil Harris and Mary Livingstone were the only people to be mentioned at the start of each radio show. Anyone else got credit for their performances only on rare occasion. An exception might have been Mel Blanc, whose name Jack mentioned as the show was unfolding on the air. Unlike other radio shows, you wouldn’t hear “Appearing tonight were…” though credits were given on the Benny television programmes.

The writer got Schlepperman’s catch-phrase wrong, but his column otherwise sums up the Jack Benny show that people remember today.

It was published Oct. 13, 1950.

OUR FILM FOLK
Why Jack Benny Is the Indestructible Comedian
Jack Benny has returned to the nation's air waves for the 19th season of his comedy career in radio. And he has come back, as always, in his familiar role of the balding, penny-pinching patsy, but his CBS program as in the past, will be replete during the coming year with new riotous laugh skits, new characterizations, new guest surprises. At least that's what Jack tells me.
This indestructible quality of the great wit's character creation and a show format flexible enough for a perennial infusion of fresh idea material and talent point to the secret of his enduring and inimitable success. As one newspaper editor once wrote: "Benny hasn't, as is so persistently rumored, been doing the same thing for 18 years. He wouldn't have lasted that long if he had."
Comedy situations in a Benny program season had, year after year, been marked by freshness and originality. New characterizations, his own and those of an odd assortment of fellow actors and actresses, have paraded across; the script in endless procession. His guests, too, have been spectacularly impressive, as witness the case of the Ronald Colmans, who appeared 16 times on the show.
But the program personalities, including the whimsical portrayals of regular cast members, are probably the most memorable highlights of the Benny saga. Among those who turned up last season was Frank Fontaine, a new comedian, playing a mentally retarded sweepstakes winner named John L. P. Sivony [sic]. Mel Blanc, a regular, (the voice of Bugs Bunny) did a week-by-week impersonation of Al Jolson. Jack himself added another facet to his characterization, that of the naive treasurer of the Beverly Hills Beavers, a boy's club.
Once, there was an ostrich in the script, and even a polar bear named Carmichael. Jack kept Carmichael in the cellar and Rochester was his keeper. At the time, the husky-voiced valet was in an endless search for a gas man to do some repairs. The versatile Mel Blanc played Carmichael. Blanc now is the voice of the Benny parrot, which keeps Rochester from delivering soliloquies while doing the household chores. Its screams drive him to distraction. Blanc is also Benny's French violin teacher. He is the coughing, sputtering voice of the rattletrap Maxwell auto as it tunes up, and he doubles as well as the rhythm-tongued train announcer calling out Azusa, Cucamonga and other weirdly-named stations.
Buck Benny Rides Again
Who doesn't remember the famous Buck Benny of the long-running "Buck Benny Rides Again" sequence? Andy Devine, whose entrance line was "Hiya, Buck" was the chief stooge of this comedy turn. The skit ceased with the release of the Paramount film "Buck Benny Rides Again." in which Jack and most his fibbers appeared.
Mr. Billingsley was a quaint character dreamed up and played by Ed Beloin, a former Benny writer. A subnormal, self-appointed house guest, Mr. Billingsley consistently made wry comments at the wrong time in a dry voice. Beloin, never an actor, always had Benny worried that he'd miss his cues or fluff his lines.
Another witty specimen knocked on the Benny door anouncing [sic] "A telegram for Mr. Benny." The role was played by Harry Baldwin, Benny's secretary, who would glow with Barrymore-like pride at the end of each performance, over his laconic line.
Mr. Kitzel, a current fabrication, is played by Artie Auerbach, former New York newspaper photographer. His "peekle in the meedle with the mustard on top" and his baseball stories are laugh toppers. Mable Flapsaddle and Gertrude Gershift, the Benny telephone opertors [sic], enacted by Sarah Berner [sic] and Bea Benadaret [sic], tie the program in knots with them saucy badgering of the boss.
Schelepperman’s "Howdy Stranger"
Off and on the show have been Sheldon Leonard, Sam Hearn, Frank Nelson and many other stooges. Leonard is the racetrack tout with the soft, patronizing voice. Hearn played Mr. Schlepperman, whose greeting, "Howdy, Stranger," stirred a ripple of chuckles. Nelson is often heard as the haughty floorwalker, the butler or some generally nasty type, with a mocking "Yeahus" when addressed.
Jack's main foils of course, have come in for equally hilarious typing. Tenor Dennis Day is the timid mama's boy who is always asking for his salary, and Phil Harris is ribbed as a lady-killer with a predilection for word-mangling and liquid refreshments. Rochester as the extrovert valet and chauffeur constantly befuddles the harassed Benny. Mary Livingstone, Jack's wife, is the heckling girl friend whom Benny constantly threatens to send back to the hosiery counter at the May Company department store.
Practically every important figure in show business has guested on the Benny funfest, but Fred Allen's visits have been among the most notable. Jack and Fred carried on a feud for years, on their own programs. Every once in a while they crossed over for mutual calls, letting the quips and sparks fly at close range. "If I had my writers here," Jack once exploded, "you wouldn't talk to me like this."
Benny at His Best
For years, the Benny comedy situations have run the gamut of thing that could possibly happen to Jack Benny has been satirized. Last season, for example, he did a takeoff on an actual operation on his nose, and in another skit he roved through the script for several weeks spending his money like a drunken sailor after a can of tomatoes fell on his head and put him out of his mind. It was Benny at his best.
To his sheer delight, the fabulous funnyman has taken the worst beating from his stooges of any comedian in radio history. Everything about him is mercilessly lampooned . . . his thinning hair, his baby blue eyes, his age (39 years), his romantic attractiveness, his Maxwell, his money vault, his thriftiness and his fiddle. A few years ago his writers even dreamed up a contest in which listeners were invited to send in letters of 25 words or less dwelling on the theme "I can't stand Jack Benny because . . ." More than 500,000 letters poured in. Benny revelled in the scheme.
That's why Jack Benny is the indestructible comedian, who never changes himself but keeps his show over fresh with funsters. That's the secret of his 19 years of radio success.