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.

Before Aunt Harriet

I’ve always enjoyed Madge Blake on the Batman TV series. She gave fine performances as the naïve but kindly Aunt Harriet.

Considering the huge impact the show had on kids when it debuted, it’s hard to realise Blake made regular appearances on TV shows before that.

At the time, some of her roles were proudly profiled in local newspapers. Here’s a feature story form the Modesto Bee of May 7, 1961. She had been appearing periodically on The Real McCoys at the time. It explains why she got into acting late in life.

Madge Blake Of The Real McCoys Visits Son In Merced
By Richard Watry
McClatchy Newspapers Service
MERCED, Merced Co. — Madge Blake is a wonderfully warm actress-mother whose theatrical star orbited when she was cast as the delightful Flora MacMichael on the highly popular The Real McCoy's television show witch features the venerable Walter Brennan.
Mrs. Blake has been here on a brief visit with Ted Blake, one of her two teaching sons. Blake is a science instructor at Merced High School. His other brother, Jim, teaches in a Southern California high school. And while in Merced the past few days Mrs. Blake found time to drop in at El Capitan High School to be guest lecturer in Alice Osborn's drama class.
Madge Blake — that is her real name — did not stumble into acting but entered it late, only 12 years ago. The daughter of a Methodist circuit riding minister, she always had a bent for the dramatics.
"But my father was a true hell bent for the Lord type of a man who would tolerate no smoking, lipstick, late hours or dramatics," she said.
However, living alone after her sons went into military service in World War II, Mrs. Blake worked for Cal-Tech in the chemistry division, a post for which "I guess they felt my one year of high school chemistry made me eminently qualified to do the task." Nonetheless she was given a special citation for her tasks in the war effort.
Not readily recognizable was her developing talent in little theater work "which I did to fill the vacant hours".
It was the late Fanny Brice who triggered the countdown for Mrs. Blake's eventual recognition as character star material. She had seen a performance by Mrs. Blake and subsequently was instrumental in landing the latter the role of mother to Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib.
This was in 1949 and Mrs. Blake credits Katherine Hepburn also with "aiding and abetting my career". Miss Hepburn, also in that film, kept building up Madge Blake's part by tossing her some unauthored dialog which Director George Cuker [sic] left in the script.
Since then Mrs. Blake has done some 50 to 60 films and more than 300 professional shows.
And gilding the lily, so to speak, was her selection to play veteran actor Andy Clyde's sister Flora in The Real McCoys for television. She was just right for the sweet, soft spoken foil to Brennan.
It is a tribute that wherever she goes young and old alike hail her as Flora MacMichael instead of Madge Blake.
Even greater theatrical heights are in sight for her this fall when the Joey Bishop show is scheduled for a weekly run. She already has signed contracts to appear as his mother. And Jack Benny wants Mrs. Blake to join him once again for his summer show in Las Vegas because of her success with the show there last year.
Mrs. Blake has no affectations. She is in real life much like Flora McMichael who sat in this reporter's home until 1 in the morning eating ice cream, munching cookies and dispensing with some warmly amusing bon mots about her love affair with the theater.
She lives alone in Pasadena, her place of residence the past 24 years. In her younger days she lived in the Dinuba and Reedley areas while her father was in the ministry. How does this belated film and television activity affect her?
"Well,” she remarked, "I just love it. I am glad I had smaller roles and a chance to develop into character parts gradually. I love to cook and do some entertaining. And, of course, the pride of my world is not the acting profession but my four delightful grandsons in Southern California.
"I enjoy visiting in Merced and meeting Ted and Millie's friends. And I do love the theater. I just hope I can go on and on and on and I am looking forward to my new series with Joey."

The “new series with Joey” wasn’t as permanent she might have hoped. The series went on, but Blake was dumped after the first season as Bishop tinkered with the sitcom’s situations. Here’s Blake speaking to the Merced Sun-Star of May 12, 1962.

HOME IN MERCED FOR MOTHER’S DAY
Veteran, Twinkling Star in Appearance at Merced High
Madge Blake's large expressive eyes twinkled and a warm, friendly smile flashed across her face as she offered this bit of advice:
"If you want security in your life's work, don't go into show business. Become a dressmaker or a plumber."
Mrs. Blake, known to tele-viewers as the loveable and flustered mother of Joey Bishop on the television comedy show of the same name gave a few hints about show business in a brief talk Friday afternoon before Merced High and El Capitan High Schools drama students.
"Show business isn’t really as glamorous as it appears looking in from the outside," she told the students. "You have to put in many long hours and work awfully hard.
"I know that some days I came home and am so exhausted I wonder if I'll be able to get up the next morning."
Mrs. Blake is in Merced for Mother's Day and is staying with her son, Ted Blake, who is a teacher at Merced High School.
The actress told the students she got into show business at the end of World War II after working at a number of other jobs, including a two year stint at Cal Tech, Pasadena, in experimental chemistry and as a salesclerk in a large well known Southern California department store.
"After the war ended and my two sons came home I became interested in acting and went to the Pasadena Playhouse," Mrs. Blake related. "I just had to learn to act because it seemed like a challenge.
"In the years that followed I learned that much hard work has to go into an acting career and I had many bit parts and good breaks in a number of films.
"I learned, for instance, that in comedy, timing is the important thing. A good scene can go down the drain if an actor isn't aware of the importance of timing."
Mrs. Blake recalled that she played the part of Spencer Tracy's mother in the film Adam's Rib.
"When Spencer learned that I was to play that part, he was considerably annoyed," she continued. "I am younger than him and he felt that it wouldn't work out.
"I told him that in the movie I play the part of a rich woman who has no worries and said that the woman holds her age well and looks young. He seemed satisfied with that and we got along wonderfully."
She also was in the casts of "I Remember Mama" and "The Long, Long Trailer."
"Lucille Ball, one of the stars of "The Long, Long Trailer," told me recently that she saw that film in New York," Mrs. Blake remarked. "She said the scene where I got so mad when the trailer rolled over my garden evoked a lot of laughs.
"I've never been in New York in my life but apparently my shadows rocked the walls of a movie theater there."
She also has been in the production of "The Happiest Millionaire," "Bell Book and Candle," and "Harvey."
Mrs. Blake said that when young persons who aspire to be actors and actresses ask her for advice she tells them this is her recipe for success in show business:
"Develop the hide of a rhinoceros and add a little rubber to your diet so you can bounce back if you get knocked down."
She explained that the new format of the Joey Bishop show next season will probably mean she will appear less in the program.
"Joey plays the part of an entertainer who has his own show," she noted. "This is really what he enjoys doing the most. He's a talented man and is a darling to work with."
Mrs. Blake said she doesn't know what all she will be doing during the next season but imagines she will be working on different programs.
She has had the part of Grandpa's girl friend in "The Real McCoys" and will be seen next week in the "Dr. Kildare" series. After this weekend, Mrs. Blake will return to her home in Hollywood.

In these interviews, Blake comes across as a down-to-earth, rather gentle person. I hope that’s an accurate assessment. I’ve enjoyed her in many different roles over the years. It’s a shame ill health (and a focus on Batgirl and some preposterous villains played by Barbara Rush, Rudy Vallee and Milton Berle) prevented her from doing much on Batman after the second season. She passed away on Feb. 19, 1969 after a heart attack.

Like a Moose Jaw Needs a Hat Rack

Have you heard the one about Jack Benny showing up in a church in Moose Jaw?

No, this isn’t a joke. It actually happened.

Well, we should clarify that it wasn’t Jack himself but his voice.

May 1939 was an unusual month for Jack. It was a month after he was ordered to pay a fine in a jewellery smuggling case and columnists like Jimmy Fidler pointed out the charges had absolutely no effect on Benny’s career. In fact, radio newsman Tom Fizdale reported Jack’s management worked out a pay increase that month to $15,000 a week (and staved off an attempt by General Foods to change his sponsorship from Jell-O to Grape Nuts Flakes).

At the start of the month, he was a batter in a celebrity ball game during the opening of Gilmore Field, the new home of the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League. His movie Artists and Models Abroad was still in theatres and Man About Town was set to open the following month.

His radio show, of course, was still on the air. But that isn’t what was heard at a United Church (still standing) in Saskatchewan.

Jack made guest shots on a number of radio shows. On May 16, he appeared on the Lifebuoy (Beeee-oh!!) Tuesday Night Party. Here’s what the Regina Leader-Post reported on page one the next day:

Jack Benny In Church
MOOSE JAW, May 17.—Ghosts of departed congregations of a less broad-minded era probably rolled over in their graves Tuesday night, as a musical festival program was in progress at Zion church.
A radio was set up on the stage to bring to the audience a talk to be given by Adjudicator Arthur Benjamin over the CBC. Officials, anxious lest they miss the opening remarks, turned the set on five minutes ahead of time.
They turned into the last hilarious five minutes of a comedy broadcast, with Jack Benny rowing violently with Dick Powell. The audience, momentarily startled, giggled a bit. But nobody moved to turn the radio off.
Set at full volume, the set blared forth wise-cracks and riotous laughter, a blurb that the United States had more bath tubs than any other country in the world.
Then, to cap it all off, wide-mouthed Martha Raye swung into it ditty about “Three Little Fishes” who swam to the dam. It was not festival music. It was rowdy-dowdy swing stuff, and it probably never blared forth in more peculiar surroundings.
The song ran its course with a hot orchestra background. There was no adjudication for Miss Raye's number.

You can hear part of the show below.



There was another unusual Benny appearance during the month, this one in person. In the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, Jack raised millions of dollars through benefit concerts to save symphony orchestras, their theatres, even their pension plans. Things were a little different in the 1930s. On May 19, 1939, Jack agreed to preside over a charity dinner in Pasadena for poor kids. He brought along announcer Don Wilson and writers Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to add some shtick.

Here’s the pertinent part from next day’s Pasadena Star-News.

BOYS BENEFIT BY $10-PLATE BANQUET
Funds To Permit 220 To Enjoy Camp
JACK BENNY GIVES $50 DONATION
Radio Star Willing To Come Again
Approximately 220 underprivileged boys will enjoy vacations in the mountains this summer because 550 prominent Pasadena business men paid $10 a plate for their dinners last night in the Huntington Hotel.
Members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce today were jubilant over the success of last night's brilliant [sic] event. General Chairman W. H. Nicholas proudly displayed a $50 check signed by Jack Benny, who after serving as master of ceremonies declared himself completely “sold” on the Junior Chamber of Commerce plan for boys' camps.
"I've had the best time in 20 years, and if you ask me to come again next year, I'll drop everything and come over," he told Leon Kingsley to whom he presented the check. "I'll even bring my own violin."
Benny Humor Pleases
Virtually everyone attending last night's banquet got thrills from Mr. Benny's fine humor, the vaudeville entertainment provided, the "ribs" at the expense of prominent Pasadena officials and the sizzling steaks served as the main course of the dinner that cost $10 per plate.

I suspect one of the jokes at the Pasadena dinner did not include the phrase “like a moose needs a hat rack.” Morrow or Beloin were gone from his writing staff when it was heard on the air for the first time in 1947. Norman Krasna loved it, you know.

There might have been something about the feud with Fred Allen, which would reach another high point by tossing it into a movie in 1940 called Love Thy Neighbor. The photo to the right is also from May 1939 but I can’t find the source. The feud, in a way, continued after Allen’s death in 1956. Jack would reminisce about it to TV talk show audiences and even drag out his impression of Allen ridiculing him.

I’ve Heard That Joke Before

When comedians on radio got tired of jokes, they made jokes about jokes.

Fred Allen, Henry Morgan, even Boston’s Bob and Ray, pointed out radio was obsessed with making fun of Brooklyn or the La Brea Tar Pits. Morgan and the wonderful Arnold Stang had a routine, where Stang urged Morgan to jump on the overused joke bandwagon, saying Fred Allen had one about a pen that writes under water and, by procrastinating, Morgan didn’t have “one damp joke.” Morgan responded with a lovely pun that he did have a joke about a typewriter that wrote under wood.

Syndicated columnist John Crosby went further, making jokes about comedians making jokes about jokes in his missive of Friday, February 14, 1947.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
The All-American Joke
Peter Lind Hayes, who is developing into a very good comedian indeed, fell to complaining the other day about jokes. There were, he claimed, almost as many jokes about the Governors of Georgia as there are Governors of Georgia. Mr. Hayes, who is one of the brighter luminaries on the Dinah Shore show (C. B. S. 9:30 p. m., E. S. T. Wednesdays), explained that the Georgia Governors had moved to Number Four on the Hit Parade of jokes.
"What's Number One?” inquired Miss Shore.
"The most popular joke of the year was Kilroy was here. Number Two was the fountain pen that writes under water. In the third slot is a new entry which came up very fast."
"Bet I can guess—‘Open the Door, Richard.’ "
"Right," said Mr. Hayes some-what grimly. "Number Four was, of course, the Governors of Georgia. Numbers Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten were Artie Shaw's marriages. Eleven was President Truman's piano. Number Twelve was the joke about Leo Durocher saving up for a Larainey Day."
"Pete, what about Los Angeles pedestrians?" asked Miss Shore.
"Coming up—got the perfect number for them. Number Thirteen. Yes, Number Thirteen is Los Angeles pedestrians. Number Fourteen is Los Angeles smog, and Number Fifteen is Los Angeles."
Mr. Hayes then offered his version of the All-American Joke, a fool-proof number guaranteed to contain all the guaranteed laugh ingredients. Here it is:
"The other day the Governors of Georgia and the pedestrians of Los Angeles picked up a fountain pen that writes under water and wrote a letter to President Truman asking him to play the piano at Artie Shaw's and Leo Durocher's weddings and signed it Kilroy was here."
• • •
Well, it was a brave try, Mr. Hayes, but I feel vaguely dissatisfied with that All-American Joke. Some of the most brilliant running backs and four or five linesmen of indubitable All-American excellence have been omitted. No All-American team would be complete without a mention of Frank Sinatra. John L. Lewis, the Brooklyn Dodgers, portal-to-portal pay, Jack Benny's stinginess, Esther Williams's bathing suits, James C. Petrillo, Senator Claghorn, Don Wilson's waist line, Bob Hope's yo yo and the housing shortage.
Mr. Hayes's list calls attention to the flagrant favoritism the comedians pay to Los Angeles. President Truman's piano, Kilroy, "Open the Door, Richard," and the fountain pen that writes under water belong to the nation; the Governors of Georgia are the personal property of that state, but all the rest of the jokes have a distinctly local connotation. Hollywood and Vine is virtually the only street intersection in the world that ever gets mentioned on the radio. Hollywood's weather is more widely and unfavorably advertised than the weather any place else and Tommy Manville simply can't compete any longer with the Hollywood marriage and divorce mill. Nobody ever tells any regional jokes about the East, the Mid-West or—apart from the Georgia Governors and Senator Claghorn—the South, Chicago, which in my youth was the most prolific joke factory in the world, is hardly ever mentioned.
Also, it seems to me the joke-smiths have missed a couple of topics entirely. I don't hear all the jokes that are told on the air, Heaven forbid, so maybe I missed a few. Has any one told a joke about Staten Island's threat to secede from New York City, Admiral Byrd's expedition to Antarctica or Toots Shor's expedition to the White House? Any one who can't fashion a joke out of Toots Thor in the White House, to parephrase Mr. Shor, ain't tryin'.

Let’s look at the rest of Crosby’s columns for the week. As a side note, these columns had been banked as Crosby was on his honeymoon in Los Angeles when they were published.

Monday, February 10: Politicians and would-be politicians show up on Information Please. I’ll take Oscar Levant, thank you.
Tuesday, February 11: Jack Benny and Your Hit Parade were sponsored by Lucky Strike, which used a tobacco chant in its opening and closing commercials. Crosby delves into the cigarette spiel. We posted that column several years ago.
Wednesday, February 12: The BBC tries an intellectual programme, drama, poetry, plays and such.
Thursday, February 13: an odds-and-ends column, including Johnny Olson’s audience participation show and newsman Bob Trout on slang.

You can click on the stories to enlarge the copy. Cartoons are by Alan Ferber and Bob Moore of the Daily News in Los Angeles.

A Day With the Family

It’s no surprise Dennis Day came across in real life as a family man.

He had ten children.

Day appeared from obscurity to take over the vocalist’s job on the Jack Benny show in 1939. Nobody on the show was certain Day—that was the name they gave him—would make it. To hedge their bet, they brought on veteran actress Verna Felton to play Dennis’ overbearing mother. Felton was funny, but Benny and his people agreed Day was capable of handling the role without assistance, so Felton’s mother was reduced to occasional appearances.

As it turned out, Day developed a pretty good flair for comedy, both in the context of his quiet and silly character, and when it came to a small group of imitations, which the writers started putting in the show. He did funny versions of Jimmy Durante, the Mad Russian (Bert Gordon as Eddie Cantor’s foil) and Ronald Colman, and some over-the-top accents that were perfect for Benny’s sketches.

All this resulted in Colgate-Peet-Palmolive signing Day for his own radio series. When television came around, he starred in two short-lived series in the 1950s, but started raking in the big money when he headlined in Las Vegas.

Despite this, he seems to have been removed from the glittery world of show business celebrities, no doubt helped by publicity along those lines.

Here’s an example. TV Guide published this two-page profile on June 4, 1954.

Four Days Make One Weak
Dennis’ Children Keep Life Hectic For ‘TV Bachelor’
Brentwood, Cal., is one of those money-sprinkled suburbs whose shopping center is archly referred to as “the village”; whose winding roads bear names like Tigertail and Saltair and whose few remaining unsold lots are priced higher than a kite in an updraft. Being a sub-suburb of suburban Beverly Hills, it is loaded with movie and TV stars on a high turnover basis.
Now, in the film capital, a star’s home is rarely associated with the star himself. It is almost invariably "the old Gloria Swanson place” or “the former Rin Tin Tin manse,” regardless of who might be footing the current utilities bill.
An exception to this rule-of-thumb is the Dennis Day farmhouse, located north of Sunset Boulevard in the outer reaches of Brentwood. Day and his wife, the former Peggy Almquist, bought the place from its builder, who was not a star, thereby assuring its future pedigree as “the old Dennis Day place.”
The pedigree is going to have to wait awhile, however, as Dennis and his wife have remodeled it with a careful Irish eye on future expansion. They are the early settler type and, with four young McNultys all under the age of six, they are both early and settled.
Right here it should be explained that in this woodsy little corner of Brentwood the Days are known as “the McNultys,” Dennis’ real name being Eugene Patrick McNulty. The children, Margaret, 1; Michael, 3; Dennis, Jr., 4, and Patrick, 5, are known strictly as “the McNulty children.”
It’s the end of a perfect Day, you might say, when the kids rush out to meet their particular Mr. McNulty. That workaday character, name of Dennis, disappears, and in his place there’s only “Daddy.”
With four Indians of Irish descent on the premises, Dennis generally finds himself up by 7:00 A.M. whether he likes it or not. Breakfast is a pleasant sort of bedlam—the kind only parents can ever become accustomed to. After that, it’s up to Peggy McNulty to get her husband piled into his car, the two older boys piled off to nursery school and the other kids piled out from underfoot.
On weekdays Dennis generally gets home fairly late, just in time to try to calm the children with a quick story before their bedtime. He and Peggy like a quiet dinner together and spend most evenings watching television. Sunday, however, is family day. Dennis leads the entire brood off to church, after which the four Indians rule the roost and keep their father stepping.
An Irish Stew
A favorite Sunday occupation is a family barbecue, with Dennis himself presiding at the open pit built into the den’s huge brick fireplace. In warmer weather the backyard pool becomes the general meeting place, fairly crawling with McNultys. Dennis has four brothers and a sister, plus enough nieces and nephews to stock a small school. The canyon neighborhood, in fact, is rapidly becoming known as McNulty Gulch.
Aside from the occasional fishing sorties, which are strictly a mother-and-father deal, the McNultys are as tightly knit a family group as Hollywood boasts, and keep pretty much to themselves in their canyon hideout. Dennis keeps a firm hand on the children’s reins, and labors mightily to keep their natural, exuberant tendencies within limits.
Hams Must Age, You Know
Patrick, the oldest boy, already has some of his excess energy siphoned off into show business, having appeared on one of his father’s TV films in the role of Dennis himself as a young boy. Whether or not the others will follow suit is something Dennis is not yet prepared to say.
“They’re too young at the moment,” he says matter-of-factly, “to do anything but get in and out of trouble. But they’re Irish and they’re mine, and it’s quite possible there is a small amount of latent ham in them.”

I’ve always liked Kenny Baker as a vocalist more than Day, though I’m not excited about the kinds of songs both were required to perform, but Day was more talented of the two. While Andy Williams and Perry Como were bigger on television, Al Martino and Johnny Mathis were bigger on the record charts, and rock would be embraced by young people, Day still attracted fans who wanted to see the singer they heard for years on a radio show with a comedian they loved.

The Blanc Two-Step

An almost fatal car accident didn’t stop Mel Blanc. (You can read an account about it in this Yowp post).

He continued recording voices for Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros. He had formed Mel Blanc Enterprises to produce humorous commercials. And there was a happy, Christmas-time reunion on the Jack Benny television show in 1961.

But he obviously slowed down. In looking through newspapers in the first half of 1963, I can find only two on-camera appearances—one with Benny and another, somewhat improbably, with Arthur Godfrey.

Godfrey had been ubiquitous on CBS television in the 1950s. Things had changed by the end of the decade, perhaps because of the discovery that he wasn’t as charming and laid back in real life as he was on camera. It didn’t quite kill his career. He co-hosted part of a season on Candid Camera in 1960 before walking off annoyed at the show’s owner, Allen Funt (who didn’t have much good to say about Godfrey, either).

The network was still interested in Godfrey’s talents and signed him to host specials. One in early 1963 featured Blanc. It turned out the two men had something in common, as Earl Wilson reported in his column of March 8, 1963. As you might have expected, Blanc had a Jack Benny story.

INJURED, BUT THEY'LL DANCE
Arthur Godfrey and Mel Blanc—each survivor of a near fatal auto accident, each held together by silver plates and pins—will try to forget March 18 that they've had to use canes . . . and will try to dance on TV.
Mel Blanc, while still on a cane, learned about this ambitious undertaking when he reported to the big red-head Arthur (who’ll be 60 in July) for rehearsal for CBS' "Arthur Godfrey Loves Animals" TV show.
"Tell me about your accident," Arthur said first.
"Well, this leg here had 22 breaks in it . . . I had five fractures in my spine . . . I was unconscious for 21 days . . . they kept telling my wife, Estelle, that I couldn't make it . . . she'd cry and beg them 'Please don't say THAT!" . . . there were 18 doctors on duty at the UCLA Medical Clinic . . . practically all of them worked on me . . . I was in a cast eight months, but it was two months before they could put me in a cast . . . “I've still got six silver screws through my leg . . .”
Blanc’ll do Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Speedy Gonzales, and Pepe Le pew, the French skunk, as well as the sound of Jack Benny’s expiring Maxwell, on the Godfrey show.
"THE ONE MAN who never forgot us when I didn't know whether I'd pull through," Mel said, "was Jack Benny. He’s come to see us every 10 days."
“One night we were having chicken-in-the-pot in the kitchen. He said he had to go to dinner at Dave Chasen's, but he'd just have some soup with us. Pretty soon he said he'd have dinner with us, and have dessert at Chasen's. Then Estelle brought out dessert and he said ‘Never mind, I’ll just have coffee at Chasen’s.’ He wound up going to Chasm's for an after-dinner drink."

A news release about the special said “With Mel Blanc, Arthur gets a taste of the wiles of Bugs Bunny when the sassy rabbit tried to fast-talk him into a television appearance while Sylvester and Pepe Le Pew interrupt with idea of their own.” The Boston Globe’s review added Blanc demonstrated the voices of “Sweetie Pie” and “baby Deeno.” Percy Shain evidently needed to watch more cartoons.

There was an interesting and unique follow-up to this story in the Fremont Tribune of June 17, 1963. The columnist in this Nebraska newspaper was not an entertainment writer. He was a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. We’ll leave him with the last line, again showing the selflessness of a supposed 39-year-old.

Reflections
Two Entertainers Offer Lesson in Enduring Woe
By CHARLES S. RYCKMAN
The capacity for achieving amazing triumphs over physical handicaps seems to be in some people in proportion to the severity of the disability. The most complaining and despairing sometimes are those with minor and temporary impairment of their bodily faculties.
Those with major loss of physical powers, and especially those with long and perhaps permanent experience with agonizing suffering, often rise to the highest peaks of endurance and accomplish the greatest degree of mastery over the tragedies with which they must live for the remainder of their years.
The current activities of two great entertainers offer vivid illustration of these facts. Radio and television personality Arthur Godfrey is one. The movie and TV veteran Mel Blanc is the other. They appeared together on Godfrey's television program in March, supporting themselves on canes. They danced, told jokes, kidded each other and themselves, treating their own disabilities so lightly and casually that viewers had little understanding of the bitter hell both men have known, and still must know as long as they live.
Arthur Godfrey was an auto accident victim many years ago. He has had so many operations he has lost all count. His body is so pieced and patched that what he was born with and what now holds him together are so intermingled that identification, like the lady's hair color and her hairdresser, is known only to his surgeons.
* * *
Mel Blanc went down into his purgatory by the same route, but much later. One leg had 22 fractures. There were five breaks in his spine. He was unconscious for 21 days. It took two months to get him in condition to wear a cast, and he wore the cast for eight months. He still has six silver screws in the formented leg.
But you knew mighty little of this as they danced, gagged and entertained millions of people. They themselves seemed scarecely conscious of the tortured road by which, they had come. They know about it, well enough. Neither is a stranger to pain and fear nor ever will be again.
And, for a wry item, of all Mel Blanc's friends only one was a constant visitor at his bedside through-out the long months of his ordeal. That was comedian Jack Benny, who works so hard to develop an image of himself as a selfish man.

And the Michael Goes To...

How could Jack Benny win an award from a television academy before he ever appeared on TV?

Simple. He didn’t win an award for television.

In case you’re confused, we’ll sort it out.

The year was 1950. Jack’s award did not come from the American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, which gave out the Emmys in January that year in a ceremony from Los Angeles. His honour was handed out in March by the Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences in New York. Benny’s radio show was still going strong, so the Academy feted him for his radio show.

From what I can tell, this was the first and only time this Academy mounted an awards ceremony. While the winners were announced in the national press, the ceremony itself was not broadcast on radio or TV, and it avoided the notice of the show biz bible, Variety.

The awards were called the “Michaels.” Who Michael was, I leave you to discover.

The International News Service wire wrote, in part, on March 22, 1950, the day after the awards.

GODFREY SHOW UP FRONT
Dinah, Bing top list for radio-TV ‘Oscars’
NEW YORK (INS)—The Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences made its first annual awards for the year's best performances in those fields last night to a host of celebrities including Walter Winchell, Jack Benny and Arthur Godfrey.
The radio and video awards were made at a reception and dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as the first annual designations in several radio and TV classifications in what is hoped will be the equivalent of the movie "Oscar."
The winners were chosen by a field of top experts in radio, newspaper, magazine, educational and sociological fields from throughout the country. [The AP reported there were more than 1,250 judges]
[...]
• • •
NOT ALL those honored could be present personally. Among the radio and television celebrities present were Tex and Jinx Falkenberg, singer Monica Lewis, Columnist “Bugs" Baer and Mrs. Baer, Mrs. Wendell Winkle, RCA president Frank Folsom and CBS vice president Hubbell Robinson.

Radio Daily had a full list in its story:

Award Winners Named At Dinner In Waldorf
Winners in 27 categories were named last night as recipients of the first annual "Michael" Awards, sponsored by the Academy of Radio and Television Best Arts and Sciences. The awards were announced by Ed Sullivan at a $25-a-plate Awards Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria, which was co-sponsored by the New York Heart Fund.
Winners listed in one-two-three order were as follows:
News & Commentary (radio)—Walter Winchell, ABC; Edward R. Murrow, CBS; Lowell Thomas, CBS. Comedy & Variety (radio)—Jack Benny, CBS; Amos 'n' Andy, CBS; Godfrey's Talent Scouts, CBS.
Education, Forums, Etc. (radio)—American Town Meeting, ABC; People's Platform, CBS; Meet the Press, MBS.
Religions Programs (radio)—Greatest Story Ever Told, ABC; Eternal Light, NBC; Family Theater, MBS.
Drama (radio)—Theater Guild on the Air, NBC; Lux Radio Theater, CBS; Railroad Hour, NBC.
Educational Documentaries (radio)—You Are There, CBS; Living, NBC; United Nations Series, NBC.
Agricultural (radio)—Farm & Home, NBC; CBS Farm News, CBS: American Farmer, ABC.
Music (radio)—Telephone Hour, NBC; Voice of Firestone, NBC; NBC Symphony. NBC.
Children's Programs (radio)—Let's Pretend, CBS; Juvenile Jury, MBS; Greatest Story Ever Told, ABC.
Outstanding Comedian (radio)—Groucho Marx, CBS; Jack Benny, CBS; Bob Hope, NBC.
Outstanding Comedian (television)—Milton Berle, NBC; Ed Wynn, CBS; Sid Caesar, NBC.
Outstanding Dramatic Actor (radio)—Everett Sloane, House Jameson, Staats Cotsworth.
Outstanding Dramatic Actor (television)—Ralph Bellamy (Man Against Crime), Charles Heston (Studio One), Everett Sloane.
Drama (television)—Philco Playhouse, NBC; Studio One, CBS; Ford Theater, CBS.
News & Commentary (television)—Camel News Caravan, NBC; Headline Clues, DuMont; Leon Pearson & News, NBC.
Variety Programs (television)—Toast of the Town, CBS; Texaco Star Theater, NBC; Talent Scouts, CBS.
Children's Programs (television)—Kukla Fran & Ollie, NBC; Mr. I Magination, CBS; Singing Lady, ABC.
Sportscasters Mel Allen, Bill Stern, Harry Wismer, ABC.
Promising Stars—Dave Garroway, Abe Burrowsm Jack Carter, Fran Warren.
Special Citations — Lawrence Tibbett, Paul Winchell, Fred Waring.
Outstanding Dramatic Actress (radio)—Helen Hayes (Electric Theater); Agnes Moorhead (Suspense); Ann Sothern (in Theater Guild's "Burlesque").
Outstanding Dramatic Actress (television)—Gertrude Berg, CBS; Felicia Montealegre; Faye Emerson.
Top Feature Vocalist (radio & TV)—Dinah Shore, CBS; Jo Stafford, CBS; Monica Lewis.
Top Male Vocalist (radio & TV)—Bing Crosby, CBS; Frank Sinatra; Perry Como, NBC.
Outstanding Radio Writer Cy Howard for “My Friend Irma" and "Life with Luigi"; Norman Corwin; Morton Wishengrad.
Outstanding Producer Director (radio)—Homer Flickett for "Theater Guild on the Air"; Fletcher Markle; William Keighly.
Outstanding Producer Director (television)—Worthington Minor for "Studio One" and "The Goldbergs"; Mark Daniels; Burr Tillstram [sic].
Program of the Year (radio)—You Are There, CBS; "Could Be" by Norman Corwin, NBC; "Sister Carrie" (NBC University Theater).
Program of the Year (television)—Godfrey's Talent Scouts, CBS; Eisenhower's Crusade in Europe, ABC; Kukla, Fran & Ollie, NBC.

The Michael wasn’t the only honour Benny got in March 1950. Radio Daily made this declaration on its front page of March 10.

BENNY ACCLAIMED TOP PERSONALITY
Crosby, Hope And Amos 'n' Andy Also Rate High With Radio Editors In Radio Daily Poll
Jack Benny has been acclaimed "the greatest radio personality during the last 25 years" in a questionnaire poll of 330 of the nation's radio editors completed yesterday by RADIO DAILY.
In naming Benny many of the radio editors supported their choice with comments about him as a master show-man who has consistently presented top comedy programming over the years. Second choice of the radio editors was Bing Crosby who ran close to Benny in the balloting while third place resulted in a tie between Bob Hope and Amos 'n Andy.
In selecting Benny most of the radio editors wrote in their non-commercial choice. This honor went to the late Franklin Delano Roosevelt, of whom one editor wrote: "He relied almost entirely on radio to instill confidence, faith and courage in this nation."
Comments were many and varied among the radio editors in awarding the honor to Benny. Among them were:
"Jack Benny for his personal accomplishments and those he has helped to stardom."—Nat Lund, Seattle Times, Seattle, Wash.
"Jack Benny is not necessarily the best or the greatest judged in terms of pure talent—but he deserves the title of 'greatest' in the sense that his radio characterization has not only become a national tradition, but has maintained itself as such in the top levels of public acclaim longer than any other." — Ben Gross New York Daily News.
"If by radio personality you mean entertaining personality, I'd say Jack Benny." — Peg White, San Diego Journal, San Diego, Calif.
"If F. D. R. is barred from competition, I'll throw my vote to Jack Benny who had led the way so many years."— John Crosby, New York Herald-Tribune.
In taking the poll RADIO DAILY asked radio editors one question: "Who Was the Greatest Radio Personality During the Last 25 Years?" Editors were invited to comment on their selection.
Among other personalities who received ballots in the poll were Walter Winchell, Arthur Godfrey, Lowell Thomas, Major Bowes, H. V. Kaltenbom, Alexander Woollcott and Will Rogers.
Jack Benny, currently starred in the "Jack Benny Show" on Columbia Broadcasting System Sundays from 7:00 to 7:30 p.m., EST, under sponsorship of the American Tobacco Company, first entered radio 18 years ago.
Started In 1932
Back in 1932, Benny bumped into columnist Ed Sullivan one night in a Broadway restaurant. Sullivan asked him to guest on his radio program the following evening. "But I don't know anything about radio," Jack protested. "Nobody does," Sullivan replied.
Benny offered to give it a whirl, gratis, and on this first broadcast of his life introduced himself with a line now immortal in radio, "This is Jack Benny talking. Now there will be a brief pause for everyone to say, 'Who cares'?"
First Commercial On NBC
Millions did care, as Benny soon found out. The same year, 1932, he had a sponsor and a network program on NBC. He was a sensation from the start, zooming to the top in rating sweepstakes and helping to put radio on its first real pants. He has remained at the top, or pretty much so, ever since, a national institution and trail-blazer in radio comedy.
The "Jack Benny Show" has remained virtually constant in basic pattern through the years, evidence of its tested value as a style of entertainment. As everybody knows, Jack doesn't tell the jokes himself, though he is a master wit. He is the "unhappy" target for the barbs of his radio gang.
As a master showman, Jack Benny's genius is universally recognized. His knack of building personalities into stars of their own right is well known. Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson, who plays Rochester, and Phil Harris are notable examples of his star system.
Benny and his company moved over to CBS from NBC in January, 1949, and since then his Lucky Strike broadcasts have been a Sunday night feature from Hollywood.

The day before the survey results came out, Radio Daily published the latest Pacific Hooperatings. Jack’s show was number one at 40.9, with Bergen and McCarthy next at 33.1. Incidentally, Dennis Day was 11th at 19.6, while Phil Harris and Alice Faye followed at 18.9.

Jack continued to popular. It took another 15 years before he succumbed to glum ratings. 1932 to 1965 is a pretty good run for anyone.

The Horn Blows

On a whim, I decided to flip through some newspaper clippings about Jack Benny in May 1945.

You could certainly get your fill of Benny then, on radio and on the big screen.

Jack’s last show before summer break was on the 27th, with Larry Adler as his special guest. The show also featured Prof. LeBlanc (Mel Blanc), a “typical American family” soap opera announcer (Bea Benaderet), Speedy Riggs’ mother (Elvia Allman), and a plug for Yhtapmys Soothing Syrup with Jack chuckling in the background over Frank Nelson’s delivery.

But he wasn’t through with radio yet. On the 29th, he and Keenan Wynn co-starred in “Please, Charley” on NBC’s This is My Best at 9:30 Eastern. It was based on Lawrence Riley’s humorous short story. Then the following night at 11:30 Eastern, he emceed the second half of a two-hour Seventh War Loan show on the network. His gang was there, as was Ronald Colman to lend some seriousness to the proceedings. On May 16, he appeared from Hollywood in a segment of the series for wounded servicemen, The Road Ahead, airing on the Blue network at 9 Eastern and hosted by Clifton Fadiman.

Among the clippings is a story by Tom Dammann in the May 11th edition of the San Luis Obispo Telegram-Tribune. We quote part of it:

SAN FRANCISCO, May 11.—No gathering of people is complete without funny incidents. The United Nations Conference is no exception. [...]
The other evening, to show you what we mean, we were standing with a large crowd just outside the Opera House to watch the delegates arrive for a plenary session. [...]
Where’s Rochester?
Finally a long black limousine drove up and the crowed quieted, awed, because here perhaps was a Molotov or Stettinius. Out stepped a handsomely dressed man and three well gowned women. The crowed craned its neck, including us. Here was obviously a delegate of importance, but who was he? He walked hurriedly up the steps, followed by the three women. He got just inside the door when a sailor in the crowd recognized him.
“JACK BENNY!” the sailor hollered.
And it was Jack Benny, with Mary Livingston [sic] and two friends. He turned and shouted “Hiya, folks,” and went on to watch the proceedings. The crowd laughed.

It seems others got to meet Jack in the flesh during his trip to the Bay area. His May 20th show came from San Francisco. Before and after the broadcast, the cast took part in an “I Am An American Day” show at the Civic Auditorium. As for the show, it made the May 19 edition of the Fulton Daily Sun-Gazette of Missouri.

Dudley Payne, Hospital Attendant 2-c at the U. S. Naval Hospital in Oakland, Calif., and son of Mr. and Mrs. Wallace Payne of Fulton, will play with a navy band on the Jack Benny radio program at 6 p. m. Sunday night.
Young Payne, who plays trombone, has written his family that he is a member of a band which has been judged the best at his base, and will make a guest appearance on the nation-wide radio show tomorrow night. In his letter he said, "If you hear an extra loud note on a trombone, that's me!"
He has been stationed in California almost two years and is movie projectionist and in charge of the sound equipment at the hospital. In this capacity, Payne has met and worked with many famous radio and motion picture stars and has written home often of his interesting and amusing experiences.

Jack stayed after the broadcast, as we learn from the Vallejo Times-Herald of May 22.

Comedian Jack Benny, accompanied by members of his radio troupe, entertained Mare Island Hospital patients at a program in the hospital garden yesterday. After the outdoor show, Benny toured wards to meet patients unable to leave their rooms.

Feature films and Benny didn’t mix, at least according to legend, but in May 1945 he could be seen in movie theatres across the country. Some theatres were playing It’s in the Bag, in which he had a cameo with Fred Allen. Others were advertising his appearance in Hollywood Canteen, released in late December the previous year.

And then there was The Horn Blows at Midnight.

Benny fans know he used this unusual film as a whipping boy, whipping up laughs on his radio show. At the time, it got mixed reviews, more so, I believe, than any other film he made in the ‘40s. The Oregonian’s Drama Editor wrote on May 16:

Benny Film Needs Help
Jack Benny came to the Orpheum screen Tuesday in “The Horn Blows at Midnight.” The film proves definitely that Mr. Benny should have stuck to his violin and “The Bee.”
However, died-in-the-wool Benny fans will pehaps gather joy from this production for it does hold a few laughs.
The story is one of those dream affairs with the comedian playing the role of a third-rate trumpet player on a radio program. He falls asleep as the program is about to go on the air. The picture is devoted from this point to the Benny dream.

The Louisville Courier-Journal of May 11 had a different take.

Not since the heyday of Harold Lloyd has a comedian created so much unalloyed hysteria in audiences as does Jack Benny in his roof-top escapades in “The Horn Blows at Midnight,” [...]
Mr. Benny, we might add, is very pleasantly cast in this film, playing with a droll sense of bewilderment and timidity.

Jack put his name to a column that was kind-of about the movie. The only version I can find is in the Charlotte News of May 26, 1945.

That There Benny Fellow Is A Card
(Editor's note: The following story by Jack Benny was apparently hidden away in an old show since the picture he refers to has long since been completed. Proceed at your own risk.)
By JACK BENNY
HOLLYWOOD — Oddly enough, my day starts in the morning. At 6 A. M., an alarm clock rings in my ear, so I take it out of my ear and go back to sleep. About half an hour later I hear a bell ringing again, but this time it's a telephone call from the Make-up Department of Warner Bros. Studio, urging me to hurry over — because putting enough make-up on my face so that I will look ten years younger, is equivalent to making a "Dogwood Sandwich". I would resent that if there weren't a clause in my contract telling me to "SHUT UP". So I inform them that I will rush over to the studio as soon as I comb my hair. But they tell me not to bother because they got it there and it’s combed already.
It is now 6:30 and still dark, so not wanting to wake up Mary or my daughter, Joanie, I tip-toe through the hall, slip out the front door, ease down the curb where my convertible is parked. Just as I open the car door, I hear a window being raised, and Mary's voice raised even higher yelling, "It's about time you got home." I would give her an argument but I recall that she had "that same certain clause" put in our marriage license: so I throw her a kiss and drive off.
COFFEE TIME
In no time I am at Schwab's Drug Store where I always stop in for my morning cup of coffee: 5 cents, plus doughnuts; 15 cents, plus sales tax $1.30. Finishing my breakfast, I jauntily flip a 10-cent tip on the counter. It comes down tails so I have to leave it there. This is the third time it's b[words missing] and I'm really becoming quite popular.
Anyway, I jump in my car, drive through Laurel Canyon to Burbank, and there in spite of yesterday's rain, stands Warner Bros. Studio. As I pass through the main entrance, I wave a cheery hello to the gateman, who waves back and yells, "STOP." So I back up, show him my studio pass which has my picture on it. He seems quite interested, and shows me a picture of his wife and son; so I show him a picture of Mary and Joanie. At this point we are even. Then he shows me a picture of his dog, so I show him a picture of a girl I used to go with in Waukegan. The competition being too tough for him, he lets me through, and I park my car right between Barbara Stanwyck's and Ann Sheridan's which keeps my motor from getting cold.
And so to work making love to Alexis Smith and Dolores Moran in "The Horn Blows at Midnight."
Editor's second note: Ho. Hum. And unquote.

Here’s the oddest Benny connection I found in newspapers of May 1945. I don’t know the background behind these panel cartoons, if some Hollywood war bond campaign organisers asked the stars for captions. But several of them have Jack’s name on them. The ones below were found together in the May 30th issue of the Goldsboro News-Argus. Goldsboro, coincidentally, is where L.A. Speed Riggs of the Benny opening/closing commercials worked as a tobacco auctioneer.

Five Years With Jack Benny

When the Jack Benny radio show hit the five-year mark in 1937, it wasn’t the show you may remember. There was no Rochester and Kenny Baker was still the singer. But it had evolved over that time (which included a rather acrimonious change of writers).

Jack got into some of the changes in this feature interview in the St. Louis Star and Times published May 10, 1937. He also explained how he felt comedy had changed in the U.S.

The first phrase of the story isn’t accurate. And Jack vacillated about his place of birth. The How-I-Met-Mary story changed over the years, too (the “seder” meeting, a late addition to the tale, never happened).

The writer quotes dialogue from the April 25, 1937 broadcast. St. Louis listeners would have heard the East Coast broadcast. I’ve never liked this show. I can understand it when the cast gangs up on Jack when they catch him in a lie, and he keeps building on it instead of admitting he’s BSing. In this one, Jack makes an honest mistake (that isn’t his fault; it’s the board operator’s) and even apologises but they keep bashing him throughout the show. This is one time where he doesn’t deserve it. And the Block and Sully routine seems shoehorned in.

When Jack Benny Talks, 27,200,000 Listen
By HARRY T. BRUNDIDGE
HOLLYWOOD, May 10.—His name is Benjamin Kirselsky—Jack Benny to you—and he is the world's number one radio entertainer. His radio sponsors pay him $12,500 a week (not stage money) and out of this he has only to pay the men who write his programs. Paramount Pictures pay him $125,000 in a lump sum for his every production and his 1937 income will top $1,000,000.
Under the system of rating radio stars, now accepted as authentic, he is on the top spot with 34 points; each point represents 800,000 listeners and according to this system some 27,200,000 persons hear Benny every Sunday. On a recent Sunday I went to the little theater in the NBC studio to watch him stage his program, which had been rehearsed for the first and only time an hour before. Benny hates rehearsals, says they take the punch out of a program. "My rehearsals are the worst in the world," he told me. "If they were good I'd be worried about the regular broadcast."
The little theater was packed to capacity. Tickets to broadcasts are not sold; all are given away to applicants, usually weeks in advance. (You apply in January and get a ticket for a May show.) Because tickets are hard to obtain, the visible audience is always one that is highly appreciative, ready to laugh at a joke they heard grandpa tell forty years ago. But the boys and girls on the stage at ALL broadcasts do NOT depend on the spontaneity of the audience. Someone on the stage at EVERY broadcast gives the audience the cue and laughter is turned on and off with a mere wave of the hand.

AS I settled down in the "wings," to watch the performance, Jack Benny, the star; Mary Livingston, his wife; Phil Harris, the orchestra leader; Don Wilson, the announcer, and others of the cast took their places on the stage. Michrophones [sic] were at strategic points. Each member of the cast has a copy of the script because nothing is memorized; everything is read from a script that has been prepared by professional writers, and approved by the advertising agency which represents the sponsor, and by officials of the broadcasting company. Now and then there is some extemporaneous joke or comment, but that is infrequent.
The stage manager, stop watch in hand, watches the seconds tick away. Then, with a long sweep of his arm he indicates that the program "is on the air." What follows — save for the scripts in the hands of the performers—looks exactly like a scene from a musical comedy.
Don Wilson, the announcer, introduces the program by naming it and saying it is starring Jack Benny, with Mary Livingstone and Phil Harris and his orchestra. The orchestra opens the program with "Hallelujah, Things Look Rosy Now."
The number is completed. Wilson steps close to the nearest mike.
WILSON: Spring's the time to wake up and live ... swing into the new tempo . . . go places and do things—"
As the announcement (or plug) is finished and the music fades, Benny reads from his script:
JACK: Hey, Mary, come here. Don't you love the way Phil wiggles around when he leads the orchestra? Look at him.
MARY: Yeah! If he could only see himself. (She giggles.) He sure is cute though, Isn't he?
JACK: Yes, but he doesn't have to show off so much. After all it isn't television.
WILSON: Jack, quiet, your microphone is open.
JACK: What?
WILSON: Everybody can hear you.
JACK: Oh, I'm sorry.
(MUSIC UP AND FINISH.)
CROWD: (Applause.)

THE foregoing is direct quotation from the script. Even the crowd's cue is written in! But why the applause at that point? Ask the script writers—I don't know!
With the broadcast at an end, there was a mad rush of musicians, spectators, electricians and others to gain the street; Benny, his secretary, Harry Baldwin, and I joined the milling mob, battled through the perennial autograph seekers and finally reached the seclusion of a booth in "The Grotto," next door to the Melrose avenue Studio.
"Maybe I ought to feel a little impressed with myself for within a few days—May 2—I will celebrate my fifth year on the air," Benny said. "But as a matter of truth I am far more impressed with radio than with myself. I've made some strides in those sixty months and may be a bit more polished on May 2 when I give my 287th broadcast, than I was on my first, but radio has moved ahead so rapidly that in the same period I feel my own progress has been that of a snail on a treadmill by comparison.
"In common with other so-called funny men on the radio five years ago, most of my stuff was made up as I went along. We didn't spend much time working over a script for we figured that if a joke was bad we could think of something on the spur of the moment that would make it a lot better.

THAT was a fallacy. Many times as we stood before the mike our brains wouldn't think up anything and many times the jokes we did think up were more feeble than those they replaced. That is one of the improvements comedians have made. Scripts are written by experts, far in advance of a program, read, revised, worked over and, usually, revised again after a rehearsal.
"Compare the picture of my first broadcast with the one we did this afternoon. In the first broadcast I had an audience of forty or fifty persons jammed into a small corner of a studio that wouldn't have held twenty in comfort—if everyone breathed right. Then I was in a glass cage, separated from the audience. While radio listeners could hear the suppressed giggles of my visible audience. I couldn't I had to watch the audience through the sheet of glass and wait until they closed their mouths so I could go ahead with the next joke. I got to be a great lip reader, but since I wanted to be a comedian and not an interpreter, I had the glass taken out and the sounds let in. When others found that this idea worked without blasting the microphone off its foundations, they did the same thing, and we haven't been bothered by glass partitions since."
"There were other odd little customs in broadcasting five years ago. The first time I stepped up to a mike I was told that if I so much as moved my head, the listeners would be unable to follow my words. I did a lot of broadcasts with my head glued to one spot in front of the microphone, and I suffered from chronic stiff neck. Today I can stroll all over the stage, virtually go out for a walk during a broadcast, and still be picked up by the small mikes now in use, for they have been made that flexible and sensitive. The NBC trademark letters would have to be made small enough to hang on a woman's charm bracelet to find the mikes we actually use today.
"My hope is that for the next five years radio will decide to amble along at the leisurely pace we comics have taken so that we comics can make the advances that radio has wide."

BENNY, five feet, eleven inches tall, well groomed, with blue eyes, brown hair, and weighing 160 pounds, has a far-away look in his eyes and goes off into day-dreaming trances. In one of these he elbowed me and returned to mere earth with, "I beg your pardon—what were you saying?"

WAUKEGAN, ILL., was my birthplace," said Benny," and the date was 1894. I was a St. Valentine's Day present. Father was a haberdasher in Waukegan and I grew up with a collar and shirt under one arm and a fiddle under the other. It's the same fiddle which Fred Allen has been discussing for weeks — discussing whether I can play it. Pop thought that as a haberdasher's clerk I would make a good fiddler, but orchestra leaders put that thought in reverse, so I decided to go into vaudeville with a monologue and a fiddle. Theater managers, listening to me, decided pop, the orchestra leaders and myself were all nuts because, as a monologist, I was a good fireman or deckhand on a boat. "We got into the war and I left vaudeville flat and joined the navy. I thank the navy. Were it not for the sailor suit they gave me at Great Lakes I still wouldn't have the nerve to try to get away with what I have been getting away with ever since. That sailor suit gave me a lot of confidence because people respected wartime sailors; they were supposed to be hard guys.
"The war ended and I went back into vaudeville. More and more I cheated on fiddling and leaned heavily on nonchalant chatter. It got so I was being paid good money just for idling through fifteen minutes of monologue.
"Eventually I worked up to $2,500 a week and I'm frank to say I was making almost as much or more at $2,500 a week than I'm making now—and that goes for everything I'm making. I do not pay off the stage show out of my income; I pay only my writers. But Uncle Sam with his income tax law is the guy I'm really working for.
"I told you before the broadcast about writers—the important thing is that a writer should know what is bad. If he can select the good from the bad he's a genius. You can take my word for it. The bad material is what hurts.

MOST writers try to be ultra-sophisticated and in the attempt, forget that with the coming of the automobile, the radio, and the motion picture, city limits were all but wiped out. The line between the urban and the sub-urban today is so fine as to be almost indistinguishable. There's no such thing as a 'hick' any more and the 'small' town has vanished. The Missouri Ozarks farmer demands an ever higher grade of entertainment—and a newer joke—than the New York City broker, because the Ozark fellow spends more time at the radio, listening, than does his city cousin and knows all the answers.

"Comedians used to say 'It will be great for the hicks in the sticks but Broadway will give you the horse laugh.' Now the comics assert: 'Broadway and Hollywood will giggle but toss it out—it won't get by in the sticks.' "No longer do the so-called horny-handed sons and daughters of the man with the hoe weep at such songs as ‘You Made Me What I Am Today;’ they're too busy singing Robin and Rainger love songs, and they're swinging about the barn to the tunes of Benny Goodman and Phil Harris and can't be bothered with 'Turkey in the Straw.'

I SHALL illustrate my point. We had a gag that laid them in the aisles in New York. Here it is:
“'Q. Who was the lady I seen you with last night?'
“'A. What were you doing in that part of town?'
"But you should have read the fan mail from the farms, villages, and small towns; letters that topped that gag in 100 different ways, and all old.
"The Burns and Allen program is one of the most popular on the air and it couldn't be that without the warm following of fans in the rural districts. I happen to know that their fan mail shows that one of their most rib-tickling gags was appreciated far more by their rural listeners, than by the so-called city folks. Here's the gag: Milton Watson was leaving the Burns and Allen program and after the usual build up, Gracie told Milton to kiss her goodby. There were a series of torrid kisses and then: GRACIE: Goodbye GEORGE. I'm going with Milty.
"Modern?
"To be successful on the air you have to write up to the small towns and rural districts, not down. The greatest mistake a comedian can make is underestimating the intelligence of the audience. Those who make that mistake don't last long. They're too lazy to dig up new material, or too dumb to understand that people in the 'sticks' also enjoy subtle humor."

MY BIGGEST thrill in radio was when a guy in the Ohio state penitentiary, about to be electrocuted, wrote and told me he was very much interested in my feud with Fred Allen, over the subject of whether I could really fiddle. He wrote that he wanted to know the outcome of that feud before sitting on the hot seat. Allen and I both wrote to him and told him how the feud would end. The next week the guy got a commutation of his sentence to life imprisonment and wrote us the Ohio prison inmates had a hearty laugh on the two of us because they knew all along that our feud was bound to end that way.

MY LIFE has been mostly work. I never did anything last night that the world was crazy about the next day. Nothing I ever said tonight was commented on tomorrow. It has just been a procession of programs. I've spent twenty-five years climbing up the greasiest ladder that was ever greased and believe me, you can slide down a damned sight faster than you can climb up.
"My routine hasn't changed. I'm doing the same thing on the air today I did when I was a master of ceremonies at shows in the Orpheum Theater in St. Louis.
"My most exciting experience on the radio was the night of March 14, in New York. Fred Allen and I had been going after each other for three months and on that night we got together, threw away our scripts and went after each other, tonsil to tonsil."

BENNY, now making his eighth motion picture, was preparing to leave and I reminded him he had told me nothing of Mary Livingstone, his wife.
"Sorry," he said. "I met her in Los Angeles. She was a sales girl in a department store and was pinch hitting for a girl with whom an actor friend had made a date for me, but who failed to show. Mary kept the date and, although I didn't know it, I fell in love and that fact didn't dawn on me until I wrote to her sister and learned Mary was engaged to a guy in Vancouver, B. C. I suggested a trip to Chicago. Mary came to Chicago and I proposed and was accepted. We were married on Friday instead of Sunday because we both figured if we waited until Sunday the wedding probably would never take place.
"Would you believe it, we've been married ten years and six months and it only seems like ten years?"

A Weighty Matter

The Jack Benny radio show didn’t just develop over the course of a season, with a Maxwell, and age 39 and trains leaving for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga showing up in the dialogue. That took years, something a show on TV would never be given the time to accomplish.

Jack debuted in May 1932. There was a revolving door of NBC and CBS staff announcers assigned to the show. Any attempt by Benny to build a comedy character around them was pretty much impossible.

When Chevrolet picked up his show the following year, Jack started with Howard Claney, who was replaced with Alois Havrilla. The carmaker dropped his show in 1934 and Benny was forced to find another announcer when General Tire decided to sponsor it.

That’s when Don Wilson won an audition and began a lengthy association with the Benny show, taking the jump into television with Jack in 1950. He had started in radio in Denver as a singer, and ended up working at several radio stations in Los Angeles, and hosting a transcribed comedy/variety show called The Mirth Parade. He was best known for calling the Rose Bowl game. That got the attention of NBC executives in New York, who transferred him back east, ostensibly as a sports announcer.

Don continued doing what Claney and Havrilla had been doing—interrupting dialogue to shoehorn a word in about the sponsor. But Wilson had something else Benny could hang a comedy peg on—his size.

Some might call it fat-shaming today, but Wilson seemed to take it in stride and got his licks in at Benny in response.

When the show became televised, audiences could see Donsie was hefty but not obese. I’m no expert on the television version, but it seems things shifted and Wilson was called to do sillier things on camera (and, out of nowhere, was father to an adult son).

Here’s Don talking to one of the newspaper syndicates in a story published on March 4, 1962.

Don Wilson: Large Bones
By DONALD FREEMAN
Copley News Service
HOLLYWOOD—28 years with the Jack Benny troupe, Don Wilson’s size is certainly no state secret. Everyone knows that the cheerful announcer-actor with the mellifluous voice is —well, ample. His bulk, in fact, has proved one of the more durable props on the show.
"Actually, I am not fat at all," said Wilson, smiling broadly as he slid into a booth at an airport restaurant. "It is true that I have a large bone structure. But, if you want the truth of the matter, I only weigh. . . . .” An airplane droned overhead at that moment, drowning out Wilson’s voice.
“What was that?” I cried, leaning forward. "What was that again?"
Weight A Comic Myth
"Let me put it another way," said Wilson, his expression bountiful. "My weight is one of those comic myths that take hold. But no one, down deep, believes the myths they laugh at.
"No one really believes that Jack Benny is so penurious, for instance no one really believes that he drives a Maxwell or has a butler named Rochester or that he keeps his money hidden in a vault."
"And your —er, size," I put it, that kind of a myth, too?"
"Absolutely," Wilson said, defiantly jutting out his chins. "But I couldn't be happier about it because it gives Jack a chance to make a lot of jokes and it's given me a pleasant living at my profession."
"How much," I asked, "did you say you weigh?"
Wilson raised a interruptive finger. "See those people over here," he said, "at that table by the window." A cluster of diners had spotted Wilson and several of them smiled by way of recognition, Wilson waved back, also smiling.
Wears A Triumphant Look
Now Wilson turned to me, a triumphant look on his good-natured face. "I'll tell you what they're saying over there right this minute," he said. "They're saying, 'My gosh, Don Wilson must have lost a lot of weight.' Wherever I go, that's what people say to me.
“I have to explain that I haven't lost any weight at all. Besides the fact that the TV camera adds a few pounds, with all the jokes they've heard about me on the Benny show, people assume that I must weigh at least 350 pounds."
Wilson laughed at the outrageousness of the thought, his chins dancing again. "And then it's a big surprise to these people when they see me in person."
"I suppose, that I have been the subject of more fat man jokes than anyone in show business. When I think that Jack's writers have used every fat man joke in the world, they come up with another one. I remember one line where I tell Jack that I had gone on a diet and taken off 25 pounds. Jack gave me that dying calf look of his and he said, 'You haven't lost weight, Don. Turn around. You've just misplaced it.' "
Scales Are Challenged
A few minutes later, we left the restaurant and Mr. Wilson approached a scale. "Now," he said, inserting a coin, "this should prove my point. Fat, indeed."
"What does it say?" I asked, but, as he turned, Wilson accidentally blocked my vision. He quickly stepped off the platform.
"When a scale is out of order," Wilson demanded, innocently, "wouldn't you think they'd at least put a sign?"

Don Wilson won all kinds of announcing awards, even though Bea Benaderet once remarked how a pool was conducted every Sunday, with actors guessing which line Don would blow first. Jack took one of the mistakes on TV and turned it into a running gag on both television and radio—Wilson twisted the Lucky Strike slogan “Be Happy, Go Lucky.” Wilson’s wife Lois, who was a fine radio actress, was hired to add to the situation.

When Benny ended his regular series in 1965, Wilson wasn’t hired to announce the specials. Veteran Bill Baldwin was brought in, while Wilson only made a few guest appearances. Somehow it didn’t seem right.