Rabbit Transit Smears

“Ptoo!” I say to people who don’t like the three Bugs Bunny-Cecil Turtle cartoons because there’s supposedly some kind of “rule” that “Bugs has to win all the time.” Given the context of the story, people shouldn’t expect Bugs to win because the hare didn’t in the fable the cartoons use as a starting point.

All three have much to enjoy. The final one, “Rabbit Transit” (released in 1947), has some wonderful acting by animator Virgil Ross in the opening scene; watch how he moves Bugs’ body and fingers. And Virgil tosses in some of his smear animation. Here are three frames from later in the cartoon.



Who better to comment on this kind of effect than animator Greg Duffell? He wrote on Facebook:

Virgil Ross (who animated the scene displayed) did similar transition effects in this general period. I gather they are based on examples starting in THE DOVER BOYS. There is a formula to how Virgil did these. The effect usually takes 3 frames. Frame 1 is a slight stretching out of the first key, frame 2 is much like the example provided here which is basically a full stretching from between the start and destination pose, and frame 3 is a slight stretching out of the destination frame 4. Each drawing is photographed for one frame each. This technique was largely abandoned by all units by 1950. LONG HAIRED HARE uses this technique for the conducting sequence, to particularly good effect.

Here are a few more smear frames.



The scene toward the end when the angry Bugs is trying to get at the turtle has some great poses, too. I’ll get to that in a future post.

Convict Concerto Take

There’s no director credit on the Woody Woodpecker cartoon “Convict Concerto” (released 1955) but it’s apparently the last cartoon Don Patterson supervised at the Walter Lantz studio. Patterson, Ray Abrams and Herman Cohen get animation credits. Here’s a realisation take when Woody hears the dumb cop tell him (as if he couldn’t figure it out on his own), the crook inside his piano is a killer.



It’s not as wild as takes in other Patterson cartoons but this one was written by Hugh Harman (misspelled in the credits) who wasn’t exactly enamoured of wild takes. I suspect the story behind Harman’s hiring at the Lantz studio for this one cartoon (Lantz displaced Harman and Rudy Ising on the Oswald series more than 25 years earlier) is far more interesting than anything in this cartoon.

Baked Potatoes and Traffic Lights

It’s an era we will never see again. The days of young comedians wearing themselves out for little money, travelling to small towns across North America, with the hope that they will rise to fame and fortune. The days of old comedians sitting around reminiscing about their days as young comedians, having built and maintained friendships over a lifetime, the poverty of small-time show business their common bond.

There’s something cheering about the long friendship of Jack Benny and George Burns. Not because both were talented men who brought instant smiles or laughs to their audiences. Not because Hollywood seems to be an ego-driven place where nobody really likes or trusts anyone else. It’s because you’d like to think that people you like, like each other.

George and Jack met in vaudeville. When radio brought them fame, their families socialised together. They exchanged visits on each other’s shows, both on radio and television. George sprinkled his various books with Benny anecdotes. And when Jack died in 1974, George replaced him in the movie version of “The Sunshine Boys,” winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in the process.

Here’s George Burns about Jack Benny in an Associated Press interview in 1973. It’s supposed to be about Burns but it’s more about Benny. When anyone in the entertainment world gives up a chance for free publicity to give it to their buddy, that’s friendship. And the comedian in George must have realised the story would be funnier that way.

‘Stay With Show Biz’
George Burns Still On Stage
By MARY CAMPBELL
AP Newsfeatures Writer
NEW YORK, March 20 (AP) — George Burns has some advice for young people starting in show business: “Stay with it. But,” he adds, “I think if they don’t make it by 77, they should go into some other business.”
Burns, for years best known as straight man for his wife Gracie Allen, at 77 is more or less starting a new career. He has a recording out, “A Musical Trip with George Burns,” and he gave his first concert as a singer in New York's Philharmonic Hall. The record originally came out, with then-current hits of the Beatles and Rolling Stones, etc., in 1968. Burns says sales of the reissue prove that he was ahead of his time. “Then, nobody bought the album except my sister Goldie and I had to buy it back from her the next week.”
Things are different now than when he was young in show business, Burns says. Then, before radio or TV, a song might take three years to become a hit and equally as long to fade away. A person might stay in vaudeville for years, never realizing whether he had talent or not, while today a recording can come out, sell enough copies so the artist has enough money to retire and the next week disappear so he has to write a new song to remain in the public eye.
He wouldn’t want to be retired, Burns says, or even semi-retired, which he decided he’d try a few years ago. “You get old too fast. “Jack Benny just bought $30,000 worth of rosin. We’re going to stay around. We’re booked.”
George Burns and Jack Benny have been friends more than 50 years. How have they stayed friends? Easy, Burns says. “He tells me I’m a great singer and I tell him he’s a great violinist.”
Burns recounts a usual Los Angeles day’s routine. “I get up early, have orange juice and coffee, smoke a cigar to loosen up my vocal chords. I go to my office at 10:30. At 12 I quit. I go to the Hillcrest Country Club for lunch. I sit at a round table with Danny Thomas, Groucho Marx, Georgie Jessel and Jack. We fight to get on sometimes.
“I play bridge until about 4:30. I go home and have a little sleep until 6. I get up, have a few martinis, have dinner, go out sometimes, sing a lot. It’s a nice life.”
Money was never his goal, Burns says. “I just loved show business.” He says Jack Benny is the same way, more interested in the small discoveries of daily life than in money. “If he signed a contract for $1 million, it wouldn’t interest him. He came to the club one day all excited; he'd found a restaurant that gives four pieces of butter with a baked potato. And he doesn't eat butter.
“One other day he came in looking all excited. He’d signed a contract down-town in Los Angeles. Maybe it was for $1 million. He said, ‘I came out of the parking lot, turned on Wilshire Boulevard, and if you go 27 miles an hour, you miss every red light!’”
The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show ran, after vaudeville, for 17 years on radio, then nine years on TV. Gracie died in 1964. The TV reruns seen these days hold up so well, Burns says, “Because the character Gracie played was so believable. The jokes sound fresh, even now.”

The Other Side of Jay Ward

A real estate agent isn’t exactly the kind of person you’d think would make a good cartoon producer. But Jay Ward was. He surrounded himself with incredibly creative people who made him laugh and produced some of the funniest TV cartoons ever. And, by all accounts, his own sense of humour was off-the-wall and inventive, so he fit in with his staff perfectly.

Keith Scott’s wonderful book “The Moose That Roared” goes into great detail about Ward’s life and foibles. But I found a story that Keith didn’t include and it shows a facet to Ward that doesn’t get a lot of light in the book. This is from a front page column in the Abilene Reporter-News, November 30, 1962.

PAGE ONE
By Katharyn Duff
BAIRD—Jay Ward is a very funny man who lives in California. He is a producer of the Bullwinkle show and, as a side stunt, the promoter of “statehood for Moosylvania,” a mythical land he would make the “52d state.”
He’s the sort who gives people the lock to the city—since others give the key. He has stickers, buttons and songs about Moosylvania.
(Sample, to the obvious tune; “How are things in Moosylvania? Does the fetish swamp still fester there? Does it still give off the pungent smell of Muscatel and sweaty grizzly bear? . . .”)
Jay Ward is a very funny man, a busy showman. He is also a very warm and gentle man.
This is about a quiet visit he paid last week to a little Baird girl.
* * *
Linda Dill is a senior in Baird High School. She fell in love with the Bullwinkle nonsense when it came along, and since she has marked artistic talent, she made some tiny dolls to represent the characters, wrote a script for them and let them “perform” for various Baird classes.
One day, she bundled up her Bullwinkle dolls and mailed them to Jay Ward.
That started a friendship-by-mail. Jay wrote that the dolls were on exhibit in his Hollywood studio. He sent Linda a Bullwinkle clock and a battery-operated Bullwinkle figure. Linda, in turn, got up a “petition” in Baird seeking statehood for Moosylvania.
Then it developed that Jay Ward would be in Dallas for a show in mid-November and he wrote an invitation to Linda to drop by if she could. Linda would have but six-weeks exams conflicted and she had to decline the invitation.
* * *
On Wednesday evening last week a long distance call came to Baird from Jay Ward at Dallas. He asked to speak to Linda. Then he learned.
Linda is deaf, her mother told Jay, so the message would have to be relayed.
That was the first Jay knew that his young friend is not as others. Spinal meningitis when she was 6 left her with handicaps. She is deaf, has speech impairment and is confined to a wheelchair.
* * *
Jay Ward’s call to Linda came on a Wednesday evening.
Jay Ward himself came on Thursday—came in all the glory of his “Bullwinkle Wagon,” a panel car painted to resemble a circus wagon, came complete with all sorts of gifts and gadgets from “Bullwinkle.”
He came to talk with Linda, via her family, and to visit.
He set off an assortment of devices to make music for the little girl. “Linda may not hear it, but let’s wind it all up for her anyway,” he said.
Jay Ward put on a very special show for Linda.
Then he bent and kissed Linda’s hand and got in his Bullwinkle Wagon and drove back to Dallas.
He left behind a little girl “orbiting a rainbow,” her mother says.
He left behind, too, his offer to send Linda through any college she might choose—and offer her family thinks it cannot accept.
* * *
“I don’t know Jay Ward’s height,” Linda’s mother says, “but he was ten feel tall when he bent and kissed Linda’s hand. . .I don’t know, either, when the Department of Health will get us for I don’t think that hand has been washed since. . . .
“There’s something pretty wonderful about a person who will take the time to make a little girl happy, isn’t there?”
And, except for the noisemakers, it was all done quietly. No publicity.
Jay Ward, Linda’s family learned, is more than just a very funny man.

I wish I had a happier answer to the question “Whatever happened to Linda?” Linda Dill died December 9, 1968, age 23. But it’s nice to learn her life was made a little brighter by a man with a nutty sense of humour who also had a serious, caring side, too.

Mickey Plays the Pig

From “Steamboat Willie” (1928). I wonder if Uncle Walt did this once.

The Robot's After Flip!

Flip’s fiendish robot is coming for him in “Techno-Cracked” (1933). Nice layout.



Flip decides to kill him with dynamite…



…which the robot eats. A kaleidoscope effect shows the dynamitic indigestion.



Naturally, the robot quickly adjourns to a nearby outhouse but explodes as he, for reasons I can’t fathom, does a belly-flop in front of the door.



The Iwerks studio was downplaying the fact Flip was supposed to be a frog. He’s simply billed as “Flip” in the opening title animation by now.

Elusive Radio Success

Not-altogether-bright husband. Long-suffering wife. Anxious teenaged daughter. Precocious younger son. Loud boss. Misunderstandings. Mix them all together. How many family comedies of the Golden Age of Radio does that describe?

Too many.

I’m not a big fan of most old-time radio situation comedies. Jokes were obvious. Situations were contrived. Characters behaved unbelievably. There were exceptions, of course, but it was easier for writers to take the same old stuff and adapt it for another show. That way, networks could introduce “new” comedies but they would still have an air of familiarity for the audience (and sponsors, who preferred the tried-and-true).

One of the successful comedians of comedy short films in the second half of the ‘40s was George O’Hanlon. For more than 50 years, he’s been known for the role he played in 24 half-hours that were shown over and over and over on Saturday mornings. He was the voice of George Jetson. But almost 20 years before that, he starred in the clever Joe McDoakes “Behind the Eight Ball” series for Warner Bros. The premise? Joe failed to accomplish the goal of the title of the short (eg. “So You Want to be a Cowboy”). What made them fun was the satire going on around the plot. The best ones were pretty clever. Their success hatched the idea of developing some kind of radio sitcom around O’Hanlon’s talents. But it didn’t pan out.

For one thing, O’Hanlon’s show was picked up by the Mutual network. Mutual was a low-financed co-operative venture, known for detective shows, mysteries and 15-minute kid serials (like “Superman” and “Tom Mix”). It didn’t go in for comedies. Yet the network aired O’Hanlon after a month-long delay and with no sponsor. And it sounded like more of the same old sitcom. Here’s a review by John Crosby that appeared in papers around November 30, 1948, a few weeks after its debut on November 9th. Evidently, he wasn’t a viewer of Warners’ shorts.

Radio In Review
By JOHN CROSBY
The Apoplectic Boss
George O’Hanlon, the head man in a new comedy show on the Mutual Broadcasting System (8 p.m. Tuesdays), is described as a motion picture star, though his name has left no imprint whatsoever either on my memory, a faulty instrument, or on this newspaper’s files, a fairly comprehensive collection of human achievement.
This, of course, is nothing to be held against George and may even be a point in his favor.
The program, a new one, over which he presides, dogs the footsteps of “Blondie” closely and in some respects has overtaken the older comedy. It’s a domestic comedy with office overtones. These are two places, the home and the office, where comedy, at least on the radio, runs rampant. I HAVE NO objections to this folksy approach to our times except that, in practice, it presents a dreary picture of the average man’s life. George—and Dagwood, too, for that matter—perpetually are ground between two tyrannical forces—the boss and the wife—and, while this may be an accurate reflection of middle-class existence, it’s hardly a pleasant one.
In my opinion which on this question is warped beyond repair, the O’Hanlon show is a slight improvement over “Blondie” in that George’s wife is just as dim witted as he is.
This puts the sexes all even—one of the few occasions in radio where the menfolk get a break like that.
GEORGE WORKS for something called the Lamb Paper Box Co., an organization chiefly distinguished by horseplay, intrigue and utter incompetence.
This must have been the outfit that packed all those overseas gift boxes for the soldiers during the war—the ones in which the toothpaste usually tangled interestingly with the marmalade.
The head of the Lamb Paper Box Co. is an apoplectic individual named Harry Lamb, who talks entirely in baseball metaphors like Tallulah Bankhead.
“I’ve got you down for three errors,” he will howl at a delinquent employe, usually George. “Nobody is touching second base around here. Over here, Team! Into the huddle. Our competitor, Amos Hogg, has stolen a base. Someone here has been tipping him off to our signals.”
His metaphors, you’ll notice are almost as confused as Bill Stern’s and not nearly as informed as Miss Bankhead’s.
THE COLLEGE SPIRIT around the Lamb Paper Box Co. even has generated a team song which the employes in moments of crisis gather around to sing.
I took the words down with the idea of introducing it at the next songfest at Bleek’s, but I must have left them in my other pants.
In spite of the magnificent esprit de corps of the Lamb Paper Box Co. and of the exhortations of Mr. Lamb himself, who possesses much of the truculence of the late Knute Rockne, the team play is pretty spotty.
The man who was selling the signals to the opposition is a character called Beechwood, a heel. When he isn’t selling out, George, who isn’t corrupt, just stupid, is usually kicking the Lamb Paper Box Co. a little closer to bankruptcy.
THESE monkeyshines—you get more plot in five minutes than in half an hour of Jack Benny—are just a little elfin for my taste, but there are those who might find them reasonably amusing. When George isn't in trouble at the office, he’s in a jam with his wife, and here again Beechwood offers free advice and assistance to the detriment of all concerned.
The best that can be said of the jokes is that they are good-natured. (“Do you know Fleischmann’s Yeast?”— “I didn’t even know he was west.”) . . . .
Considering the limitations of these gags, the cast performs splendidly. O’Hanlon, incidentally, is a sort of cross between Jimmy Stewart and Eddie Albert, if you can imagine such a thing, and is quite a pleasant fellow.
There is one other thing about the Lamb Paper Box Co. that disturbs my social sense. Good old Harry fires virtually the whole staff every 10 minutes or so.
This just isn’t possible under the present administration, old man. There are union rules, contracts, and all sorts of underwater obstacles in the path of the good old-fashioned apoplectic employer.

The real Eddie Albert, incidentally, went on to work with the producer of the McDoakes shorts, Dick Bare, on “Green Acres.”

The George O’Hanlon Show struggled along until March 1, 1949. It was replaced the following week by “The Casebook of Gregory Hood” but returned as a summer replacement. O’Hanlon and Bare tried unsuccessfully to bring McDoakes to TV (Warners stopped making the shorts in 1956), where it should have worked. O’Hanlon spent the next few years making occasional on-camera appearances (and voiced a cartoon or two for MGM) but made his money writing. He had to be good at it as he was hired by the picky Jackie Gleason. He didn’t get a starring role again until George Jetson came along after an unsuccessful audition a few years earlier at Hanna-Barbera for the part of Fred Flintstone. O’Hanlon loved the Jetson role. In 1989, he fought poor health to come into the studio to record his lines for a Jetsons movie. He finished the last sentence, had a stroke, was taken to hospital and died.

So it was that George O’Hanlon became known for being a not-altogether-bright husband with a long-suffering wife, two kids and a loud boss. Not from radio but from cartoons. The main difference between the two was George Jetson was surrounded by funny futuristic gadgets in the kind of satire of modern living that had made his Joe McDoakes shorts fun. Sometimes, an extra ingredient in the comedy makes all the difference.

A Funny Feeling Comes Over Him

Bugs Bunny can just sense gold. At least he can in “14 Carrot Rabbit,” another fine Friz Freleng cartoon.

Our hero gets twisted, twirled, crunched and multipled into various shapes as he goes into his gold fit (the animation gets used three times in the cartoon). Here are some of the drawings.



I like how Sam is blinking his eyes while peering from the background.

Virgil Ross, Art Davis, Manny Perez and Ken Champin get the animation credits (Gerry Chiniquy was out of animation at the time this cartoon went into production).

You Moved, Didn't You?

“Dumb-Hounded” (1943) is littered with the shock-takes that Tex Avery became known for. Takes build upon takes. Here’s how Avery gets from one surprise drawing of the wolf to the next one. Two in-betweens featuring brush strokes.



The final drawing is left to establish by being exposed on seven frames, then Avery moves the wolf around some more.

Here’s a fun in-between drawing that shows up for one frame.



No animators are credited, though I understand they are Irv Spence, Preston Blair, Ray Abrams and Ed Love.

Not That Quiet Riot

TV Radio Mirror was one of many print publications in on the parade of “Jack Benny isn’t his character” stories. This one is from May 1955. None of the little tales in this biographic article may surprise Benny fans, who have likely seen them elsewhere. The photos you see here accompanied the article.

Jack Benny—Man or Myth?
He's thrifty, 39, and frustrated . . . generous, ageless, successful . . . whatever he is, he's your favorite!
By FREDDA DUDLEY BALLING
The morning after Jack Benny's daughter, Joan, was married to Seth Baker, the Los Angeles Examiner headlined the event, "Benny Daughter Wed in $50,000 Ceremony." The Los Angeles Times duplicated that headline with one exception—the price was quoted at $60,000.
(Incidentally, both figures were incorrect.)
Eddie Cantor rushed to the telephone and asked his long-time friend, "Jack, d'ya want to save ten thousand dollars this morning?" In his usual velvety voice, Jack confessed that he had never been hostile to thrift. "Read the Examiner instead of the Times then," was the Cantor advice.
Jack has told the story repeatedly, obviously gets a kick out of it because it indicates how completely the Benny legend has permeated the American scene. He is a man who attracts labels, as if to define him could explain him as a living phenomenon. Jack Benny has been dubbed "The Waukegan Wonder," "The World's Least Appreciated Violinist," "The Most Versatile Worrier the Race of Man Has Yet Produced," "The Funniest Un-funny Man in Show Business," "The Spirit of Mankind's Daily Frustration," and (by George Burns) "The Quiet Riot."
In some respect, each of the designations is true, but—even taken all together—they don't encompass the actor, his act, or the man responsible for both. Actually, Jack Benny is one of the great short-story writers and one of the great editors of our time; his yarns have gone over the air, instead of down on paper, which makes him a throwback (with microphone) to the days of the traveling minstrels who brought gossip and song to the scattered populace.
The radio and TV Jack Benny is a character created over the years, his idiosyncracies deepened, his foibles and traits sharpened until he steps out of speakers and tubes as real as those risen-from-ink myths of Sherlock Holmes, Paul Bunyan, Pollyanna, Elsie Dinsmore, Philo Vance, and Scrooge. Especially Scrooge.
Not long ago the following classified advertisement was run in the Sacramento (California) Union: "Two women about Jack Benny's age would like small unfurnished house. Would like to pay what Jack Benny would like to pay." To at least one hundred million Americans, this description of prospective renters and their financial status was perfectly clear. Children by the dozen have written Jack to ask for options on any cubs produced by Carmichael, the bear that roams the Benny premises—in radio scripts only. During the war, the conservation board hit upon an ideal way to call public attention to the need for scrap iron: They asked Jack to donate his completely fictitious 1924 Maxwell to the scrap drive.
It is clear that, in times to come, "Jack Benny" will become part of our language, along with such meaningful names as Steve Brodie and Annie Oakley. A "Jack Benny" will be a gently swaggering, mildly four-flushing show-off who always gets his comeuppance; a tight-fisted, harmlessly vain, perpetually frustrated and somehow likable "fall guy."
Long ago, when Jack was still in vaudeville, slowly bringing the Benny character to fully realized form, the drama critic for New York's erudite Times commented, "Jack Benny's is the most civilized act in vaudeville."
A celebrated actress, after having lost a movie plum she had believed certain, after having banged up her five-thousand dollar automobile, and after having staged a battle with her husband that sent him to a hotel to recoup, announced to a friend, "I feel exactly like that newspaper etching of Jack Benny—you know, the one advertising his TV show."
This economical sketch, reproduced throughout America, depicts a pair of tragic eyes, a pair of crossed Mona Lisa-like hands, and an expression of profound frustration. Essentially sad, it is also essentially funny because nearly everyone recognizes one of his own moods in that projection of bewildered dejection. We all get "sassed back" by salespeople, taxi drivers, and police officers. We all overstep our knowledge of our abilities and fall flat on our faces. The "Jack Benny" character, suffering such disaster with us, reduces our fate to a subject for laughter.
So much for the myth that makes us smile. What of the living, breathing man who has created the legend?
First of all, he wasn't born in Waukegan, Illinois. He debuted into this world in Chicago, on Valentine's Day, just 39 years ago (or in the year 1894). Much of the time he looks somewhat younger than 39, having—as General MacArthur phrased it—"a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions," that keep him timeless.
His proud boast that he is the world's worst violinist is open to challenge. His show-business start came as a direct result of his proficiency with the fiddle. At 16, he toured for two vaudeville seasons with a pianist, a woman old enough to be his mother and having a mother's conviction that the Benny lad had talent—even if he had been kicked out of school for exasperating his teachers. In 1916, with a male partner (Lyman Wood), Jack Benny and violin played the Palace, that famous goal of all vaudeville artists. Benny wasn't asked back until 1924—and, by that time, he was carrying his fiddle onstage merely as a prop—but his musical abilities cannot be denied.
During the war, Jack was invited to do a benefit for Greek War Relief. In white tie and tails he strode onto the stage, tucked his violin into place, and played a highly involved concerto arrangement of "Love in Bloom." Finishing his performance, he bowed solemnly and strolled backstage, where a friend congratulated Jack effusively, saying that he'd never realized that Jack had not been kidding about his violin lessons all those years. Jack's deadpan response: "Listen—when I was younger, they used to call me another Heifetz . . . not this Heifetz—another Heifetz."
Second most persistent of the legends with which Jack libels himself is that he's a slow man with a nickel. This gag started during Jack's 1924 Palace engagement. It seems that the country was suffering from a mild post-war slump, prices were high and money scarce. Looking over his audience, Jack realized that there were many couples in attendance only because the escort had been living on peanut-butter sandwiches for a week. Wistfully, he said that he had been thinking of taking his girl to a movie—because, down the street there was theater where, in blazing lights on the marquee, it said: "The Woman Pays." This produced such understanding howls that the character of the man clinging devoutly to his dough was born.
In actuality, Jack is not profligate (never gambles, cares nothing for betting on the horses), but his checkbook is always open to worthy causes. During the war, he spent well over a hundred thousand dollars for telephone line charges to bring his shows to servicemen. He pays the highest salaries of any comedian in the broadcasting business, and recently sent a generous check to Walter Winchell for the Damon Runyon Cancer Fund—with the understanding that the fact would not be publicized.
Many a man, professionally generous, is personally parsimonious, but Jack could never be accused of domestic penny-pinchings. The Bennys live in unostentatious but unmistakable elegance. Their Beverly Hills home cost $250,000 when built in 1939, and it is furnished in a deceptively simple style best described as "comfortable contemporary."
Their Palm Springs home was purchased in 1951, at a cost of $75,000. The main house consists of living room, dining room, kitchen, servants' quarters, and three family bedroom suites. There is also a pool, a palm-shaded patio and a guest house which always seems to be occupied.
In small things, as in great, Jack is not inclined to scrimp. When his daughter, Joan, reached the age of telephonitis, he had a private line installed for her (use unlimited—as long as she did her home work). Both Jack and Mary have always had their own private lines so that Jack's often-lengthy business calls would not interfere with Mary's active social life.
The women in the Benny family have always been considered among the best-dressed in Beverly Hills, and Jack himself is considered by his tailor, Eddie Schmidt, to be one of the 10 best dressed men in the world today. At latest inventory, Jack owned around 80 cashmere sweaters, about 40 cashmere jackets, some 100 sport shirts, 20-odd pairs of gray flannel slacks, a blue capeskin sports jacket (greeted by whistles from the entire personnel at CBS), and around 20 business suits, along with an array of tuxedos and full-dress suits for both professional and personal use.
Another charge leveled at Jack Benny, the character, by Jack Benny, the man, is that he can't act. "The Horn Blows at Midnight," a Benny motion picture, has come in for much caustic comment from Jack. Truth is that "Horn" made Warner Brothers a nice piece of change.
Jack's ability as an actor is so subtle that it often escapes notice, but—like air—if it were missing there would be obvious discomfort. All comedians suffer from a quaint human practice: The layman tells the doctor how to cure the common cold; he tells a professional musician about his uncle who played piccolo for Sousa; he explains his hatred of modern art to painters—and he tells jokes to comics. It is likely that Jack has now heard, in multiple versions, every joke perpetrated. But his laughter rings out in hearty enjoyment of any and every story, quip, pun or gag inflicted upon him. He looks as if he enjoyed it, he laughs as if hearing it for the first time, he thanks the teller as though this gambit might save the Sunday show.
Statistics about the number of Maxwells manufactured are clouded by time and unsteady reporting, but they must have rolled off the assembly line like doughnuts at Hallowe'en. Wherever Jack goes to make a personal appearance, someone has thought up the great gag of meeting him at airport or station with a vintage Maxwell. Without fail, this breaks Jack up. He examines the relic with tenderness and gives every indication of being grateful for the implied familiarity with his program.
When he was on USO tour, wherever he went—no matter how mud-choked or artillery—raked the camp—Jack was greeted by a convulsing sign: "Welcome, Fred Allen." He never failed to make a big thing of this acknowledgment of his long-famous feud. He never failed to get in some mention of the sign in the show.
Jack still owns and operates a pretty good head of hair, but no Christmas passes for which he doesn't receive a toupee from some local prankster. Such a gift is acknowledged with a correspondential merry-ha ha.
The "Jack Benny" of radio and TV characterization would seem to have no emotional nature beyond a tender regard for his own ego and the welfare of his wallet, but the man behind the mountebank is—in every sense—a gentle-man. In speaking of the people connected with his show, Jack always refers to them as "those who work with me"—not "for me." When meeting times are being set for discussion of the next show, Jack never mentions an hour and adheres to it arbitrarily. He says, "What time would be good for you?"
He and Mary Livingstone were married in Waukegan, at the Hotel Clayton, on January 14, 1927. (She fainted at the end of the ceremony, a fact that has troubled Jack ever since.) When Jack is away from Mary, he writes every day, telephones whenever possible. In Korea, he lined up with the GIs in order to send flowers to Mary, just as the other men were doing for their wives. Sometimes he tells Mary, "For your birthday, go buy something you really want," but usually he plots her gift for weeks in advance, presents it with a small boy's heart-filled grin.
Perhaps the unkindest dig of all is the charge sometimes made that Jack Benny, outside his radio personality, is not an amusing man. There has been an assumption that his admittedly tremendous abilities reside in situations built up to a payoff. Such phrases as "flawless timing," "masterful inflection," "an uncanny ear for the inner rhythm of laughter," have been tossed off to explain audience guffaws at Benny. One colleague once observed: "The only operator to get more out of a 'Well . . .' than Benny is the state of Texas."
Now would seem to be the time to give you a happy few minutes with Jack Benny, the man who doesn't need his writers to tickle your ribs. Having been interviewed by Cleveland Amory, author of The Proper Bostonian, Mr. Benny made good use of the time from the standpoint of both publicity and putting a show together. The following Sunday, a comic situation found Jack annoyed with Rochester and seeking reasons to rebuke him. "What is this copy of The Proper Bostonian doing next to the Kinsey Report?" he wanted to know. Eddie Cantor, in an affectionate moment, allowed as how he'd give Jack the shirt off his back any old time. Benny's instant response, delivered in a tone of solemn dedication, was: "And do you know what I'd do for you, Eddie? I'd wash it, iron it, and charge you only thirty-five cents."
Jack still likes to report the advice he received from Jimmy Durante when Jimmy heard that Jack was going into TV. "Jimmy sounded a real warning: He said, 'When youse is in television, youse is gotta speak distinkly.'"
Benny said of his great and good friend George Burns, "He's the world's loosest man with an insult."
Returning from an appearance in Vancouver, one raw spring day, Jack was happily playing gin rummy with Don Wilson when the plane began to struggle like a Mexican jumping bean. The pilot came back to ask for instructions, saying that dead ahead loomed Mount Rainier: The plane was icing up and they were losing altitude and something had gone wrong with the radio—he thought they were off the beam. Would it be all right if he set down at Corvallis?
Many spine-chilling moments later, the pilot made a perfect landing at Corvallis, once again came back into the cabin to ask if there was anything more he could do for Mr. Benny. Very softly, Jack said, "Yes. Please get me a room in a nice one-story hotel."
During one of Jack's USO tours, he and two other members of the troupe were being jeeped back to their lodgings. An MP ordered the jeep to stop unexpectedly—calling from a dark corner—and when the driver didn't comply as fast as the MP thought he should, a fusillade of bullets whizzed over the heads of the jeepsters. Once all were identified and the difficulty straightened out, the shaken quartet climbed back into the jeep just as a black cat strolled across the street in front of the whitened travelers. "Now he tells us," snorted Jack. When he was asked by an interviewer if he were a handy man about the house, Jack admitted sorrowfully that he "couldn't push a thumb tack into a bulletin board without consulting a carpenter."
Well aware of the fact that he isn't supposed to be a quipster, Benny sometimes uses this misapprehension to his own advantage. He said wistfully, one day, "I really envy ad-libbers like Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. They're so well coordinated. I've been playing golf as long as they have, but I still haven't been able to break 80."
The tag line must be awarded to Fred Allen, erstwhile airwaves enemy of the Waukegan Wonder. Fred doesn't often speak the straight lines, so he is doubly impressive when he does so. Said Mr. Allen, in his book, Treadmill to Oblivion, "Jack Benny is the best-liked man in show business."
And funny, too.