Porky's Clim-axe

Evidently Bob Clampett and his buddy Flash Gee must have been bored with Porky Pig. In 1939, they turned him into a parody of Mr. Moto. Why? Just for something to do, I guess. It’s not even a particularly good one, as Porky’s Movie Mystery relies on stereotypes, verbally and musically (Carl Stalling plays “Japanese Sandman” in several spots).

The climax comes as Porky/Mr. Motto quickly stops the Invisible Man’s axe in mid-air and then fights him. There are five drawings used in a cycle.



Porky jumps out of the fight, gently lays down the axe, and resumes the fight.



The Invisible Man is suitably voiced by Billy Bletcher until he’s revealed at the end to be Hugh Herbert, when Mel Blanc voices him. Was Hugh Herbert ever funny?

John Carey is the credited animator. Izzy Ellis and Norm McCabe are in here somewhere, and there’s a bad edit about three-quarters of the way through the cartoon in circulation.

Tips on Tipping

There are only so many ways a star can promote their show before they look at a new way of doing it.

At one point, Jack Benny was appearing on two shows—his own, and then occasionally guesting on another CBS TV broadcast called “Shower of Stars” (ostensibly, the hosts were Bill Lundigan and Mary Costa, who spent most of their time plugging Chryslers). One of the newspapers giving Jack publicity for his appearances on Stars was the New York Herald Tribune, which gave short shrift to the show itself. Instead, the story was really a joke column playing on Benny’s reputation (on the air, not off) of going out of his way to avoid spending money.

This tongue-in-cheek piece ran on October 2, 1955. The photos with this post accompanied the article, though I don’t believe Ben Hogan appeared on the Stars show in question.

Take A Tip From Me . . . (if you can!)
By JACK BENNY
I realize that I have gained quite a reputation throughout the entertainment world, not only as a great actor, but also as a very economical person. This reputation still exists even though my income has been increased this year with a new television series, the “Shower of Stars” programs, which starts this Thursday night. I am doing five hour-long programs for my new sponsor in addition to my regular Sunday night television series.
I must admit that this legend is exaggerated as most legends are. Words get twisted as stories are retold, and somehow a great many people have the idea that I am stingy. That hurts. I’m not what you would call stingy, I just like to see good care taken of money.
Word has gotten around to waiters all over the country, and I have really been getting the business, come tip time. I think it’s wonderful, the game they play. First they tell me out of the corners of their mouths about a customer who just left a 50 cent tip and how they hate such a tightwad. Then as the soup is served, they begin looking under my plate and in the neighborhood of my elbow to give the idea that they haven’t forgotten. Eventually, after I have successfully ignored such childishness, they bring the change from my bill in nothing but quarters. The theory is that no one would want to go around with all that jangling silver weighting them down. Occasionally one will go so far as to say, “The management frowns on tipping, but like it,” or “I’m not greedy, I’ll settle for 10 per cent.”

Of course, none of these underhanded tactics makes the slightest impression on me because I just don’t like to leave tips. I smile and tell them I’ll get them the next time I come in. Another trick I use is to let them see me slip a dollar under the plate, then slip it out when they aren’t looking and leave in a hurry. They think the bus boy stole the buck and I get away with that for awhile. My best trick though is to wait until the waiter begins looking for his tip, and then ask him if I can borrow a fiver until next Tuesday. That one usually sends them running for cover.
The practice of tipping began innocently enough. It started back in the days of the old Romans when patrons used to leave a little wine in the bottom of each glass for the waiter to enjoy. This kind of tipping wasn’t bad. It made the waiters very happy . . . sometimes so happy that they weren’t in any condition to work the rest of the day. Before long, restaurant managers saw the faults in this system and encouraged their waiters to wheedle money out of the customers instead of wine. I have always contended that liquor led to bad habits, and this is proof of it, I think.
Tipping is too much trouble, anyway. For instance, your check is $2.35 plus eight cents tax. The question is; should your tip be 10% of the original bill, or 10% of the bill including tax? As I saw, it’s too much trouble to figure that out every time I leave a tip. I’d rather save myself the trouble and the money and forget the whole matter.
I could go on and on with reasons why I think that tipping should be abolished. But I think my own experience should convince you. Since I gave up tipping my mind has been completely at ease. Hat check girls used to irritate me. I stopped tipping them, and stopped wearing a hat. Now I not only save the money I would be tipping them, but I save the price of a new hat each year. I cut out tipping delivery boys by buying everything at a cash-and-carry store. I’m not bothered by the bell-boys or door-men when I’m in New York since the hotel gave me my own private entrance. It’s sort of an iron grated stairway that leads up to my window on the 15th floor. But it’s private, except for the one time we had a fire.
You never know what harm you can do by leaving a tip. Let me tell you a story about my cousin Edgar who persists in this foolish practice. One day Edgar was feeling particularly flush, and tossed a quarter tip to a waiter in a Miami nightclub. The waiter made a bee-line over to the slot machine in the lobby and dropped the coin in the slot. He hit the jackpot. When he took his winnings home that night, his wife accused him of filching it from the cashbox, and he ended up on the receiving end of a French heel right between the eyes. He woke up in the hospital to face a grand larceny charge, divorce proceedings and a hospital bill for $393.20. All that because of a tip.
Doesn’t that give us food for contemplation?

Making Tom, Jerry and Droopy

Who kept winning Oscars for short cartoons during the ‘40s? MGM. But the writers in the papers kept talking about Walt Disney.

Granted, they weren’t writing about short cartoons; they were commenting on or reviewing Disney’s features. But you’d think someone outside the trade papers would have noticed Fred Quimby dutifully picking up Oscars for the work of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera for 1940, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.

Well, a few people did. Here’s one example from the New York Herald Tribune, December 12, 1948. It’s a pretty blah example, an unbylined feature story mechanically outlining the step-by-step process in making a cartoon. You don’t get any sense of fun or comraderie at the studio. The thing I find interesting is the mention of sketch artists and a story group. Joe Barbera and Bill Hanna left the clear, unmistakeable impression years later that Barbera was the fountain of all Tom and Jerry stories, that he did the sketches. You’d swear he was the only one involved. But there were others. Cal Howard provided material for the first Oscar-winning Tom and Jerry short. Pinto Colvig was writing for MGM after returning West from the Fleischer studio in the early ‘40s. It’s a shame their efforts have been shoved to the background. (Conversely, Tex Avery’s cartoons gave screen credit to gagmen who, at least in Heck Allen’s case, claimed they didn’t do a lot).

Seven Months Work, Seven Minutes Play
HOLLYWOOD has long been considered a modern wonderland, where a fire, flood or earthquake can be dreamed up on five minutes notice by some of the most skilled technicians in the world. And nothing in all of Hollywood’s unique achievements ranks higher in technical skill or creative imagination than the production of today’s animated cartoon. Limited only by the fancy of its creators, the cartoon is an unhampered medium which allows the widest latitude in choice of subject matter and execution.
At the M-G-M cartoon studio, under the guiding hand of producer Fred Quimby, a staff of 150 devotes its full-time efforts to the creation and perfection of those miniature mixtures of mirth, music and mayhem—M-G-M technicolor cartoons. Although it takes only seven minutes for Jerry Mouse to outwit Tom Cat on the screen, it takes the complete staff seven months to produce one of these cartoons.
Since 1936, when M-G-M became the first and only major company to enter the field of cartoon production—which until then was left to a specialized few independent producers—producer Quimby and his staff have continued to experiment with new characters and new techniques.

What makes a cartoon character catch on with movie audiences? Successful ones don’t just happen. They are as much the result of careful planning as the making of any Hollywood star. When a movie studio wants a certain type for a picture, screen tests are made of several players. By the same token, when a new type of personality is needed for a cartoon role, several artists will be handed assignments to experiment until they develop a character whose personality fits the bill.
Likewise, when a new player shows screen promise, he or she is given a few bit parts in pictures before getting a chance for full stardom. And in the cartoon field, when the artists have evolved a new character and want to give him a “screen test” they’ll put him in a minor role in one of the cartoons—and then watch the audience reactions.
Tom and Jerry, the creations of two young artists, William Hanna and Joe Barbera, who head a unit at the Metro cartoon building, were first introduced in “Puss Gets the Boot,” as an experimental pair of feudists. The reaction was so good that they subsequently appeared in “Midnight Snack,” “Fraidy Cat,” “The Bowling Alley Cat,” “The Lonesome Heart,” “Puss ‘n’ Toots,” and others. In the past few years their popularity has grown to the extent where they achieved the status of cartoon stardom. Jerry Mouse climaxed his screen career by his sensational appearance in the combination live-action and animation sequence in the M-G-M musical hit, “Anchors Aweigh,” in which Jerry did those intricate dance steps with Gene Kelly.

The production of a cartoon is a highly integrated series of processes, most of them requiring a high degree of technical perfection. Once the story has been selected, gags and routines are discussed for weeks. Sketch artists make up thumbnail drawings of sections of the story, illustrating the gags. These are arranged in the form of a rough continuity for careful discussion by the entire story group.
Animators breathe life into the cartoon by preparing a succession of progressive drawings which suggest motion. Character and background are drawn separately. Individual drawings are made for every movement of action. Inkers and painters convert sketches into finished work. Workers known as in-betweeners fill in the actions indicated on the drawings by the animators.
While all this is going on, there are other phases of the production taking form. The musical director is working on the score, working closely with the director, so that the music will tally with the detail for time and effects.
When all the drawings have been completed in color, shooting begins. It takes more than 15,000 individual drawings, each separately photographed, to make a complete cartoon.

Phantom Rocket

Did the Van Beuren cartoonists like to drink a lot? There seems to be a drinking gag in a pile of their Tom and Jerry cartoons.

There are at least two in The Phantom Rocket (1933), a cartoon which seems to exist solely as an exercise to see if the staff can animate the rocket in perspective (the design changes from scene to scene). The first booze gag is near the start of the cartoon, where a trombonist spots a bottle of hootch in the back pocket of a dignitary at the launch ceremony. The dignitary reacts.



The timing of the cartoon is all messed up (not to mention the animation of the dignitary jerks as if several in-betweens were missing). The politico has one of those shake takes with a wavy outline of the character alternating with a smooth one. But you can see the tuba is already reacting. It would have worked better if the dignitary shook for maybe six or eight frames, then the tuba could move in and zap out a raspberry which sends the dignitary on his heels.



The story makes no sense in spots, and some of the gags are poorly executed, but this is a Van Beuren cartoon after all. However, Gene Rodemich provides an enthusiastic score.

Frank Sherman and George Rufle are the co-directors in this final T & J outing.

Hair Today...

Lonesome Lenny discovers the hair remover that Screwy Squirrel glooped on him really works. Here is his reaction, frame-by-frame.



Ed Love, Preston Blair and Ray Abrams animated this 1946 short, Screwy’s final appearance. Sad, isn’t it?

Jonathan Harris and Doctor Smith

Kids tuned in to Lost in Space to see the self-absorbed Dr. Smith get his comeuppance. I suspect some people on the show’s set wanted the same thing to happen to the man who played him, Jonathan Harris.

Lost in Space started out in 1965 as a science fiction show centered around the Robinson family marooned on a planet (you know, like in "Swiss Family Robinson"). June Lockhart and Guy Williams were supposed to be the stars. It quickly changed. Harris got permission to re-write his lines and, to be blunt, he made himself the star of the show with his scenery-chewing acting style and comic byplay with a robot voiced by Dick Tufeld. There wasn’t a whole lot for Lockhart and Williams to do on screen, even less for the rest of the cast (with the notable exception of very skilled child actor Billy Mumy). I suspect they weren’t happy about having their show hijacked by someone who, like, Dr. Smith, thought very highly of himself.

Harris had been an accomplished stage and live television actor, first appearing on Broadway in February 1942 in “Heart of a City” at Henry Miller’s theatre in the comparatively small role of a Polish soldier (Harris and several other cast members were added after a three-day shake-down at the Shubert in New Haven).

The over-the-top performance of Harris attracted the attention of newspaper columnists. A number were written about him during the show’s three-year run. Let’s pull out a couple distributed by King Features Syndicate. The first appeared in papers on November 16, 1965.

Character Actor Plays Villain
By CHARLES WITBECK
HOLLYWOOD — “Dr. Zachary Smith is a lovely, wicked man!” declared actor Jonathan Harris, talking about his villainous character who seems to be running off with the liveliest lines und scenes on the Wednesday night CBS special effects wonder for children, “Lost in Space.”
Zachary Smith is a fairy tale type villain kids can boo, for he leers with extra malice, and he utters flowery, florid language. “Smith has the softest heart,” added Harris. “He's really a cowardly lion who would rather be bad than good.”
Versatile character actor Harris seems to be safely ensconced in a winner with “Lost In Space,” and he has managed to pull off a first, by being listed each week on the show credits as special guest star. “It really doesn't mean anything except to me,” Harris acknowledged.
Without Dr. Smith, “Lost in Space” would merely pit the sweet, earnest, intrepid and wooden Robinson family against the space elements for weekly conflicts. Smith, the villain, was a last minute addition to the show, and he really shares leading honors with the tremendously inventive 20th Century Fox special effects crew who make all the eerie gadgets and cosmic storms work.
Entitled To Awards
“The special effects men should be coated with awards for the incredible production,” says Harris. “Producer Irwin 'Voyage To the Bottom of the Sea' Allen is willing to tackle anything because he knows that crew can't be stumped.
“Some gadgets are very complicated like my robot who really doesn't care for me. Others are relatively simple, like the alien people who will be seen shortly on the air. The alien people are just heads which have been put together with saran wrap, minus bodies. They hover about and speak in a most cultured, genteel manner. We earthlings are like boobs beside them.”
The wicked, talkative Dr. Smith marks Harris third TV series, so he is quite familiar to fans who may discount his villainous qualities, Harris worked with Michael Rennie for three years in “The Third Man,” filming in England and on the Continent, and then he played the urbane, snippy hotel manager on “The Bill Dana Show.” Like Dana and Don Adams, Harris is unable to figure out what went wrong with the Sunday night series.
“Don Adams is repeating his same role of the idiot detective, and he's a big hit on 'Get Smart.' I'm being ugly on Wednesday night and I'm safe, and you know everybody is always happy to see Dana as Jose Jiminez. It's a puzzle.”
Never Leading Man
Harris has played character parts in stock, on Broadway and in TV for years. “I never was a romantic leading man,” he explained. “I never got the girl because I had just killed the girl.”
Harris believes actors should look in mirrors a lot. “Look in the mirror closely,” he advises, “and find out what you can sell. Then go out and sell it better than the others.”
He also believes life forms a kind of pattern. “Things happen because they should, and because I have earned them,” Harris continued. “I have no false modesty.”
Harris had four long runs with Broadway's “Teahouse of the August Moon," "The Madwoman of Chaillot,” and “Hazel Flagg,” and then he was fired for the first time in his life from a Broadway play.
“I was upset for two weeks,” he recounted, “and then a call came from Hollywood for a movie. It worked out for the best and it had to happen that way. From that point on I spent most of my time out here in pictures or in TV.”
'I Did My Homework'
Producer Allen had no special instructions for Harris after the actor signed on the dotted line. “Irwin let me work out my own approach,” said Harris. “I'm very good at preparation and I did my homework on the character before We started filming. Then Irwin watched me very carefully for the first few days, gave his approval and that was I all.”
The cowardly lion, who likes to scare little boys and girls, I pretends to be very bad on Wednesday night. “I can be evil,” said the actor with gusto. “But I worry a little about my robot. You see, he's really me, so I can't trust him an inch. Perhaps the alien people will settle his hash.”

In January 1966, ABC moved The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and replaced it on the Wednesday night schedule with Batman. Soon, the Caped Crusader started taking the audience away from Lost In Space. But Batman begun to sink, just as the confident Harris thought it would, as he explained in this column from November 28, 1966. You’d almost expect him to call Batman a “Neanderthal ninny.”

Actor Harris to Play Dual Role In Next ‘Lost in Space’ Episode
By CHARLES WITBECK
TV Key, Inc.
Hollywood — Children's favorite Jonathan Harris, that petty, mobile-faced trouble-maker Dr. Smith on “Lost in Space,” really outdoes himself Wednesday night, plying his talkative self, and look-alike Zeno, the fastest gun fighter in space, in an episode titled “West of Mars.”
Jonathan spent six days talking to himself, acting out two parts, an exercise the ebullient actor reveled in. “It was a bit much,” Jonathan modestly declared. “I had to be told who I was constantly, and was allotted about five minutes to figure out my character, but we managed.”
Zeno the gunfighter is played in the traditional deadpan western style, except for a habit of calling people "pussy cat" “Oh, my, Zeno is a glum one,” Harris admitted, “a complete opposite from the expressive doctor who dotes on phrases like 'Oh the pain,' or 'Never fear, Smith is here.'”

“Never fear” Smith leads the attack on rival “Batman” which seems to have lost its novelty, and sinks each week in boredom. The contest between the two juvenile offerings has ceased being a tug of war. The Smith show canters along with a comfortable rating lead, something Jonathan predicted long ago.
“Pretense is never successful on television,” explains the actor. “And 'Batman' was based on pretense. Some called it 'camp,' but our opposition really didn't fit the term.”
The character of Dr. Smith quickly became the “boss man” in “Lost in Space” last season, because Smith has some meat to his part as the protagonist. Guy Williams, the noble space captain and his sweet wife, June Lockhart, were caught in a character straitjacket and seem unable to expand their solid roles. As a result, Smith carries the show, playing a larger-than-life part.
“We give a slap, tickle and a giggle, and slip in a moral here and there,” said Harris. “In the process we have hooked the parents along with the kids.”
Jonathan has proof, not from the ratings, but from personal experience. Recently, 5,000 people stood in the rain to catch a glimpse of Dr. Smith in San Jose, Calif., a feat which flabbergasted the experienced character actor.
“I'm a Cary Grant fan, but I wouldn't go out in the rain to see him,” Jonathan said. “Yet, there were acres of faces out in the downpour waiting for Smith.” A similar reception greeted Jonathan and his wife early last summer in Bangkok, Thailand, where “Lost in Space” dazzles viewers. Harris appeared on TV in a live broadcast and was mobbed trying to leave the station.
“I was almost trampled to death with love,” is the way Jonathan put it. “The Thais are affectionate, open, happy people, and they show it without reservation. In Hong Kong, Harris was looked upon with interest for his role of hotel manager in “The Bill Dana Show” enjoying a run, but there were no mob scenes. “The Chinese are different,” said Harris. “They look, but they don't bother you.”
Now “Lost in Space” made its debut this summer in Tokyo, and Harris understands the series is already number one, and has crossed off Japan in his travel itinerary to stay in one piece. “We wouldn't stand a chance in those Tokyo crowds,” he said. “We seem to be an Oriental smash, thanks to our formula of a slap, a tickle and a few good giggles.”

Harris found other things besides Lost In Space to talk about in interviews. Here’s an example from a syndicated column of November 14, 1965.

He’s Still Stagestruck
By HAROLD STERN
HOLLYWOOD – There’s only one thing wrong with Jonathan Harris’s performance as the evil Dr. Zachary Smith on the CBS-TV “Lost in Space” series. He’s so charming, I refuse to accept him as a villain.
In real life, he isn’t even close to the wonderful characterization of Mr. Philips he contributed to the late, lamented “Bill Dana Show.”
His energy and effervescence are almost beyond belief. He is a quicksilver conversationalist and one just doesn’t interrupt.
“I’m stagestruck,” he said as we began to make out each other’s faces in the stygian gloom enveloping the “festive” Hollywood tavern where we met. “I love the word actor. I still get nervous. Isn’t that wonderful! It’s standing in the wings to go on on opening night with a death wish and then going on and giving the best performance of your life. I still get that feeling, even in TV.
“And you go out and do it, and if you feel it isn’t right or it isn’t working, you blow it deliberately and force them to shoot it over.
“Being an unemployed actor is disaster! Going to work every day is kicks. You learn something vital from each show. That’s kicks for an old dog like me. And you can watch other actors and learn things not to do.
“I never had any formal training. I learned by watching. I learned a tremendous amount from watching Paul Muni in ‘A Flag Is Born.’
“I’ve done so many of those shows where you read the script and you say ‘Oh, they’re kidding!’ But they’re not. And if you do the show you must do your best. And for all that money, come on, you know you’ll do your usual first-class job.
“It’s your responsibility to your audience and to those important to you. Always do your best. I learned that in the theatre. It’s a question of pride in what you do. If you don’t have it, you can’t act. Never apologize for what you do or for the script. Just do it well.

“On the set I'm referred to as ‘Himself.’ It really swings when I’m there. Our producer Irwin Allen is called ‘The Emperor,’ the great Emperor Irwin, The First. His energy is frightening, all the more so new that he knows he has a huge hit because of me. He’s so inspired, he gets 28 hours of work into every day. “I haven’t given up the theater. I know I’ll do another play. But the theater isn't what it used to be. However that shouldn’t stop my triumphal return, the return of ‘What’s-his-name?’
“Come to think of it, television isn’t what it used to be. I've been in it since the first live broadcasts from the old Dumont network in the ‘40s. I always thought television was destined to be a major force for good. And who’s to say it isn’t.
“Every once in a while there’s a White Paper or a drama with something to say or a documentary or Julia Child. How I love her! I’ve stolen all recipes. “I’m a demon cook, you know. I love to cook on the run doing four other things at the same time. It’s great fun and interesting and I’m daring. Male cooks are daring, you know. I’ll throw ginger into the most unlikely dishes.
“But, I’m an opera nut, if I had my druthers. I think I’d rather be a tenor than anything else. Opera is very important to me and I’m always the tenor unless the bass is Cesare Siepi and then I’m the bass.
“There’s nothing I like better than cooking to opera music.”

As the robot might have remarked: “Warning! Warning! My sensors detect increasing silliness.” He wouldn’t have been a “bubble-headed booby” if he had. Toward the end, one episode of Lost in Space revolved around human vegetables or some such nonsense. Like Batman, the show lasted three seasons before being killed by camp. But both shows are still fondly remembered by people who watched them over 50 years ago. And probably best remembered from Lost in Space is the preening, cowardly braggart Dr. Smith, played deliciously by Jonathan Harris.

Cartoondom's Greatest Singing Headstones

One of the greatest cartoons by the Fleischer studios is Swing You Sinners! (1930). Bimbo ends up in a graveyard where everything comes to life and ghosts emerge to taunt him. To think this was the same studio that made those dreadful Stone Age cartoons ten years later.

Here’s a scene after Bimbo’s feet have turned to ice in fear. The tombstones grow faces and sing mournfully to him “This is your finish, brother.” Bimbo looks through his hat and then buries his head, only to have it pop up from one of the graves. The bone his head has displaced is gently picked up and lowered to the ground by his ears.



This cartoon is so imaginative and bizarre. The music is first-rate. I never tire of watching it.

Ted Sears and Willard Bowsky receive screen animation credits but, as Mark Kausler has pointed out, Grim Natwick animated parts of this, too.

The aforementioned song is Rube Bloom’s “Song of the Bayou.” You can hear a 1929 version below.

Bugs and Daffy Make a Cartoon

One of the real treats of the original Bugs Bunny Show in prime time was the little cartoons with a running story that ran between the old theatrical cartoons. They were classy-looking and always amusing.

Here are some frames from one of them, where Bugs walks off stage and into the adjacent animation studio to show us how cartoons are made. It’s really a lot of fun.



Bugs shows off a storyboard for Transylvania 6-5000.



He plays a disc of Mel Blanc’s voice and confidentially tells us that he supplies Mel’s voice.



Next comes the flipping of the animation drawings, rough and cleaned-up versions. Daffy Duck then barges in to demonstrate his clean-up skills. He draws himself over Tweety. His animation skills leave much to be desired.



Does anyone know who animated this? Bugs’ head is very round here. Not the later dome-headed Bugs that Jones tried to foist upon the masses.



Maurice Noble (layout) and Phil De Guard (background)?



Daffy is called to the producer’s office for a job. The last scene shows what it is.



So what happened to these great little cartoons? Jerry Beck talked about it in 2013. I don’t think the situation has changed since but I’ll be happy if I’m wrong.

Observations on Jack Benny

Social media and 24-hour news channels magnify pop culture, especially when someone dies. They don’t even have to be A-listers for the internet and airwaves to be filled with mourning.

That wasn’t the case years ago when you had local newspapers and a few channels on TV. Someone had to be incredibly important in show business to be eulogised and analysed in the media upon their death.

Jack Benny was one of those people.

It’s somewhat remarkable to read the editorial sections of small town newspapers, where the editor or columnist would use up space to explain what Benny meant to the world. Major papers did the same thing. The Boston Globe had at least a couple of columns.

One columnist gave a personal remembrance of Benny in his missive to readers on December 28, 1974, two days after Jack died. I haven’t been able to divine the date of the Met appearance. Benny appeared at that theatre in 1936. Sam Hearn was on the radio with him from Boston, but didn’t appear at the Met with him. Hearn did appear with Benny in 1942 in Boston, but it wasn’t at the Metropolitan. No matter, I suppose. It’s a nice personal reflection.

Jack Benny was an institution
By Ernie Santosuosso
Globe Staff
Jack Benny, who died Thursday night, aged 80, was not only funny, he was also persuasive.
Long ago when radio receivers were encased in wood cabinets, Jack Benny influenced me to eat his sponsor’s product, Jello.
His opening greeting each Sunday night at 7 was “Jello again, this is Jack Benny.”
Before Don Law invaded the Music Halls with his electric rock-‘n-rollers, dressed-up people would flock to the then Metropolitan Theater (its original name), to see and hear the bands and the touring movie stars.

The first in-person show I ever attended was a Jack Benny performance at the Met. This marked a milestone in my life. His wife Mary Livingstone sang a song, and Jack brought out another member of his radio family, Sam Hearne [sic]. On the radio show, Hearn was known as Schlepperman, to whom Benny would feed straight lines and Hearne would fire back Yiddish-dialect gags. Much of that show is only a hazy memory now but I’ll never forget the ingenious windup.
Benny, insisting on playing his violin, bowed on and on, totally oblivious to the fact that the opening credits to the feature picture were being shown on the screen and his squeaky fiddle playing ie’s [sic] sound track music.
Jack stole the show at Symphony Hall on Feb. 11, 1968, when he played violin in front of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The event was a benefit concert for the orchestra’s pension fund. He told the audience that the violin cost him $110, although the comedian did own a Stradivarius. The newspaper review appearing the morning after noted that his performance contained “some of the best musical clowning since the Hoffnung Festivals of London” and that he had “the best portamento” (passage from one note to another in a continuous glide) the reviewer had ever heard.”
Surprisingly, the comedian seized upon a portion of my review of his appearance at Framingham’s Carousel Theater in July 1967, to create a genuinely funny bit. I had written: “He could read off the back of a cereal box and the people would fall on the floor.”
The following night Benny walked on stage carrying a package of corn flakes. After alluding to my reference to the cereal, Benny announced that he wished to test the audience’s risibilities and check out my assessment of his laugh-getting talent. Donning his reading glasses, Jack began to read the ingredients list on the cereal box. “Milled corn ... sugar ... salt ... malt flavoring, “he intoned straight-facedly. The initial titters swelled into rolls of laughter as he toiled on. “Sodium ascorbate ... niacin ... thiamin ... preservative BHA ...” The then 73-year-old comedian had knocked them dead with an improvised script out of Battle Creek. Michigan. I recall the provincial line he threw in that night, too. “Three cities in the world I have always wanted to see,” he said. “London, Paris and Milford.” Jack Benny, the Waukegan wit, was unquestionably an institution. If not, then why do I continue to eat Jello.

Another Globe columnist put his thoughts together about how important Benny was to the entertainment world and what made him so great. If you’re a fan of Jack Benny, you may have thought some of the same things, though perhaps in simpler language. I suspect you don’t use “extirpation” in every day conversation. This was published January 5, 1975 and we’ll let the author have the final words in this post.

Forty years of healing laughter
DAVID B. WILSON
Somehow we had the feeling that Jack Benny would go on forever, like the Mississippi River or the telephone company. There was Jack Benny like there was ice cream and “Silent Night.” There always had been and there always would be.
It is no exaggeration to say he was a self-made work of art. As Jack Benny, the private man, kept his distance and dignity, Jack Benny, the comedian, sacrificed both for us.
Allen was wittier, Hope was and is faster and other had and have their gifts. But Benny, in the stark simplicity of his comic genius, was greater than all of them.
He had only one joke, and it was Jack Benny, and it just about always worked for him, and for us. The sheer courage involved in doing the same bit for 40 years and getting away with it is perhaps the least appreciated aspect of the man.
Listening to Benny was like listening to a familiar piece by Beethoven: You knew what was coming, and he knew you knew, and you knew he knew you knew, so you let him build up to it, and then it happened, but always just a bit differently, so you knew a little more than you did before.
The raw clay from which he fashioned Jack Benny was all of our weaknesses and inadequacies and self-delusions and we were taught to laugh at them instead of worrying ourselves sick about them. Petty tyrant, coward, tightwad, schemer, Jack Benny was both contemptible and ineffectual, like the rest of us, and somehow the realization did not hurt so much.
The voice was most of it. The appearance was almost a distraction, sometimes complementary, with the nancy gestures, but most often unnecessary. How do you evaluate a comedian whose funniest lines were “Well...” “Hmmm...” and “Now stop that!” And whose funniest line of all, perhaps, was simply silence, gradually obliterated by a rising tide of laughter.
Most mockery is sick. That is what is generally wrong with topical humor, which depends parasitically upon the defenseless objects of its wit for sustenance.

Jack Benny’s stuff was mockery, all right, but it was mockery of the magnificent skinflint cad he had, himself, created. And it was poignant, too, because you knew that this hero in his own eyes never quite persuaded himself of the accuracy of his vision.
It must be difficult for persons born after, say, 1935, to comprehend the importance of Jack Benny in the late Thirties and Forties, before television accelerated the remorseless extirpation of the national intelligence.
Jack Benny on the radio at 7 o’clock Sunday night was almost as obligatory as church on Sunday morning, and in many families more so. All day Monday, Americans related to each other what they had heard on the program. It was a great leveller and social adhesive, like major league sports and the weather.
In a time when Saturday movie money was not always available, even though admissions were 25 cents or less, Jack Benny was free, and you knew he would be there on Sunday night, welcomed like a favorite uncle back from a trip.
Try to imagine the Super Bowl, “All in the Family” and Johnny Carson, all wrapped up in one half-hour of audio, and you will be groping for it, but you will not quite be there.
All week long, we waited for Don Wilson’s voice and the spelling out of Jell-O, and we wished the too-brief 30 minutes would never end. I can still see the glowing, Cyclopean eye that was the dial of our four-legged Atwater Kent radio and feel the smooth, wooden curves of its cabinetry.
And remember Rochester, Mary and the May Co., Schlepperman, Dennis Day and, earlier, Kenny Baker, the feud with Fred Allen, the vault where Benny stashed his wealth, the Maxwell, Phil Harris and the lugubrious insults he and his musicians absorbed, Benny’s pathetic parvenu attempt to ingratiate himself with his tony British neighbors, the James Masons [sic], and Buck Benny rides again.
People laugh mostly with their nasal sinuses today. At Jack Benny, you laughed with your belly and lungs and whole soul—at yourself. That was the extent of his genius, the genius of a kind and gentle man who made a lot of money but blessedly always gave more than he received. George Burns said it best:
“I can’t imagine my life without him. I’ll miss him very much.”