The Show Never Heard on the Radio

Once the Jack Benny radio show settled in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s, he occasionally took it on the road (not counting war-time location shows). Jack and his cast appeared a number of times in New York, Palm Springs and San Francisco. The Bennys had a home in Palm Springs, New York was the home of Fred Allen and where his TV show was shot at the beginning (expenses were no doubt paid thanks to mentions of the Santa Fe railroad and Sherry Netherlands hotel), and San Francisco was close enough up the coast for a nice short trip.

For a number of years, the Benny cast did two live shows—one at 4 p.m. on Sundays for audiences in the East and Midwest, and again at 8:30 p.m. for the West Coast. But during one of his San Francisco stops in 1938, they did a third show—one that never got on the air.

It sounds like the special Saturday “show” was thrown together considering the cast rushed to San Francisco post haste, according to the San Francisco Examiner. There’s no mention of Rochester by the newspaper for a simple reason. He didn’t make the trip. The paper confirms a man named Carl Kroenke appeared on the programme; he played a “blusboy” in Ling Foo’s Chinese restaurant; it turned out Ling Foo was really Schlepperman (played as usual by Sam Hearn). Benny always seemed to get good reviews in San Francisco.

The first story ran January 8th (Saturday), the second the following day.

Just a note that really has nothing to do with these stories or Jack’s San Francisco appearance—the week before, Don Wilson mentioned 24 Canadian stations had been added to those airing the Benny show. The CBC network picked up Benny live from the East Coast feed but, for reasons I haven’t been able to discover, newspaper radio listings say “Not BC.” CBR in Vancouver broadcast a symphony concert at 4 p.m. Vancouver and Victoria fans had to listen to KPO in San Francisco, KOMO in Seattle or other NBC Red stations down the U.S. coast to hear Benny.

'Buck' Benny Will Ride Again To Appease S. F. Radio Fans
Return Engagement Planned by No. 1 Funnyman
By DARRELL DONNELL.
"Buck" Benny will ride through San Francisco again!
Close associates of the famed air comedian have revealed that unless some unforeseen obstacle mars present plans, Jack Benny will return to San Francisco within a few months to accommodate disappointed thousands who will not see the Sunday show.
As suggested in this column a few days ago, Benny would choose an auditorium with a seating capacity of thousands, although he prefers to work in small theaters where he feels a greater intimacy with his audience.
Bill Morrow, senior script writer for the program, suggested to Jack, and Benny has agreed, that the nation's most popular comedy show should return here in the immediate future.
Meanwhile, to accommodate at least a few of those who were first to apply for tickets, a special performance of the forthcoming Sunday show will take place in the Community Playhouse this afternoon. This presentation will not be broadcast. In all, three Benny appearances are scheduled for the week-end. And Jack thought he was coming here for a vacation!
At The Sound Of The Chimes
DON WILSON planed into San Francisco two days ahead of his scheduled arrival here to appear in this afternoon's special JACK BENNY show . . . ANDY DEVINE and BLANCHE STEWART were also hastily summoned.

Jack Benny's Preview Big Hit With S.F. Fans
Six hundred self-satisfied San Franciscans smiled, chortled, applauded enthusiastically yesterday at the preview of today's Jack Benny show, scheduled to be broadcast from here via KPO at 8:30 p. m. The fortunate six hundred sampled the six flavors and found them satisfactory. They heard Benny promise a return engagement at the War Memorial Opera House to accommodate those who were unable to witness the program today.
Broad grins became guffaws when Benny brought forth his famous fiddle before the show began.
They chortled at Mary Livingstone's poem, dedicated to San Francisco, were gleeful when Harry Baldwin (he's the man who's always knocking on the Benny door) made his appearance. They applauded so enthusiastically when Andy Devine made his appearance that genial Don Wilson began to worry about what approximately seventeen million listeners might say about studio applause tonight.

Unlike other radio shows, the Benny contingent is fearful of giving the impression of playing to a studio audience. At the same time Benny dislikes to mechanize the laughter and applause through warning the visible audience against prolonged demonstrations.
Backstage, this reporter watched writers Bill Morrow and Eddie Beloin, creators of many of the very funny gags on San Francisco (no we won't spoil it by repeating any of them). Morrow and Beloin were quite calm about the whole thing.
Suave, dapper Phil Harris and his bandsmen, arriving in the proverbial nick of time, tumbled out of a bus, turned in the typically smooth performance, and then trekked to Sacramento for a one-night engagement before returning here again for this afternoon's eastern show.
As for Schlepperman, wait until you hear him as a Chinatown restaurant proprietor. He has one line well, no, we won't spoil it. Carl Kroenke, of the local NBC staff as Schlepperman's stooge is another surprise.
Many a San Francisco girl found Kenny Baker no timid tenor, but a self-assured gent, considerably more handsome than his pictures, movie and still. Oh, yes—San Francisco, sophisticated San Francisco—is not above autograph seeking. Jack, Mary Phil, Kenny, Andy, Don and the others signed themselves into a fine case of writer's cramp.
Flashbulbs carried by news cameramen imbued the scene with a typical premiere atmosphere. Backstage, NBC moguls, including John Swallow and Syd Dixon, beamed approvingly.
Hollywood came to San Francisco, and unquestionably the cool city by the Gate went Hollywood.

Terry Tells Tales

Haven’t heard the “Little Herman” story? Well, you can read it below as Paul Terry tells his favourite tale about how he tried to sell his first cartoon in 1915.

Terry seems to have run a B-list studio through much of his career. In the silent film years, the Fleischers had Koko the Clown and the bouncing ball cartoons. And perhaps greater than them was Felix the Cat, turned out by Pat Sullivan’s studio. Terry carried on with his Aesop’s Fables and then was forced to strike out with animator Frank Moser when sound came in.

Again, the Fleischers had Betty Boop and Popeye. Terry had Kiko the Kangaroo. Guess which was more popular? Terry told one reporter in the ‘30s that it was better having one-shots than continuing characters. That, naturally, changed when Terry’s staff developed Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle, characters who seemed to be as popular as some of the stars at other studios. Terry carried on into the ‘50s when he sold his studio and films to CBS, then retired to a life of rest at a local gentleman’s club until he died.

Here’s Terry, paraphrased, after an interview with the Chicago Tribune. This appeared in the edition of April 25, 1948. I should probably groan at the pseudonym of the columnist but it’s kind of cute. Oh, and I’m not quite sure whether audiences rushed out to theatres to catch the next “Wacky Cat” or “No-name character” cartoons.

Pioneer Tells the Secret of Movie Cartoon
BY MAE TINEE
Animated cartoons have become firmly established as an integral part of every program offered by motion picture theaters. They round out and sometimes bolster the bill, and after sitting thru a dull full length feature, it’s remarkable to watch an audience perk up when a cartoon flashes on the screen. They’re colorful, musical, full of action and brief—probably four good reasons for their universal popularity, but if you think blithe tales about rollicking rodents are produced with any of the ease and nonchalance their principal characters exude, you’re very much mistaken.
Paul Terry, who pioneered in the field with a little boy character he labeled “Little Herman,” over which he worked laboriously for six months, drawing and photographing thousands of sketches, explained modern cartooning methods during a recent visit to Chicago.
● ● ●
His company produces Terrytoons, which are released by 20th Century-Fox.
“Mighty Mouse,” who always swoops to the rescue and brings about a happy ending in which the bully always meets a thoroly [sic] disagreeable punishment for his misdeeds, is probably the most popular of his characters, but the company also produces “Heckle and Jeckle,” “The Wacky Cat,” “Rudy Rooster” and many others, some of them nameless.
● ● ●

Modern cartoons are the product of the work of many people, and an idea goes thru a large number of departments before it’s ready for the screen. The story department provides a scenario, expert cartoonists fill in expressions, details and backgrounds. When the final cartoon emerges, the sound department takes over, noises and voices are dubbed in, and the final touches are provided by the musical department.
There is a complete research department for detailed information on all sorts of subjects, a publicity staff, in fact, almost all of the services available in studios making full length features. The company produces 20 cartoons a year, and each of them is viewed by an estimated 20 million people. Before sound, they were turned out at the rate of 50 a year. Color and music have added zest to the films, and time and expense to the production.
● ● ●
Mr. Terry, a rather quiet man with a mild and philosophical outlook on life, told of one of his early experiences in peddling his “Little Herman.” He took it to one of the top men in the film business, the father of David O. Selznick, and was offered one dollar a foot. The young artist explained that the stock for the drawings cost that much alone, and that price would be no reward for his painstaking work, whereupon the prospective buyer informed the young creator that such materials lost their value the minute they suffered the artist’s pen. Further salesmanship finally brought $1.35 a foot from another agent. Present day costs average about $50 for every 12 inches.

Bill and Joe's Angry Kitten

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera started directing at MGM with Tom and Jerry and ended directing at MGM with Tom and Jerry. While the bulk of their cartoons starred the cat and mouse, three of their earliest efforts did not.

One is Officer Pooch, released in 1941. The title character tries to rescue a kitten which kind of looks like Tom in some scenes and Jerry in others.

Here are some multiples from one scene, animated on twos, of Officer Pooch and the kitten that didn’t want to get caught.



Bill and Joe later ripped off this idea from themselves and deposited it in Fireman Huck, a 1959 Huckleberry Hound cartoon.

Hanna and Barbera are the only ones to get screen credit for this short.

They Rattle My Brains

Daffy Duck’s The Upstanding Sitter has what you’d expect in an early Bob McKimson-directed cartoon—waving arms, floppy tongues, walking in perspective to the side of a camera. This one also has some rhyming verse courtesy of Warren Foster.

When Daffy strolls to his next gig complaining that his young charges rattle his brain, his head goes off in all kinds of directions. The scene is animated on ones.



Sorry there’s so much digital fuzz. My DVD with the cartoon won’t play and this version was grabbed off the internet.

Manny Gould, Phil De Lara, John Carey and Chuck McKimson are the animators in this short.

Behind the Scenes at To Tell The Truth

You wouldn’t think people need to be taught how to lie (insert your own politician joke here) but it came in handy on one TV show.

To Tell The Truth featured two liars trying to convince a panel of TV/stage actors they were someone else. They got a little bit of help, and for good reason.

Here are a couple of neat little backstage stories about the game show from the years Bud Collyer hosted it. The first is from the Associated Press and appeared in papers that published on Christmas Day 1966. The second is from the Niagara Falls Gazette of September 16, 1963.

In going back 50-some-odd years and thinking about it, To Tell The Truth was probably my favourite of all the Goodson-Todman game shows. It was on every day, so you got to know the panelists and they all seemed to have a good rapport. (The Match Game and Password had different people every week). And it was fun to guess along.

On 'To Tell the Truth'
Contestants Are Taught to Lie
EDITOR'S NOTE: Fooling the panel of To Tell the Truth isn't easy, so the producer runs a "school for liars." The imposters get all the dope on Oman, an oil sheikdom in Arabia, along with tips like don't volunteer information and never say "I don't know." But watch out, the panel's sharp.
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
NEW YORK (AP) —The two gentleman liars, scribbling furiously on legal-size yellow paper, listened intently as the honest man paced the room, describing the weather of Oman, the small oil-rich state on the Arabian Peninsula.
"Muscat, the capital," said the pacing man with the air of a lecturer, "is one of the three hottest cities in the world. I've read the thermometer at 120 degrees at midnight three nights in a row."
It was a briefing session for contestants on CBS' "To Tell the Truth," a panel show that has been around the network for 10 seasons. This month it made the jump to Monday evening's schedule as an emergency replacement for "The Jean Arthur Show."
The briefing, held the day before the show was taped, took place in a small room in the 30th floor offices of the show-packaging firm, Goodson and Todman.
Presiding was Bruno Zirato Jr., producer of the show. The lecturer was Wendell Phillips, an oil millionaire, honorary sheik of Oman, archaeologist and author of a new book, "Unknown Oman."
He and Zirato were teaching Thomas Gillis, a professional fund-raiser, and Howard Larson, an advertising man, how to fool a panel of four experts.
The object of the game is for the panel — Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean and Kitty Carlisle — to try to pick the truth teller from the imposters on the basis of brief questioning.
"We get the southeast monsoon," continued Phillips, "and it lasts from May to September — it stops around my birthday, Sept. 26 . . . ."
"Libra is his sign of the Zodiac," interrupted Zirato. "Peggy Cass might hit you with that kind of a question — she's interested in astrology."
Then Zirato addressed himself to Phillips:
"What's a Caftan? It's a cloak but women around here are wearing them and Kitty Carlisle knows fashion."
"That's Morocco," Phillips said. "I've only been there once."
"Zirato turned to the two liars: "That's a good answer — brush if off like that."
Gillis asked Phillips, "What are your oil interests?"
"They consist of rights covering 65 million acres — no, make it 75 million because I picked up some more last week. That's to look for oil or drill for oil, although some acres are producing now."
Zirato and the two contestants looked impressed.

"What makes oil?" asked Larson, the second liar.
"The Arabian Peninsula was an inland sea during the Jurassic Period, the age of dinosaurs," replied Phillips. "Oil comes from either marine or animal organisms—no one is quite certain about that."
"What if someone asks my opinion about the Israel-Jordon thing?" asked Gillis.
Zirato broke in: "Just look at them sternly and tell them they can hardly expect an unbiased opinion from an Arabian sheik—and don't forget to pronounce it 'shake.' "
The session went on for more than two hours. Finally the contestants left, carrying with them copies of Phillips' book for homework.
Zirato relaxed and pushed away a pile of notes from in front of him. Mostly they covered subjects he knew, from long experience, might be the basis of questions from the panel.
"We know, for instance, that Orson and Peggy are real experts on flying saucers, and if you think of a spot involving comic strips, forget it. Orson knows everything about comic strips and he knows old movies, too."
POSTON is likely to trip liars with detail questions, like asking the location of the brakes in a small plane. Both Peggy and Kitty have traveled widely, but, according to Zirato, where Kitty would ask for the name of a hotel in a town, Peggy "would know the name of the hotel manager and the name of the sacristan of the local church, too."
Zirato always instructs the liars never to provide unsolicited information, and never to say "I don't know."
Thus if a panelist asked one of the liars to name his college archeology teacher, he was briefed to parry with a question: "Which one of my teachers? I had many, but if you mean in Egyptology, it was John Wilson."
"Use any name that comes into your head," said Zirato, "and if you can't think of one that sounds read, use your own name—which you probably can remember. In a lot of instances, the vague answer to a technical question—'I don't think that has ever really been established'—works well."
The panel has remained intact now for the past couple of years.
"People sometimes want to know why we keep the same panel, and the answer is that they are good and we couldn't do better," Zirato said. "And Bud Collyer, the moderator, adds a lot, too. He has probity. It isn't necessary for us to make statements that the show is absolutely on the level."
In their hunt for contestants, Zirato and four assistants wade through newspapers, magazines and books, and also accept nominations from press agents. The liars are found among volunteers, friends, of the producers and friends of friends.
Zirato interviews all the candidates for the imposter spots. From long experience he can judge whether they will be able to think quickly before a camera and not forget vital information.



Panelists Spot Him
Reporter Struggles 'To Tell the Truth'
EDITOR'S NOTE —Earlier last week Gazette reporter Austin Hoyt took part in the production of a segment of "To Tell the Truth" in New York.
• • •
By AUSTIN HOYT
Gazette Staff Writer
SUPPOSE your name is Barbados Gunglefinger and you just went over Niagara Falls in a rubber ball.
The papers make a big scene over it, and the next day the phone rings. It's a producer for the TV show "To Tell the Truth." He offers you a round trip flight to New York, $50 expense money, and what you, as the "real Barbados Gunglefinger," can make by fooling the panel of four. No mention of a date with Miss America, a free evening of dancing at the Ritz or a set of luggage in case you win nothing else, but you decide to go anyway.
The day before the show is to be taped, you appear at a producer's office on the 35th floor of a glassed-in building.
A secretary's slim digit with a well polished nail motions you to an office where you meet your two impersonators, a shoe clerk and a pediatrician, both from New York.
• • •
FOR TWO HOURS the producer briefs you on the show and you help the impersonators fabricate likely stories. The shoe clerk's motive will be that he always liked rivers and water falls. You decide the pediatrician has had a life long fancy for rubber balls. You are to be yourself, the Pine Avenue butcher who just got sick of 20 years of hacking up meat.
You see that the imposters learn how high the Falls are and all the facts of your voyage.
• • •
EARLY THE NEXT DAY you walk through the stage door of the CBS-TV studios. You are given a blue shirt to cut down glare from the lights, and you take your place for another briefing. Across from you are the "three Cookie Gilchrists," and the "three barbers for Harry Truman" being filmed for Wednesday's show. You and the "three Dr. Salks" will be taped for Thursday's show.
A minor functionary passes out coffee and doughnuts as the imposters nervously recollect their stories.
An assistant producer arrives with more advice. "When you hear a voice say, 'What is your name?', that is your cue, number one," he says, addressing the shoe clerk. "The cue for the number twos and threes will be the spot light turned on you."
"When you turn to walk down to your seats, just stick out your left foot and walk. No army turns or marches," he warns.
Then there is a dress rehearsal with a mock panel, using the real panel's names: Joan Fontaine, Phyllis Newman, Jan Murray, and Dana Andrews.
There is another wait backstage as the audience fills the house. You can hear them practicing applause. They must be old ladies or degenerates, you think. Who else would be out there at 10:30 in the morning?
Then reassuring words from Bud Collier, the master of ceremonies. He wants you all to meet him so you feel "you have one friend out there."
• • •
HE REMINDS YOU there are no awards given for dramatic performances and not to upstage the panel when you chat with them at the close of the show. And, he goes on, when the game is over and he says "Goodbye and God bless you," that means "up and out."
The three Cookie Gilchrists and the three Truman barbers traipse off to the platform and you watch them on closed circuit TV.
Have to sit through the commercials, too. You're not nervous. All you have to do is tell the truth, but the imposters are writhing and smoking, wishing they had never volunteered.
• • •
"WHAT IS YOUR NAME?", a voice asks. What if the imposters keel over or say their real names, you think, but they all say, "My name is Barbados Gunglefinger." The quizzing goes quickly and you try to stall and underplay the truth and hope the imposters will feel casual. You enjoy the game and wish the panel would ask you more and not call so much attention to themselves.
Then it's over. Three panelists guess you. Why? You shouldn't have smiled at Joan Fontaine, and as Phyllis Newman said, you did "look like a Barbados Gunglefinger." And the shoe clerk should have known what a back eddy was.
• • •
THE IMPOSTERS reveal their true identities. Someone forgot his real name once, so they have cards saying who they are, but they manage without them.
A prompter beckons the audience to applaud, and the ladies muster what enthusiasm they can.
"Well that's one wrong answer, $100; split three ways, that's not enough for a new rubber ball," Bud says, "but next time you go over the falls, take our best wishes with you."
Up and out. There's a man waiting for your blue shirt. As another holds open the door for you, a voice says:
"Will the three James Meri .....

Fishy Skunk

Even the minor gags in Tex Avery’s Little 'Tinker (1948) are well animated and timed. Unfortunately you won’t get that in the screen grabs below, but you can get an idea of some of the poses.

B.O. Skunk pulls a Romeo and Juliet routine (thanks to an advice manual) and sings opera to his lady-love raccoon as he climbs a balcony. The raccoon is delighted at first, but takes a whiff and realises he’s a skunk. The Disney animation principles of anticipation and follow-through are used. When the raccoon expresses shock, she stops but her cheek ruff follow the principle of gravity and continue to move.

\

B.O. is clobbered with a flower pot.



Avery’s timing is excellent here. He doesn’t wait too long or rush his next gag. The horrified fish come out of the lake after just the right amount of footage. The water doesn’t have time to completely settle before the fish leap out of the water and run away.



Bill Shull, Grant Simmons, Walt Clinton and Bob Bentley are the animators.

Van Beuren Does Fleischer

There’s glorious fun in chickens singing, dancing and piano-playing the old song “Ida.” That’s how the Van Beuren cartoon Panicky Pup (1933) starts out.

The cartoon turns dark, though, when a cat (who has just finished dancing with a blow-up kitten doll) falls in a well. The dog is haunted with a minor key chorus imposing guilt. The Fleischer studio did a great job with this kind of plot in Swing You Sinners in 1930. This one is isn’t as imaginative but it’s full of skeletons, ghosts and weird morphing stuff.

Swaying haystacks become ghosts. Pumpkins become devil cat heads.



In the next scene, a tombstone becomes a xylophone player.



Sorry for the poor screen grabs; I hope this cartoon gets restored.

John Foster and Harry Bailey get the “by” credit on this short. Van Beuren was always a hit-and-miss studio, but this strikes me as one of their hits.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: The Light in Your Life

One of the busiest industrial studios in the 1940s and ’50s gets no notice from animation fans today. It was Raphael G. Wolff studio at 1714 North Wilton Place, not all that far from the old Warner Bros. cartoon studio. For a time Earl Klein was Wolff’s art director after leaving the Chuck Jones unit and the musical director was a chap named Hoyt Curtin.

Ray Wolff was an advertising photographer from Chicago who came to Hollywood and opened a photographic business in 1937. He somehow expanded into advertising films. His studio made hundreds of shorts for businesses. Some included animated portions. One (of many) of them was made for General Electric in 1949 and called The Light in Your Life.

Business Screen magazine devoted two pages of its May 5, 1949 edition to this film (“Thirty types of lamps are featured,” we’re told). It would appear G.E. (who would later use Mr. Magoo as its spokescartoon) wanted to be represented by an animated character like many other businesses of the day and came up with J. Lumen Lightly. He co-stars with nine-year-old Eilene Janssen, an MGM contract player who was crowned Little Miss America of 1948. She later recalled G.E. sent her on tour with the film along with her mother, her pianist and her marimba. Eilene continued acting until 1980 (she had a recurring role on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet on TV). I can’t tell you who is playing the Cliff Arquette-ish Lightly. I thought it might be Earle Ross.

The story owes something to Alice in Wonderland and, to a small extent, Tom and Jerry cartoons where the black housekeeper is seen from neck down. Jonathan Boeschen located the print below on-line.

There’s virtually no biographical material about Wolff on-line. An obituary article was written in the South Pasadena Review of Monday, February 21, 1972. Oddly, it doesn’t make a direct mention of his career in industrial films; it focuses on art instead. And it avoids mentioning he was six-foot-five.

Raphael Wolff Died. Funeral Held Feb. 16
Funeral services for Raphael G. Wolff, Sr., well-known Southern California artist, were held at the Wee Kirk O’ The Heather, Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Wednesday noon, Feb. 16. Interment Forest Lawn, Glendale.
Wolff was born in St. Louis, Mo., June 3, 1901. He was a sickly boy and, at the age of 14, was given only one year to live. With this in mind and to enjoy that short period of time, he and a friend went to the head waters of the Missouri and floated down of the Gulf of Mexico. [Note: Wolff was 22 and with two other friends according to contemporary newspaper reports).
Later, with his health restored, Wolff came to California and became a noted photographer for advertising, eventually entering the scenic art field, doing backgrounds for television advertising spots. At one time, his studio employed 85 artists.
Ray’s father was a noted artist around the turn of the century, but the son didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps.
About ten years ago, Wolff sold his studio and business, and began the study of art, painting with oil colors. He developed rapidly and soon was taken into many of the leading art groups. He was a member of the California Art Club, the Valley Artists Guild, the San Gabriel Fine Arts Association, and just recently was voted a member of the Artists of the Southwest, Inc. He had been active in the Business Men’s Art Institute and had served on its board of directors. He had won many ribbons and honors.
Ray was a member of the William D. Stephens Masonic Lodge No. 698, F. and A.M. and the Masonic Press Club, Los Angeles.

Jack Benny, His School and His Gang

Jack Benny accomplished many things in the entertainment world, but he remarked on several occasions his most proud moment (charity concerts notwithstanding) was having a junior high school named after him. Benny never considered himself a studious boy years earlier in Waukegan.

Benny talks about this and his age in a February 1960 article by United Press International. The rest is a biography and a few quotes from others.

You’ll notice the article says “Part Two.” You may be wondering about Part One. Well, to be honest, it was posted last December. However, the version I found didn’t indicate it was a Part One, otherwise these two parts would have been posted on consecutive Sundays. Both are stand-alone stories so newspapers could run one or both.

Jack Benny Flabbergasted, Jr. High Named After Him
(Editor's Note: This is the second of two dispatches about Jack Benny, one of America’s most beloved and enduring comedians.)
By RICK DU BROW
UPI Hollywood Writer
HOLLYWOOD (UPI)—Jack Benny, the pride of Waukegan, Ill., is flabbergasted that his home town has named a new junior high school after him.
“It's such an honor,” he said. “I could understand maybe a theater being named after me — or a bowling alley, but a HIGH SCHOOL!”
Benny, who began his show business career 49 years ago as doorman of the only theater in Waukegan, recalled that “I was so lousy in school, they almost threw me out.”
Now, however, he has equal billing in Waukegan with Thomas Jefferson end Daniel Webster, after whom the two other junior high schools are named.
“One thing we have in common is that we're all up there in age,” the 65-year-old CBS-TV star told the home folks at the ground-breaking ceremony.
Nicest Thing
“This is the nicest thing that has ever happened to me,” he added as he turned the first load of dirt on the $1,200,000 structure, which will spread over 17 acres.
When the comedian was born in 1894, he was christened Benny Kubelsky. As he grew up, he spent summers working in his father’s haberdashery shop. But he preferred to practice on the violin his father gave him.
In high school, he played with a small orchestra at local dances and firemen's balls. But Waukegan's Barrison Theater, which has a pit orchestra, would accept him only as a doorman.
Soon, however, he became a property man, and before long he became the only knickerbockered member of the pit orchestra.
When he was 17, Benny teamed up with a pianist named Cora Salisbury in a vaudeville act called “From Grand Opera to Ragtime.” His next partner was another pianist, Lyman Woods. They toured the nation until Benny joined the Navy in 1916.
In service, Benny traveled in a revue put on by the Great Lakes Naval Station.
His violin-playing failed to raise money for Navy relief, but he discovered his wisecracks did produce results. Soon he was a monologist.
After the war, he decided Ben K. Benny would be a better name for vaudeville than Benjamin Kubelsky. But he was confused with another fiddler —Ben Bernie—so he changed his name to Jack Benny.
In the next decade, his suave comedy made him a vaudeville favorite, and he did big musicals on Broadway for Earl Carroll and the Shuberts.
On Radio In 1932
His first words on radio — the medium that made him famous — were spoken in 1932 when he appeared as a guest on a show hosted by another up-and -coming personality, Ed Sullivan.
“Hello, folks!” he said. “This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for every one to say, ‘Who cares?’”

In a few years, however, the nation’s radio listeners cared very much. He and the members of his show—Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, Mary Livingstone (his wife) and announcer Don Wilson—became household favorites.
“My cast,” he says with a grin, “has played a large part in the longevity of the program. Don has been with me since the old ‘Jello’ days—more than 25 years ago. Rochester has put in 24 years.
“I don't have to carry the ball. More often than not I give the funny lines to a supporting character and let them play the laughs off me.”
Rochester A Hit
Rochester was originally a character written in for one broadcast. That was when Benny moved his family and program to California. Rochester was supposed to be the Pullman porter in the radio enactment of the journey west.
But the public clamored for more of Rochester, and the script was written so that Benny hired him away from the Pullman Co. to be his valet.
Mary became a regular the same way. Benny had met her on a trip to Los Angeles, where she was a department store clerk named Sadye Marks.
Then she started playing the part of a young fan from Plainfield, N.J., who would burst into his program reading him “poems” and wisecracking. The public loved her lilting giggle, and she became a regular.
Rich Man Jack Benny
Today, Benny is one of Hollywood’s richest men. In addition to his own production company, he has “a little property in California and Florida, a little oil in Texas and here—and some cattle in several places.”
Many believe that Benny’s greatest strength as a comedian is his perfect timing — knowing exactly how long to pause before speaking his next line to get the maximum humorous effect.
It was his timing, coupled with his on-stage reputation as a miser, that made what may very well have been the funniest bit on any Jack Benny program. He was supposedly approached by a holdup-man who demanded, “Your money or your life.” The silence that followed while Benny was “thinking it over” produced howls of laughter.
Great Stamina
His greatest asset, however, is his stamina — which keeps him looking almost as young as the 39 he has pretended to be for a quarter of a century.
“He never slows down,” said a friend. “Recently, he flew from Rochester, N.Y., to Manhattan, changed his clothes, went to a cocktail party, then a Broadway opening, then a Rodgers and Hammerstein party, then Eddie Fisher’s opening at the Waldorf, then a party thrown by Liz Taylor for Eddie — and. finally, at 3 a.m., to a party Josh Logan was throwing for Mary Martin.”
Benny, who plays golf three times a week and has a good head of hair despite all the jokes on his program that he wears a toupee, says with a grin:
“I don't mind telling audiences my real age because they leave shaking their heads and saying,
“I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”

Snafu

Servicemen and women hunkered down in the Gilbert and Mariana Islands during World War Two enjoyed two things when they got a chance to relax and watch a movie. According to the October 1944 edition of Redbook, one was Bugs Bunny cartoons. The other was animated shorts starring Private Snafu.

Few people outside the military ever saw Snafu during the war. The cartoons were designed to use humour to convey to soldiers how to behave (and thus win the war). Years later, being public domain, they began showing up in home video collections and several years ago, Thunderbean did a very nice job issuing a DVD with restored versions.

Snafu did get a bit of publicity in the civilian press in the war years. Here are two wire service articles about the cartoons. The first appeared in papers starting around December 23, 1943 and the second on August 3, 1944 (feature stories back in those days could be spiked for use even months later). Both stories are referring to the cartoon Spies, directed by Chuck Jones in 1943.

Army Pin Up Boy Popular Private Snafu Liked By Men
By ROBBIN COONS
AP Features Writer
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 29 (AP)—The screen's pin-up girls have competition now in fan mail from American servicemen. Their rival: a funny little guy named Private Snafu who is a model soldier—a model in everything, almost, that model soldier isn't.
Snafu is a military secret. His starring pictures are of, by, and for the armed forces only. But when the army takes surveys to ascertain the soldiers' film favorites, Private Snafu usually rates highest or second highest.
Snafu's misadventures in army life emanate from the information branch of the office of morale services, located in part of the old Fox studios in Hollywood. Originating in an idea of Lt. Colonel Frank Capra, a former movie director, Snafu is a product of the "lighter moments" of the men who create him men, incidentally, who have gone through the regular prescribed military training.

For a "light moment," however, Snafu represents plenty of hard work. Each Snafu film has been turned out in six weeks, compared to the six months usually taken for a short cartoon. And Snafu does his stuff in four minutes, whereas a commercial short cartoon runs ten.
What's Snafu like? Well, he's a patriotic guy who does everything wrong. He's a fellow who thinks it would be a swell army with a few minor changes. He's a guy who can keep a military secret with a zipper on his lip, if there's somebody handy to keep the zipper zipped.
Leon Schlesinger's cartoon studio animates his films from stories and drawings by Capt. Theodore Seuss Geisel (the "Dr. Suess" [sic] of such children's stories as "To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street" and "The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins;") First Lieut. Otto Englander, formerly of Walt Disney's story department; Lt. Jack Sarkin, former art student; Staff Sgt. David Rose, late of Disney's; Cpl. Philip D. Eastman, and Pfc. Eugene Fleury, both formerly of Schlesinger's and Disney's.

"Snafu" Films Shown To Army To Stop Talk
BY DOROTHY WILLIAMS
United Press Staff Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UP)—Hitler and Tojo take notice! Snafu is in the army now. Brass hats call him the goofiest soldier in the U.S. Army, but they've handed him one of the toughest assignments.
Snafu is an animated cartoon soldier and it's his job to impress on U. S. troops the importance of being good soldiers. Snafu does it by being a horrible example through hundreds of feet of movie film.
His name springs from the military slang word, "Snafu," meaning "situation normal, all fouled up."
The pitfalls for the Army private, or any other personnel, for that matter, are depicted in this series of Snafu training films being turned out by the film production section of the special service division of the U. S. Army for showing at posts here and overseas.
Snafu, the bantam-weight private, with the outsized ears and feet, scoffs at Army rules and regulations to bring on resultant cataclysms. How he lives up to his name is shown in the film, "Spies," an illustration of the importance of secrecy.

"I'll never let it slip," Snafu sings in the film, when he learns his sailing time for overseas. "When I learn secrets, I zip my lip."
A Japanese spy, disguised as an ice cream wagon horse, hears Snafu boast as he bounces along the street and into a telephone booth to inform his mother he's bound for overseas. Snafu doesn't realize that a Japanese agent is concealed in the telephone box into which he is speaking.
Next Snafu stops in a bar for refreshments. He does not know that the two moose heads over the bar are really a couple of enemy spies. He drinks and his tongue loosens.
He sits down at a table with a lovely, who records his words on a concealed typewriter she has strapped to her garter.
The siren is revealed as a veritable Mata Hari, who wakes the carrier pigeon, sleeping on her hat, and dispatches the bird to Berlin with a notation of transport sailing. Furthermore, the bar queen is something of a sweater girl who absorbs more of Snafu's secrets in her special transmitters and relays them to Germany.
As a result, Nazi U-boats spot the convoy in which Snafu and his fellow soldiers are moving. From the aft deck Snafu sights the sub and is thrown overboard as the ship gains full speed. Below, in Satan's kingdom, Snafu is shown his own reflection in a mirror.
"This guy blabbed," Satan explains.
Snafu is currently starring in four films.

The bulk of the cartoons were made at Warners and it’s pretty easy to tell. While there are Seussian characters at times (especially in Rumors, which is my favourite; Ted Geisel worked on some of these cartoons), the designs look like something out of the Warners units. Carl Stalling’s music is no different than in your average Daffy Duck cartoon, and the soundtrack is filled with Mel Blanc (with his various dialects), Bob Bruce, Frank Graham and other Warners actors. No doubt all that familiarity—and humour—sold Snafu cartoons with battle-weary audiences.