The Waukegan Whiz of Television

You never know when a newspaper is going to need to fill its space with a story about a celebrity, so film studios and TV network publicity departments came up with specific and generic stories with stock photos about their stars.

I suspect what you’re about to read came from the CBS publicity department. It appeared in various lengths in newspapers from the start of 1953 to the second half of 1954. This is the longest version I can find.

It’s a profile of Jack Benny, talking about his career and his family, not promoting anything in general. You Benny fans will have seen these details before but will be happy to read them again.

Television Viewers Find Jack Benny Fits Frustrated Character He Created On Radio
Jack Benny, who for 18 years on radio has created solely through his voice one of the greatest of comedy characters, entered America's living rooms “in the flesh” when he made his debut on television October 28, 1950.
And the millions of delighted fans who saw him on television for the first time found he fitted exactly the money pinching frustrated lovable laughmaker they so vividly imagined him to be.
Jack Benny made four broadcasts from New York during the 1950-51 season. He launched his second season, November 4, 1951, in a transcontinental broadcast originating from the CBS-TV outlet, KNXT, in Hollywood.
Benny in 1932 was one of the first of the major comedians to make the changeover from vaudeville to radio. Vaudeville was going out and big time radio was coming in.
Benny bumped into columnist Ed Sullivan one night in a Broadway restaurant. Sullivan (now host of CBS-TV's "Toast of the Town") asked him to appear on his radio program the following evening.
"But I don't know anything about radio," Jack protested. "Nobody does," Sullivan replied.
Immortal Line
Benny offered to give it a whirl gratis and on this first broadcast of his life introduced himself with an immortal line: "This is Jack Benny talking. Now there will be a brief pause for everyone to say 'Who cares?'"
Millions did care as Benny soon found out. The same year, 1932, he had a sponsor and a network program. He was a sensation from the start.
On television as on radio, Benny is the central figure in what historians of comedy call the classic insult method. It goes back to Aristophanes.
His knack of building unknown personalities into stars in their own right is well known. Dennis Day, Eddie Anderson, who plays Rochester, and Phil Harris are notable examples. And his sense of timing has been underscored by critics—a quality which contrasts strangely with the dither he works himself into in preparing his scripts. He sweats out the lines which appear to flow effortlessly and merrily over the air.
Although a battery of top gagsters whip together the raw material, Benny does the final editing, unifying and polishing. To keep the lines fresh, he cuts rehearsals to the minimum. And during the broadcast he rarely ad libs, but stops the show and howls with unrestrained laughter when others put over an unscheduled nifty.
Child Prodigy
Waukegan, Benny's home town, is a suburb of Chicago. His father, a haberdasher, insisted on violin lessons at an early age and Jack was a child prodigy in Waukegan.

One of Jack's early triumphs was playing "The Bee," a short violin piece that has been the butt of Benny jokes on the air for a decade. "The Bee sparked his famous radio feud with Fred Allen. A moppet in an Allen skit which was a take-off on amateur programs played the song and Fred commented afterward that it was Benny's old vaudeville specialty. "Only eight and you already can play 'The Bee'," Allen joked. "Why Jack Benny ought to be ashamed of himself."
The next week Benny, on his own show, indignantly declared he could produce four persons who would attest that he had played "The Bee" at the age of six. And the feud was on.
"The Bee," by the way is not "Flight of the Bumble Bee," but a piece composed by Franz Schubert but not the Franz Schubert. Seems confusion is the word for Benny.
At 13 he was a fiddler in Waukegan's leading dance orchestra and a regular on the Barrison Theater orchestra, a lone knicker-bockered figure surrounded by grown-ups. Since his teachers recall him more vividly for his wisecracks, it wasn't surprising that Jack quit school before he was 17 to team up with a vaudeville pianist named Cora Salisbury.
Jack billed himself as Benny K. Benny and at $15 a week toured Midwest theaters with his partner. He didn't tell jokes, but he drew laughs by sawing away at his violin with the little finger of the bow hand extended affectedly while his eyes followed in mock curiosity.
Jack joined another pianist named Lyman Woods and their tours took them, at the outbreak of World War I, to London's famous Palladium. They broke up and Jack joined the navy.
In a navy revue, Jack played the fiddle without much success until one night when he paused to make a few wise cracks. The crowd roared and Benny the comic was born. Thereafter, Jack was penciled into the show as Issy There, the Admiral's Disorderly.
After his discharge, Benny returned to vaudeville and to avoid confusion with another fiddling comic, Ben Bernie, he adopted the Jack Benny tag.
He worked with the greats in the vaudeville heyday and went on to the Earl Carroll and Shubert shows on Broadway.
His movie debut was as auspicious as his radio bow. A talent scout spotted him in a Los Angeles theatre in 1929. Benny got the lead in "The Hollywood Review," clicked big, and has been starred in a number of pictures since, including "Charley's Aunt," "The Horn Blows at Midnight" and "George Washington Slept Here."
Benny and his wife, Mary Livingstone, have been stage and broad casting partners for 20 years. She was Sadye Marks, a salesgirl in a Los Angeles department store when they were married in 1927. She recalls that he practically had to drag her onstage to make an actress out of her. But it was not long before she became an invaluable ingredient in the Benny fun formula.
The Bennys have a beautiful home in Beverly Hills and their home life has been a happy one. Their daughter, Joan Naomi, adopted at the age of four months and now married, is the joy of their lives.
As practically every Benny fan knows, Jack is the exact opposite in private life to the penurious, protesting character he plays on the air. He is notorious for his over-tipping. His genial manner and friendliness have made him one of the most popular figures in Hollywood.
Benny gets little time off to play, what with television schedule, weekly radio show and business interests, but when he has an hour or so to loaf he's usually out on the golf links.

The NET House

NBC had the best TV IDs. Shows opened with a kaleidoscope peacock and closed with letters snaking across the scene with the network chimes quickly playing in the background.

My second-favourite ID when I was a kid was not from one of the commercial networks. We got it on a somewhat snowy signal from a hundred miles away. It was for NET, which was National Educational Television. I was disappointed when it became PBS in 1970 because the animated closing ID was dumped.

This post is a little weak because I’d love to give you a history of the ID. I do not know when the animated version first appeared, nor can I find what company animated it. However, I can provide some frame grabs.

Three rectangles separately slid onto the screen, then individually turned to become the network initials. They scrunched together and the words National Educational Television popped above the letters. The words turned into a bar, which became the roof of a house, complete with TV antenna on top.



The animation was accompanied by electronic music and a voiceover. Moog logos were a big thing starting in the mid-‘60s. The cue is a piece called “Plenipotentiary” by Eric Siday, who wrote a fair bit of music for commercials, as well as the CBS colour ID bed and the ABC News title used in 1966.

A colour version was made a number of years later (we only had a black-and-white TV in the ‘60s).

Reader Brandon Pierce points out the house made an appearance in the opening of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when it moved to the NET network.

If anyone has a reliable source with information about this animated ID (ie. something without the word “Wiki” in it), let me know.

Felix's Journey

The best Felix the Cat cartoons have something inventive going on. In Doubles For Darwin (1924), Felix goes into a trans-Atlantic cable office, flicks the switch to “South Africa” and gets sucked into the Magnavox.



Felix makes his way inside an underwater cable, stopped briefly by a swordfish that saws the cable. Felix bends his “sword” and carries on.



Cut to a receiving station. Felix is still inside the cable, which is attached to a printing contraption.



The Morse code on the ticker tape swirls to form letters in plain English.



The operator drops the tape on the ground. The letters “Felix” rise from it and morph into the cat.



There’s no credit for the animator. I await the day when we get a restored set of some of the great silent Felix cartoons.

I'll Cut You Down to Size

Somehow, it’s a crime that Bosko was available on up-to-date home video way back when but only selected shorts can be viewed on DVD. Setting aside the fact that Bosko set up the whole Warner Bros. cartoon empire, his better cartoons are enjoyable. I certainly like the gags better than the ones Mickey was given in some of the Disney shorts at the same time.

Ride Him, Bosko! (1932) has the fun ending where live-action Rudy Ising, Hugh Harman (and Ham Hamilton?) can’t figure out how Bosko’s going to rescue Honey, so they all go home leaving Bosko looking perplexed at the camera.

A gag that seems slightly used but is still amusing is when a rifle (firing like a machine gun) cuts a walking wiener dog down to size. His ten-gallon hat remains aloft until he shrinks and then lands on his head.



In the meantime, there is a fight going on in silhouette in the window of the Red Dog Saloon.

There’s some reused cycle animation to keep the budget down.

Friz Freleng and Norm Blackburn get the screen credit for animation.

It Doesn't Only Happen In The Movies

Okay, maybe Lana Turner wasn’t discovered behind the counter at Schwab’s Drug Store. But nobody-to-star transformations do happen in real life.

Take, for example, Vicki Lawrence.

Lawrence’s path to stardom wasn’t instantaneous—she was very much the junior member of the cast on the Carol Burnett Show at the outset, and it took several seasons for her role to grow—but her fame was sudden. Lawrence had been an unidentified member of one of those rah-rah chorus groups that cheered middle-town, button-down America at one time, and went from that to suddenly being a regular player on a TV variety show.

We’ll let her tell the story. Here are two newspaper stories, the first from October 29, 1967 and the second from June 5, 1973 when she added “recording star” to her list of accomplishments (“The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” went Number One for her in 1973). She went on to take one of her Burnett characters and put it in a starring role in the occasionally-revamped sitcom Mama’s Family and hosted her own cheery talk show.

At age 71, she still performs her “Vicki Lawrence and Mama” act. Perhaps appropriately, her “older sister” is still on stage at age 87.

She Looks Like Carol—That Helps
o o o
Vicki Lawrence Cast as Miss Burnett's Sister
By STAN MAAYS
HOLLYWOOD—Vicki Lawrence hunched her shoulders and grinned impishly when she confessed, "I didn't know who Carol Burnett was until I was a sophomore in high school.
The tall (5-6 1/2), slim (115) 18-year-old-girl, who was picked to be Carol Burnett's sister on her CBS-TV show because of her amazing resemblance, has acquired many of Carol's mannerisms.
It wasn't until the kids of the Young Americans singing group (Vicki was a one-time member) started telling everybody that Vicki was really Carol's sister that she decided to catch the effervescent star on TV to see for herself.
SHE WROTE a fan letter, with picture enclosed, and that's what lead to Vicki's being on TV today.
"Gosh, it was just a year ago when it all started," exclaimed Vicki as she rolled her eyes like Carol. "I was up for 'Miss Fireball,' the annual contest staged by the Inglewood (Calif.) Fire Department, when things happened.

"Carol and her husband had sneaked in back to watch. Of course, word got around that she was there, and when I was picked the queen they got her to come up on stage and crown me.
"HER HUSBAND let out a yelp when they announced she would do the honors, because Carol was pregnant at the time. All I could think about at the time was that this sort of thing only happens in the movies."
Carol kept in touch with Vicki most of the year, telling her that they had a sister skit in the works for some time.
When the time came to test Vicki, another girl, with professional experience, also was tested. This worried Vicki.
"WHEN MY turn came, I was discouraged from the word go," Vicki admitted. "The director told me to just walk in like I did at home. And when I did, he looked at me, scratched his jaw a moment, and said, 'Hmmm, we've got a lot of work to do.' "
On her CBS publicity questionaire Vicki listed her dad, a CPA, as "business agent." Mom is down as "publicity representative." It's also noted that mom is "a frustrated comedienne who received no encouragement."
"SO MUCH has happened, " Vicki said. "Gee, my dad — he's such a goof, always teasing me — called me one day and said they're having a little party for me. So I went along with it. Wow! When I got home there it was at Rock Hudson's place. Princess Grace was there and everybody. And Carol had arranged for me to be there.
"I'm so overwhelmed by what's happened that I never think of thanking her."

Veni, Vidi Vicki Lawrence of TV's Carol Burnett Show
By CHARLES WITBECK
TV Key, Inc.
HOLLYWOOD — (KFS) — "I never like anything I do, I go by what others say, said Vicki Lawrence of the Carol Burnett Show.
The former Miss Fireball, a talent contest winner crowned by lookalike Carol Burnett at the Hollywood Park race track, suffers from insecurity problems despite her six seasons on the best variety hour in television.
Vicki's lack of confidence in herself makes sense to her. The UCLA college student, who gave up school because she was learning more about her craft by working, is surrounded by the most skillful sketch artists in town. As the neophyte compared to all the others, Vicki remains the favorite little sister on the show, a member of the family whose time will come. She must watch from the sidelines and be content with her category. After a while, the sister row becomes confining, and Vicki champs at the bit.
"If I could get one good part outside the show — something crazy—just to prove I can cut it, I would be very happy," Vicki said. She has already verified her talents to Carol, who will back her in anything she wants, but now it's time to prove it to her questioning self — outside the protective family which has provided everything.
That break is occurring these days in the record business. Vicki has a hit in "Rainy Night in Georgia," written by her song-writing husband Bobby Russell. "Rainy Night" could be another door opener, allowing Vicki to slip out of her sister Chris image, and let show bookers see the youngster in a new light.

Six years of seasoning on the Burnett Show has been invaluable to Vicki, working with and watching Carol, Harvey Korman, semi-regular Tim Conway, and such guests as Carl Reiner, Lily Tomlin, Steve Lawrence, Bernadette Peters — a training course with pay that UCLA could never match. Some years ago, a college professor told student Vicki that she should quit school, since she was already doing what all the other drama-oriented students were aiming at. Student took professor's advice, and months later bumped into the man on a CBS stage; he had taken his own advice and was starting out in the business as a stagehand.
Carol Burnett's protege is the first to acknowledge all the benefits derived from being included in the show, and she is also honest enough to explain her problems as the youngest member of the family. In the last two seasons, Vicki has begun to emerge from her protective shell. "I still need to lose my inhibitions," she said. "I am too self-conscious. Lots of times I think I'm making a total fool of myself. If somebody laughs, this encourages me to go further."
Marriage to Bobby Russell has also been a major factor in bolstering Vicki's self-confidence. She could throw in the towel, but admits she's hooked on the business of performing, and doesn't believe she would be happy just as a housewife. The Russells may live in Beverly Hills during the television season, but their true home is Bobby's farm, 300 acres in the south, where Russell does most of his composing, and Vicki plays the farm girl, getting up at 5 a.m. to cook breakfast. Raised in Los Angeles, the actress is a greenhorn about the land, yet she loves the rural life. Her eyes sparkle as she talks of selecting fat goose eggs, riding horses, cooking turnip greens, country ham and corn cakes.
The city girl who did everything well as a youngster — from cheer-leading to table tennis to tap dancing — has gone country in a big way.
Listen to "Rainy Night in Georgia," sung by a Los Angeles girl, an ex-Miss Fireball, who just discovered the land, and makes it sound like she's never been West of the Mississippi.

Cat Cash and Carry

Ah, the satisfied look of a kitten.



The bully bulldog arrives. The cartoon is Bad Luck Blackie (1949), and you probably know how it works. The kitten blows a whistle, a black cat crosses the dog’s path, something bad happens to the dog. The kitten has a great expression of horror as the dog devours it.



Here comes the cat. The bicycle wheel is an unexpected touch; only Tex Avery would come up it. Note the perspective animation. MGM budgets at work.



Now the bad luck. A cash register falls from nowhere. Avery then turns the dog into a cash register as the kitten, looking proud, emerges from a tray in the dog’s mouth.



Louie Schmitt designed the cutsy, Disney-type kitten and provided animation along with Walt Clinton, Grant Simmons and Preston Blair. Rich Hogan helped with gags, Johnny Johnsen painted the backgrounds. Avery voices the bulldog and Pat McGeehan (according to expert Keith Scott) is the black cat.

The First Twisker Punch

Popeye uses the twisker punch on the screen for the first time on an Indian brave that attacks him with a tomahawk in I Yam What I Am (1933).



Seymour Kneitel and William Henning are the credited animators.

Censoring the Jerkfinkle

He appeared in three Jack Benny radio episodes in a row, brought the house down, then vanished.

He was Logan Jerkfinkle.

Logan was a somewhat effeminate (but married) man who interrupted the Benny routine on stage to proclaim his undying loyalty to Jack. The trouble was, in his first appearance, this “ardent fan” turned out to not be a regular listener. He wanted to speak with Don Bester and Frank Parker, who hadn’t been on Benny’s show for about five years.

In his second appearance, he switched allegiances to Don Wilson and verbally encouraged “Tubby” to continue telling him all about a product with six delicious flavours.

Jerkfinkle was played by one of Fred Allen’s stock actors, a funny man named Charlie Cantor, who later became Socrates Mulligan in Allen’s Alley before taking the same character to Duffy’s Tavern with a new name of Clifton Finnegan.

Logan appeared on the April 21, April 28 and May 5, 1940 broadcasts. Not only that, the astute Allen Heard the laughs and had Cantor do the same Jerkfinkle schick on his own show May 1st, swooning about Allen then explaining “I’m fickle.” Logan didn’t appear again. Granted the three Benny shows were in New York and Jack went back to Los Angeles after they were done, but there may have been something else afoot.

The weekly edition of Variety reported on May 8th:

‘Jerk’ Ruled Out
NBC’s continuity acceptance department has asked agency radio department to curtail if possible the inclusion of the word, ‘jerk,’ in their comedy scripts. What brought up the matter was the use of the word as a personal moniker (‘Logan Jerkfinkle,’ played by Charles Cantor) on the Jack Benny and Fred Allen programs.
Network has taken the attitude that while the word has lost its original connotation and has been accepted as everyday slang, it still sounded ‘cheap’ and its use ought to be kept from getting out of bounds on the air.

Benny’s writers (and it would have been with Jack’s acquiescence) ignored any warning, if they got one, and figured they could milk Logan for laughs one more time. The following appeared in the Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, on June 16th. Considering the fact specific songs are mentioned, this must have come from an NBC news release.

Jack Benny In Final Program Until Next Fall
Jack Benny, with a renewed contract in his pocket and a remodeled bathing suit in his trunk, will say aloha to his gang and make ready to embark on his Hawaiian vacation trip during the broadcast with Mary Livingston, Phil Harris, Dennis Day and Don Wilson over station WIBA at 9:30 tonight.
Joining the regular gang in bidding Benny a bon voyage will be none other than Logan Jerkfinkle, his loyal New York fan, who journeyed 3,000 miles across country just to be on hand to toss Benny an anchor.
Dennis Day's vocal finale for the season will be Blue Love Bird, and Phil Harris orchestra will play Tennessee Fish Fry.
Ezra Stone, previously scheduled to appear, will not be heard.

It turned out Stone did appear. But Logan Jerkfinkle did not. Did the network censors get in the way and pull poor Logan off the show? Perhaps. We’ll never know. (“Tennessee Fish Fry” was replaced with “Make Believe Island.”)

It’s telling that Cantor returned on a New York broadcast on December 15th. He was playing the same less-than-manly character but with a completely different name.

If nothing, Logan’s brief appearance on radio made an impression. Here’s a story in the Oklahoma Briefs column of the Cushing Daily Citizen, May 13, 1940:

HOLDENVILLE—Ballots in the Arkansas Day queen contest here last week included these signatures: Logan Jerkfinkle, Chief Justice W. H. Taft, Susie Cue, U. S. Grant, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Parkakarkus, Jed Johnson, Will Rogers, Josh Lee, Red Phillips, Fannie Hurst, Charles Lindbergh, Al Capone, Lee Cruce and Tom Joad.
Jerkfinkle was the most popular name with the frivolous voters, having been signed to 14 ballots. Contest judges wondered if state candidates tendencies toward "shadow names" aren't spreading among the electorate.