The Secret Desire of Jack Benny

During the ‘50s and ‘60s, Jack Benny repeatedly told newspaper reporters if he had to do it all over again, he would be a concert violinist and not a comedian.

It appears, though, he had a different desire in the days before he did violin theatre performances.

The North American Newspaper Alliance revealed it in its Hollywood column of January 20, 1944. Interestingly, whole chunks of this column appeared a year and a half later. And the columnist is quite correct. Jack talked in print about retiring a number of times in the ‘40s, then did a 180 when television came along.

Jack Benny Keeps Amiable by Keeping Always Busy
By HAROLD HEFFERNAN
HOLLYWOOD (NANA) — Jack Benny is going to retire and have himself some fun. He said so yesterday. He said so a year ago, five and 10 years ago. Not right away, of course. He's too busy at the moment. He's been too busy for the past 30 years. But some day, and mark it well, he's going to get clear away from gag writers, radio programs, movies and such and really relax.
At least that's what he says. Personally, we think Benny is just talking through his cigar again. Benny is the sort of fellow who'll pass out of the picture with a gag on his lips and his feet on the chalk marks before a camera. He can no more relax than you can lay your hands on a 50-gallon drum of gasoline tonight. It isn't in the cards, and, secretly, no one knows it better than Benny.
We had a talk with Jack in his make-up for one of the most fantastic characters of his career. It's that of an angel, complete with wings, for "The Horn Blows at Midnight," which he's doing for Warner Bros. As The Angel Least Likely to Be Missed," Jack is sent down from heaven by Chief Guy Kibbee to destroy the earth by the simple act of blowing his trumpet at midnight.
Actually, he never gets around to the act, as the world is deemed worth saving after all. But before getting to the fadeout enough screw-ball things happen to give us a clue as to why Benny won't be retiring this year, or next, or even next. The reason is this: Jack Benny gets too much fun out of his work to give it up.

He admits he must be busy or he gets irritable. That's why he crowds his days with writers' conferences and work, and his nights with benefits and shows for soldiers. It beats sitting around with the boys at Chasen's or the Brown Derby.
Jack isn't interested in the past, doesn't care to talk about it at all. The superb work he did entertaining troops in North Africa and Italy is never mentioned. We did, and he quickly shifted the subject. All that happened yesterday. Jack has his sights on tomorrow.
Because he’s been a reigning radio favorite for more than a decade, many people overlook the fact that Waukegan-born Benny Kubelsky (his real name) has been a screen star for even longer 16 years to be exact. He has, then, been "in the money" for long time, and money, as such, has long ceased to interest him. But Jack knows if he stops work tomorrow he would toss some 100 people, his official family, out of work.
Like most everybody who reaches the top of his line, Jack entertains a secret ambition. He wants to be a movie director. With certain qualifications, he is quick to add.
"If I thought I'd be a good director," he told us, "I'd try it tomorrow. But I don't want to be just another director. I'd want to know I'm bringing something to the business that wasn't there before." Many of his closest friends are directors. He studies their actions on the set. It he has an idol among directors it is Mervyn Le Roy. When Le Roy was making “Random Harvest,” Benny was a visitor two or three times a week, always observing and always question questions of Le Roy as to why he did this or that.
Benny thinks the most enviable fellow in the entertainment field to day is Elliot Nugent. This for the reason that Nugent is equally adept at acting, writing or directing.
“If Elliot sees a good part in a New York play, he takes it,” said Jack. “When the run is over and he has an urge to direct, he hops a train for Hollywood and picks up a megaphone. He never will be in a rut and, of course, you can say the same thing for Orson Welles.”
All of which may be by way of warning you that you needn’t be surprised when, some day in the not too far distance, you see on the screen of your favorite theatre: "Produced by Jack Benny. Directed by Jack Benny. Starring Jack Benny. Written by Jack Benny.
He thinks that would be just tops.

Jack Benny never retired. He was set to do a television special (the script had been written and guest stars hired) and was to appear on the big screen in The Sunshine Boys when he died after Christmas in 1974.

Finding Fame For Felix

What’s with Felix the Cat and dancers?

We posted a spread of Felix from Photoplay magazine with 1920s dancer Ann Pennington. He also got an appearance in with another dancer, this time in the New York Herald Tribune in 1925.

Exhibitors Trade Review of November 7, 1925 wrote about it, with advice for theatre owners—Yes, You, Mr. Exhibitor!—on how to exploit moviedom’s most successful animated character to date.

"Felix, the Cat" Crashes Sunday Supplement Section
More persons than usual, 330,000 more in fact, had an opportunity to laugh at the antics of "Felix the Cat," the comical feline star appearing in Educational Pictures, when the rotogravure section of the Herald-Tribune on Sunday, October 25, featured a series of "Felix" photo caricatures.
Felix "crashed" his way into the picture pages of this great metropolitan Sunday newspaper in the manner that would do justice to Tammany Young himself. Not only did Felix "crash in" but he also "strutted in," in his own inimitable feline way — via "The Charleston."
On the Sunday afore-mentioned, the famous Pat Sullivan character dominated one of the picture pages with four views of his version of the dance as taught him by Virginia Vance, leading lady of Educational-Mermaid Comedies.
Not to be outdone by the "thousand and one" celebrities who have been breaking into print these days, by showing pictorially the "fad fond" multitudes how they do the "Charleston" and having himself a few new ones up his pelt, Felix decides to broadcast evidence of his skill to the world.
That he does this satisfactorily is borne out by the fact that following the use of this pictorial feature by the Sunday Herald-Tribune, another great news organization, King Features Syndicate, requested the use of the pictures for distribution to about fifty of the principal newspapers throughout the country subscribing to this Hearst feature service — a most decided publicity "beat" for Felix.
This and many other Felix publicity ideas may be used to advantage by Exhibitors who have booked the Felix cartoon series. For instance, the photo of a pretty local girl could have a small cut-out of the cat pasted on her cheek — call it a new beauty spot fad or what you will. A prominent boxer could be posed boxing and Felix afterward inserted as a sparring partner. Felix directing traffic could be inserted in place of the regular officer over a photo of the busiest corner in your town.
Think up a few of these trick photographic stunts yourself, Mr. Exhibitor. Send any print you desire Felix inserted into, to the exploitation editor of this publication and they will be returned promptly with a quaint figure of the cat carefully inked in. This is the sort of picture material that your local newspaper is usually willing to print — it has humor and local interest, a most ideal combination.



Educational Pictures was releasing a Felix cartoon every two week. The same trade paper gave little synopses of shorts—and there was an amazing number of one and two reelers being made then—so let’s pass along a few to give you an idea of the kinds of situations Felix was in.

"Felix the Cat Trifles with Time"
Educational 1 reel
This is another Pat Sullivan animated cartoon having to do with the adventures of our old friend, Felix, the cat, when he persuades Father Time to transport him for a day to the Stone Age.
Felix has various troubles with Mastodons, dinosaurs, and the various other monstrous beasts of the time, and is mighty glad when he is recalled to modern times.
This comedy is well up to the standard set by its predecessors, and will please both children and grown-ups.

"Felix the Cat Trips Through Toyland"
Educational 1 reel
Here is one of the cleverest Pat Sullivan cartoons. Felix rescues a doll from an irate pup and in reward is taken for a trip to toyland. Here he encounters a villainous clown who kidnaps his doll-girl and spirits her away to his castle. Felix tries in many ways to rescue her. Finally he calls on the toyland army for aid and wages war against the villain. Finally he overcomes Punchinello and again clasps the doll to his heart. There are many nice touches in the film, such as lollypop trees and various toy animals that seem to live.

Felix the Cat "Eats Are West"
Educational 1 reel
Here is Felix again who expresses more human emotions than many a full-fledged actor. This latest edition of the Felix comedies, promises to emit chuckle after chuckle from the old and young, as the hero goes through his stunts.
Poor Felix is continually being chased; first by hunger, then by the old colored woman of the pancake ad, then cowboys and finally Indians. Miraculously, Felix uses many devices to escape. Punctuation marks are his greatest aid, but after he has succeeded in eating all the grub intended for the cowboys, he calls on his guns, and continues to use these to "shoot-up" the Indians — even a wooden one. Very good !

Exhibitors Herald published short squibs from theatre managers about the films they were running. Felix was incredibly popular and highly praised. Just a couple:

FELIX THE CAT TRIFLES WITH TIME
Best thing in a cartoon reel that I have ever seen. Used it with my one cent sales and “knocked ‘em dead.”
FELIX THE CAT BUSTS INTO BUSINESS
Another excellent cartoon.
FELIX ON THE FARM
I have found all of the Felix cartoon comedies very good. Well worth playing.
FELIX FINISHES FIRST is another comic in which the Sullivan prodigy gets the necessary money for the farmer’s mortgage holder. He does it by riding a trick horse in a funny race. It’s been done before, but it isn’t old.
There seems no end to this cat’s cleverness. Incidentally, Mr. Sullivan seems to me to have improved animation and photography materially since beginning distribution of the current output. I never see one of his comics, nor one of Paul Terry’s, without thinking how much funnier most of our flesh and blood comedians would be in similar footage than they are in the lengths they employ.
FELIX GOES HUNGRY
These Felix cat comedies are cartoons, of course, but they do please.

Considering the comments, it’s startling to release before the end of the decade, Felix would essentially be washed up, with sound—and a mouse—grabbing theatre goers’ attentions.

Goat, Goat, Gone

Two goats, each with a wooden leg, are pitching horseshoes in front of a blacksmith’s shop (in the shot below, one is concealed by the swaying tree).



Uh oh. One goat disappears for two frames. This is cycle animation and the goat vanishes every time.



The short is Ub Iwerks’The Village Smitty where Flip and his girl-friend (why is a frog dating a cat?). They’re at their Mickey and Minnie Mouse-iest in this 1931 short. Flip does an aw-shucks giggle. There’s even a piano in the livery stable. Too bad there’s not much humour in the cartoon.

Theatres had problems with the name of the cartoon, as you can see in the newspaper ad to the right.

Tex's Other Rabbit

Two buzzards are arguing over which one has caught a rabbit to eat when the rabbit gets between them and mimics their argument.

There’s great animation of the rabbit with fun expressions.



The buzzards kick the heckler out of the scene. These are consecutive frames.

What's Buzzin' Buzzard is a 1943 Tex Avery cartoon with lots of signs and wartime rationing references. Kent Rogers plays one buzzard. I don't know who the Durante buzzard is. John Wald announces the surprise ending. Ed Love, Ray Abrams and Preston Blair are the credited animators with Johnny Johnsen providing backgrounds.

You Kids Killed The Time Tunnel

How could a TV show with Whit Bissell, John Zaremba and a set made of concentric metal ovals fail?

Pretty easily, as it turned out.

Your correspondent, age 9, loved the Time Tunnel. Actually, I loved the set more than the show, though Bissell and Zaremba fit the parts. Bissell’s general and Zaremba’s scientist were alternately contemplative and urgent, by my recollection.

The Time Tunnel was a product of Irwin Allen Productions, which also brought viewers Lost in Space. I’m not a science fiction fan, but both shows—at their best—had an element of suspense, until Lost in Space turned into the Dr. Smith and the Robot (and Some Other People) Show. If Jonathan Harris had been any more camp, he could have been on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Scripps-Howard entertainment writer Richard Shull looked at the rise and fall of The Time Tunnel in a pair of columns. As a side note, there’s one reason to like Shull. He was hired by the New York World-Telegram to replace the retiring Harriet Van Horne—who once dissed a Christmas special starring Helen Hayes. Van Horne then changed her mind and wanted her job back, so the World-Telegram fired Shull. You have to pull for a guy that gets shoved around by management like that.

Let’s start with Shull’s column of November 12, 1966, about a month and a half after the Tunnel debuted. Irwin Allen must have put out news release bait that his show was deadly serious because I’ve read a number of columns that snapped at it.

Time Tunnel: Has Interesting Twists
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK—Neglected and almost lost in the corridors of TV time scheduling this season is a good, honest adventure show titled "The Time Tunnel."
Unfortunately, it's sandwiched between the sub-moronic Green Hornet and Uncle Miltie Berle's moribund variety show on ABC on Friday. Also, it's directly opposite the gallow's humor of Hogan's Heroes on CBS and the snickering sadism of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on NBC.
The odds against its success, anyone on Madison Avenue will tell you, are monumental.
And a sure kiss of death for the show would be for a TV columnist to say it's good. So, no more along that line.
But Time Tunnel is good science-fiction well done with some interesting twists. Ex-rock singer James Darren, now 30 and a father of two makes a strong, youth-oriented hero.
The basic idea of a machine capable of transporting humans in time and space is incredibly credible.
• • •

MOST OF ALL, however, the show is dedicated in its honesty to history. You won't find Daniel Boone fighting the South American Incas as in the Daniel Boone show. Nor will ever see Asian tigers battling African lions while South American toucans fly overhead as in Daktari.
Time Tunnel is doing a first rate job of making history palatable to the small fry, perhaps a true reflection of the modern child's mind in which history, space research, and futuristic fantasy all commingle in one welter of events and places past and future.
"The show won't change history, but we can affect the people involved within an event," Darren, an intense fellow, explained.
"And sometimes we'll take credit for the inexplicable of history. For instance, during the Black Plague in Europe, there was one group of people who were untouched while everyone around them died. Who is to say that someone from a time tunnel hadn't played a hand? History never explained," Darren said.
• • •
THE SHOW is produced by Irwin Allen, who also does Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Lost in Space. He has the facilities of 20th Century-Fox Studio behind him so he can incorporate expensive scenes from old movies into his shows to give them the illusion of grandeur and bigness.
Although the original intent of the show was to travel Darren and his pal, Robert Colbert, both backward and forward in space, so far the show has spent most of its time going back.
The initial episode, a flossy $1,000,000 production, has Darren and Colbert aboard the Titanic. They and the viewers knew what was to happen, but, in keeping with the show's policy, they were powerless to change history. The ship sank.
The following week they were in 1978 and the first U. S.-manned flight to Mars.
Since then, they've been to New Orleans for the 1815 battle in which the misdirected British were sacrificed before Gen. Andrew Jackson's lines; to the East Indian island of Krakatoa for its violent volcanic eruption in 1883, in ancient Troy to see Ulysses's Trojan Horse scheme; in the American West in 1876 to see arrogant Gen. George Custer lead his men to slaughter, and at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 6 and 7, 1941.
• • •
IN EVERY STORY, they become deeply involved with the prime characters, yet never change history.
In most of the episodes, the production values have been outstanding, although in the Custer episode the Indians were a rather potbellied, motley group.
In the context of what is being offered to youngsters as TV entertainment, Time Tunnel is an outstanding show.

Shull changed his mind before the season was over, almost as if he had been betrayed. The Time Tunnel, he decided, stopped being an “outstanding” show and the writers dumbed it down, narrowing the audience in the process. Smaller audiences mean hesitant potential sponsors, and no sponsors mean no show. There was no tunnel within a few months. This appeared in papers May 13, 1967.

“The System” Breeds Silliness
By RICHARD K. SHULL
NEW YORK — Why does a TV series, which shows promise of good escape entertainment in its early episodes, rapidly deteriorate into silliness? Many adult viewers have asked this question.
Blame it on the system. And for a clear example of how it works, look at Irwin Allen, producer of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space and Time Tunnel. The first two of those shows will continue next fall.
Allen is a modern Janus, with a faculty for presenting one face to the networks and advertisers and another to the TV audience. He is the ultimate product of television's system of buying and selling shows.
Take a look at his three series and see what happened.
In the beginning, Allen had Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, a tale of a futuristic research submarine and espionage by foreign agents bent on learning its secrets.
That was the story idea Allen sold to ABC network, and which appealed to the sponsors. But once the show got on the air, Allen began to modify.
To be successful with an early show, Allen knew he had to appeal to that 14 per cent of the audience between the ages of 6 and 11 years.
Youngsters don't especially dig spy stories and romantic sub-plots. Kids do like monsters, almost any kind of monsters.
• • •
SO Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea got rid of the spies and girls, and settled down to the serious business of hairy globs and chrome-plated galaxy men. The kiddies watch, the ratings are sustained, and the network keeps renewing it.
As the star of the series, Richard Basehart, once was given to comment, "It ain't Hamlet, but . . ." And recently David Hedison, the co-star has asked for more money, since he rarely gets to perform opposite a human anymore.
Lost in Space went much the same way. The original idea concerned futuristic space travel with a foundation in existing fact. This appealed to the adult program buyers.
But on the air, Allen discovered the 6-to-11-year-old TV thought leaders were smitten with the cowardly, deceitful nature of the program's villain-in-residence, Jonathan Harris.
The story ideas were overhauled and now the show comes across weekly with a tale in which two children, who ooze with honesty and integrity, must rescue the sniveling, cavilling adult villain.
The kids love the show because it confirms their suspicions about all adults.
It's almost superfluous to point out that Time Tunnel commenced as a painless history lesson in which two travelers in time, weekly would step into some historical event. This idea appealed to the adults who purchased the show for TV.
But again, there was the kiddie element. The little people who make the big ratings took over. When last seen, Time Tunnel had British General Chinese Gordon fighting for his life at Khartoum while futuristic alien beings with their brains outside their skulls were preparing to take over the earth.
So it goes in the world of Irwin Allen, who has mastered the art of selling two shows under the title—one to the networks and sponsors and another to his audience.

Sandwiched in between these columns was one by UPI Hollywood Reporter Vernon Scott. We’ve republished a number of his columns here; Scott used to do a minute-long feature on the UPI radio network, too. Generally, he seemed fairly upbeat and friendly, but he just loathed The Time Tunnel. It became a symbol for him.

This is from January 29, 1967.

Sorry Plight of Time Tunnel
By VERNON SCOTT
UP-International Writer
HOLLYWOOD — Anyone measuring the worth of a television show should first weigh its merits, if any, on the basis of the audience it is attempting to reach.
Thereafter, it should either entertain, inform, stimulate or evoke a combination of these reactions.
Clearly, most television shows this season have failed on all counts. But again, who are the producers trying to reach? The question is not easily answered.
Captain Kangaroo is perfect for his audience. Batman is fine for his. And presumably Bonanza has stolen into the maudlin hearts of viewers from 16 to infinity.
But what of a series such as The Time Tunnel which airs on Channel 34 every Fri-day evening? Who in the world is ABC trying to reach with this nugget? What does producer Irwin Allen have in mind? Tots are in bed by that time. Teenagers are too hep or out on dates. And any adult who watches it has got to be suspect.
• • •
IN THE BEGINNING the show might have been based on a good idea—perhaps H.G. Wells’ “Time Machine.” The premise was to have two handsome young scientists flown backwards and forwards into time from week to week involved in historic events over which they have no control.
But the idea is too costly for execution, for one thing. If you are going to put a couple of guys back in early Rome or in the War of the Roses you'd better have the money to make it look authentic. On this show it never does.
The concept is handled clumsily, the acting poor, the scripts unbelievably bad.
Recently it wasn't enough that the heroes (James Darren and Robert Colbert) found themselves in an Italian' nobleman's villa during World War 1 where they are badgered by the Kaiser's troops and — get this — the ghost of Nero. A spoof you ask? No. A bit of satire perhaps? No. It was pure tedium.
• • •
A MATURE MIND must ask itself why on earth this particular hour-long episode was filmed and aired, and for whom it was intended.
At best it was comic book nonsense for adolescents. But it cannot be written off so lightly. In reality it is typical of the affrontery of television executives determining what the public is offered for viewing.
But this isn’t to single out the Time Tunnel. It is no better nor much worse than the common fare American viewers have been slapped in the face with for too many years to come.
The great misfortune is that good television, not to say great television, is so rare that one is forced to leave the set turned off most nights of the week. There are Time Tunnels of one kind or another on the air almost every hour of prime time.
It is pitiful that a great and powerful medium, indeed America's mass medium, cannot or will not do better.

Irwin Allen went on to greater, big screen achievements, like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno (the latter lovingly spoofed on SCTV). Bissell won a lifetime achievement award from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films. Zaremba and his serious mien made a good living in TV CommerciaLand, hunting for beans to put in Hills Brothers coffee. The Time Tunnel became scrap metal.

ABC went on next season to bring viewers a series about General George Armstrong Custer without a visit from time travellers. At least Bissell, Zaremba, Colbert, Darren and Lee Meriwether never dealt with that kind of ratings massacre.

There's Something Familiar About That Dog

There are many people who are quite expert at watching animation and recognising the artist. I am not one of them. But even Mr. Magoo could see that Chuck Jones is written all over these frames.



Jones wouldn’t have drawn these, not at this point of his career, but I imagine he did the character layouts. Someone can accurately tell you if this is by Ken Harris or Abe Levitow or someone else.

This is from a commercial for Gaines Multi-Menu, a product of General Foods, likely from late 1964. A nice bit of animation is a swirl before the dog lands in a position that reminds me of Charlie Dog. It's animated on twos.



You can download the spot by clicking here. All the voices are done by Paul Frees.

Tongue in Hand

Here’s Boxoffice’s review The Framed Cat (1950)

Good. Another excellent Technicolor cartoon in the popular Tom and Jerry series. Jerry, the tiny mouse, tries to frame Tom, the cat, by planting a bone stolen from Spike, the bulldog, on him. This leads to the usual complications in Tom’s life as the ferocious dog pursues him. In the end, the cat has to bow to the superior chicanery of the tiny creature.

One sight gag I like is when Spike is licking the bone as Jerry takes it. He realises something is wrong. Then the dog’s tongue turns into a human hand, feeling around for the bone.



The usual crew animates this: Irv Spence, Ray Patterson, Ken Muse and Ed Barge.

The cartoon was reissued in 1965.

Honking, Hats and Home life

“When he hits a low...he is impossible to talk to.”

One wouldn’t think that is a description of Jack Benny, but that’s how his business manager Myrt Blum described him to the man who later managed Benny’s career, Irving Fein.

Understandably, newspaper and magazine articles about Benny didn’t talk this all that often. It’s not good publicity, you know. But besides Fein’s book, there’s a reference to it in an article in the June 30, 1939 edition of Radio Guide. In it, we see a not-so-perfect Benny, as well as a candid revelation that his wife was quite enthralled with the finer things in life. “High strung” is an interesting way to refer to her.

It starts off by looking at some of the silly restrictions placed on what he could say on his radio show (with a bit of a side journey about a moose). And there’s plenty of trivia, too.

I don’t believe I’ve either read or posted the previous chapters of this series, unless one of them involves his oft-told tale of growing up, vaudeville, meeting Mary, going into radio, and such.

THE MELANCHOLY CLOWN
This concluding chapter in the story of Brother Benny tells you how serious he is —and how funny!
By James Street
BENNY is a serious man. Tom Harrington, his radio boss, says he's the most serious man in show business, possibly excepting Fred Allen. He talks shop all the time. Mary buzzes around, but Jack is apt to get you in a corner and pound your ear with his woes and talk ideas.
“It’s impossible for Jack to relax,” Harrington said.
He’ll talk for hours about censorship. He believes the public should be protected from obscene shows, but he thinks too much censorship is dangerous and that it can wreck comedy. Rules regarding controversial subjects are rather silly at times and Benny is penalized particularly because so much of his humor is based on today's happenings.
After the Orson Welles' Mars program, Jack was going to use some cracks about Mars, but he was blocked. A week later he was allowed to do so, but the punch was gone. Maybe Mars is controversial. Unquestionably, radio is childish about "controversies" and in straining at a gnat often swallows a camel.
Along that line, this little recent incident may tickle even Mr. Benny, who is not the only radio man with woes. Phil Stong's "Honk the Moose" was broadcast recently, and Phil was asked to take the part of the moose he made famous. His job was to honk. The moose story is for children and thousands of them have read it. But some minute-man of radio came up with the startling information that mooses honk only during mating-season, therefore Phil's honk would be out of order. There was quite a to-do about it. Maybe the FCC and some of the bigwigs would be offended if there were a nasty old honk on the air. Phil Stong was too amused to be offended, even at such ignorance. He simply pointed out that a moose honks as a cow moos, a duck quacks, a sheep bleats and a dog barks. He went on and honked for his moose. America's morals were not soiled.
Benny is a cooperative soul and he's willing to cut his show to conform to good taste. Recently he had a school room scene in his tentative show. A day or so before broadcast date, a school bus was wrecked, and Benny cut the scene rather than remind America of the tragedy.
HE IS not allowed to get by with gags that Allen can use. Jack is prohibited from saying anything about a bad appetite, and he can't kid about taste. His agency handles many food accounts, and they fear that if Jack kids about foods somebody might not buy some of General Foods products. We hazard the suggestion that is very funny. Brother Benny can work miracles but we do not believe he can wreck America's appetite.
Benny is never temperamental, but he gets irked. He was in Boston one day and it had been arranged that he call on the Governor of Massachusetts. He went to the executive's reception room and waited. The Governor was busy. Jack waited a long time, then got up to leave. A stooge of the Governor's said, "Don't go, his excellency will see you in a minute."
JACK said, "I've got to go. My option comes up in thirteen weeks. The Governor is good for four years."
Benny has had trouble only once with his program, and that was when he hired Michael Bartlett as his tenor. Bartlett's voice didn't fit the tone of the program. The contract was canceled in friendly fashion and Benny hired Kenny Baker, who now ranks next to Bing Crosby in popularity. Don Wilson also rose to fame after joining Benny. However, Benny's hired hands are "typed," and in years to come that may cause trouble for them.
Burns and Allen are the Bennys' best friends and have been socially associated with them for at least twelve years, ever since Jack and Mary married.
They play Friars "Around the Corner" and rummy together. Jack and George play pocket billiards while Mary and Gracie concentrate on backgammon. The two women favor the same shops but avoid duplicating clothes because they are together so much.
Jack thinks George Burns, Eddie Anderson—the Rochester of the show—and Andy Devine are the funniest men alive.
Although Benny is moody. he'll laugh himself sick if he's really amused.
"He'd laugh at a red hat." Burns said. "His friends enjoy punching in his presence because Jack is such a good audience. He'll literally roll on the floor when highly amused.
Once he fell down and crawled on the sidewalks of New York because he got tickled at Burns. The two were waiting along and Burns said something unimportant. Benny doubled up.
"What's so funny?" Burns asked.
"It's not what you said," Jack replied, “but I know what you are planning.”
Burns didn't.
The two clowns used to have a telephone game that was very funny to them. Burns would call Jack and say he had some important information. Then right in the middle of a sentence he would hang up. Benny would roar. Once Jack wired George to meet him on the nine-thirty train that would arrive at a certain station. George wired back. "What time will you arrive?" Benny then wired friends all over the country and they wired Burns "Benny will arrive at nine-thirty."
George didn't meet the train. He posted the telegrams all over the walls of his room, and when Jack asked why he didn't meet him, Bums said, "I didn't know what time you would arrive."
Jack rolled on the floor. Gracie and Mary put a stop to such doings.
When Benny and his writers are working on a script, he will act the whole thing. If the script calls for him to climb a ladder, he'll climb one. He gets peeved at Beloin and Morrow, the ace gag-men, at times, but never bawls them out. Instead, he scolds Baldwin, his secretary for eight years, for not "reminding the boys to do such and such."
He loses his temper with his radio cast if they don't put their whole heart in rehearsals. But after bawling them out he'll say, "I'm sorry I was a bit harsh."
Benny has been accused of being absent minded and reserved. Morrow says his brain is preoccupied, that he's always thinking about his work, and that many persons mistake his preoccupation for snootiness. He's a generous and fair boss and gets his hands extra jobs when ha can. He even pays his cast and writers when they do benefits, although Benny is not paid for such work.
His feud with Fred Allen, of course, is just a gag. They really are good friends.



Benny reads detective stories and other frothy stuff. He likes to think of himself as a gourmet, but actually his appetite is very easy to please. He does know good coffee, and makes his own. He also enjoys malted milks and likes to cat at drive-in restaurants—those places where you park and eat in your car. He eats anything, but is apt to sample your food. He eats when he gets hungry and eats what he wants.
His favorite exercise is walking, and he takes long jaunts with his trainer, Harvey Cooper. He plays golf, too. And terribly! He makes fun of the game while he plays it, and usually knocks off about the tenth hole.
He enjoys driving his own car, and owns three. On his recent trip to Europe, he left his Buick in Chicago, and all during his European jaunt he kept talking about how much fun he would have driving from Chicago to California.
Benny can sleep anywhere and in anything. If he's tired after a party, he'll sleep a few winks on the divan in his clothes before he heeds Mary's order to undress and relax. He never uses a pillow. Mary buys a new hat every week and each is more radical than the other. Those gags of Benny's about his wife's hats are from his heart.
Mary is a very vital person and interested in everything, particularly hats. She smokes moderately and is generous to a fault. She loves movies and attends every preview possible.
She loves fine nightgowns and negligees and is afraid of the dark. She won't be alone for five minutes if she can help it. They have some half a dozen servants, but when Jack is away, her sister or Gracie must stay with her.
Mary is essentially high-strung. Jack pays her a salary and she spends half of it on clothes. She loves tailored underthings and silken doodads. She buys a new dress for each weekly show and her wardrobe is filled with fine clothes and furs.
She sometimes bobbles a line in the show, but the audience never knows it, and the bobbles give Benny some swell ad-lib material. Recently she said, "Can't I be boat's Don" instead of "Don's boat." Jack squeezed five extra laughs out of the mistake and the audience thought the line was planted.
Jack is allergic to roses. They make him sneeze. A fan sent him a basket of roses at a recent broadcast and Benny was on a spot. He didn't want to seem ungrateful and he knew the sender was in the audience. So he smelled the flowers, and sneezed so often that his show almost was late.
As a dresser he's inconsistent. He has been voted the second-best-dressed man in America, but he's apt to be mussy at times, with cigar ashes on his front. Robert Taylor asked Benny the name and address of his tailor, and now Taylor goes to Jack's tailor. Phil Harris also is a smooth dresser and goes for hand-embroidered robes.
The Jack Benny Club of Perry, Iowa, voted him the only star who can look handsome in his shirt-sleeves. It’s well enough that his fans can't see him at Saturday rehearsals. The cast meets at Benny's house and sits around a long table. Jack is at the head of the table, dressed in a pair of gabardine slacks, a tan camel's-hair sweater and a tweed coat. Morrow and Beloin wear rumpled sports clothes. Mary probably will be dressed in a navy blue blouse and slacks, with a bandana on her head. Andy Devine will be in blue dungarees and Don Wilson will wear flannel golf slacks and a polo shirt. Phil Harris probably will be the best-dressed of the pack, with a bright sweater and glen-plaid trousers.
When Benny began his gags about his Maxwell automobile, he had no idea so many of the cars still are in operation. Bui owners of the orphan cars have sent him more than a hundred hub-caps from old Maxwells.
Every room in the Benny home, except the dining-room, has a fireplace.
A Benny joke seldom fails, but Jack tells of the time he flopped.
"I was at the Academy of Music," he said. "I walked onto the stage and said, 'Hello, everybody." I got the raspberry. So I said, ‘Good-by, everybody,’ and walked off and kept right on walking until I got home."
Jack poses as a tightwad in his show, but he's really a soft touch. He gave away $1,500 in two days to not-so-lucky friends during a recent visit to New York.
Several years ago he and Mary adopted a daughter, Joan Naomi, who now is about five. Jack's funniest act is seen only by her and Mary. He romps and yells with her and converts his home into a madhouse. She went to one of his rehearsals and saw him do a line several times. Finally she said, "Why didn't you do it right the first time?"
Benny is not a joiner. He belongs to the American Legion, however. He was slated to fiddle while Rome burned at the Los Angeles American Legion convention. He had his fiddle and was ready. Rome was to be a pyrotechnic display. But something went haywire and the fireworks went off too soon. Jack barely escaped injury.
His radio income is approximately $15,000 a week for thirty-nine weeks. He gels $170,000 a picture and has two slated for this year.
His net income, therefore, is one of the highest in the United States. His income tax runs eighty-five percent.
"I don't give a hang how much money Uncle Sam takes in income taxes," Benny said, "as long as he leaves me enough to live on comfortably, as I do now. Uncle Sam can have the rest, and more, if I am able to make it."
Noble sentiments, Brother Benny. He has proved that if a man speaks a better gag the world will beat a pathway lo his door. But he knows something else that's far more important—that the same path leads away from the door, and the world will retrace its steps if a man is not worthy.
Jack Benny may be heard Sunday night on NBC at:
7:00 p.m. EDT – 6:00 p.m. EST
6:00 p.m. CDT – 5:00 p.m. CST
8:30 p.m. MST – 7:30 p.m. PST