Tex's Twisker Punch

Even lesser Tex Avery cartoons have something worthwhile in them.

Here’s a gag from Avery’s final black-and-white cartoon at Warners. A hen and a chick are fighting over a watermelon in Porky’s Garden (from the cartoon of the same name).



The chicken takes care of the chick, who walks off feeling sorry for itself.



The chick comes to a stop at an inside gag. A plant doesn’t come from garden seeds. It comes from JONES garden seeds. But the chick isn’t thinking about that. It knows, no doubt from watching Fleischer cartoons, that spinach means only one thing.



The best part is that the chick doesn’t grow Popeye-like muscles. It turns into Popeye, complete with muttering, growling voice (likely supplied by Danny Webb). There’s even a line about “sweet peas.”

The music after the transformation switches from “Chicken Reel” to the Warners-owned “Shovin’ Right Off Again” from the Warners feature musical The Singing Marine, released the same year as this cartoon.



Now the chick takes care of business.



The reference to Chuck Jones wasn’t the only inside joke. Here’s another one.



Bobe Cannon was out of Avery’s unit and into Bob Clampett’s by now.

I wonder if this is someone on staff as well.



The credited animators on this cartoon are Sid Sutherland and Elmer Wait, who died two months before this cartoon was released at age 23. Virgil Ross, Paul Smith and Irv Spence were animating in the unit at this time, as far as I know

Another Oops

Radio audiences liked it when actors blew a line. Sometimes, the mistake got bigger laughs than what was in the script.

On the Jack Benny show, Bea Benaderet organised a pool, taking bets about which line announcer Don Wilson would mangle. His most famous one was when he tried to explain he read about Jack’s new suit in Drew Pearson’s column, but it came out “Dreer Pooson.” The writers pounced on it, and later in the show, when Jack asked Frank Nelson, standing in front of Romanoff’s, if he was the doorman, Nelson blurted out “Who do you think I am, Dreer Pooson?” It came out of nowhere and the audience—and Benny—went into convulsions.

Mary Livingstone had her problems getting out lines, too. My favourite is a lesser-known one. She was talking to Eddie Anderson and said “That’s okay, Mr. Rochester,” then fumbled afterward, realising the character’s FIRST name was “Rochester.” Jack ad-libbed a response to the extent that in the studio, she could call him “Rochester,” but outside she could call him “Mr. Anderson.”

Two of her better-known ones among Benny fans are when she substituted “grass reek” for “grease rack” (which had a wonderful post-script in a later broadcast when the police chief of Palm Springs talked about a skunk fight on a lawn and ended with “Boy, did that grass reek!”), and when she ordered a “chiss sweeze” sandwich.

We pass along this tale of one you don’t know about. The reason is it is from 1935. Only 2 1/2 recordings of the shows from that year exist, none when Michael Bartlett was Jack’s vocalist. This was documented in K.L. Ecksan’s column in the Sunday Oakland Tribune on November 10, 1935.

Glum-visaged, low-spirited folk wouldn't last long around the Jack Benny rehearsals and broadcasts in the NBC studios in Hollywood. Why? Because that's the time and place for spontaneous laughter—ad lib gags, practical jokes and the gentle art of "ribbing."
It's a fact that the Benny clan stumbles onto more good hearty laughs than the average script writer who gets paid for originating just that sort of thing. Writer Harry Conn, one of the wittiest wits who ever owned a typewriter, liberally sprinkles his continuity with usable jokes, but by the time Benny and his stooges wade through one rehearsal at least two jokes grow where one stood before.
For instance, on a recent broadcast Benny had a line in which he said, in effect, "That guy Michael Bartlett isn't such a much," and Mary Livingstone was supposed to answer, "Well, fifty million women can't be wrong." When Mary came to her line she read, "Well, fifty willion momen," which was spontaneous enough to "break up" the entire cast. Patient practice throughout the balance of Saturday night and Sunday made Mary letter-perfect in the line. But when it came broadcast time she still couldn't unscramble her m's and w's. Mistake or no, it proved the biggest laugh of the program.
An occurrence of similar spontaneity took place on the first broadcast of the new series when Bartlett and Benny were engaged in a bit of rube dialogue. As the conversation went on, Bartlett—doing the first rural dialect of his life—kept pitching his voice higher and higher. Unconsciously, Benny kept railing up on his toes and boosting his own voice, until he was stretched to his full height.
Then Benny's sense of humor got the better of him and he called across stage to Bartlett, "Mike, I'll come down, if you will." And Mike did, but not without having created the best laugh of the show.
The Benny-ites have got to be good-natured. Else how would hefty Announcer Don Wilson be able to take it when Benny describes him in uncomplimentary terms?
The same goes for Mary Livingstone, who really does like poetry. Every time she composes a rhyming gem her fellow-troupers point significantly at their heads and move one hand around in a circular motion. Whenever Johnny Green and Michael Bartlett do a particularly effective musical number their co-workers walk away. It's all part of an act, of course, for underneath, every member of the cast is sure that the other one is tops in his particular endeavor, Benny wouldn't trade his stooges for a tentfull of another comedian's helpers. And the stooges wouldn't trade Benny, either.

Did someone ask about the Benny-ites away from the microphone? Well, they're a busy crew. Every waking hour and some of the dozing ones, too, Benny spends at M-G-M, where he is regarded as the current sensation. Jack came to Hollywood six months ago to do "Broadway Melody of 1936" and took a short lease on Lita Grey Chaplin's former home in Beverly Hills. It's really the first home life the Bennys have had, after all these years in vaudeville, and living in hotels and apartments. The climate clicked with Jack, and Jack clicked with M-G-M, so M-G-M renewed Jack, and Jack renewed the lease. Benny figured on leaving after his second film, "It's in the Air," but his picture bosses figured otherwise, so Benny has taken an indefinite lease on the home, and Mary is even planting flowers in the back yard.
Speaking of the home, it was a big laugh the other night when the Bennys had a house full of guests and Jack turned on the electric organ. The selection was "Love in Bloom." Half way through the number the organ stuck. Benny and all the guests took turns at turning switches on and off, pushing and pulling pedals and pounding the back and front of the console. After two hours of the same high note, slightly off-key, Jack managed to get an organ technician over from Grauman’s Chinese Theater, and the recalcitrant console was repaired.
Michael Bartlett, who is no longer with Jack Benny, is no less busy. He is another sensational newcomer to films, having been a smashing success in Grace Moore's latest picture, "Love Me Forever." He is starting production on another movie this week. Incidentally, an odd note of a Hollywood coincidence is that Writer Harry Conn just took a new apartment and found that it was the one Bartlett had vacated a few weeks before.
Johnny Green hasn't got his Hollywood legs He still misses his New York, but is so busy arranging music for the broadcast he doesn't have much time to notice his loneliness. As for Don Wilson, Los Angeles is his home. He started on the NBC station, KFI there, as a sports announcer.
So that's a quick and candid camera shot of the Jack Benny cast in Hollywood. They're a swell lot of folks, and very busy, as well as happy.

Bartlett was replaced by Kenny Baker, who stayed until walking away the show one broadcast before the end of the 1938-39 season. Green stayed for a year, then Benny had the great fortune in 1936 to hire Phil Harris as his bandleader. Wilson stayed until the Benny show ended on television in 1965. Conn’s ego caused him to flame out before the end of the season and Jack brought in Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin to write. Incidentally, this blurb popped up in the Sunday Oregonian on November 17:

Harry Conn, the Jack Benny script writer, says the days of radio gags are over, and that hereafter the big comedy programs will have to depend on original situation routines and travesties of current plays and motion pictures.
Harry considers “The Bennys of Wimpole Street” the funniest script he has ever written.

That was heard October 28, 1934. About two-thirds of the broadcast still exist; it is missing the opening commercial and the musical numbers, including “Easter Parade,” written by Irving Berlin in 1933. Blanche Stewart plays golfer “Masha Niblick” and Elizabeth’s maid, while Mary Kelley is Maureen. You can listen to it below.

Can I Borrow a Basket of Berries?

Our story today takes place on this piece of property. The year is 1946.


You can see the address on the sidewalk in the shade of the lower right corner. 17340. We don’t wish to deceive you. This is a bigger house than what was on the property at the time. The original home was on an acre of land, had three or four bedrooms, a den, a guest house and a pool. It was owned by the same person according to the 1945 local directory as it was in the U.S. Census for 1950, the year it was sold.

The home is at 17340 Magnolia Boulevard in Encino. The property at the time belonged to a gent named Walter Lantz.

The Valley Times wrote about the cartoon producer several times that year, but in a story published April 29, a reporter decided to visit Lantz at home. The first subject wasn’t cartoons.

Encino Tops for Home, Says Cartooner Lantz
By HILDA BLACK
Going in search of Walter Lantz, producer of the animated cartoons that bear his name, your reporter arrived at a modest French provincial home in Encino. Producer Lantz was found digging in his garden. He is, he confided to us, going to have enough strawberries to supply his favorite fruit for every meal. Its worth all the hard work, the bending and stooping, he said. We agreed, and made a mental note to make a return trip in another week. We like strawberries, too!
Did he, we wondered, have any other farmer-like instincts, chicken raising, for instance? Not on your life, was the firm response; at $1 a piece eggs are cheap, compared to the worries that beset an “egg raiser.” Lantz admitted he discovered this the hard way.
While we discussed the price of eggs and the value of raising your own strawberries, the Lantz dogs, Daisy, a pointer, and Butch, a 165-pound Great Dane, were greeting us officially. Butch darned near knocked us down, in a friendly way, of course.
Butch Is Sensitive
“He greets all our friends,” Lantz explained. “Gracie tried to break him of the habit, but it’s no use. He’s sensitive, and sulks all day if he doesn’t get a chance to jump up and meet every visitor.
Even as he spoke, Mrs. Lantz (Gracie) was trying to call off the hounds. We thought she looked like someone we’d seen before, and commented on it. Our hunch was correct; Mrs. L.—the former Grace Stafford—had been an actress on the New York stage, then one of the Duffy players who appeared regularly at El Capitan theater in Hollywood, and still later in pictures. Now, she’s perfectly content to be a housewife.
But not a “sit-by-the-fire” housewife, for she is a senior grey lady at Birmingham hospital, and during the war, as part of her patriotic contribution, she put in over 500 hours as a spotter in the Valley.
Films for Government.
And what, we wanted to know, about Walter? Did he work at spotting, or something like that? No, he told us. While Gracie was busy spotting, he had been busy at his Universal studio making training films for the government. Twenty-two in all, for the U. S. navy. What were they?
Oh, pictures on bomb fuzes, torpedo practices, and one which now is being shown all over the country: A film called “The Enemy Bacteria.” Designed to teach young doctors the necessity for proper sanitation precautions, the picture fills more than a wartime need. Today, young medics and nurses are shown this picture early in their training. It is also being distributed through the Latin American countries by the office of the co-ordinator of inter-American affairs, as part of their educational program.
Yes, Walter Lantz did a good job for the government, we decided. And so did Grace.
Woody in Cement
On our way up the driveway we thought we had detected a bit of Lantz artistry, and asked about it. Yes, that’s Woody Woodpecker, and Andy Panda, Walter agreed a bit sheepishly. Then he told us about how his top Cartune stars found their way into his driveway. They almost didn’t we learned.
Seems when the driveway was being put in, Lantz got the unique idea of drawing a Woody and an Andy in the wet cement. Anxiously, he waited around until the workmen had left for the day, then carved out the figures of his two top stars with a nail.
He was a little chagrined next morning when the gardener came running into the house reporting that some darned neighborhood kids had scribbled all over the driveway and ruined it!
Speaking of neighbors, we wondered about his. Well, we learned, there was M-G-M Publicity Chief Howard Strickling and Actors Paul Muni and Walter Tetley. Tetley, incidentally, is the voice of Andy Panda in the Lantz Cartunes.
He Loves Encino
Fine neighbors, enthused Walter, and Encino! Well, here’s a town! And he’s not kidding—he means every glowing word. He almost had us believing that the weather is always wonderful, and that even though there may be fog in every other town in San Fernando Valley, in Encino the sun always shines!
We became a trifle suspicious, and asked if, by chance, he had anything to do with the local chamber of commerce. Our remark brought only an innocent, pixie-ish grin, and the information that the chamber of commerce meets regularly in Edward Everett Horton’s barn, and is now planning to build the Encino community clubhouse.
What about local politics, we asked pointedly. Once more we got that naive smile and Walter Lantz informed us: “Tom Breneman may be mayor of our town—but I’m the only cartoon producer in Encino.”

By the way, we checked the Van Nuys directory for 1945 and, sure enough, Walter Tetley lived almost across the street with his parents at 17357 Magnolia Blvd. That house has been replaced as well.

The year Lantz sold his home, he inked a deal with Universal to make a new series of Woody Woodpecker cartoons for the studio after a dead period of over a year; the first one was released in January 1951.

And who bought the Lantz house? In 1962, it was listed for sale again. It seems the owner filed for bankruptcy, partly because he was trying to make alimony payments to three ex-wives. The man was Joseph N. Yule, Jr. You know him better as Mickey Rooney.

Hey! I'm Headless!

Tom yells into a mountain range to hear his echo in the wonderfully warped Van Beuren cartoon A Swiss Trick (1932).

The word “HEY” flies in between the peaks, then makes holes in each mountain as it sails along.



The word bashes Tom on the back of the head. But the gag doesn’t end there. It decapitates Tom. Jerry grabs the head as it goes past him, reattaches it to Tom’s body, then Tom rubs his chin as he wonders what to make of what happened.



This short has all kinds of weird ideas, ending with Tom and Jerry developing holes like Swiss cheese and being chased by mice.

John Foster and George Stallings get the “by” credit.

Sylvester's a Mother

Foghorn Leghorn has convinced Sylvester he has laid an egg in the 1947 release Crowing Pains. The cat is quite proud of himself.



But wait a minute, he thinks. Director Bob McKimson holds the pose for 26 frames.



“Hey!” he shouts. “Tom cats can’t be mothers!”



Sylvester’s body is static so the animator can concentrate on moving the head around in different shapes during the dialogue. Here are some frames.



The opening credits say this is a Henery Hawk cartoon, not a Sylvester cartoon. Even then, the star is the not-yet-named Foghorn Leghorn, with a different voice than what Mel Blanc used later, but with some Senator Claghorn-isms already part of the dialogue from Warren Foster (egs. interrupting a sentence to remark “I say!” and ending sentences with “That is”).

It seems the Warners directors were trying to find ways to use Sylvester. The time this cartoon was released, Friz Freleng had paired him with Tweety, and won an Oscar. Art Davis and his writers came up with an idiot version of him with a dopey voice. Chuck Jones tried him in several horror cartoons with an oblivious Porky Pig. After this cartoon, McKimson came up with a combination far more lasting—a “giant mouse” (kangaroo) nemesis in Hop, Look and Listen (released in 1948), adding Sylvester, Jr. into the mix in Pop ‘Em Pop (released in 1950). The three of them settled in for a long career on the screen.

Meanwhile, McKimson realised Foggy was of star calibre and gave him a leading role (occasionally with the dog in this short) until 1963’s Banty Raids, about a year before the end of the studio’s life. With this one cartoon, McKimson managed to spawn two series of well-remembered shorts.

Presenting the CBS Radio Network

Ed Murrow was of such towering stature in the news business, you’d think he couldn’t be replaced. But replaced he was when CBS boss Bill Paley decided he was too controversial. It’s all about attracting big corporate sponsors, you know.

When Murrow took time away from his CBS radio commentary slot in 1959, who do you think the network got as a replacement? Charles Collingwood? Walter Cronkite? Eric Severeid?

No. They got Bob.

We don’t mean veteran newsman Bob Trout. We mean Bob Elliott. And Ray Goulding.

Network radio was heading in the direction of news by the late 1950s, but CBS decided on one last shot at comedy in the evening hours Monday through Friday. Thus Bob and Ray were hired to take over Murrow’s 7:45 p.m. Eastern Time spot on June 29, 1959 to give listeners 15 minutes of their sly humour. (They were preceded by Amos ‘n’ Andy at 7:05, a newscast with Stuart Novins at 7:30, Andy Griffith at 7:35 and Burns and Allen at 7:40).

Radio critics loved Bob and Ray. In 1959, columnists were happy to announce the prospect of an hour and a quarter of Bob and Ray’s “irreverent whimsy” every week. At that point, the two had been showing up occasionally on NBC’s Monitor, and their recorded bits were heard on a five-minute show at 6:55 p.m. on Toronto radio station CJBC 860. The CBS gig was such a big deal, newspaper ads appeared on The Big Day. Cynthia Lowry promoted it in her daily column for the Associated Press.

In fact, the debut got reviewed the next day. Here’s what the Des Moines Register had to say. The history is a bit off; the two first left Boston for NBC in New York in July 1951. They were at Mutual later in the decade.

On Television
By Ogden Dwight
Bob and Ray—Elliott and Goulding, the maddest team in broadcasting were last on network television in a set of filmed commercials for an auto hour. It would have been astonishing if they helped sell a single car.
Because television is not their medium. Radio is, and their return to it with a nightly quarter-hour of wild wit is a kind of diminished-seventh heaven for their fanatical disciples.
New Network
The two maniacs from Massachusetts are on CBS Radio now—a network new to them after having captured wide renown (and an elite Peabody award) for a similar weekday series on Mutual in 1951, five years after first concocting their deadly satires over WHDH, Boston.
Then they did a few programs for NBC Radio and TV, and in '54 and '55 tried to cut on ABC-TV with "The Name's the Same." No go. Video's appetite for sight gags is too voracious.
Bob and Ray then landed on NBC's weekend "Monitor" in irregular three-minute spots (meantime earning a good living doing commercials), spots which kept their cult alive and hoping.
Now their weird little world and its lunatic population have moved over to 485 Madison ave., formerly precincts sacred to Ed Murrow, Arthur Godfrey and Jackie Gleason.
On wavelengths those mellifluous voices once ruled, may now expect to meet—if you follow the Bob and Ray party line as a fellow traveler—such Bob and Ray-voiced caricatures as:
The "incomparable" Wally Ballou, dough-voiced ace radio reporter; Uncle Eugene, soft as a grape; Mary McGoon, who once ran for the U. S. senate; Tex, the cowboy warbler; Steve Bosco, talent scout [for] has-been athletes; Webley Webster, ace forum foul-up, or Arthur Sturdley, a jerk.
Also you are likely to hear their hilarious lampoons of radio and TV: “One Feller's Family,” “The Life and Loves Linda Lovely,” or “The Gathering Dusk,” in which the heroine does nothing but rest.
A New Kit
Monday night in their CBS premiere they made one of their famous premium offers—the "Help Bob and Ray to Fame & Fortune & Worry-Free Old Age Kit," which included among other useless articles a sign to hang over your TV screen reading, "I'm Away Listening to Bob and Ray," plus a "handsome, rich-looking, simulated plastic lapel pin" for promptness.
They conduct crusades for hopeless causes and send out expeditions to nowhere. They recite straightforward, hard-sell commercials for products like ersatz garbage. They interview men in the street who have nothing to say. If you're a square about satire, don't bother to listen. You won't understand it.

One particularly audacious show at CBS was when Bob and Ray took aim at an announcement on October 16, 1959 by company president Frank Stanton in response to the quiz show scandals on TV that network programmes must have disclaimers that “everything is exactly as it purports to be.” Ed Murrow became livid when Stanton mentioned in a New York Times interview that Person to Person, a show Murrow had hosted before his sabbatical, was one that needed a disclaimer. Murrow lashed out at Stanton personally in a written statement later that month.

Bob and Ray responded on their transcribed show of October 22 not with Murrow-esque anger but with ridicule. They stopped the show and spent the quarter hour constantly telling listeners everything on it was fake—the music, the characters, the sound effects. Goulding’s Mary McGoon lent some sane commentary to the situation by remarking “Don’t you think that’s a violation of a theatrical promise, really?” “Well, yes, it is,” Ray replied.

Another target for their stinging was Jack Paar and what Bob and Ray perceived was his self-serving, phoney humility and persecution complex, abetted by announcer Hugh Downs. They did it twice that I recall and the dialogue struck Daily News columnist Kay Gardella as worthy of preservation, at least some of it, in her column of August 14, 1959. The routine was on CBS three days earlier.

Paar Taken Apart:
For a refreshing change from TV reruns, we recommend tuning an occasional ear to Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding, CBS-Radio's rapier-tongued satirists, who hold forth nightly at 7:45. This witty pair have an ear for the ridiculous, turning what they hear into hilarious comedy routines. The other P.M., for instance, they had some typical Bob and Ray fun with Jack Paar's nightly TVer; their version was the Hack Park Show, excerpts of which follow:
BOB: Well, Hack—people have asked me what Hack Park is really like, and . . . ah . . . you see, Hack, you're so many people . . .
RAY: I have to be. There's so much to do around here. And I have to be so many people to look after the details. And thus far, what I've done here has been incredible. (Sincerely) I mean that, Eustace.
BOB: I know you do, Hack. And . . . ah . . . that's part of it. But the thing that . . .
RAY: Excuse me, Eustace. Folks—about Eustace . . . most of you out there don't know this, but Eustace is seldom wrong.
BOB: (Embarassed) Hack . . .
RAY: No, I mean that, Eustace. Most people do not know how right you are. And I'll tell you something else about Eustace—who's part of our family here. He's been to my home and he's seen a lot.
BOB: Ah . . . Hack is right about that. And I might tell you that I was moved by what I saw. . . . and so was Hack.
RAY: Tell them why I was moved, Eustace.
BOB: Well, I don't know if you folks know this, but there's stream that runs adjacent to Hack's house. Anyhow, about six months ago there was this crab. Well it crawled into Hack's home.
RAY: Oh, that was a wild night! Wild!
BOB: And wouldn't you know. . . . that crab crawled into one of Hack's best suits! And the marvelous thing about it is Hack continued to wear the suit, crab and all! Now, very few people know that.
ETC.

Bob and Ray, and whoever helped write their sketches, even had Hack call people “Dear heart” just as Paar used to do.

Remarkably, Bob and Ray survived just under a year CBS. The radio show was cancelled on June 24, 1960, leaving the Amos ‘n’ Andy Music Hall as the only entertainment show on the CBS weeknight schedule, and it was gone five months later.

On January 28, 1961, President John Kennedy announced the name of the new head of the U.S. Information Agency. Edward R. Murrow was gone from CBS, too.

Chicken Fingers

Here’s an example of one of the things animation had to give up when it went to made-for-TV cartoons.

Look at the positions of The Rattled Rooster’s fingers in this scene as he’s left in mid-air when a worm sprays him into the sky with a hose. That kind of subtlety cost too much time and money for a television cartoon budget. (Virgil Ross was great at this kind of thing in the Freleng unit).



The rooster realises where he is. Down he drops.



Dave Monahan is responsible for the story in this 1948 Warners cartoon from the Art Davis unit. Davis’ animators on this one are Don Williams, Bill Melendez, John Carey and Basil Davidovich. This one doesn’t do much for me, though I do like the design of the rattlesnake. As a Davis fan, I am happy this one got restored; it was previously on laser disc.

A Burning Desire

Tex Avery (and gagman Heck Allen) had a challenge making The Shooting of Dan McGoo (released in 1945). He had to find new variations on the reactions of the wolf to “Red” than the ones in Red Hot Riding Hood (released in 1943).



The difference this time is Droopy was added to the mix.

In the scene below, Droopy anticipates what’s going to happen by casually raising a menu over the wolf’s eyes to block his vision. It is not effective.



Note in the second frame above, the wolf’s eyes turn red.

Avery had used the Robert W. Service tale of Dan McGrew as the basis for a parody in 1939 when Warners released Dangerous Dan McFoo. This one, of course, has Preston Blair’s wonderful animation of Red, er, Lou, and a quicker pace than the earlier cartoon.

There’s great timing in the gag where the wolf downs the straight whiskey. He immediately knows, despite his reaction, something’s wrong. Avery uses only three frames to get the wolf off the floor and into the bartender’s face to tell him “This stuff’s been cut.” (The camera zooms in for a closer shot for emphasis).

Frank Graham supplies most of the voices here, including the wolf and the off-stage emcee.

Writing and Ratings by Jack Benny

It had the makings of a triumphant return.

Jack Benny, grabbed by Bill Paley in 1949 to appear on CBS after starting at NBC in 1932, was coming back to his old home.

That made a great story. So Jack was paraded around the NBC-TV affiliates confab in 1964 and plugged the switch to reporters while glad-handing with management of various peacock stations.

Unfortunately, things didn’t go so well.

Some of it was out of Benny’s control. For one thing, CBS scheduled two Benny series for late afternoons in the 1964-65 season—one to run Monday through Friday and another on Sunday. This saturation of Benny was despite the fact CBS TV president Jim Aubrey didn’t want him, which is why Jack headed back to NBC in the first place.

That wasn’t known when Jack talked about the coming TV season with the Pittsburgh Press. This feature story was published June 2, 1964.

‘Old 39’ Likes Cinch Of TV Schedule
Benny Rides Bonanza On 70 Trail
By VINCE LEONARD, Press TV-Radio Writer
HOLLYWOOD, June 2—"I was 70 years old on my last birthday and I don't look it," Jack Benny said into a microphone in a roof-top restaurant at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Benny, whose show returns to NBC In the fall at 9:30 on Fridays on Channels 6, 7, and 11 In Pittsburgh, was holding court for a battery of writers attending the NBC affiliates' convention.
He was telling the truth. He didn't look his age at all.
Tanned and wearing a smart, tweedy-ish sport coat and horned-rim glasses, Benny mixed quips with news of his fall show.
"Actually, the only difference next year will be that the show will be on NBC rather than CBS," he said.
"Oh, I'll have a new character to go along with Rochester," he said. "Her name is Jane Dulo and she'll be my cook."
Any change in format?
"I can't change my format," he said, "because I really have no format to change."
The perennial "39 year-old" reported he had six shows already done, calling it "cinch work." “Sometimes,” he said, “I don't have to show up until Wednesday and finish in time to have the week end off."
Nice work if you can get it, the writers agreed to a man.
Connie Francis, Andy Williams and Bob Hope and the wives of Steve McQueen, David Janssen and Andy Williams are the guest stars of the first six segments.
Then Benny, who began his broadcasting career on NBC in 1932, began hitting to all fields.
"We spend more time on editing our scripts than anything else," Benny said. "You know the old saying, plays are never written, they are re-written."
He said sometimes a writer comes up with an idea that doesn't meet with his approval.
"And sometimes I have to apologize. Of course, I'll apologize 28 weeks if the show comes off well," he said.
The Jack Benny Show was nominated for an Emmy 12 of the last 13 years. The season that It missed was the past one. And Jack was nimble with his comment.
"Look at the other shows that weren't nominated," he said, and then ticked off names like Hope, Andy Griffith, Jackie Gleason, Lucille Ball and Red Skelton.
"I'd rather be in their class, great people that were not nominated."
Someone brought up the category squabble concerning the Emmys, and Jack cracked:
"Once I was in the same category with 'The Defenders' and they hardly get any laughs."
On ratings, Benny had this to say:
"I was on top in radio once, but couldn't say much for ratings then. The only time I can say I believe in ratings is when I drop. Otherwise they'd holler ‘sour grapes.’”
The demise of the Richard Boone Show was brought up and after commenting on the show's worth, Benny said, "You know, if I were going to be thrown off the air, I'd rather be thrown off with a good show. At least I'd save face for my concerts."
Then the most famous violinist since Heifetz launched into a symphony on "Bonanza," one of his cousins at NBC, a show which was a rival of his last season when Jack was with CBS.
The Benny show last year came on during the second half of Bonanza.
"I turned on Bonanza once just to see what it was like," he said. "Then it came time to switch over to my show I just couldn't. I got so interested I had to wait for that big ending.
"Then it dawned on me. If I couldn't switch, what about all the other viewers?"
The Joey Bishop Show will battle Bonanza next season.
Said Jack:
"Bishop's a fine comic but he's going to have problems."

The columnist was a bit confused. Jack was opposite the second half of Bonanza on Sundays in the 1961-62 season. He was moved to Tuesdays the following year.

You’d have to be a real Benny diehard to remember Jane Dulo as the cook. She was only on three shows. Dulo loved her time with Jack. She was quoted in the Sacramento Union of May 23, 1965.

“[W]orking with Jack Benny is an incredible experience. Think of anything great to say about somebody and it will apply to him.
“I’ll never forget our first rehearsal. I was terribly nervous and gave what I thought was a mediocre performance.
“Jack said to me, ‘Kid, if your reading is an indication of your performance, we’re home free.’ I loved him for that.”

The irony of the Benny interview is while Jack talked about ratings for Joey Bishop, poor ratings would take his show off NBC at the end of one season. Aubrey counter-programmed by putting an Andy Griffith Show spin-off opposite Benny: Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.. Rick DuBrow of UPI proclaimed it “the real new smash popular show of the year” and Gomer’s Jim Nabors “the biggest new star.”

The Valley Times pointed out on Jan. 2, 1965 that Benny’s show hadn’t even cracked the top 50. On the 19th, the Anaheim Bulletin’s Ann Saunders sadly wished Jack “many, many thanks for the many hours of pleasure you have given us.” The Benny show was being cancelled.