Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: The Odd Couple Bonding

The U.S. government spent money to get you to give them your money to invest.

There are film examples galore where the government urges Americans to buy bonds, during war-time and peace-time. Animation fans will likely think of Bugs Bunny in Any Bonds Today? (1942). Rocky and Bullwinkle pitched Savings Stamps in a funny cartoon that is on-line somewhere.

Here’s a different example. It’s an ersatz episode of The Odd Couple, complete with the opening credit footage and the arrangement of Neal Hefti’s theme, as well as the bridge cue “Man Chases Man” (which is less gay than Sammy Cahn’s lyrics to the theme). It takes place in the apartment set used on the TV show. Not only do Tony Randall and Jack Klugman reprise their roles, so do Larry Gelman (Vinnie) and Al Molinaro (Murray). Someone other than Gary Waldman is Speed. The plot involves Felix testing out his Payroll Savings Plan pitch during one of Oscar’s poker games.

The Hagley Digital Archives site says this was made in 1970. Wrong! Here’s the background behind it, likely from a government news release, found in the Salisbury Post of May 13, 1972.

Odd Couple Aid Payroll Savings
Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, the stars of the ABC Television Network’s The Odd Couple,” have been named honorary co-chairmen of the payroll savings campaign on behalf of the U. S. Savings Bonds program by the Department of the Treasury, in ceremonies in Washington, D. C.
Randall and Klugman appear in a special Savings Bond film, “The Winning Hand,” which is being used to train payroll savings canvassers, and which was unveiled in the nation’s capital to launch the ‘72 payroll savings campaign by the Federal government.
They received individual plaques from the Department of the Treasury for their work in promoting bonds.

The laugh track despised by Klugman and Randall in the first season is absent.



As a bonus, here’s a piece on Klugman and wife Brett Somers from Earl Wilson’s column of Oct. 31, 1970.

NEW YORK — Jack Klugman, the slob sports writer on “The Odd Couple” TV show, hears unofficially and round-about and every way but officially that the show’s being renewed . . . which means that the poor man will still be hopping over to Las Vegas from Hollywood at every opportunity to spend his clay in the horse parlor.
“It’s my one vice,” Klugman says. “It’s like a job. I’m there from 9 to 6. I bet all six tracks and nearly all nine races, so I got 50 bets going.
“I go to tracks besides. One day I was doing the FBI series, I was ready to fly back to New York but they had to reshoot a scene.
“They ca1led my wife in Weston, Conn., to find out where I was in California. She said, ‘Is there a race track open?’ They said ‘Yes, the trotters at Hollywood.’ They paged me, ‘The FBI calling Jack Klugman.’ I was on the daily double line.”
Jack’s love for gambling is surpassed only by his respect for his colleague in the series. Tony Randall. “Tony once told me,” Jack says, “I’m an authority on everything.’ He is. The man knows everything — and remembers it.”
Jack’s wife, actress Brett Sommers, has a couple of tricks for saving his money from the gamblers. “She goes to auctions. She hates gambling. I hate auctions.”
When they did “He Said, She Said” recently, his wife pocketed both his fee and hers. He asked her why she took his fee.
“Listen,” she said, “if you weren’t married, you couldn’t do this show.”

Viewers Strike Back About Benny

Larry Wolters, I know your pain.

Wolters was, for a number of years, the radio, then television, critic of the Chicago Tribune. Critics, by nature, have opinions. And there’s a segment of the population that gets all butt-hurt if a critic has a differing opinion than theirs’. They treat the situation as seriously as if it were cancer surgery. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone and their sock-puppets went on social media to put angry frowns next to this post.

Jack Benny was in show business for decades. As he was in radio and television, his on-air offerings to the public came under the watch of Mr. Wolters.

One such programme was broadcast on CBS-TV (WBKB) in Chicago in 1952 and Mr. Wolters put in his two cents. Spewed annoyance followed by mail. First, here’s his column, published Dec. 3rd that year.

BENNY: Last year, the amusement critics of the nation named Jack Benny the outstanding American entertainment figure during the last 25 years. On the basis of his current television shows, he may hang up a 50 year record [since he admits to being only 39]. While Red Skelton, and even Martin & Lewis are beginning to pall on televiewers because of their repetitious routines, Benny continues to put on shows that are fresh and different.
For one thing, Jack has not settled on a specific, ironclad format for his shows. Sunday evening’s performance was in striking contrast to anything that he has done before. He avoided his familiar radio format.
The construction of the show was simple. Benny started out to give a monolog. He was interrupted by a pretty 6 year old girl who asked for his autograf. She turned out to be a Margaret Truman. This low level exchange between Benny and little Margaret was one of the funniest bits we’ve seen, but it was topped by a skit in which Benny went to bed after a trying day on television. He couldn’t get to sleep because of the drip of the water faucet; Rochester was summoned in numerable times, but it always stopped when he entered the room. Finally Rochester got the drip stopped thru a ruse, and Benny fell into a deep snooze.
. . .
TIGER, TOO: Then came burglars. And trouble. They pulled open a drawer. Seltzer water blew them down. They tried another drawer, and a gloved fist knocked one of them out. They found the safe and cracked it—only to have a live tiger snarl out at them. When they tried to flee thru the window, they found they had to put a quarter in the slot before it would open. Benny just slept on.
In writing these observations, we are making one subscriber to THE TRIBUNE extremely angry. He phoned in, stating that this Benny show was the worst yet and that, if we wrote anything favorable about it, he would quit reading this column. “After all,” he asked, “what did Benny do except lie in bed?”
Our answer to that question: Benny [with imaginative writers] can get more laughs pretending to be asleep in bed than half a dozen rip snorting comedians, including Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Martin & Lewis, Abbott and Costello, and the Ritz Brothers, can by charging all over the premises.
Benny, in our opinion, will outlast all of these in the public favor.

Readers struck back. One of them happened to be a gentleman born in 1894, 39 years before. This was the start of Wolters’ column of Dec. 21st.

GRAB BAG: Reaching into the pile of letters from readers that have been accumulating we come up with these reactions to TV and radio:
            CHICAGO: I liked what you said about Jack Benny in your column. Even liked your indifference to the fact that you might lose one Tribune subscriber. I did not like one thing, tho I’m glad that you added that it was your opinion. You said Jack Benny will outlast Milton Berle, Martin and Lewis, Abbott and Costello, the Ritz brothers, and Jimmy Durante. The last named, sir, in my opinion, will outlast even Jack Benny.
           PHILLIP BOSVIC
We are not indifferent to the lot of a subscriber, but we don’t believe in letting a reader dictate an unfavorable review. You may be right about Durante, but we doubt it.
. . .
            CHICAGO: Your comparing Jack Benny to hard working comedians such as Jimmy Durante [right], Milton Berle, and others is absolutely asinine. These comedians work hard every minute and do not go to sleep on the job [like Benny] for laughs.
            BELLE KLEIN
Whether he pretends to be asleep or not, Jack Benny is fully awake and alert to what is going on on his show at all times. No one gives more careful thought or prepares more carefully for a performance than Jack Benny.
. . .
            BEVERLY HILLS, Cal.: Thanks for your wonderful review. As I have often told you, all I can do is keep trying, like everyone else. Some shows will be good, some very good, and some not so good. However, I will always try to keep from being lousy.
            JACK BENNY

I’m a large fan of Durante, and wished more of his radio shows with Garry Moore were in circulation. But if you compare the public reaction to his death to when Benny died (let alone Jerry Lewis or even Dean Martin), the sheer volume of reaction isn’t close.

Benny’s passing was front page news, and resulted in hundreds of comments and remembrances on the editorial pages, as well as TV specials and tributes for days afterward. This was in an era before cable channels and syndicated shows devoted to nothing but show biz news and gossip. You really had to be somebody to get that kind of rare reaction. Jack Benny really was somebody.

Hurray (Again) For Foray

What?! It’s been more than a year since a post about June Foray? Well, we’ll fix that.

I love June’s voices in Jay Ward’s “Fractured Fairy Tales,” which are among the funniest cartoons ever made for television. But I like her voices in everything. I’m so glad Earl Kress and Mark Evanier got together to help her write her autobiography. She couldn’t have had two better people work with her.

June recorded a pile of voices for a Pogo TV special in 1969. To attract viewers, she was asked to do some advance publicity. Here’s a syndicated story that appeared in newspapers starting May 17th that year.

A GIFT FROM GOD
Vocals Without Music
By STAN MAAYS
IF JUNE FORAY had grown a few inches taller, she might not have become the queen of female voices for the past 20 years.
"Because I am short—not even five feet—I had no dignity to command on a stage," declare Miss Foray. "I couldn't play leading ladies, so I had to concentrate on character roles. I began playing old ladies because it didn't matter how I looked."
Miss Foray reluctantly allowed as how maybe "it's God's gift" that she has the ability to do so many things with her voice. This realization first came to her when she was a 12-year-old drama student. A teacher admitted, "I can't teach you anything more."
"Now that I'm older it doesn't matter any more," she shrugs. I'll be working a lot longer than some because I can do a very young voice (she slipped into a breathless ingenue) or an old voice like Marjorie Main (a perfect impression) and not be concerned how I look on or off camera."
MISS FORAY'S remarkable talents will: be displayed in The Pogo Birthday Special, the first animated musical special to be based on Walt Kelly's comic strip. NBC-TV airs the half-hour show May 18.
Miss Foray does Pogo, Miss. Mam'selle Hepzibah and a "half dozen other voices that have one-liners." The voices of Pogo's other Okefenokee Swamp pals—Porky Pine, Basil, Howland Owl and Churchly La Femme are supplied by Walt Kelly, Chuck Jones and Les Tremayne.
With her old friend Stan Freberg she has worked on a number of albums and radio commercials. In cartoons she has done Bullwinkle, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker; she has worked for Walt Disney, Jay Ward and Hanna and Barbera; the credits are endless. She's the sexy voice in Bandini commercials, plus voices in Uniroyal, United Air Lines, Kellogg, Cheerios, Mustang and Dodge plugs on radio and TV.
When the late Ann Sheridan gallantly tried to finish the season of Pistols and Petticoats but just couldn't carry on any more, it was June Foray the producers turned to for help. She rerecorded dialogue Miss Sheridan's weakened voice couldn't sustain. Her lip-sync of Miss Sheridan's voice was perfect.
IF THERE'S a chink in Miss Foray's talented armor it's a minor one.
"I'm a lousy singer," she announced, unabashed. "I have a good ear, except when it comes to singing. Bobbie Gentry asked me to sing as a character voice in her new album and it took some doing on my part.”
Miss Foray, who lives in a nearby suburb with her husband, writer Hobart Donavan, has joined the growing list of non-smokers. Her keen ear began detecting a loss of range in her voice control four years ago.
"I figured it wasn't worth it if it affected my voice," she reports. I'm very fortunate to be the master of my vocal chords, but I wasn't when I was I smoking.”

Let’s give you one from May 18, 1969, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Press. I suspect some of the quotes came from a UPI wire story earlier in this year.

A Long Hop . . . From Okefenokee To NBC
By Vince Leonard
Press-TV Radio Editor
THIS is why National Porkypine Week and why not? There are so many people pushing so many products that they've had to double up the varieties to get them in the 52—all the weeks the year allows.
Chuck Jones is responsible for Porkypine Week. He's co-producer with cartoonist Walt Kelly of "The Pogo Special Birthday Special" today at 8:30 p.m. on Channels 6, 7 and 11. "Pogo" is a daily and Sunday feature in The Press. Mr. Jones just responded to a complaint made by Porkypine that there is "No National Porkypine Week . . . No, nor no Porkypine Day . . . or hour . . . or second even."
The special, which lifts the characters out of the Okefenokee and onto NBC-TV, centers on the fact that Porkypine is “a norphan" coming from a long line of norphans, so all his friends in the swamp band together to throw him a surprise party.
"Everybody has a favorite holiday," Jones said, "so why not celebrate anytime you choose? And, as the folks in the swamp reason, ‘Why not?’ Actually the year is so cluttered up with holidays now there isn't room for vacations."
Meanwhile, the voice of Pogo belongs to June Foray, who has provided vocal chords to thousands of inanimate cartoon characters.
In fact, June Foray is the Marnie Nixon of the cartoon set.
Her voice ranges from bass to soprano and she speaks for both Rocky and Natasha in "Bullwinkle."
"When I was hired to play Pogo," she said, "the director said he wanted a straight, young Southern boy voice about 12 years old. We decided against a hokey cartoon character for him."
Miss Foray, in addition to doing Pogo's voice, will dub for six other characters in the show, including Miss Mamselle Hepzibah, a petite skunk with a French accent.
"I can do every accent and dialect in the world," said Miss Foray, who has worked for Disney, Hanna-Barbera, MGM, Walter Lantz and Jay Ward.
"It's a very specialized field. There are about 100 people in the business, but only six or seven of us work regularly."
Hopping around from studio to studio, therefore, June Foray could probably make good use of a pogo stick.

The Pogo special was re-run the following February and June was, once again, profiled in various newspaper publicity pieces. You can read a couple in this post.

Woody Throws It Away

Some of the Walter Lantz cartoons in the 1940s featured bits of perspective animation, with a character or object moving to and from the camera.

Here’s a brief example in Woody the Giant Killer, directed by Dick Lundy and released in 1947. Woody (voiced by Bugs Hardaway) gets conned into buying “magic” beans by Bucky Beaver (played by Harry Lang). He shakes the box of beans into the dug-out ground.



Woody then throws the box away in perspective. Lundy holds the first drawing for three frames, the second for two frames, then the others are one frame each.



Woody has some good expressions in this cartoon. Not outrageous ones, but you know what he’s thinking. La Verne Harding and Ed Love are the credited animators. Pat Matthews is here, too; my guess is the final scene is one of his.

Writers Webb Smith and Hardaway make fun of the post-war housing shortage by mixing it with the beanstalk fairy tale.

Backing Up Bunny

“Think fast rabbit,” Bugs Bunny says to himself in Water, Water Every Hare (1952). After an 11-frame hold, he does. Cut to Bugs already moving, stopping on the fifth frame of the scene.

This is the second Bugs/Rudolph encounter. The first time was in Hair-Raising Hare (1946), when Bugs suddenly became a manicurist. He’s a hair dresser in this one. My stars!

Ben Washam, Ken Harris, Phil Monroe and Lloyd Vaughan are the credited animators in this one, with Carl Stalling playing “What’s Up, Doc?” over the opening titles.

Tarnish in the Golden Age

For every successful radio sitcom like Burns and Allen or Blondie or Our Miss Brooks, there’s an equally unsuccessful one, perhaps no one but extreme radio die-hards have heard of.

That’s Finnegan would qualify.

The series has the distinction of a name change, a cast change and a network change. About the only thing that stayed the same was the sponsor.

Household Finance announced, through agency Shaw-Lavally in Chicago, it was paying the bills for Phone Again Finnegan, which debuted on NBC on Saturday afternoons from 5 to 5:30 Eastern time starting March 30, 1946, replacing the equally-memorable Square With the World. Only 57 stations cleared time for it.

The Hollywood Reporter said the debut episode “bears too great a similarity to many other shows, living and dead.”

On June 27, Household Finance moved the show to CBS because NBC said it wasn’t good enough to put in a nighttime slow. Columbia gave it Thursdays at 10:30 Eastern. It appears the star agreed. The Hollywood Reporter announced Stu Erwin felt “the role he portrays is not suited to his talents” and he quit Sept. 19.

Herald Tribune syndicate critic John Crosby finally got around to reviewing the show, and his eye-rolling was published on January 15, 1947.

RADIO IN REVIEW
By JOHN CROSBY
Somewhere in "That's Finnegan," which, if you're not careful around 10:30 p. m. Thursdays, you're likely to hear on CBS, a Swedish Janitor name Larsen is almost certain to say "Yumpin Yiminy," a mild form of Swedish profanity. Besides substituting Y's for J's, Larsen also garbles metaphors and words in general.
"Did you ever pull a tendon?" he was asked.
"No, but I pulled a boner once."
Larsen is the Janitor of the Welcome Arms apartment, which is operated by Frank McHugh, or Finnegan as he is known on this program. The part was once played by Stuart Erwin, who, I think, was wise in getting into another line of work. Erwin and McHugh, no doubt everyone knows; are movie actors of almost identical personality — that is, addlepated, good-natured, butter-fingered and easily frightened by mice.
“Bills! Bills! Bills!” said Finnegan on this program. "I don't know where they all come from. When I go into a store, the salesmen are all billing and cooing. Now they're just billing me." (Don't blame me for these jokes. I’m just quoting them.) According to my notes, Finnegan said once; "I took her to a taffy pull and got stuck with her," a gag I wouldn't pull at a church social.
Originally titled "Phone Again, Finnegan," this inane little comedy series has been on the air for some time and was once on NBC at 5 p.m. Saturdays. Anyhow, Finnegan’s current problems don’t have much to do with the Welcome Arms apartment house but with his 14-year-old nephew Jiggs. Jiggs' conversation is dominated fairly heavily by exclamations such as "Gee," "Golly" and sometimes, when he's heated up to an extraordinary degree, "Gosh," and he has a girl named Helen.
"Gee, uncle, did you ever have a girl look at you and you got butterflies in your stomach?" he asks, referring to Helen.
“Not for quite awhile."
“Who was she?"
“Clara Bow."
"Gee, uncle, I've known this girl for a week now and I haven't even had a date yet — and I’m not getting any younger."
Helen is a breathless young thing who behaves like Judy Foster though in a more restrained way. The only scrap of her dialogue I seem to have on record is: "Gee, imagine making such a remark about a poor defenseless baby." I can't think what would provoke this statement, but it's fairly typical of Helen's conversation.
There isn't much else to be said about “That’s Finnegan." On the test program I heard, Jiggs tried to touch Uncle Finnie for five bucks and got a fine lecture about how well people could get along without money. One minute later, the Household Finance Company, a small loan outfit which sponsors the program, jumped in with a rather convincing argument about how difficult it was to get along without money. It's none of my business but it seems to me they're defeating one another's purposes on this program.
At any rate, Jiggs was reduced to earning his own five fish, which he did by tending Clancy’s baby for him. Clancy is a cop, naturally. (All people named Clancy are cops and conversely all cops are named Clancy. This is known as Crosby’s Law). Well, to get on with this, there's some pretty confusion about where Jiggs' money is coming from and when Finnegan finds Clancy is after him, he assumes the worst. "They won't railroad my boy Jiggs to jail,” he shouts.
“They don’t railroad them any more,” says the faithful Larsen. "It’s cheaper to send them by bus.
It all came out happily.

By the time this review was in print, the show had already been cancelled. Broadcasting magazine of January 6 said Household Finance was replacing it on March 27 with a show far better remembered by radio fans—The Whistler (Signal Oil continued to sponsor The Whistler on the CBS Pacific Coast network on Monday nights).

As for Crosby’s other columns for the week:

Monday, January 13: The former Edward VIII spoke on American radio for the first time since abdicating the British throne in 1936. This speech was only picked up on ABC, and the network admitted he may not have attracted a large audience. He attracted a very unflattering drawing by Alan Ferber next to Crosby’s column in the Los Angeles Daily News.
Tuesday, January 14: Better late than never, I suppose, but Crosby relayed predictions for radio for the coming year from a number of sources, including a note about television. There were still fewer than a dozen stations in the U.S. at the time and limited networks in the east. He also promoted a new Norman Corwin series.
Thursday, January 16: WMCA, a local station in New York, imitated Orson Welles’ most famous radio broadcast except, in this case, atom bombs attacked New York City. Crosby’s drily dismissed the drama.
Friday, January 17: ABC mounted a new version of stories based on Sherlock Holmes, pointing out there wasn’t much new about Conan Doyle’s character, though he thought the English-isms in the script were jolly good fun.

You can click on the columns to read them better.

Poor Cinderella

John Foster and Harry Bailey go for pathos in a scene from Cinderella Blues (1931).

After dropping and breaking the family dishes, Cinderella sits dejected by the fireplace. As violins play in the background, words of sympathy are formed by the flames.



Gene Rodemich’s scores for the Tom and Jerry cartoons at Van Beuren are made up from newish songs used as mood music but in this cartoon, he seems to be trying to score to the action, especially to dance numbers likely choreographed by Jack Ward.

There’s some really atrocious animation, with Cinderella walking into her limo like it’s a flat drawing, and the dialogue is over enunciated, but the cartoon does have a happy ending.

The Home of John Pettibone

After some night-time shots of a junkyard, there’s a fade to inside a shack that is the home of John Pettibone, the alias given to Droopy in Dixieland Droopy.



Director Tex Avery pans from right to left. You'll have to click on this to enlarge it.



The name of the artist is hidden three times in the background. This is the work of Joe Montell. The right-hand bag covering the window is for Montell Flour. And it’s tough to read but the stove is a Montell brand. The towel over the window is from the Hotel Mondello. Mondello was his family's surname.

By the time this cartoon was released in 1954, the Avery unit had been shut down at MGM and Montell was working for John Sutherland Productions.

Tralfaz Sunday Theatre: Freedom 2000

There was plenty of talk in the 1970s about the saving the environment and, by extension, saving the Earth. From it was born the environmental protest movement.

This also seeped down into Saturday morning television at a time when pressure groups demanded cartoon producers teach “correct” behaviour to children, naively believing this would end things like racism, pollution, violence and other world ills.

Hanna-Barbera responded with a TV movie called Yogi’s Ark Lark (1972), which was turned into a series. Its message to the kids: clean up the planet.

But this wasn’t the studio’s only foray into what was called ecology back then. There was another film, this one by Hanna-Barbera’s industrial division and funded by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Freedom 2000 (1974) follows planet inspectors from another world, first as they look at a world killed by its peoples who couldn’t get along with each other. Then they zoom to Earth, where the “captain” champions the American economic system as the best. From here, there is a history of how the system came to be and then the usual warning from the Chamber about the government stifling it, with another veiled threat about Communism. “A totally-controlled economy has within it the implication of a totally-controlled populace.”

It’s only toward the last four minutes the film segues back into the environment, with the captain opining how technological change is adversely affecting the eco-system. But, hurray!, Corporate America is up to the task of doing its part.

The superior aliens, having reviewed the situation (as big business sees it), promise to return to Earth in the year 2000 to see if any advancement has been made.

We know the answer.

You’ll recognise the voice of Korann as Janet Waldo. Vic Perrin is the narrator. Having made these notes, I didn’t realise there are credits at the end. Gerald Baldwin directed the cartoon and co-wrote it with George Gordon and Art Scott. The animators were Alan Zaslove, Ruth Kissane, Fred Crippin and Bob Bachman, with backgrounds by Bob McIntosh and layouts by Rosemary O’Connor, Wall Batterton, Charles McElmurry and Cliff Roberts.

Ross Martin and Richard Carlson supply the other voices and the string-filled score is by Dean Elliott.

Coffee With Jack

Comedians and critics both praised Jack Benny for his timing. Some pointed to the way he slowly unfolded a story, ignoring any interruptions that happened along the way, which made the ending even funnier. Others pointed to his waits and his expressions, which he held as the laughs built and built.

Jack told interviewers over the years he told stories, not jokes. That wasn’t necessarily true. Here’s an Associated Press story from 1958.

Jack Benny Is Unperturbed At Losing A Joke
BY CHARLES MERCER
NEW YORK, Oct. 14 (AP) — Jack Benny ordered some hot coffee sent up to his hotel suite the other day during a visit to New York.
"Please," he told room service, "make it so hot that you can’t carry it.” Hanging up the telephone, he said to a visitor, “to be honest about it, that line is stolen from George Burns.”
“THAT REMINDS me of a story," said a friend of Benny. "There was this kid 3-4 years old who seemed perfectly normal in every way except that he wouldn’t talk. His parents were worried sick about it. They did everything possible but the kid wouldn’t say a word.
“Finally one morning when they served him his cocoa, he tasted it and yelled, ‘Gee, that’s too hot!’ His parents burst into tears of joy, kissed him and asked, “Why haven’t you ever spoken before, dear?’ The kid said, ‘there hasn’t been anything to complain about before.’”
Benny, laughing, said he could use that joke. The visitor told Benny’s friend he could use it too and would try to rush it out before Benny did.
BENNY WAS philosophical about the loss of a new joke. After all, he knows millions of them. Besides, he’s a very philosophical guy—extraordinarily calm and unharassed in his 26th year of radio and television. Calmer, really, than Perry Como.
Without belaboring that joke which may be old to everybody but the visitor, you might say that Benny has never sounded off a great deal because he doesn’t feel he’s had anything to complain about.
Week in and week out his CBS-TV show (Sundays, 7:30 pm) still is the most risible half-hour comedy show on the air. He does not worry about "changing format” problems because the format of the show always is changing from week to week anyway. What are his working habits on the program?
As he tells it, they sound more like playing habits. His staff and writers have been with him for a long time; they know one another thoroughly.
“SOMETIMES YOU have a show in a couple of hours,” Benny says. "Sometimes it’s a couple of weeks before it’s together. It doesn’t matter who gets the ideas. We’re all working together. I guess I work, but I also have time to play golf and some days I get in a couple of hours’ practice with that—”he pointed to his violin on a table.
The first 10 years are the hardest, he feels. He used to work like a dog after he began his radio program in 1932, "scared every week that they’d fire me if it wasn’t the best show ever.” But after nine years on television he doesn’t worry any more.
Why did he start the happy myth that Benny is the most tight-fisted man in the world?
“It began as an accident on radio,” he said. “I did a couple of jokes about being tight and it caught on. Apparently everybody has a skinflint in his family. I went on with it because people demanded it — I had to. It was like being carried along by an avalanche. And now it’s a permanent fixture of me as an entertainer.”
The waiter brought in coffee. Benny tipped him heavily. The waiter left with a shocked expression.
That waiter must have worn gloves to carry the coffee. Benny thought it barely warm enough, but his visitor scalded his tongue.
"Serves you right for stealing jokes,” Benny said mildly.

See how Jack waited and waited and when it was the right moment—Wham!!—casually gave the punch line.

Now, that’s timing.