Jack Benny: His Life, His Comedy, His Timing

A book called The Great Comedians Talk About Comedy was excerpted over a number of weekends in the Weekly Observer, a Sunday newspaper magazine supplement syndicated by the Gannett News Service.

First up in the series was Jack Benny. I need not say more other than it was published on March 9, 1969

Benny: The Penny Pinching Pauser
By LARRY WILDE
Perhaps Jack Benny’s most famous comedy moment has him walking down a street. A hold-up man appears from the darkness and shoves a gun in his ribs, saying, “Your money or your life!”
Because he is notorious for penny-pinching, there is an interminable pause. The audience is convulsed with laughter. At the last split-second, Jack says: “I’m thinking it over!”
As a guest on Fred Allen’s radio program, on which the comedians carried on their hilarious “feud,” to the delight of millions, Allen got off a particularly funny ad-lib, which stopped the show. Jack Benny, not to be outdone, came back with: “Hmmmm, you wouldn’t say that if my writers were here!”
JACK BENNY was born Benny Kubelsky on Feb. 14, 1894, in Chicago, but be grew up in Waukegan, Ill. He spent his early career touring vaudeville circuits, eventually doing Broadway musicals for Earl Carroll and the Shuberts. He entered the new medium of radio in 1932, switched to television in 1950, where he won eight “Emmy” awards for the excellence of his program. His best-known movies were: George Washington Slept Here, Buck Benny Rides Again, Man About Town, Charlie’s Aunt, and To Be Or Not to Be.
Jack’s latest enthusiasm is performing as violin soloist with the top symphony orchestras m America, with proceeds going to charitable causes.
THIS MEETING TOOK place m Benny’s Beverly Hills office. Fifteen minutes passed while Benny worked on some material with his writer for Lake Tahoe appearance.
As we chatted, it was difficult for me to believe that the man was in his seventies. He looked fifty-five.
Wilde: All right, Jack. How many years did you play the violin before you decided to become a comedian? Beany: We-e-ell . . . when I was about 14, 15 years old in Waukegan, I used to play with dance orchestras. We would play in stores on Saturdays and maybe get a dollar and a half for the day. Then I studied and I went into vaudeville as a violinist. There was a woman pianologist — or whatever they called them — who sang and did talking, comedy songs. Her name was Cora Salisbury. She took me with her on the road. We did a violin and piano act — Salisbury and Benny.
Wilde: Did you do any comedy?
Benny: No, only a little bit of kidding with the violin, but I never talked.
Wilde: What happened to make you give up being a musician and become a comedian?
Benny: Well, Cora’s mother became very ill and she had to give up the stage. So, I found another partner, a fellow by the name of Woods and I called the act Benny and Woods. That’s how I have Benny as my last name — Benny is my right first name. We stayed together doing a violin and piano act until the First World War and then I joined the Navy.
Wilde: Until then, you still had not done any comedy?
Benny: No comedy at all. Then in the Navy at Great Lakes, David Wolfe, who became a very dear friend of mine later, was the author of a couple of sailor shows for Navy relief. Wolfe needed somebody to play the part of an admiral’s orderly, who only had one or two comedy lines. He happened to see me and said, "Hey, young fella, come over here!" And I read a couple of lines and he liked it, because the next day he added lines for me and by the time the show opened in Chicago in the Auditorium, I had practically the comedy part of the show. Then I realized I could talk and get laughs. When I went into vaudeville again, I went back as a single act. But I always held the violin . . . did a lot of violin playing and just a little bit of talk. And then gradually I kept talking and less violin until finally I dropped the violin entirely. If I wanted to have a finish for my act I borrowed a violin from the orchestra.
Wilde: Even though you stopped playing the violin, why did you still hold it? For security?
Benny: Yes, for security. Also, it made all my jokes sound impromptu— when you hold an instrument, they always think you are ready to play.
Wilde: Where did you get the material you used?
Benny: I would get help occasionally from writers and I would pay them for that particular routine — $35 or $50 — but I wrote a lot for myself. In those days I was able to write because I had to. The only trouble . . . I was always walking down the street staring and people would pass me and say hello and I would not even know who they were. I was always thinking of jokes.
Wilde: Was your delivery basically the same as it today—that is, leisurely, unhurried?
Beamy: Basically the same, but I was always nervous, the first few years, when I talked. I wouldn’t gesticulate enough and though I work easy and smoothly now and I put into it, in the old days I was afraid to. When I was a bit in those days, I was a big hit because I worked easy and smooth, but if I flopped I was a flop for the same reason. You see, there’s such a thing as being too nonchalant on stage. It looked as though you were—
Wilde: Too well rehearsed?
Benny: Yeah. It looked as though you were over-acting and under-acting at the same time. Trying too hard to be smooth and easy. I learned since then I have to have a little action.
Wilde: What qualities are required, other than being able to make people laugh?
Benny: In the first place, to become real successful they must like you very much on the stage. They must have a feeling like: “Gee, I like this fella” — “I wish he was a very good friend of mine” — “I wish he was a relative.” You see, it’s like a television show—if they like you, you may think sometimes you are doing a bad show and you’re not at all. But if they don’t like you, you cannot do a good show. Of course, we had great schools in those days—vaudeville and burlesquer, which they haven’t got today. That’s why I give all the new comedians a lot of credit for making it as quickly as they do and actually getting big laughs. For instance, I can walk on stage and if I want to be secure I can open up with a stingy joke and everybody screams. Well, a lot of comedians who haven’t got those characterizations have to actually make good as comedians, not as institutions—household words.
Wilde: When yon started, were there any comedians you admired or patterned yourself after? You said Phil Baker was your idol—

Benny: It was not so much that Phil Baker was a great comedian — he was a great personality. One of the handsomest fellas you have ever seen and people loved him. He would always have somebody working with him to get the laughs, like I do on television. I used to like Frank Fay very much. Al Jolson was the world’s greatest entertainer. I don’t think there’s been anybody since then that had his magnetism, and particularly when he was in black-face. He had a sympathetic quality. I have always thought Ed Wynn was the world’s greatest comedian, and I still think there is nobody that has ever been as funny, or will be, in my time as he was in his heyday.
Wilde: Has what people laughed at changed much through the years?
Benny: I don’t think so. I think they laugh at the same things. Years ago you could do some corny things and be funny. I can look over what I used to do many, many years ago and pick out things to use now. The only thing is if you are working on characterizations, things that were funny 30 years ago have to be embellished — have to be smarter — wilder. Like, if I do stingy jokes I can’t do an ordinary joke about leaving a guy a nickel tip — that’s not funny anymore. Now you have to be more wild. Maybe the waiter leaves me a dime tip knowing how cheap I am. Today, it has to be actually funnier.
Wilde: Many comedians earn an excellent living doing club dates, conventions, but the world never hears of them. Some are very content with this anonymity while others are still striving to reach the top. Was it always your goal to become a star?
Benny: I would think so, and I nearly every comedian wants to be . . . just like a politician would like to be President of the United States. And I don’t care who the politician is—he might be the mayor of Carson City, but if he’s in politics he would like to end up being President. I think every dramatic actor, every singer, would like to be among the top few. Every concert musician would like to be considered among the top half-dozen. But when I say “would like to be the top” . . . you see, we didn’t demand too much in those days. For instance when I played the Palace in New York, which was the theatre every actor was nervous about, and I was a big hit . . . you had the feeling that everybody in the world knew about it and you didn’t have to go any farther. And the same with money. When I got to the point where I was getting $450 per week I thought I was quite a rich man. I started to move in the first-class hotels . . . oh, my goodness, I thought, if I could ever reach $1,000 a week, then I’m ready to call it a day—this is it.
Wilde: Could you pinpoint the specific steps you’ve taken to remain a star all these years?
Benny: I think I have had, through my years of radio and television, almost always a very, very good show. I can’t stand bad shows — I get embarrassed. I was the comedian, of course but I think I was almost a better editor. Most comedians give me credit for being not the best comedian in show business, but the best editor — which is important — as important as being a comedian. It’s not that I am such a particularly funny man. People will say to me, “Did you study the pauses in the tape?” There is nothing as important as editing.
Wilde: Were you born with this talent for editing or do feel it came about as a result of years of analyzing yourself and your material?
Benny: The latter — I don’t think I was born with it. It was important to me never to have a superfluous moment in my act or in my radio or television shows.
Wilde: How did all the Jack Benny trademarks come about? Thriftiness, bragging, playing straight to the people you work with, etc.
Benny: All these things happened by accident . . .with one show. Now how I probably became a stingy character happened because on one show I did some jokes about my being stingy. Then we did it again and again, until suddenly by accident this became one of my characterizations, and it’s the easiest one to get laughs. My feud with Fred Allen was an accident. Fred said something one night, I answered him —he answered me — I answered him, and it went on and on. We never got together and said, “Let’s have a feud.” If we did, the feud would have flopped, because it would have been contrived. We would have worked so hard at it it would have been lousy.
Wilde: Why was Fred Allen considered the comedian’s comedian?

Benny: Because he was a great writer. Fred was a wonderful humorist. He wrote funny letters. He wrote funny books. He wrote great shows. I don’t know whether he was altogether a great editor, because sometimes he’d have sensational shows and sometimes they wouldn’t be at all. They would be far from it. I always blame it on editing. Let’s take you . . . you are preparing this book, you gotta edit it, right? They say a play to never written, it’s rewritten. Well, the same goes for an article in the paper, or a monologue for a show—everything. My four writers and myself sit down and argue and discuss whether the word “but” helps or hurts a joke. That’s how important editing is.
Wilde: How did “Love in Bloom” become your theme song?
Benny: Quite by accident. “Love in Bloom” is not a theme song I particularly like. It has no significance with a comedian! It happened that I was fooling around with that number thirty years ago, and before I could do anything about it . . . it was an avalanche, and it became my theme song.
Wilde: You are considered to have the best timing among comedians. What exactly is timing?
Benny: Sometimes I think I have been given more credit than I merit in that because every good comedian has to have, right off the reel, good timing, otherwise he can’t even appear anyplace. I think the reason other comedians (feel this way) and maybe the public, who are gradually getting to know about timing, they know the words now . . . because I talk very slowly and I talk like I am talking to you . . . I might hesitate . . . I might think. Everybody has a feeling, at home watching television or when they come to a theatre, that I am addressing him or her individually. They feel that I am doing it for them, and because I talk slowly . . . I make it a point to talk like I would in a room with fellows. So they think my timing is great for that reason. Other people have great timing but they talk very fast. It would be tough for them to talk slowly and it would be tough for me to talk fast.
Wilde: Do words like “rhythm” . . . “pause” . . . help describe it?
Benny: Well, my pauses fortunately went over even in radio, when you couldn’t see me. The audience felt the pauses, but pauses make an audience think you are thinking. Sometimes I might do a monologue three or four nights and not change a word and an audience sitting out front will think I am ad-libbing a lot of it because I hem and haw around. But how do you define timing? It’s a necessity. It’s something everybody has to have. A good joke without timing means nothing and a bad joke without good timing means nothing — except you can help a bad joke with timing where you can’t help a good joke with bad timing . . . I don’t know how to define it.
Wilde: Is it a question of an easy flow . . .?
Benny: That’s right — one word or one syllable too much can throw it off completely. I had an experience one. I was playing Las Vegas . . . wonderful audience every night and I knew that my very opening line would be a big laugh, and every night it was a big laugh, and I knew just how long that laugh would hold . . . and then I would continue. One night I walked out and the laugh was good but not as long or as big . . . and that performance knocked me off my timing for about two medium—radio, television, movies, night clubs, or the stage — do you prefer to work in?
Beany: The stage — and my concerts. They’re all charity, you know. I enjoy playing with the big symphony orchestras . . . Carnegie Hall. A concert is the finest background a comedian can have. I’m dressed in tails as though I were the world’s greatest violinist. The musicians behind me are ninety or a hundred of the greatest musicians— Leonard Bernstein, George Stell, or William Steinberg. Alfred Wallenstein or Zubin Mehta are conducting for me like they would for Heifetz.

It's Radio For Benny

“It’s a gold mine!” Fred Allen told Jack Benny about radio in an episode of the Benny show about how the humourist and the comedian met. The banter was scripted but the statement wasn’t far from the truth.

In 1932, Benny was a master of ceremonies on the vaudeville circuit and the star of some lukewarm short films. It’s also the year he jumped into radio. Jack told interviewers over the years he left vaudeville because it was dying. And he could tell by the dollar signs.

A few months before working his way onto the air, Jack was in a salary dispute with his employer, Earl Carroll. The producer tried cutting the pay of his performers; no doubt the Depression played a role in that. Benny balked. And no doubt he eyed the salaries of people on radio where Rudy Vallee was making more than twice as much as he did for emceeing a variety show. Take a look at a chart published in Variety on March 8, 1932. It’s pretty clear Jack was not the huge star he later became, thanks to his radio show.

Let’s leaf through the weekly “Show Biz Bible” for that year and see what it wrote about Jack Benny. He debuted on the Canada Dry show on May 2, 1932. It’s not the Benny show you know and love. There was no Rochester, no broken-down Maxwell car, no jokes about being 39. That all came later. There was no studio audience, either. There was a lot of music with kibitzing in between and bandleader George Olsen was equalled billed with Benny in newspaper radio listings. The Mary Livingstone character was created a number of weeks later and, in time, the comedy portions evolved to occasionally include light satire.

You don’t have to do a lot of reading between the lines to see that Canada Dry scuttled its own programme with its interference. First, it pulled the show off NBC because it was unhappy with the network’s affiliate line-up. To CBS went the show (with the sponsor’s first choice of a new bandleader running afoul of the musicians union). Then Canada Dry decided it wasn’t happy with Benny’s writer, Harry W. Conn, so it imposed Sid Silvers as an additional writer on the show. You’re just asking for trouble when something like that happens. Trouble happened. Not only did Conn and Silvers squabble, Silvers made the fatal mistake of building up his own on-air role and playing down Mary Livingstone’s. You don’t cross Mrs. Jack Benny. Soon, Silvers was out, and then Canada Dry just decided to be done with it and cancelled the show. (Mary and Conn had their own showdown a few years later. You can guess who won).

In a twist of irony, NBC decided to use radio, which helped kill vaudeville, to make money from vaudeville. The network put Olsen, Benny and others on stage.

We’re not posting all items about Jack to stop this post from becoming too long. We’ll spare you weekly lists of the take of his stage performances. Also omitted are stories about a lawsuit involving two of his former agents over commissions for radio work and insurance premiums. Jack paid $11,000 in insurance premiums in one year and one of his agents got a secret 25% of it. And there was another suit involving Actors Equity and the Friars over a performance he was part of.

January 5, 1932
No ‘Vanities’ Cut
Chicago, Jan. 4.
Jack Benny stays on for the remainder of the road run of Earl Carroll's ‘Vanities.’ When asked to take a cut with the rest of the cast the comic had countered with a request for his release, explaining he had been offered an m. c. engagement at the Ambassador, St. Louis. Cut was to go into effect after the current Kansas City date.
Meantime the show played Milwaukee Christmas week to gratifying results, and Carroll decided to call off the contemplated general salary slash. Same time the producer notified Benny he would be held to his contract.

January 26, 1932
Cincinnati
By Joe Kelling
Frank Aston went straight man for Jack Benny’s air blast.

February 2, 1932
Gag Syndication
Whenever Georgie Jessel, Jack Benny, Nat Burns (Burns and Allen), and Jay C. Flippen strike a gag that's worthwhile using in the act, they immediately wire it to each other.
Idea is that other gag-grabbers will grab anyway, so the boys figure they might as well beat them to it by spreading it around and killing it before the grabbers hook on.

February 9, 1932
NO 2ND SALARY CUT FOR BENNY-HE QUITS
Boston, Feb. 8.
Earl Carroll’s attempt to put over a second salary cut for his road ‘Vanities’ is a 100% no with Jack Benny. Benny quits the show at the end of this week here. Cut proposed is 20%, This ‘Vanities’ edition is the one which appeared at the Amsterdam, New York.

March 8, 1932
‘A TAXI TANGLE’
JACK BENNY
Comedy
9 Mins.
Rivoli, N. Y.
Paramount
A fast thinking and generally delightful comic slowed down by his medium, the screen. Benny can’t turn loose those shafts he’s accustomed to delivering in legit and some vaude spots. They wouldn’t know what he was talking about in most of the film spots. Consequently it has made for Benny a dull short which may, however, do better away from Broadway. But even that’s doubtful.
Whole premise here hangs on a finishing gag prior to which is a prolonged flirtation between Benny and a girl who are in adjoining open taxis during a Fifth Ave. traffic halt. Patter leads to one of those comedy marriages and annulments before the autos start to move again. Just before the green light flashes the woman decamps from her cab followed by three or four children unseen until their exit.
Drivers of the cabs are played by Tammany Young, hard boiled disciple, and a grammatically correct individual for contrast. Main fault is that the cross-fire between Benny and the young woman can’t stand the strain of the footage allotted. On the other hand, Benny’s droll style may save it for the smaller houses. Sid.

March 29, 1932
Joe Cunningham, Ribber, Next on Spot at Friars
Next event of the Saturday Nite Boys will be held in the grill of the Friars April 9 at midnight. Guest of honor will be Joe Cunningham, billed as the 'ribber of ribbers.' Cunningham is that Philly rival of Bugs Baer, though they claim to be pals.
Jack Benny will be m.c. Committee running the blast is Jay C. Flippen, Sid Piermont and Jules Howard.

April 12, 1932
FUTURE HOLTZ BILL—TWO WEEKS
Stay of the vaudeville bills at Warners’ Hollywood, New York, will be limited to two weeks in the future unless business warrants additional holding over. Warners’ experience with the business at the theatre thus far has dictated the reduction of runs.
Both Hollywood bills so far have followed the same business trend.
Each grossed well over $30,000 and showed a profit during the first two weeks. The third weeks brought even breaks with the fourth week a loser for both shows. Last week (third) the second Hollywood bill did $26,000 which just about met expenses. This week the bill probably will lose money. Some of the acts on the next show, opening Monday (18), are in for one week only with the house holding options.
Jack Benny replaces Harry Richman as Lou Holtz’ running mate on the next show. The other acts will be Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields, Borrah Minevitch, Adler and Bradford, Buster Shaver and Three Swifts.
Richman intended to hold over with Holtz but the two couldn’t reach satisfactory terms. Richman is getting $6,000 a week in the current bill and at that figure is drawing more than Holtz is getting on percentage. Lyda Roberti, on the first two bills, goes out to return to Hollywood for picture work.
Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields will also be on the bill.

JOE CUNNINGHAM PULLS S. R. O. AT THE FRIARS
The dinner in honor of pompadour Joe Cunningham, the Philadelphia humorist, drew the biggest gathering the Friars have yet had at its Saturday night affairs. He brought a gang over with him of some 60 Philly stooges but didn’t need ‘em, and when Cunningham arose to speak his mind about the speakers it was after three o’clock in the yawning. At that time Jack Benny, the toastmaster, turned and said:
‘Well, Joe,’ and that alone was enough to bring a laugh.
Cunningham started saying he would try to give answers ‘now that all the perjured evidence is in.’ He thought some of those who panned him should have had a break-in and rated Benny as ‘my laughingly referred to toastmaster.’
Admitting he was somewhat in a haze, the honor guest thought the whole affair looked humpty-dumpty. ‘Earlier somebody introduced George Jessel, the dizzy dean, but he has disappeared. Walter Hoban is a nice fellow. That’s what you think, but I know he puts gunpowder in his grandfather’s pipe and pulls the chair from under grandma.’
Referring to a warbler he said ‘When that Chicago opera guy sang, Bobby Clark tried to look intelligent. As to Bing Crosby, a great crooner got up and did everybody a favor. And then Judge Walter C. Kelly, the Virginia ham, got up.’ He spoke about the Kelly estate, which is a brick-yard in Philly. Figuring he was about even Cunningham sat down claiming the dinner the event of his life.
George M. Cohan arrived a bit after two o’clock, having come in especially from Philly where his new show opened last week. Kelly was welcomed back into the club as ‘the greatest monologist we ever had.’
Bert Hanlon—Cinema Star
Benny’s first laugh came when he said: ‘The last time I was m. c. here we paid tribute to a famous movie star, Bert Hanlon’ (reported lost in California). As to Cunningham: ‘He is a ribber who can rib 10 rounds but can only take it for three and who wears his hair that way to get discipline from his children.’ Clark was introduced as ‘a stooge for Lou Holtz.’ Clark thought that most members of the Friars are sitting pretty, that is 'pretty nearly 24 hours a day.’ After using the word recapitulate he demanded to know if he was a low comedian.
Broadway’s columnists were introduced, Winchell being ‘one of our better cigarette salesmen.’ James Cagney was ‘a tough guy in pictures, who said he was once a bellhop at the Friars.’ Other speakers included Harry Hirshfield and William Degen Weinberger.
The Philly contingent was made up of reporters, people from the local radio stations, agents and other Cunningham boosters. The event was given advance publicity in the dailies there.

April 26, 1932
VAUDE HOUSE REVIEWS
HOLLYWOOD, N. Y.
With this third and final bill the Warner-Lou Holtz straight vaudeville venture at the Broadway Hollywood closes at the end of this week. Decision to hold was made before this bill was booked, and the layout shows it. The punch of the first two shows isn’t present because the material isn’t there.
[deleted portion of review]
The pre-intermish section holds sufficient variety and reaches a crescendo with the Borah Minnevitch harmonica troupe. And the show is literally over at smoking time. Part Two has less merit than the average picture house presentation, being basically similar through the preponderance of specialty people and lacking a legitimate variety act. It needs more than the classical special hill-billy lyric, credited to Arthur Lippman and Manning Sherwin, by Holtz and Jack Benny, which stands far above anything around it.
Excepting the hill-billy bit, which is 75% material and 25% delivery, Benny and Holtz are not a happy combination. The suave Benny is a better monologist and solo m.c. than team-mate for a comic of the Holtz type.
[deleted portion of review]
Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields, the show’s second important money turn outside of Benny and Holtz, are straight singing now with two pianists as background. Apparently influenced by radio, and providing that by Fields’ offstage use of the mike to accompany his partner, they have dropped some of the mannerisms and vocal tricks that always distinguished a Seeley-Fields singing act. The change is not for the better, although under any conditions the singing alone of this couple can be depended upon to sell. Holtz and Benny double up here for a ‘nance’ bit, using a handkerchief switch on the love poppy from the good old Mutual wheel.
[deleted portion of review]
Holtz, Benny and the former’s stooge, Benny Baker, picked a perfect spot for their second part opening bit, a checker game with a kibitzer angle and a double-cross for the finish. With Benny as the kib and Holtz getting the double-x, it’s an intelligently played bit of nonsense.
They round up the company for a School Days finale that has everything but Gus Edwards. As usual, it’s built on a bladder, with Benny as the school teacher, pitching, and Fields in short pants catching, Holtz draws a few laughs, which is the extent of the scene’s effectiveness. It draws to an unsatisfactory conclusion a bill that starts much better than it ends. Bige.

OLSEN-BENNY HALF HRS.
Canada Dry returns to the NBC airwaves after a lengthy lapse of some months on May 2 with George Olsen’s orchestra and Jack Benny.
Commercial will be on twice weekly for 30 minutes each.
John Young, NBC announcer, has been taken off the Cliquot program to do the commercial spiels for Canada Dry.
[Note: The announcer on the first show was Ed Thorgerson. Young, to the best of my knowledge, never appeared with Benny.]

Olsen’s Provisions
George Olsen’s new contract with Canada Dry program, which Jack Benny will m.c. starting May 2 over NBC, specifically calls for Ethel Shutta (Mrs. Olsen) to be on the air with the orchestra.
Another provision is that Olsen may be picked up either in New York or Chicago, where he has café offers, with Benny stationary in New York as conferencier. Olsen is also not restricted to this one commercial.

May 10, 1932
CANADA DRY PROGRAM
With George Olsen Band, Jack Benny and Ethel Shutta Orchestra, Singing and Talk
COMMERCIAL
WMAQ, Chicago

Canada Dry has taken a step forward in commercializing its bottles over the air by turning to show business. Whether the Olsen music, Benny's humor and Miss Shutta’s singing can click either as a combination or individually depends largely soon how soon one or all of the trio can get acclimated. Both Olsen and Benny have been on the air before, but as far as Benny is concerned this is his first professional appearance, as he himself called it, i. e., getting paid for it. Ale company’s last ether program, also over NBC, was titled ‘With Canada’s Mounted,’ and as the name implies, a series of playlets about the redcoats who always get their men. As entertainment these dramas weren’t so hot, with the company convinced that snappy chatter and music, such as expected from the new setup, will do the trick.
In Benny’s glib and droll talk lies the responsibility of getting the plug across, yet the comedian, usually so naturally at ease on the stage, appeared to suffer from that common ailment, mike fright, on this first broadcast. Another stumbling block which he should be able to hurdle in time is Benny’s disaptitude at reading from a manuscript. That slowed him down a good deal.
Particularly interesting was that Benny’s sole solid laugh occurred when he rushed in ad lib; at least it sounded like one. Another error is that the few gurgles and snickers that came over sounded very much suppressed and didn’t help Benny’s cause any, but there’s no reason why a clever, intimate comedian of Benny’s type shouldn’t hit over the air. Essentially he has everything it takes, from an excellent speaking voice to the right kind of delivery.
Olsen is using the same old signature theme, the train imitation, to start him off and from there into his usual good style of music making. Some very good arrangements on his opening program of numbers, particularly ‘I Love a Parade.’ But Olsen should leave all the talking to Benny.
Miss Shutta wasn’t particularly impressive in her debut, being introduced by Benny as Mrs. Olsen, and with Benny saying that might be one of the reasons why she’s on the program. Just a gag to those who know, but what about the flock of listeners who don’t know what it’s all about? Miss Shutta did a duet with one of the boys in the band and came back later with ‘Come West, Little Girl’ number she did in ‘Whoopee,’ which probably nobody remembers.
Plug angle was considerably overdone here, with Benny handling it throughout. He pulled some pretty obvious puns, such as ‘drinking Canada dry.’ Again he repeated a drugstore gag, using the same locale in straight fashion first and then coming back to top it with a few placed quips. Right now the subtle spotting of the plug should be handled with silk gloves. Span.

May 24, 1932
PARAMOUNT, N. Y.
New York. May 20.
Dorothy Mackaill, Cliff Edwards and Jack Benny are the names and Ledova the standard vaudeville entry in another heavy money bill at the Paramount. Once again the stage show is billed over the picture. Latter, this week, is Par’s English ‘Reserved for Ladies.’
Salary list for the visiting talent amounts to around $9,000, with Miss Mackaill at $3,500 and Edwards and Benny, $2,000 each. The layout has name value, and delivers a fair enough amount of entertainment.
[snip]
The theatre’s expert wiring system was a big help to Benny, as it has been to other talking acts and monologists here lately. For the first time talk is penetrating to the back of the house and with it come chances for more diversifying sound and less repetitious sight in this big picture palace. Comedy has been the essence arid real strength of recent Par shows.
They may hold Benny over here as standing m. c. for a while. He seemed to expect that, according to his return to old bits for this week. The comedy band number which Benny has probably used in every other house on Broadway is spotted for most importance and the Friday night audience regarded it as something new. In his introductions and monologistic moments the unruffled Benny got by, despite a hit or miss string of gags. He was particularly good in a comical kissing scene with Miss Mackaill.
[snip]
The sketch section of the Mackaill offering was chiseled down to the full stage dressing room sequence, with Benny and Edwards replacing Montgomery and McDowell for comedy purposes in this date. They came in handy, opposite Miss Mackaill and her husband, who plays the husband in the skit. Bige.

June 7, 1932
FRIARS ELECTION
Cohan and Jessel Again Head Officers
More than the usual number of actors are on the new Friars Club list of officers as the result of Friday’s (3) election. George M. Cohan continues as Abbott for another year, his steenth [sic] in that capacity.
George Jessel, dean; Emmett Callahan, prior; Harry Hershfield, secretary, and William Degan Weinberger, treasurer, are the other officers for ‘31-‘32.
Board of governors comprises Jack Benny, Harry Jans, Bert Lahr, Ira Streusand and S. Jay Kaufman.

June 14, 1932
BILTMORE CASCADES
New York, June 9.
Except, perhaps that hair-splitters might note a certain restraint and unwonted decorum in metropolitan gaiety, there was no visible indication of depression atop the Biltmore last Wednesday (8), when Paul Whiteman arrived for the summer. The place was jammed.
[snip]
Bunch of celebs, including Mayor Walker, were introduced. NBC’s radio comic, Ray Perkins, was emergency ringmaster when Jack Benny disappointed.



July 5, 1932
Canada Dry Renews
Canada Dry has renewed its contract with NBC effective Aug. 1. Will retain the same program, George Olsen’s orchestra, Ethel Shutta and Jack Benny. Account is handled through the N. W. Ayer & Son Inc., agency.

July 19, 1932
Stooge as Trailer
First live trailer is at the Capitol, N. Y., this week. It’s Lou Holtz’ stooge who comes on for half a minute with Jack Benny, current, to mention next week’s Holtz show. Understood Holtz is paying the lad for the advance plug.

Little Bits from Air [unbylined column]
Jack Benny is the big disappointment of the air. It may console Benny to know that his professional well-wishers seem to be many, judging by the continual regrets over his disappointing deportment as an ethereal m.c. But in pacing the Canada Dry program he falls decidedly flat.
Nothing can overcome that microphonic reaction. Try as George Olsen and Ethel Shutta and a flock of laughing stooges will, their prop ha-ha’s don’t help make Benny’s stuff funny.
The same general flatness goes for the rest of the program. Benny tries to pun about Fran Frey (one of Olsen’s soloists) and Miss Shutta sings solo and double with others of the band personnel, but the general result is blah.
The primary fault is really not so much that of the talent as the formula pattern of the Canada Dry programs. It’s another disappointing example of what up-to-date 1932 program should not be.

July 26, 1932
Renew on Benny
Jack Benny’s term with Canada Dry has been extended for another 13 weeks, second period going into effect Aug. 1. Three options ride with the renewal, each for 13 weeks. A salary raise is specified upon exercise of options.
Benny has been appearing twice weekly over NBC with this commercial account in association with George Olsen and Ethel Shutta. He has one writer assisting him in writing material for the program.

August 9, 1932
CANADA DRY ACT
Benny, Olsen’s Band, Ethel Shutta, Frey For RKO
Canada Dry program is being readied for a route over the RKO circuit. Vaude routine is now in process of being framed between George Olsen and Jack Benny, with special gag material also being authored for the act. Ethel Shutta and Fran Frey are set for the warbling assignments exclusively, while several stooges may be added to bolster the comedy.
Initial date for the act when ready to unveil before the footlights will be the Palace.

August 23, 1932
Little Bits from the Air
Jack Benny was in good form on last week’s program, having evolved sundry effective gags for plugging Canada Dry. In line with the recent trend toward a humorous plug for the sponsor, he is sugar-coating and making palatable what is usually a boresome interlude in the best of programs. Such a crack as when he paralleled the backfield members of a football team and added ‘a nickel back for your bottle of Canada Dry,’ serve their purpose satisfactorily without bothering anybody.
Ethel Shutta also did well by ‘The Lost the Man I Found.’ George Olsen's music started off nicely, too, with a foxtrot arrangement of ‘Liebestraume,’ including a little of ‘Samson and Delilah’ in the arrangement.
However, those prop laughs by the studio personnel still ring blah. It’s strictly an intra-studio builder-upper, and highly artificial in its audible microphonic effect. The stuff doesn't need that pulmotoring to register.

August 30, 1932
Canada Dry Act’s $8,000 Too Much for RKO Vaude
Although, suggested by M. H. Aylesworth as a fitting follow-up radio act to Kate Smith, the Canada Dry radio group comprising George Olsen and band, Ethel Shutta and Jack Benny may not make the RKO vaude books. Price of $8,000 put on the combo is too steep for RKO to venture in its out-of-town spots or even the Albee, Brooklyn, according to booking office comment.
Rub comes in that the trio are not under NBC contract and price negotiations must be made with commercial sponsoring the program.

September 6, 1932
NBC’s $61,300 Bookings with Loew In 3 Wks.; More Than RKO in 3 Mos.
On the three weeks it has been doing business with the Loew circuit the NBC Artists’ Service has taken in $61,300 from that source alone. Tally rates as considerably more than the network has obtained in stage bookings from its own affiliated, RKO, in the past three months. The Loew coin was derived from the sale of only five acts.
Of the quintet the Canada Dry unit taking in the George Olson combo, Jack Benny and Ethel Shutta, leads the credit side of the ledger with a total of $24,000 for three weeks of appearances. Next in line is Buddy Rogers with $19,000 for four weeks, and following him is Russ Columbo who brought in $12,000 on a three-week contract. Balance of the money was obtained through bookings of the Pickens Sisters, Harriet Lee and Her Leaders, and Mildred Bailey.

CAPITOL, N. Y.
New York, Sept. 1.
It’s all tight enough to say that at the Capitol this week is a great show, including in, its cast Lilyan Tashman, Sophie Tucker, Jack Pearl, Ethel Shutta, George Olsen’s band and Jack Benny. Customers were lined up at the box office all day and fighting for seats from the bell. But what next? They thought picture houses were taking a chance when they planned $10,000 stage shows. Then they took deep breaths and went to $15,000 stage shows. The current lineup at the Capitol, what with wire charges on Benny and Olsen, brings the toll up to a new high of $20,000. But what about next week?
Certainly there can be no quarrel with the current show. Even the 80 minutes that the stage end occupied, and despite the 90 minute picture; doesn’t seem too long because so jammed with sockerino entertainment. Only way to review the layout, of course, is chronologically, which method is helped by the fact that there’s no attempt at staging, the acts running off in pretty much regular vaude formation.
To say that Jack Benny is better than Jack Pearl or that Sophie Tucker outshines Lilyan Tashman is impossible. They all do their particular stints well. Benny is introduced by way of a number of gag stills on the screen and wastes little time after that announcing that he’s the m.c. and introducing the first act. Benny must be a comforting lad to have around: He’s not only witty, quick and capable, but seemingly can fill any emergency. He's the personification of what a master of ceremonies should be and emphasized his cleverness by the fact that he doesn’t need a cane or other manufactured nick-nacks to put his humor over.
Olsen’s band is the first act, a bit unusual, though not a bad idea as things turn out. His is a highly capable and diversified group of young men whose musical antics outshine their vocal efforts, but who are always on tap for novelty and syncopation. To show their control a quartet of the lads step out on the apron for a trumpet solo played in the most pianissimo fashion imaginable, and yet perfectly rich and rounded in tone. Ethel Shutta comes on toward the end of the proceedings for two vocal numbers plus her usual air signature.
Benny wanders in and out of this act for identification purposes with the Ginger Ale ether hour.
Lilyan Tashman, plus a couple of new ultra-lavish gowns, devotes her ten minutes to some crossfire with Benny, then going, with him, into a (is it possible?) new blackout. At least it seemed new because the tag is turned the other way around. At any rate it’s good fun, allows Lilyan to strip to negligee, and it went over nicely. Lilyan dug Edmund Lowe out of the wings for encore purposes and announced her seventh anniversary was that night for the usual applause result. More interesting to note is the way Benny seized on the Lowe presence for three or four of the funniest comments throughout the show.
Sophie Tucker doesn't try any gagging or horseplay, sticking closely to three numbers, but how this audience went for her! She’s probably the only person in the world, who could mix together ‘Eli, Eli’ and ‘Lawd, You Made the Night Too Long.’
Jack Pearl to close the proceedings is another problematical choice that worked out okay. Pearl doesn’t bother with material this week, going back into the flies of his memory for them, but all they were interested in, seemingly, was to hear him. He just stood with a straight in front of a street drop and gagged. Okay results.
Couldn’t very well close cold that way, so all the stars assemble in front of a drop dressed in street clothes to worry about where to go or what to do. With Benny suggesting they go to the Capitol to see Marion Davies in ‘Blondie of the Follies.’ So they all march off the stage and park in a box as the house darkens and the scrim descends for the feature.
No time on the layout for anything else, even the newsreel being dropped on the show caught. Kauf.

September 27, 1932
OSTERMAN'S SQUAWK
Complains to V.M.A. On Royalty for Taahman-Benny Sketch
That a vaudeville material author is collecting royalties on something he didn't write is charged by Jack Osterman in a complaint filed at the V.M.A. against Lilyan Tashman and Charlie Judels. Latter is the accused writer.
Osterman’s complaint is over a sketch. Jack Benny and Miss Tashman are using in the Loew theatres. Osterman claims the act was written by himself and the late Harry O’Neal for a Shubert ‘Artists and Models’ some years ago.
Comic’s objections are not to Benny and Miss Tashman’s use of the material, but to Judel’s alleged collection of royalties as the author.

Ted Weems Gets Open Spot on Canada Dry
Chicago, Sept. 26.
Ted Weems, now playing his initial stage date at the Oriental for Balaban & Katz, is set to succeed George Olsen on the Canada Dry program. Switch will occur about Nov. 1.
Weems takes his orchestra to the Club Forest. New Orleans, first and it may be necessary to pick up the first program or two from that point. Thereafter he will locate in New York.
Weems' audition was piped to New York from WBBM locally last week.
Canada Dry contract with NBC expires Oct. 26 after which date the session moves over to CBS, precipitated by NBC's refusal to permit splitting its present southeastern link following the expiration of the current contract. C. D. argued that its present scope of distribution made these stations it desired eliminated from the hookup so much deadwood, but network was adamant.
With Olsen's radio services exclusively under NBC Artists Service, program's transfer automatically eliminated him.

October 11, 1932
New Program Calendar
Periods on the air for the first time, or resuming commercially
SUNDAY, OCT. 30
‘Canada Dry Revue’ (CBS). Canada Dry Ginger Ale debuts its show on this network with Jack Benny and the Ted Weems band, over the basic network and outlets in Montreal, Toronto, Minneapolis and Atlantic City. Originating from WABC, N. Y., Sundays from 10 to 10.30 p. m. and Thursdays from 8.15 to 8.45 p. m., EST.

October 18, 1932
Little Bits from the Air
Jack Benny is improving on his Canada Dry humor. Benny his built up a unique style of comedy, especially with those puns which, however, are not injudiciously primed for strong returns.

Benny Joins Weems
Chicago, Oct. 17.
Jack Benny, accompanied by his radio author, is visiting his father at Lake Forest, Illinois. He is due in New Orleans Oct. 26 to join Ted Weems and his orchestra for the first of the new Canada dry programs.
Benny will stay with Weems in New Orleans four weeks until Weems opens at the Hotel Pennsylvania, New York.

N. Y. UNION OKAYS WEEMS; JONES LATER
Ted Weems’ entry into the Hotel Pennsylvania grill has been okayed by the New York musicians’ Local No. 802. Booking had been objected to by the union on the ground that an outside band couldn’t fill both a permanent cafe engagement, and a commercial broadcast series. Weems joins the Canada Dry program the Sunday after next (30). Roger Wolfe Kahn’s orchestra is at the Pennsy for four weeks or so.
CBS Artists Service tried to sell Isham Jones for the ginger ale ether account and ran into a similar snag. Understood that the union has decided to reconsider its opposition to Jones taking on a radio commercial while working the Hollywood Restaurant and grant him carte blanche on the next network prospect that comes along.
Current contract will keep Weems at the Club Forest, New Orleans, on the debut date of the Canada Dry show over CBS, arid as a result the agency handling the account has arranged to broadcast the program from that city with Jack Benny and his wife, Sadie, on hand to blend in the talking portions of the continuity. Show, incidentally, will not be heard in the New Orleans territory. That town is not on the regular Canada Dry hookup.

October 25, 1932
Kalich Testimonial Brings B’Way Marquis Names Back to 2d Ave.
Broadway—or a goodly portion of it—went native Thursday (20). Practically every actor on the street of Jewish background made the trip over to Second Avenue to pay homage to Bertha Kalich, called the greatest contribution of the Yiddish stage to the world’s theatre.
It was called ‘a testimonial entertainment in honor of Mme. Kalich’s 40 years in the theatre.’ That sounded better than calling it a benefit for Mme. Kalich. And it was equally effective, the Yiddish Art Theatre being sold out several hours before the performance started. Police were needed to handle the overflow mob trying to crush its way into the house. The total income was about $6,000.
Among the stars appearing were Paul Muni, Molly Picon, Jack Benny, Maurice Schwartz, Sophie Tucker, Luther and Stella Adler, Arthur Tracy and Willy Robyn.

November 1, 1932
Rochester
Radio script refused by station WHAM was snapped up by Jack Benny. Richard Chevillat, the author, was taken to New York to write more.
[Note: Chevillat later co-wrote The Phil Harris-Alice Faye radio show on NBC when Philsie was Jack’s bandleader].

Comm’l Couldn’t Broadcast Its Network Switch
Canada Dry’s final program on NBC (26) developed into one of those mystifying affairs as the result of last minute blue-pencilling on the part of a higher-up network exec.
To the listeners it was obvious that C. D. was trying to convey some message of importance, but the program timed out without giving the key to the riddle. Account, burned over the NBC hour move, but later conceded that the network had acted within its rights.
Barred from making direct mention of the fact that the commercial was moving its network activities over to Columbia (30), Canada Dry inserted a line at the close of its last continuity asking the listeners to consult their local newspapers for the stations that the program would be on the following Sunday and Thursday evenings.
NBC sales department had okayed the suggestion, but just before the show went on instructions came through ordering; that reference be cut out of the program.
'Farewell' Jazzed Up
Agency in the meantime had arranged one of those farewells by the people in the act to be staged just before the signoff. George Olsen, Ethel Shutta and Jack Benny had been cautioned to make no mention of Columbia during the bye-bye exchange; with the info vouchsafed that the cause for the parting chatter would be tipped off in the closing announcement.
Farewell scene had Olsen and Miss Shutta telling Benny what a grand time they had had working with him on the program and wishing him all sorts of luck in his future career with it, with Olsen, particularly, slipping in a line to the effect that Benny would not only find Ted Weems (the Olsen successor on the Canada Dry CBS version) a great fellow to work with, but the leader of a great musical organization. Benny came back with a similar line of abadaba and thanked them for the sendoff wishes. Then came the Olson musical signature signing off. All this patter had listeners, not on the inside, wondering what it was all about. It was a warm and bewildering two minutes for the studio personnel, while the farewell exchange was on, but discretion dictated against cutting off the program.

November 8, 1932
Benny Friars’ Victim As Rib Season Opens
The Saturday Nite Boys of the Friars swing into action for the season Nov. 19 when a chili and spaghetti dinner will have Jack Benny as the guest of honor and Joe Cunningham as the toastmaster. Tickets will be two bucks, with an extra nick of a dollar for guests.
The Friars board has been petitioned to consent to a Saturday night at which George Burns and Gracie Allen will be the honor guests. It will be the first time in 16 years for the club to have a woman guest. Tentative date of the Burns and Allen event is Dec. 3, with Eddie Cantor the toastmaster.
Saturday night affairs will be held in the Monastery Hall on the second floor hereafter. The celling is being lowered to improve the acoustics.

Little Bits from the Air
Jack Benny’s nifties clocked fast, funny and furious with Ted Weems and his band doing nice straight. Weems is currently at the Forest club, New. Orleans, hence Benny m.c.’s the Canada Dry program—at the same time as the Fleischmann-Vallee hour—via CBS. And incidentally that’s unusual competition how for the big NBC program—more so than ever before. Benny and Weems are a corking combo with Adrian Marsh (or so it sounded) also having her innings as femme aide.

November 15, 1932
CANADA DRY PROGRAM (New Series)
With Jack Benny, Ted Weems, Andrea Marsh and Sid Silvers
COMMERCIAL
WABC, New York

It took this revised cast of the ginger ale affair several programs to blend on the give and take, but by last Thursday (10) night’s broadcast all the kinks has been eliminated, revealing a crack, smooth-running comedy organization. And the Thursday night session was as funny a performance as Benny perpetrated while with the previous George Olsen-Ethel Shutta troupe.
Every one of the cross-fire bits on this occasion sparkled with deft humor both in the writing and the interpretation. Sid Silvers as the ‘one man in the South who voted for Hoover’ did a darb piece of goof straighting and Benny’s wife, Mary Livingstone, shone all over particularly during a burlesque takeoff on a hillbilly drama. Here was spoofing of a rare quality on the air.
In the band department, the Ted Weems substitution for the switch to the Columbia network is all to program's good. This ace of a novelty dance combos can still wrap itself around a slice of syncopation and give it all that it takes to make the tootsies want to romp. Instrumentally it’s got something distinctly different and the same goes for the ensemble warbling of the boys.
Elmo Tanner is still there with the melodious whistling, while Andrea Marsh plies an appealing set of ingenue pipes. She’s being gradually groomed into speaking parts, and indications in this department are all in her favor. Weems, who heretofore had elected to let others do the mike talklng for him, has also been mustered into articulate service on this program. All he needs is a little easying up and he’ll likely prove Benny’s best foil of the lot.
For the fadeout the program has retained Ethel Shutta’s signature song, ‘Rockabye Moon.’ Olsen was surprised by the selection but decided to let it go and dig up another for the missus. Odec.

November 22, 1932
Saturday Nite Boys Go Radio at The Friars Early Sunday Morning
Season for ribbing at the Friars Club, New York, was started early Sunday morning (20) by the Saturday Nite Boys in the club’s grill-room when Jack Benny was the honored roast and Philadelphia Joe Cunningham the m. c., about whom Joe Laurie, Jr. (still) said from the dais that ‘these dinners are given so that comics can play straight for Cunningham’. Also: ‘If he threw away those notes and specs he’d, be a Harpo Marx.’ There was plenty radio about the event.
Benny himself was out of commish and was warned by the doctor not to speak, else he would be unable to go on the air next night. But the honored one spoke hoarsely for a few moments. He said the dinner was his biggest thrill, only comparable to the time when he was playing Erie, Pa., and was moved front number two to next to closing.
In introducing him, Cunningham said Benny started with a fiddle but his first acting was as a back stage door slammer. Then as of the team of Salisbury and Benny he spoiled many a deuce spot on the Gus Sun time—the duo was ‘not terrific; it was epidemic.’ After some Hollywood experience he then joined ‘Vanities,’ B. M. B.—before Milton Berle. That dated the guest up to the debut before the mike.
Cunningham’s other comment about Benny was based on the suspicion that the Friars made a mistake in picking ‘such a muzzler’ for the main part—‘he has gone into the radio racket, selling blackmail ginger-ale.’ Further: ‘Just an idea on some other programs, such as Chase & Sanborn, who wanted Jolson, Cantor, Jessel and Chevalier for the price of Benny, so they took Georgia Price.’ Latter was present and tabbed Benny as ‘God’s gift to gas.’ He claimed Schultz’s ginger-ale doubled in sales since Benny went on the air for Canada Dry.
The Mayor's Rep
William Collins, Justice of the New York Supreme Court, was introduced aa a representative of Mayor-elect O’Brien. He was supposed to introduce a serious note, but thought Benny had two first names....Lou Holtz said the guest stood out like a radish on Jack Johnson's body, then turned to Cunningham and said: ‘I told you not to ask me.’ He told a story of a Hebe traveling salesman, pinched for speeding that was the laugh of the night....Jack Pearl admitted he needed a straight man and claimed that when be asked the m. c. to write his speech for the occasion, Cunningham replied: ‘The hell with it, if I don't get paid for the stuff....Bing Crosby was introduced as a ‘fugitive from the Columbia chain,' then he crooned ‘Please’ from ‘The Big Broadcast.’....Benny was presented with a solid gold replica of his club membership card....Singer who gave out ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ was then called a panhandler.
Burns and Allen Dinner
George Burns was present but said little. He is saving up for the dinner to be given at the Friars Dec. 3 when be and Gracie Allen will be the honor guests. For that event ladies will be admitted, also other non-members. Tickets for latter, however, will be $5.

November 29, 1932
Inside Stuff—Radio
At the insistence of the advertiser the staff of authors for Jack Benny’s material on the Canada Dry session has been augmented to three. Original gagman on the show was Harry W. Conn.
When the show went CBS, Sid Silvers was not only added to the cast as foil for Benny but given a writing assignment. While the program was being broadcast from New Orleans the account complained that the script was in need of strengthening, with David Freedman, collaborator (Cantor) on the Chase & Sanborn stanza, now filling a similar niche for Canada Dry.

December 13, 1932
Sid Silvers Off C. D. Over Mrs. Benny’s Squawk
Squabble which has been brewing for several weeks between the Jack Benny family and Sid Silvers over the lines that the latter as author arrogated to himself in the broadcasts wound up last week with Silvers suddenly being dropped from the Canada Dry program. Account settled for the balance of Silvers’ 13-week contract after Benny had handed in his ultimatum that either he or Silvers would have to go.
Trouble over a claim made by Mary Livingstone (Mrs. Benny) that Silvers in preparing the script had as each broadcast unfolded cut down on her part and built up his own mike contribution with more lines. It looked to her, Mrs. Benny complained, as though it was Silvers’ intention to eliminate her altogether.
Writer Denies Charge
Benny took up the cudgel for his frau and took the grievance to the commercial and its agency rep, N. W. Ayer. During a subsequent meeting of the cast in the agency’s offices Silvers heatedly expressed his resentment of the Benny family’s charges, describing them as ‘unfounded and malicious.’ Verbal set-to came to a climax when Benny demanded an immediate showdown, that either Silvers was let out or he and Mrs. Benny would walk.
Silvers’ contract with Canada Dry had seven more weeks to go and he was paid off in full. With last Sunday (11) night’s stanza the continuity built around the experiences of a legit producer and authored originally by Silvers was abandoned, and the script portion of the session resumed the previous routine of crossfire and bit gagging. Preparation of the patter was turned back exclusively to Harry W. Conn.
Canada Dry stated that it has no intention of replacing Silvers with another gag man of similar standing, but to confine the payroll to the Ted Weems band and the Bennys.

December 20, 1932
Actor-Writers Squabbling Induces Can. Dry to Cancel Benny Program
Canada Dry goes off the air Jan. 26, on a decision to take advantage of a cancellation clause in its CBS contract following a recent outbreak of dissension among the actors and authors on the Jack Benny program. Advertiser’s present intention is to stay off a couple of months or so and return with an entirely revised program. Contract with Columbia called for 26 weeks but permitted Canada Dry to drop out at the end of 13 on four weeks’ notice.
Differences between performers and writers broke out shortly after the session had moved over from NBC, where it had concluded a 26-week run. For the continuance of the program on CBS the commercial brought in Sid Silvers to double as author and bit player. Later David Freedman, Eddie Cantor’s script man, was added to the Canada Dry writing staff, with Harry W. Conn, originally brought into the program by Benny, also retained as a contributor.
Mrs. Benny Objects
After several weeks of this gag-writing merger, Conn objected to the material submitted by his co-authors, and, with Benny backing him up, proceeded to blue-pencil the script. Resulting kick from Silvers was followed by Benny’s ultimatum to the commercial that if Silvers remained on the program, he and his wife, Mary Livingstone, would walk. Canada Dry settled the impasse by paying Silvers off on the balance of his 13-week contract.
Mrs. Benny alleged that Silvers was gradually, cutting down her part on the broadcast it appeared to her, she said, that the writer was eliminating her from the script altogether.
Benny’s Explanation
Jack Benny’s explanation of Sid Silvers being off the Canada Dry program is that with the abandonment of the script idea wherein he (Benny) was the theatrical manager and Silvers his office boy, the latter went off.
Benny avers that his wife, Mary Livingstone, and Silvers are friendly and that fan mail demands for the former style of al fresco etherizing solely prompted the abandonment of the script idea. For this reason last Sunday the ‘Grand Hotel’ burlesk was repeated, with Silvers off and the continuity dropped.
Benny contends that he ‘gave a good hunk of it’ to Olsen and Shutta when they were with him on C. D., so there’s no prof jealousy.

If you’re wondering, Olsen and Shutta ended up on an NBC Red network programme sponsored by Oldsmobile.

Despite the off-air turmoil, people warmed to Benny and the new kind of humour he developed with Harry Conn. Variety put his show in sixth spot in a year-end survey of 150 cities. Interestingly, Benny didn’t rank in the top ten in any of the individual markets listed it surveyed except Canada (Vancouver, Winnipeg, London, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City were surveyed). Benny would move to a new sponsor the following year, although it took a bit of doing to find one.

Jack Benny Becomes Jack Benny

For years, Sunday night was Jack Benny night, first on radio, and then television. The Benny show was so seared into popular culture, references to a Maxwell, the age 39, and being cheap brought only one thing to mind--Jack Benny.

Benny’s traits, of course, were pure invention. But it wasn’t like a bunch of writers sat down and came up with them, ready to spring on audiences listening to the premiere on May 2, 1933. They evolved over a period of time. The same was true of Benny’s cast and secondary players. Characters were added and subtracted as the years went on; Benny’s wife Sadye had been a part of his vaudeville act so she appeared early on as fangirl Mary Livingstone. There was a bit of acrimony behind some of the changes (such as the departure of writer Harry Conn, who you see with Benny to the right) while others are shrouded in mystery.

A number of Benny biographies have been written over the years and you’d think since Benny has been dead for 41 years, there’d be little else to say. Ah, but you’d be wrong. Kathy Helgesen Fuller Seeley has been studying the evolution of Benny’s humour, looking at its origins and comparing it with the wider world of vaudeville and radio comedy at the time. A little taste of it has been posted HERE. It contains footnotes to provide assurances of the accuracy of the facts.

For much of his career, Benny appeared on the air on Sunday nights (while 7 p.m. is the popularly ascribed time of his show, that applied only to the East Coast). It’s the reason this blog has posted a Benny-related piece almost every Sunday. Over the course of the next few months, we’ll try to augment Kathy’s work with a yearly roundup of clippings from Variety. 1932 will be posted this week, the following two years are banked. We can’t guarantee anything after that as the hunt is still time consuming (especially because of OCR scanning errors), but Kathy has lent some assistance to make the task a little easier.

Broadway Benny

Jack Benny disliked the song the world associates with him, “Love in Bloom.”

Well, so he said in an interview with the Associated Press in 1963. And elsewhere, long after his radio days when he adopted it had ended.

He had nothing against the song’s writers, Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger. In fact, he had them on his show twice and handed them laughs as his violin butchered their songs “Let That Be a Lesson To You” (show of July 7, 1936) and what became Bob Hope’s theme “Thanks For The Memory” (show of March 6, 1938). But the song was a love song, and Jack didn’t see how the lyrics applied to a comedian. They didn’t, of course, but there’s something funny about lousy violin playing during what’s supposed to a romantic song. So it really did fit him after all.

Here’s the story we mentioned above. Jack was making a Broadway appearance, so the A.P. found it worthy of an interview.

Jack Benny's Broadway Return Done on a 'Hunch'
By WILLIAM GLOVER
NEW YORK, Feb. 4 (AP) — "I had a feeling," says Jack Benny who is coming back to Broadway, "that if I didn't do it this time, I just never would."
And if that sounds mildly mystical—well, Benny is a great believer in hunches. His career, the noted television comic asserts, has been filled with impromptu payoff events.
"Everything that's happened has come about by accident."
For several years, the man from "Waukegan has been noodling notions about appearing once more on the White Way stage that he last visited in the 1931 Earl Carroll "Vanities."
"Each time I'd say I'd do it—and then didn't."
Obeying his impulse this time, Benny begins a six-week engagement Feb. 27 at the Ziegfeld theater in a variety revue. It is the longest in-person stint he has set, although there have been a number of concert appearances, and "about a million banquet speeches."

THE THEATER GUILD show is an expansion of a program which he displayed several months ago for two weeks in Las Vegas.
"I go to Vegas mostly for kicks—and when you do something for kicks, you better be great," he points out.
"You see, I get stage-struck every so often, and people keep sending me scripts of musicals and plays. But with TV commitments, the only kind of play I could do would be one written for me and that I would own.
"Then I could go into it for a few weeks, have someone replace me, and come back the next chance I got. But nobody is going to write a play like that for me."
With all of his television shows recorded for the rest of the season, Benny put his name on the line for the Ziegfeld date.
The original intention was to call the revue "Life Begins at 39." But the star, who will actually be 69 on Valentine's Day, felt some fans might be misled into thinking it was a play with a plot So the title is simply "Jack Benny in Person."
APPEARING WITH HIM are Jane Morgan and several other entertainers, and a preliminary warmup opens in Toronto Feb. 11. "At this point I don't really need any rehearsal," says the comedian, "we could go on tomorrow."
After the run, he vacations for a fortnight, then starts shooting next season's video series. If the show hits big, he'd like to curtail video to some extent thereafter for a cross-country tour. Why all the work?
"Well, Mary—she'll be along for the opening here—thinks I work too much sometimes, but she's got a feeling that if I rested too much, I'd get restless. So do I."
Turning to some of the happy accidents that have shaped his merry image, Benny calls such items as reputed stinginess, that renowned feud with Fred Allen and his "Love in Bloom" fiddling all the results of chance.
"IF WE'D DELIBERATELY set one of those things up, the sting would have died in four weeks," he declares.
Mention of that theme melody brings another confession.
"I despise that song — and I always have, because it has absolutely no meaning for me."
Much better, he adds, would be mastery of "All the Great Violin Classics." Just before pausing to chat, he was hard at rehearsal of a Henry Wieniawski concerto.
"I'll never master that as long as I live," sighed the thwarted maestro.

They Couldn't Stand Him

Running gags are a staple of comedy, but Jack Benny’s writers tried stretching that to running scenarios embracing part or all of a radio season. So we were treated to Jack warring with the Sportsmen Quartet (1946-47), Jack and the missing Oscar (1947-48), Jack and the echo (part of 1948-49) and Jack the songwriter (1951-52).

The most successful running routine had to be the “I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” contest, which took up part of the 1945-46 season. The idea was brilliant. It was a way to get the Benny audience involved in the show and, at the same time, get publicity.

Radio Life magazine of February 3, 1946 explains what happened.

They “Can’t Stand Jack Benny” because . . .
By Evelyn Rigsby
Fourteen years ago, Jack Benny pulled a comedy switch in radio. Instead of having a cast full of stooges, he became a stooge for his cast; instead of telling jokes on the other fellow, he let the other fellow turn the joke on him.
A few weeks ago Benny pulled another switch. This time, instead of conducting a contest on “I like Crunchy Munchies (or) Soapsy Sudsies (or) Itsy Bitsies in fifty words or less together with a box top or reasonable facsimile” contest, he launched a “Why I Can’t Stand Jack Benny” deal with no tops, no wrappers, no facsimiles—no, not even a strand from a 1945 model Benny toupe. It was a contest to satirize all contests, an insult routine to end all insult routines.
But to fifty-three winners it will pay off in $10,000—a first prize of $2,500, a second of $1,500, a third of $1,000 and fifty added awards of $100 war bonds each.
Proof that the radio fans can go along with a gag was the mail response, which, it is estimated, will finally tabulate at between three and four hundred thousand letters. Final judges Fred Allen, Peter Lorre, and Goodman (Easy) Ace will name the winners.
Almost Called Off

There’s an interesting story behind this contest which, it is claimed, will break all records for any such competition ever held in the state of California. A few months ago, Benny’s writers presented the idea as a sequence for one program, suggesting that the $10,000 of which the radio Benny character had been robbed was really a publicity stunt. While the sequence was being “kicked around” someone said, “There are 130 million people in the country, but only thirty million listen to you, Jack. So one hundred million people must hate you. Say! There’s an idea. Why don’t you run a contest—a legitimate contest, “Why I Hate Jack Benny?”
“Why not?” replied Benny. “Only it’s no good to use the word ‘hate.’
This is just the time when we’re trying to eliminate that four letter word from the national and international vocabulary.”
At this point the contest idea was almost abandoned until someone came up with the substitute wording “Why I ‘Can’t Stand’ Jack Benny,” that carried the germ of the idea, but took the curse off the hate notion.
Enlarge Staff
The contest was announced on the December 3 [actually, 2] program and ran three weeks and one day, ending Christmas Eve. To handle the anticipated replies. Benny rented a shop in an off business street in Beverly Hills—some space that could be spared for a month. He figured six girls, working without too much pressure, could handle perhaps 20,000 letters a week.
By the end of the second week, the mail was 150,000 for seven days and it was necessary to add three girls to the day staff and to put on a night staff of nine workers who hurried into the room at nightfall like little gnomes, slit open the letters, and segregated them as to categories for the workers coming in the morning to read.
About half of the replies came in rhyme. As for the reasons people can’t stand Benny, they were divided between stinginess, ill-treatment of Rochester, ill-treatment of Fred Allen, fiddle-playing, and miscellaneous. In the miscellaneous category was a certain group which seized the contest as an opportunity to write nostalgic and “Hello, I haven’t seen you in a long time” letters. Some letters went even so far as to include foot notes telling Benny they really loved him and that he shouldn’t take the entry reply as anything more than a chance to latch onto same money—as who wouldn’t, including Jack Benny?
The accompanying box contains quotes which were chosen while the contest was still in progress and which were picked because they were typical replies. Some, sent in by Benny’s friends, were not trying, to compete, but were intended as gags. Radio Life will print the winning answers.

Radio Life also published some losing answers. Actually, some were gag responses by some of Jack’s show biz friends. These were found in the same issue. Detroit Tigers star Hank Greenberg was a running gag on the show that year, heard moving to third base whenever Jack listened to play-by-play baseball. Tom Breneman had a morning show on ABC catering to elderly women, who filled his studio audience. He tried on their funny hats and gave them orchids; Jack was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral.

WHY SOME CAN'T STAND HIM
I can’t stand Jack Benny because my husband won't miss his program, then we are late for church. He'd rather miss his chance to heaven than to miss Benny's program. —E.H.R., Glenarm, Ill.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s had me on third base since the World Series, and I want to come home! —Hank Greenberg.
Sincerely regret St. Joe residents can’t qualify for contest. We still love you here. —H.B., St. Joseph, Mo.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he doesn’t play more violin solos on his program—Napoleon Bonaparte, (P.S. My two roommates, Julius Caesar and General Grant, prefer Fred Allen’s singing—but they’re crazy! N.B.) —Capt. A. J. H., Portland, Ore.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he obviously hasn’t read my book. —Date Carnegie
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he puts rocks in his pockets when he weighs himself to get more for his money’s worth. —J.O., Waukesha, Wis.
I can't stand Jack Benny because, while he continually talks about “good old Waukegan,” he was smart enough to leave and never come back. —F. F., Waukegan, Ill.
1 can’t stand Jack Benny because he's always disguising himself as an old lady to get a free meal at “Breakfast in Hollywood.” Worse yet, he won an orchid and I had to kiss him. —Tom Breneman.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he is giving $10,000 in prizes to people who can’t stand him and I like him so much I don’t stand a chance to win. —M.E., Erie, Pennsylvania.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because four years ago he took the role of Charley’s Aunt away from me. —Lucille Ball.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s so young, so firm, so fully, packed, so free and easy with his purse. That is, I don’t like him too because my great grandmother told me when she was a little girl Jack used to give her a new Indian head penny if she would go to bed when he carne to see her older sister. —Mrs. C.H.O., Spokane, Wash.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he is the type of person who would swear he had no relatives if you asked him “Brother, can you spare a dime ?” —L.C.H., Denver, Colo.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I have no sense of humor. —M. C., San Leandro, Calif.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I saw him mature from a man to a boy. —Fred Allen (who isn’t even eligible, as he is a judge.)
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s tight as an olive jar when you’re having a party. —H. T., Glenside, Penn.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because he’s too much like a close friend of mine, and by close I do mean Bergen! —Charlie McCarthy.
I can’t stand Jack Benny because I can’t stand Fred Allen; I can't stand Fred Allen because I can’t stand Charlie McCarthy. In fact, can't stand Charlie. I can't stand any of these sissy dummies who sit on a knee and use their noses for talking. Give me a HE-MAN like Joan Davis. —S.Y.C., Clifton Forge, Pa.

Benny’s real-life popularity ensured the contest got plenty of publicity. Arthur Godfrey, according to Variety, got chastised in mid-programme by management for mentioning it on his morning show; the Redhead was on CBS at the time while Benny was on NBC. Variety wrote a think piece on not only whether the whole contest was a bad idea (with the potential of contest losers getting upset and no longer listening), but whether reading the winning entry was wise (Fred Allen, according to the publication, felt it should be kept off the air). In fact, Variety reported on February 6th that Benny himself, and not the Benny “character” was “disturbed when a Los Angeles suburbanite won his capital prize” but doesn’t say why. The item seems odd, considering Benny continued to milk the Can’t Stand Contest on his show for a number of years. And it seems silly to not read the entry. Benny’s huge audience was, no doubt, dying of curiosity to know what it was.

The winner was submitted by Carroll P. Craig, Sr. Craig’s poem was more than funny. It had a ring of truth, and I’m sure that’s why it was selected.

He fills the air with boasts and brags
And obsolete obnoxious gags.
The way he plays his violin
Is music’s most obnoxious sin.
His cowardice alone, indeed,
Is matched by his obnoxious greed.
In all the things that he portrays
He shows up my own obnoxious ways.

It was read beautifully by maybe the finest actor Benny ever had on his show, Ronald Colman, who after finishing it, added to his wife: “You know, Benita, maybe the fellow that wrote this letter is right. The things that we find fault with in others—are the same things that we tolerate in ourselves.”

Carroll Piper Craig was originally from Altoona, Pennsylvania, born on December 26, 1896. His father was a lawyer. The family moved to Harrisburg where Craig enlisted in service in World War One. In 1940, he was living at 735 Radcliffe Avenue in Pacific Palisades, working as a draftsman for the Douglas aircraft factory in Santa Monica for about $2,900 a year. You see a fuzzy photo of him from a poor scan of Radio Life to the right. He died in Los Angeles on June 12, 1958.

Perhaps one other thing to mention about the contest is it brought about the invention of the character of Steve Bradley, Jack’s P.R. flack, who thought up ridiculous and impossible stunts to create publicity. He appeared only rarely after the contest ended. Bradley was originally played by Dick Lane, then resurfaced as “Dick Fisher” and then again as Bradley in the ‘50s, voiced by Hy Averback. Lane was an actor in short films in the ‘30s and worked on a number of radio shows in the ‘40s, usually as some kind of fast talker. As much as I like Averback, he was far inferior to Lane in the role. Lane had a distinctive voice and delivery which became eventually famous in Los Angeles as the voice of professional wrestling and roller games.

You can hear the winning entry read. Click on the arrow for the February 3, 1946 Benny show. The poem is at the 25:38 mark.

Not Quite Farewell

Ah, if there had only been a third and a twentieth Jack Benny farewell TV special, as a columnist for Newsday once hoped. It was not to be, though a third was in the planning stage before Jack’s health quickly went down hill in late 1974. At least, we’d like to think Jack would be hale and hearty on any future specials, not a sad shell of a funnyman long past his prime. Fortunately, Jack Benny left the world laughing until the end. He never really quit, despite the facetious headline you see below.

This column was published in the Yonkers Herald Statesman, January 21, 1974.

Jack Benny quits — again
By BILL KAUFMAN
Newsday
Jack Benny, that ageless comedian whose chagrined exclamation of "Weelll," has long been delivered with clockwork precision, is retiring publicly on national television again for the second time. 'It's not that he's insincere about it all, but as Benny explains, "I'm going to keep doing it until I get it right."
Last year he bowed out on TV with a special, and since it went over so big with just about everyone from sponsors and network officials to the Nielsen Hating folks, it's about to happen again.
"JACK BENNY'S Second Farewell Special" is the apt title of the telecast, and it's set for Thursday night on NBC pre-empting "The Flip Wilson Show." According to one Madison Avenue video mogul, "There may be a 3d, 4th, 10th and 20th farewell before Benny gets ready to hang up his violin."
The second farewell stanza will feature one of those rare occasions when Benny and his close friend George Burns will appear together on the tube. They've been chums for 25 years, and for reasons known only to themselves, they've actually worked together very little.
Benny's guest stars this time around, in addition to cigar-chomping and musically vamping Burns, will be Johnny Carson, Redd Foxx and Dinah Shore. The special will also herald the TV debut of a hot new singing group, the DeFranco Family, spotlighting 13-year-old Tony DeFranco. (The Family's latest hit, "Heartbeat, It's a Lovebeat" is soaring on the record rating charts these days). Benny's bash will also include cameo appearances by Dean Martin and the "Dragnet" team, Jack Webb and Harry Morgan.
"SOMETIMES YOU think you've got something going," Benny said in a recent interview. "I wasn't sure about, the show's title, but every time I mentioned it to the audience in (Las) Vegas, they laughed like hell. Now that's a good thing!" Benny quickly added. "I think I can go as far as the third farewell. After that who knows what will happen."
Possibly the most well-worked gimmicks of Benny's career have been his reputation of being a penny pincher and his age. Far from being penurious in real life, Benny has a reputation for philanthropic activities; as for his age, the veteran comic's most recent biography states: "Jack Benny was born 39 years ago in Chicago."
The loquacious performer laughs when questioned about it. admitting that "I've been 39 for almost that many years, if anyone cares. But if you look closely, you'll see that I have the face of a young man. Hey, I can remember not too long ago paying only half-fare on public transportation. Are you going to ask me now if it was horse-drawn?"

BENNY'S LONG relationship with Burns is remarkable both in terms of both show business and just plain comaraderie.
The fact that both senior members of the entertainment fraternity haven't spent that much time together before the public isn't because of a lack of offers. They are constantly besieged with requests to co-star in Las Vegas, and to appear on TV specials and talk shows. It generally hasn't occurred, except for brief cameo spots on each other's programs.
Benny and Burns were asked to replace Walter Matthau and Art Carney in "The Odd Couple" on Broadway, and Neil Simon wanted them originally for his "The Sunshine Boys," which many said would have been a natural for them with its plot about two vaudevillians. But their answer was always no.
BENNY HASN'T a specific reason for the perennial turndowns, except to say, "Come on and watch the farewell show. Burns and I had more fun than we ever did as long as I can remember." Benny said he met Burns back in the 1920s, when Burns was dating Gracie Allen and Benny was dating her roommate, a girl named Mary Kelly. Later on the Burnses were present at Benny's wedding in 1927 to his wife of many years. Mary Livingstone.
The show's cameo appearance by Johnny Carson is more than just another guest shot by the host of the "Tonight Show." Carson is an avid admirer of Benny and always admitted that Benny was his idol. Carson tried to learn from watching Benny perform during his early days and frankly allows that the master provided many pointers that Carson uses in his monologue style, if any comedians today can match Benny's pacing and timing during delivery.
BENNY, WHEN approached with this fact about Carson's career, gives his quizzical look and says, "Weelll, that may be so, but now he's my idol." Dinah Shore was Benny’s first guest on his initial television show in 1950, and her guest appearance enables them to reminisce about the adventure.
The viewing audience will also get a first, of sorts, on the farewell special. The cameras will give them a look at Redd Foxx's real home, not the junk shop that they're used to seeing on "Sanford and Son," and the contrast is great. "Foxx is now quite rich, you know," said Benny, "And we thought it would be interesting for the audience to see how he really lives." Strangely enough, "Sanford and Son" is based on a British series called "Steptoe and Son," and Benny was approached by the producers who originally had an option on it, to play the title role. He turned it down, because he didn't want to do a weekly show anymore.
THE SPECIAL will also feature a musical group headed by Benny and inspired by the success of the Defranco's recordings. But Benny won't divulge the group's name until air time, saying it's "A very lively one, if nothing else." The spot marks the first time Benny has played the violin on television in several seasons.
The violin is one of Benny's great loves—perhaps second in line to his natural penchant for entertaining people with comedy. He's an accomplished musician and has for many years toured, making guest appearances with leading symphony orchestras.
Benny talks enthusiastically about a forthcoming trip to Australia and New Zealand, where he'll appear in concert with each nation's major symphony. "I'm also going to give a concert in Singapore," says Benny with just a hint of pride in his voice. "I hear my old TV shows are being run there, and I'm curious to see how I sound in Singaporese, or whatever you call the language down there."
Benny acknowledges that today there's an entirely new generation—more probably two generations—that don't even know him as the Jack Benny of the radio waves during the 1930s and 1940s. Gone are the wheezing Maxwell Rochester's gruff voice and the longstanding, contrived feud with the late comedy genius, Fred Allen.
One of Benny's early radio appearances was on Ed Sullivan's show in 1932. His first words were, "Hello, folks! This is Jack Benny. There will be a slight pause for everyone to say 'Who cares?' " It turned out that many millions did.

An Unglamorous Night With Jack Benny

We think of show biz as a glamorous endeavour—appreciative fans, wealth raining down as one has fun and gets paid for it. But there’s another side. The tedium of touring. Long hours. And things not quite going the way they should.

Michael Kernan of the Washington Post covered one of Jack’s many concerts. The story is, to me, a sad one. While there’s laughter, there doesn’t appear to be joy. Jack put up with an awful lot of crap. Was it atypical? I suppose we’ll never really know. Jack again (as he did in a number of interviews around this time) practically writes off his radio career. And his manager, Irving Fein, reveals the real reason why Jack toured—he needed the money. It seems improbable, but (to quote Rochester) that’s what the man said, that’s what he said, he said that.

The Post ran the story on July 27, 1969. It was syndicated in other papers afterward.

What else do you get out of life?
By Michael Kernan
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.—This is Middlesville, Flatland, a true midwestern city with a feeling of prairie and elbow room, where lonesome tall buildings stick up against the horizon like grain elevators, and near downtown on Meridian St. there are two-story Victorian houses with lawns, and where parking costs 25 cents an hour. The event of the year is an automobile race, and the people in the hotel lobbies are slickly urban, but the ones out on the sidewalk have thick ears and heavy faces and friendly, unwondering eyes, and what in the world is a 75-year-old millionaire like Jack Benny doing at an open-air theater for a whole week in a place like this?
For that matter, what possesses him to take on a schedule that will bring him to the Shady Grove, Md., Music Theater for five days, followed by seven days in Warwick, R.I.; a week in Buffalo, N.Y.; a one-night stand in Aspen, Colo., for a charity concert; a week in Honolulu; a three-day home visit to tape a TV program; a quick trip to New York to do a special, and a return engagement in Las Vegas, where he just finished doing 28 shows in two weeks?
The first thing the comedian did in Indianapolis after he had unpacked at Stouffer’s Inn was to go to a party, and after that broke up at 2:30 a.m., he alternately napped and watched the moon walk reruns until 9.
A press conference was set for 10:30 a.m. in an annex to the Penthouse restaurant overlooking the city — from Lincoln Chiropractic College to Monument Circle — beneath a gray sky.
“Hello,” he said, striding in and shaking hands all around. “Hello, hello.” His voice was lower than one remembered. He faced an arc of TV cameramen under strong light and made small talk. Somebody presented a large cake with 25 candles and a silver question mark stuck in it, and he blew them all out in six breaths.
“Make a wish,” someone suggested.
“I wish I could eat it,” he said, adding that he has a slight case of diabetes.
THEN he began a series of comments and retorts, batting ‘em out like fungo flies. That canard about his not being able to ad-lib came from one of his better lines (to Fred Allen: “If I had my writers here, you’d never get away with that) and is simply not true.
Discussing his violins—he owns a $35,000 Stradivarius—he was asked “Is it difficult to play lousy?”
“Not for me it isn’t,” he snapped. “I played when I was a kid but didn’t take it up again until 12 years ago. I started to practice again. And after eight months, I had my first concert at Carnegie Hall, which gives you an idea of what kind of guts I got.”
He dropped two saccharine tablets from a silver pillbox into his coffee and talked about his 24 movies and the radio program, which made him an institution, and the TV specials, and how he switched from “Earl Carroll’s Vanities” at $1,500 a week to the unfamiliar new medium of radio with a spot on Ed Sullivan’s old half-hour sports program.
“I don’t like to look back,” he said. “I never was crazy about radio. Some fans always want to go back, but I’m not interested any more. I’m looking ahead to the next stage show. It’s how I keep young.”
They kept him at it for two hours, and then there were two singles with local TV interviewers. “Do you mind, Jack?” one asked. “This lady came all the way from Fort Wayne to interview you.” Benny: “All the way from Fort Wayne? (pause) That’s the greatest compliment I ever had.” Twice they had to change film reels, but Jack showed no irritation.
He told the cameraman, “Don’t catch me here,” touching his throat. Talking quietly to the woman interviewer, his arm around her, he admitted he would like to cut down by half but not retire. He said, “But if I was selling neckties I think I’d retire.”

AT LAST he was allowed to leave. His manager, Irving Fein, huddled with him, saying, “Rehearsal isn't until 2, and you can do yours first.” Then Benny went into the restaurant, where the rest of his party sat around a table, dawdling over lunch. Dressed in beach pants and open-collared shirts in hot colors, tanned and long-maned and somehow vulnerable in their casual flamboyance, they were unmistakably Los Angeles.
Benny’s head writer, Hilliard Marks, was wearing a white bush jacket, light gray slacks and white slippers without socks.
Jack: “What happens now, Hicky, you wanna come with me, see what I should wear.”
Marks: “A tux. Opening night, I think it’s nice.”
Jack: “I think I oughta dress there.”
Marks: “It’s a nice dressing room.”
Jack: “I might as well make-up there.”
It was like one person musing to himself. They walked out, Jack stopping for an autograph at a table of giggling office women. “Well Xerox it,” they said. Heads turned. Conversations died. Jack Benny lives in a world of double-takes.
Driving to rehearsal with Hickey Marks, Jack worked out some new lines on the moon-shot. He would add those, and a few local references, to the basic script, which remains generally the same. Hicky has worked for Jack off and on since 1939, and their exchanges consisted of fragments and tag-lines:
“How about, ‘I got so excited I called Mary and told her to buy a TV set.’ And then, ‘I got tired of watching in front of a store window.’ Chuckles. “No, I got a better one for Bob Hope. “How about something on what the moon looks like? Dean Martin’s liver. Yeah.”
AT THE open-air Starlight Theater they got out and greeted stagehands who glanced up from their hammering and painting and murmured off-hand greetings. The gray sky looked more threatening than ever. “Why, damn it,” said Jack, “they still haven’t got a cover on the stage.” He stalked to the front of the stage and gazed out over the seats. Three years ago he opened there in pouring rain before a packed house of 4,000, and his opening line, as he stood before the mike in raincoat and umbrella, was, “Anybody else in the world would have returned your money.”
After briefly inspecting the dressing room, he returned to the stage and fretted silently, arms folded.
“Why, it’s going to be two hours before we can rehearse,” he said. “You know, you’d think they would have put something over the stage. At least that. A tarpaulin. You could drape something over...”
It turned out that Shani Wallis, the “Oliver” star who was the other part of the show, would not rehearse because she wasn’t feeling well. Furthermore, she would use her own pianist, which would complicate things. As the hammering and sawing went on, Jack strode about with increasing irritation, ordering a standing mike and glancing at the sky. Finally he called Hicky over.
“I’m not going to wait around.” he announced. “It’ll be two hours. The hell with it. I’m going back to the room.”
They had never worked with the house orchestra; there were a lot of new lines; it was opening night. Hicky shrugged.
ON THE way, Jack talked, answering questions easily, but not initiating subjects. Several times he had to have a question repeated. He doesn’t mind the autographs or the gags about money, he insisted, but he stops signing when there are too many. He drinks hardly at all. He doesn’t eat much before show-time but has a big dinner afterward. He doesn’t get jittery, just a little nervous on openers. He smokes cigars, though when one made him cough he threw it away immediately, with apologies to the man who gave it to him.
One question was about his father, Meyer Kubelsky, a Polish immigrant who was a Chicago peddler — a back-pack peddler — before becoming a Waukegan haberdasher, and who bought Jack a $50 violin when the boy was only 6.
“Meyer Kubelsky — what was he like? What do you remember about him?”
But a conversational curtain came down. “Well, you know Jewish fathers,” said Benny. “They all want their kids to be musicians or doctors or lawyers. He died years ago. My mother died very young. She never saw me anywhere, never saw me in concert.”
Silence. A question, repeated. By now he was saying, “Huh?” to every question, abstractedly. “Jack, you’ve got it made, you have plenty of money, you’re 75. Why do you do it? Why do you play the sticks?”
Benny answered, “Why do I do it? It’s fun. What else do you get out of life? It keeps me young.”
IRV FEIN, Benny’s top aide, was asked the “why” question later. His reply was, “He has to. Jack’s got a big nut (theater lingo for overhead), in the hundreds of thousands a year. He has to maintain a staff. He’s been in the 90 per cent tax bracket for years. You can’t work New York all the time. If he could afford it, he’d take a year off and do nothing but charity concerts. Music is his love. He loves it.
“You’re meeting him in the lobby at 7 and the show’s at 8.30. He’ll be early. He’s like a firehouse. Wait’ll you see him come on stage. You think he looks young now.”
At 6:55, Benny was pacing around the suite he shares with Hicky and his son, eating free peanuts (available free at the hotel’s beer-and-oyster tavern). In the adjoining room was a rumpled bed, a silk dressing gown, a pile of magazines, from “Playboy” to “Saturday Review,” the music for Rimsky Korsakov’s “Capriccio Espagnol,” a box of violin rosin and, on the dresser, 12 bottles of pills for colds and sore throat.
“This is not good,” says Hicky said to Jack. “You didn’t eat any lunch. You can’t go all day on breakfast and peanuts. Tomorrow we gotta change this. Tomorrow we do it different.”
Jack pops another peanut. Tilting back his head.
“And the cast party tonight.”
“Let’s go.”
The comedian’s preoccupied air intensifies at the theater as he moves into the dressing room, tunes his Strad with new strings and ripples competently through “The Bee” and a hoedown version of “Sweet Georgia Brown,” scooping outrageously.
Laconic notes written on a file card he before him as he applies the tan pancake. They stand for the order of his routines. The black bowtie which he would have left behind but for Hicky, can’t be made to work, so Jack impatiently jettisons the tux idea and wears a blue suit. He worries if the bald spot at the back of his head is darkened enough.
While Fein checks the house, Jack consults with the conductor, asks for a faster pace. By 8:30 it is still full daylight—Indianapolis had something called double daylight, which advances the clock two hours—and the outdoor theater is nearly full. The rain threat is over.
“One minute,” calls a hand. Jack, Hicky and Irv Fein wait silently together in the wings, heads down, looking separate. Someone says Margaret O’Brien is in the audience.
“Stand by,” murmured the stagehand.
Jack said, “Let’s go.”

The orchestra started a medley, sounding thin in the open air, and slid into “Love in Bloom.” Jack went on. Laughs washed back into the wings. Benny’s voice was weirdly distorted by the backstage speakers. Hicky listened intently unsmiling, and once snaps his fingers. “He forgot it,” he mutters.
WHEN JACK walked off and Shani took over, he let Hicky to talk to him. They agree the audience is too slow, it’s too light for them to concentrate. The Apollo stuff went by too fast, and next time it would be moved along to later in the program.
After the intermission when darkness had fallen at last and the stage lights dominated, Jack pulled the audience along with his regular routines until he could turn the laughs on and off with a glance. At one point he stared, motionless for 90 seconds, as the laughter built steadily, and just as it began to fade he took, off his glasses, wiped them, put them back on and stared some more. The laugh redoubled.
One of his best bits involves Hicky, who comes on as a stagehand and corrects his delivery of a joke. Jack finally reveals Hicky’s identity, adding, “He’s been with me so long because we both have the same type blood.” Later Jack plays the violin (“If it isn’t a Strad, I’m out $110”) and goes into the finish. “It’s really simple to end a show,” he tells the audience. “It’s no trouble at all. You don’t need to end with a big scream. All you do is start your theme song (he begins to play “Love in Bloom”) and — see? (The orchestra joins him.) It’s easy.”
It is delicate, deft and neat and somehow touching, but the Indianapolis audience failed to catch the poignancy and laughed, unmesmerized, and soon after began to bolt.
ABOUT midnight, Jack appeared at the cast party, which one had visualized as an elegant buffet for 30 people or so, but which turned out to be a stampede, a lawn party for 500 with a tent and Japanese lanterns. Nearly everybody else had been there for hours (not having bothered to patronize the show) and was half-plastered. The host, Edward P. Gallagher, 6 feet 6, (“I own seven insurance companies but I made my money digging oil”), introduced Jack to some guests. Benny made the rounds slowly as people, including a few Negro servants, diffidently came up to him.
It was 12:40 a.m. before Jack got something to eat. He sat with his group around a table, and the guests reached in over shoulders to shake his hand Dinner was salad and some kind of bland Midwestern lasagna.
Aside: “Is there anything else to eat but this?”
Told that there wasn’t, Jack lets his plate be filled a second time.
A half hour later he was sitting at another table talking to three pretty girls. He wasn’t saying much, and in fact the girls talked to him more than he talked to them. But they were an audience.