The Jack Benny Program

I just finished watching an hour-long JACK BENNY SHOW from 1965 with perhaps the best guests ever assembled: Bob Hope, Elke Sommer, The Beach Boys (introducing some now very classic songs), and Walt Disney! The first skit was a parody of popular shows of that era (The Munsters, The Addams Family, Bewitched, My Mother the Car, The Fugitive, and Peyton Place), but the best skit was an Italian film style version of Mary Poppins with Elke Sommer in the title role, Bob Hope as a chauffeur, and Jack Benny as the father. There is also a great skit with Benny visiting Disney's office asking for free tickets to Disneyland for 110 guests. Lots of music from the Beach Boys and Elke Sommer (who manages to steal every scene, even up against Hope and Benny!). If you find this at an on-line auction somewhere (that's how I found it) it is well worth the investment. A classic the entire family will love.

Jack Benny is an American entertainment icon. Born in 1894, he had a very long career in radio, TV, live performances, and the movies. In his 1950s and 1960s TV show that we used to watch, he always had his violin. Benny was quite an accomplished violinist, but as part of his comedy act he usually played it like a beginner might. My dad loved Jack Benny. My dad also played a violin.

Benny always played a borderline sad sack, when something in a skit didn't go his way, he might stand and look directly at the audience, with a frown, playing for sympathy. But Benny needed none, he was one of the "in crowd" with Bing Crosby, George Burns, and all the other entertainment giants of the first half of the 20th century.

I also had the pleasure of seeing Jack Benny live, in 1968, when he performed on my college campus. Even though he was in his 70s by that time, he was still the same old Jack Benny. His musical guest for that performance was Lainie Kazan, a singer I had never heard of, but she was marvelous. We were so impressed, we bought several of her LP music albums, and she inspired us to name our first daughter 'Lainie'. Although she has not been a working singer for years, Kazan still is a popular actress, often in the role of a big Jewish or Italian NYC mother.

I think one reason Benny is so beloved by fans is that he comes across as a genuinely likable guy beneath all the funnyman routines. Unlike many comedians, there's nothing of the "smart Alec" or "wise guy" about him. Not that these are disqualifying traits—Bob Hope, for one, made an immensely successful career as a wise guy. But the thing with Benny is that no matter how vain or cheap he appeared in his stage act, there was always an air of underlying likability. So when he tipped the sweating waiter a nickel or preened as the world's best comedian, fans laughed and forgave him.

Consider that his show lasted an amazing 15 years on a medium with a reputation for devouring funnymen. Much of that success is due to a cast of well-honed regulars that the writers skillfully blended into the program whether live or on film. Basically, we knew what to expect from each—a wise-cracking Rochester, a jovial Don Wilson, a sensible Mary Livingstone, a dazed Dennis Day, and, of course, Jack's two perennial nemeses Mel Blanc and Frank Nelson. The latter two furnished many of the petty annoyances that were the basis of much of Jack's comedic schtick. Speaking of style, it also looks like Jack was mainly a "reactive" comedian— that is, his humor grew out of exasperated, low-key reactions to life's many petty annoyances, which were also ones the audience could relate to.

My favorite routines were the spoofs of popular movies, like Gaslight or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was the latter, I believe, where dressed up as the fearsome Hyde, Benny attacks this feeble old lady who, nevertheless, proceeds to flip him in six different directions before he slinks away, a totally defeated Hyde. I don't know how they did it, but the contrasting appearances and unexpected outcome were hilarious.

I doubt the show would succeed with today's hyper-energized audiences, where much of the humor is more obvious and more over-the-top. Jack's era was, of course, a period of tight restrictions on what could be said or shown. But his show under-played that tight framework like a virtuoso, week-in and week-out. I guess these few words amount to my little appreciation of a program that gave me so many pleasurable moments. So, the time spent trying to think this out is time well spent. Thanks, Mr. Benny. In my book, you are an enduring classic.

In the early 1960's TV Guide critic Cleveland Amory started his review of "The Jack Benny Program" with "There are two kinds of jokes. Regular jokes and Jack Benny jokes." Regular jokes hit you, if you are lucky, only once. Jack Benny jokes hit you, if you are lucky, over and over. What Cleveland Amory at the time was referring to was the way a joke that popped up in the beginning of any given Jack Benny program episode was not an end in itself but a set-up for two, three, or four jokes that would emerge throughout he show.

Some time before I was born, Jack Benny started to use, but never milked, familiar masks: his awful violin playing, his stingy nature, his offense at being insulted by his patented pause followed with, "Well!", his insistence that he was thirty nine years old, and his recurring attempts to get a renowned musician to play his pitiful song, "When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano".

"Hello, Police Department? I want to report a lost wallet. It is brown leather. Inside there are three one dollar bills. And the serial numbers are......" Inside a sauna: "Gee. I haven't sweated this much since they closed the banks in 1934."

As Jack Benny delighted in telling later in life, sometimes the stories behind the jokes were even more funny than the jokes themselves. Jack would work with the writers in mid-week before any given show. As Jack told it, one week one of the writers thought up the scenario, "Jack is walking down the street and a thug comes up to him with a pistol and demands, 'Your money or your life!'" All readily agreed that that was a good premise for a joke. "But how is Jack going to respond?" All in the room were puzzled and when one writer got impatient by calling out, "Well?", Jack, still stumped for a good punch line, snapped back, "I'm thinking it over!" When the other writers started laughing, Jack asked, "What's so funny?" It took Jack Benny a few moments to get it that he had just invented the best joke of his career.

That Jack will forever be remembered as being forever thirty nine years old is now not a joke but an inspiration for us his fans and survivors to hold on to youth and humor for as long as he did.

I loved The Jack Benny Show. I am so shocked that there were only two comments in your index about it. Yes some of the episodes are almost fifty years old and probably will never see the light of day again, but look at the dreck on tv right now. This show would be just as good as ever. Jack was such a wonderful comic because he always took it so seriously. He didn't even realize how funny he was I don't think. George Burns once said Jack was funniest when he wasn't saying anything. I loved everything about the show and would love to see it again.