The Jack Benny Program

Jack Benny was unique among the great comedians this country has produced. Only his comedy was not the product of gags or situations, though he used them. His comedy arose out of an indelible character he created, the lovable tightwad who came into our homes via radio and television for over 30 years.

In real life Jack Benny was not a tightwad, in fact he was a generous man whose charitable giving was known if not publicized. That of course would have ruined the image and the image was the linchpin of his comedy.

Because we knew his character so well, the cheap gags followed. They would mean nothing to anyone else, but because it was Benny we laughed at a burglar saying your money or your life and Benny stalling with a reply of I'm thinking. The sounds of his Maxwell car were second nature, they brought laughs because Benny was too cheap to buy a new car. And his Social Security number, 000-00-0001 in deference to his age.

The Jack Benny Show took us inside the pretend world of tightwad Jack Benny. His announcer Don Wilson, real life wife Mary Livingston, butler Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, and the perpetual adolescent with the piping tenor Dennis Day all were part of that world. On radio Phil Harris as the brash band-leader was there, but he didn't make it to television, deciding to strike out on his own. All of these people bounced gags off Benny's tightwad character and all got generous laughs at his expense. But the laughs were coming for Benny's character, not necessarily out of anything he said necessarily.

Some his shows were classics and allowed people to really enjoy themselves. One of my favorites had Raymond Burr as a guest star who did courtroom sketch and broke into a song and dance before the jury. Burr looked like he was having a great time. Another show I remember had long time show business friends Bing Crosby and George Burns as guests, reminiscing about back in the days when the three of them were a vaudeville trio act.

His shows were welcome in millions of American homes including mine. Would that another Jack Benny would come on the scene today.

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.

I have to disagree with the other user who said Jack Benny blew. What? Benny is a comic genius and one of the funniest comedians ever. I saw his classic TV show, "The Jack Benny Program", last night and I must admit I loved it, it is very, very funny. Keep in mind this is early 50s TV variety show and yet it is still hilarious. Jack brings back his radio performers to perform his comic acts and sketches. It was awesome! I will be watching it again.

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.

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.