Jack Benny and Music Corporation of America

MCA was founded in 1924 by Jules Stein and William Goodheart as a booking agency, based in Chicago, for the popular Jazz age touring bands. 
In 1936 Lew Waserman joined the company and would soon convince Stein that Hollywood would be the place to be to grow the company and got himself assigned there.
By 1939 MCA had moved its headquarters to Beverly Hills and counted many 'A' list actors amoung its over 700 clients.

In 1950 Revue Productions became MCA's televion production arm, supplying shows to all the networks for the next 30 years, and this included The Jack Benny Program.

In 1932 Benny unsuccessfully tried to have MCA represent him prior to his success with the Canada Dry radio program and like everyone else who read the trade magazines,
was impressed by what MCA did in selling the "Amos 'n' Andy Show" to CBS. He went to MCA and when was told they would love to have him, but not if he was with another agent, 
promptly took out a loan to pay off Arthur Lyons and signed with MCA.

Once Jack signed on with MCA, they set up "Amusement Enterprises Inc." as a holding company for the "Jack Benny Program" and re-negotiated the contract with American Tobacco. 
ATCO would now pay $27,500 a week to Amusement Enterprises for the Jack Benny Program and its expenses, and an additional $10,000 a week for Jack Benny.

Amusement Enterprises would also produce "The Licky Stiff" and "The Jack Paar" show.

As the next targent in CBS's Talent raid was the Jack Benny program, William Paley was told he could buy the Benny program for $4 Million, but before the deal was done, NBC heard about it and MCA started a bidding war for Benny.
Since NBC was getting nothing that they did not alreay have, they didn't try to out-bid for the program. So NBC lost the Benny and a number of other top-flight stars as well, including Red Skelton, Edgar Bergan and Jack's dear friends George Burns and Gracie Allen.

When MCA sold Amusement Enterprises, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service challenged Benny's attempt to avoid personal Income tax, and again with the deep pockets of MCA, they fought for over two years eventually appealing and winning in the Supreme Court. 
At that time the peronal income tax rate of 77 percent of anything over $70,000 would apply but if payment was routed through a corporation it would be considereed a Captial Gain and taxed at 25 percent.

MCA and Benny set up "J & M Productions" that would produce not only the "Jack Benny Program" but other properties including "Checkmate" and "Ichabod and Me", as well MCA also put Benny into the stock market, real estate and oil exploration.
The Calgush Oil Company was created in January 1951 with a roster of Hollywood names including Jack Benny, Myrt Blum (Bennys brother-in-law and manager), Edgar Bergen, Groucho Marx, Freeman Gosden, and department store owner Wilbur May.

In 1962, Jules Stenin and MCA began diversifying its assets and purchased a small savings and loan association in Denver Colorado called Columbia Savings. 
Jack Benny presided over the opening ceremonies of a new branch and did a series of regional TV commectials to promote the S&L.

July 9, 1963 - Master of Ceremonies Jack Benny presided over the ground breaking for the new Universal City Plaza.

MCA would become a publicly traded company in 1958 with MCA employees having majority owership and Lew Wasserman and Alfride Hitchcock also having significant investment.

In 1962 MCA merged with Decca Records giving the company an controlling intereest in Universal Pictures and forcing it to disolve the talent agency as having both studios and talent agency would violate U.S. Anti Trust laws.
In 1964 MCA merged Universal Pictures and Revue Productions.
In 1973 Stein stepped down and Wasserman took over.


In 1991 Matsushita Relectric took over MCA only to sell it in 1995 to the Seagram Company.
MCA became Universal Studios and Universal Music Group.

In 1998 Seagrams' was bought by Pernod Ricard who then sold the media holdings to Vivendi.