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Hello friends welcome to this day in
Jack Benny I'm John Henderson today
we're concluding the audiobook of Jack
Benny and the Golden Age of American
radio comedy read by Stephanie Henderson
with me one last time is the author
Catherine H Fuller Seeley hi so when you
decided to write this book is there a
reason that you chose to stick with
radio and not television well it's all
ready
couple
of Base but also I wanted to focus on
that of that radio period I really
wanted to pay attention to that era and
give radio it's due on many historians
of Television want to say that
television arose like Venus you know
arising from the surf already made or
something totally new and Brilliant and
I really wanted to give radio a tune
well thank you for letting us record the
book and turn it into an audiobook so
many people have asked for an audiobook
version thank you ever so much here is
the ending
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looking back over his 23-year career in
radio broadcasting Jack Benny had so
much of which to be proud he had become
one of the most familiar voices on the
radio America's first truly Mass medium
of communication speaking weekly to 30
million or more listeners in the
preceding chapters we have explored how
brilliantly Benny moved between separate
entertainment forms combining aspects of
Vaudeville and film radio and live
performance Benny created new styles of
entertainment as he honed his career
from developing the Master of Ceremonies
role the Modern urban polished but
self-deprecating figure who informally
Drew audiences and disparate acts
together into a whole to the lead
character in a situation comedy that new
episodic form demanded by the needs of
radio broadcasting's massive time
demands and Broad reach Benny and his
writer Harry Conn developed the iconic
character of Jack the Fall Guy vayne
braggart frustrated employer
disrespected media celeb Liberty the
butt of every joke and insult slung by
his workers Benny and his writers over
the years not only created his own
famous character but in developing the
sitcom they also honed a cast of
delightful characters who melded crazy
fictional characteristics with excellent
performing skills of talented players
Mary Livingston and Eddie Anderson's
Rochester van Jones in particular the
Benny show humor frequently used these
main characters to parody and
impertinently tweak social norms of
mid-century American society that women
should be quiet and obedient that middle
class white men should be strong virile
leaders that African Americans should
never critique their employers Benny and
his production group developed a
particularly effective form of oral
humor where the laughs came not from old
jokes refreshed with new surroundings
but the humor of character of sounds
like the Maxwell of silences such as
Jack's exasperated humiliation of
surprises like Mary's sudden retorts the
Benny group managed even to make the
often dreaded commercial language sound
hilarious American audiences loyally
listened to him Sunday nights at 7 pm
whether they were eating dinner sitting
around their sets or driving in their
cars the Benny Program was as familiar
as family even as its humor slyly
questioned ideas about how relationships
power and identity should work in modern
society Jack Benny was and remained an
American Institution
he may have concluded His Radio career
in May 1955 but far from retiring 61
year old Jack Benny remained as active a
performer as ever appearing regularly on
television in live stand-up comedy shows
and in charity symphonic musical
performances The Narrative and comic
ideas of Benny's radio show remained at
the core of his character and star
Persona seamlessly woven into his
humorous monologues and long lasting in
the public memory then he created and
starred in his own half hour television
program for 15 years from the broad
variety programs of the first golden age
of live broadcasting in the early 1950s
through the predominance of produced on
tape sitcoms in the Network's weekly
schedules in the mid-1960s Denny's TV
show often featured sketches directly
adapted from the old radio show and
Incorporated long-running radio
characters Dawn Wilson Eddie Anderson
Rochester the Sportsman quartet and Mel
Blanc in his many guises as well as the
easing Maxwell and the underground vault
as they had in radio the characters did
not need to appear every week to remain
a vital part of the Benny narrative they
were so well established in the
audience's minds that they could pop up
every once in a while so the occasional
appearance of Frank Nelson's obnoxious
sales clerk Mary Livingston Dennis day
the Beverly Hills beavers scouting
troupe or put upon Hollywood celebrities
like Jimmy Stewart did not require
elaborate introductions
Benny and his writers still took care as
they had always done to keep changing up
the mixture adding new skits occasional
new characters like Harlow Don Wilson's
son The Apprentice announcer and special
guests to keep the show fresh and not
completely tied to a situation comedy
format
between 1954 and 1958 Jack Benny also
regularly appeared on the CBS monthly
shower of stars variety program serving
as MC or doing a one-off comic or
dramatic skit that Amplified The
Narrative world of his Regular Show or
that reinforced Benny's larger star
Persona as his film roles had done in
the 1930s and 1940s in a February 13
1958 episode of shower of stars Jack
Benny celebrates his 40th birthday this
show reunited notable performers from
the comics radio days including early
announcers Paul Douglas and George Hicks
from 1932. Orchestra leaders George
Olson Don bester Ted Weems and Johnny
Green from 1933 and even pinch-hitting
tenor Larry Stevens from 1944. that
Benny assumed members of the TV audience
fondly remembered the Unseen castmates
from more than 25 years before is a
testament to the long-lasting
relationship he had with his fans Benny
and His Radio cast also voiced an
adorable Warner Brothers Looney Tunes
cartoon produced for exhibition in movie
theaters which was based on his radio
show the mouse that Jack built 1959 as
Mel Blanc was the most prolific and
popular vocal artist in the Warner
Brothers Studio animation Department the
short made for a perfect combination of
nostalgic fun and transmit media
adaptation of Benny's narrative World
while incorporating references to his
old radio world into many of his
projects Jack Benny's later career also
continued to touch on the developments
Benny had brought to American
entertainment then he appeared in
televised situation comedies the
episodic character-focused comic form
that Benny's radio program had done so
much to develop back in 1932. Benny
appeared occasionally usually as himself
and not a completely fictional character
in Danny Thomas's Make Room for Daddy
and Lucille balls The Lucy Show Lucy had
wanted to have Jack guest star on her
program while creating I Love Lucy in
the early 1950s but at the time her
recalcitrant sponsor Philip Morris
cigarettes forbid a performer associated
with another tobacco brand to appear on
its program
in the 1950s and 1960s Jack Benny became
a popular attraction at the Las Vegas
and Lake Tahoe Casino Resorts he
developed solo stand-up comedy routines
expanding the work he had done back in
Vaudeville on the road in Uso tours
during World War II and in the earliest
of his TV shows adult-focused
sophisticated nightclub stand-up
performers really came into their own in
the 1960s and Benny added some Frank
language to his basic Fall Guy routine
and did well in tours of British venues
and a one-man show at the Ziegfeld
theater on Broadway in 1963.
then he took this solo routine as well
to television from guest shots on The Ed
Sullivan Show to Cameo appearances on
the hip programs aimed at younger
Primetime viewers such as the Smothers
Brothers comedy hour and Laugh-In and in
the Dean Martin celebrity roasts in the
early 1970s
Jack Benny made guest appearances on
late night talk shows a new television
program Forum that had its roots in
Benny's performance style in fact
legendary talk show host Johnny Carson
was a fervent Jack Benny fan and
considered Benny a role model and Mentor
as an undergraduate student at the
University of Nebraska in the late 1940s
Carson was greatly influenced by the
work of top radio Comics particularly
Benny and Fred Allen he wrote a smart
and witty senior thesis how to write
comedy for radio and submitted it in
recorded form which can be accessed
online through the University of
Nebraska's website since Benny's
Vaudeville work in the 1920s as an MC
had an informal ease that connected him
to the audience him to the acts and the
self-contained acts to the audience his
performances were a prefiguring of talk
shows he appeared on such as Carson's
and dick cavetts in this era Benny also
rediscovered his passion for the violin
he practiced at home four hours a day
his daughter Joan recalled he donated a
tremendous amount of time and energy to
give charity concerts to raise funds for
struggling symphony orchestras around
the United States in the 1960s and 1970s
then he would State wistfully that he
knew audiences flocked to the concerts
to hear Jack massacre sonatas in comic
fashion but he longed to play as a
serious musician
Benny remained a potent symbol for
promoting consumer goods and in the
1960s he was active in commercial
product advertising pitching Texaco
gasoline Insurance television sets and
other products not only did Jack Benny
always carry with him listener memories
of the old radio show but also audiences
persistently Associated him with Jello
and Lucky Strikes advertising Executives
marveled at the longevity of that link
and wished they could manufacture that
Alchemy of long-lasting positive
identification one remarked in 1962 that
still no performer today is as
associated with the product maybe that
is good maybe it's a very rare
combination to make something sugary or
something deadly so much fun
the rapid series of wrenching cultural
changes in the 1960s made all the old
established comedians seem behind the
times and out of touch with the hip
culture of the younger generation then
he fared better than some of the more
purely nostalgic entertainers like Eddie
Cantor and Bing Crosby who seemed so
wedded to their old musical choices
Benny continued to play himself the Jack
character who was Vain about his age
frustrated by the impertinence all
around him he didn't require the radio
cast's presence and insults to enact who
he was and in doing solo bits in my
opinion he was often funnier than on his
TV show it helped that Benny did not
tell standard jokes as did Henny
Youngman or Milton Burl and that he kept
his humor to cultural foibles as
experienced through his own Persona if
he had done political jokes like Bob
Hope the younger generation would have
rejected him Benny's best friend George
Burns also aged well Reinventing himself
as an ancient commentator despite his
advance nothing Age Jack always managed
to sound like he was in the present
instead of being merely an oldie Goldie
act part of that genius is that Jack's
cheap Fall Guy character could continue
to react to any new situation
after his regular TV program was
canceled in 1965. Benny continued to
front at least one Jack Benny special
per year for NBC between 1966 and 1974.
in one of them Jack Benny's bag NBC
November 16 1968 he and Phyllis Diller
performed a wicked parody of the hotel
room seduction scene from the recent
film The Graduate the box office hit
beloved of the younger generation
Benny in a black wig played young
Benjamin Braddock being pursued by sex
hungry Mrs Robinson you have just got to
watch this hopefully it is on YouTube
then emerges his classic character with
a spot on comment on the film with a
memorable sex joke charm the
accompanying Renditions of the film's
Simon and Garfunkel songs by Young soul
singer Lou Rawls and has been Eddie
Fisher adds to the bizarreness of the
sketch
this is where I came in as that 12 year
old who wanted to learn more about Jack
Benny's radio programs originally
broadcast live out into the ether they
had become orphaned entertainment
unsaved ephemeral and gone how foolhardy
of sponsors Radio Networks and
performers to consider all this material
as useless as last week's newspaper the
fact that we have any historical
broadcasts to listen to today is due to
the efforts of hundreds of individual
Jack Benny fans Jack Benny himself had
attempted in 1947 to extend the
ephemeral life of his live radio
broadcasts by recording some of his best
routines prominent radio performers had
recorded A small collection of albums
the top 10 series distributed by the
monitor label which also included
recordings of ameth and Andy Bergen and
McCarthy Burns and Allen Cantor Duffy's
Tavern and Fibber McGee the series was
unfortunately a commercial failure for
the artists perhaps the series was not
marketed well as the records weren't
released with the full promotional heft
of cbs's Columbia Records behind them
perhaps radio audiences had not yet been
educated to desire to collect and Savor
a library of Comedy recordings the
market for comedy recordings did begin
to flower in the United States in the
late 1950s and early 1960s perhaps Benny
was too far ahead of his time while in
retrospect it seems foolish and wasteful
for Radio Network works and sponsors not
to have produced recordings of Radio
Entertainment broadcasts as broadcasting
historian Eleanor Patterson notes many
factors militated against it the ethos
of network radio was liveness and they
discouraged the playing of Records on
the radio musicians unions supported
these measures too to keep workers
employed the quality of audio recording
technology was very mediocre prior to
the development of magnetic tape
recording processes in the post-world
War II years the material was considered
topical and not worth archiving and also
tainted with its thorough commercialism
network television continued these
practices through the mid-1950s as Derek
compare documents
nevertheless plenty of radio
transcription disks were produced for
sponsors and performers to keep records
of their programs and syndicated
programs like The Lone Ranger were
distributed to stations Across the
Nation in recorded form transcription
discs made of 16-inch thin platters of
aluminum glass during the war reproduced
broadcasts well but were fragile to
Store and could be replayed only a
limited number of times Network demands
for liveness would only begin to change
with the success of TV programs like I
Love Lucy being produced on film and
becoming available to fill the many
extra hours of air time as reruns as
compare describes
in the 1960s and 1970s fans of what was
beginning to be called old time radio
OTR found ways to locate transcription
disks unearthing them from garbage
dumpsters and rescuing them from Dusty
old warehouses they made sound tape
recordings of the discs many of which
were very scratched damaged and
incomplete other broadcasts were called
from the recordings made by the Armed
Forces Radio Service that had been sent
to military bases overseas these shows
usually had had the commercials removed
further chopping up the original
programs
OTR fans started to trade tapes with
other fans and began to build
collections Jack Benny had stored his
old transcription discs in a hot Los
Angeles storage unit and those that he
donated to UCLA when he gave them his
collection of business papers in the
1960s were in bad shape many so
disintegrated that they were unplayable
several entrepreneurial third-party
organizations commercially packaged old
radio programs for nostalgic enjoyment
and sold sets of records and tapes
through 50 years of dedicated collecting
OTR devotees have amassed about 750 full
or partial recordings of Benny's radio
episodes with digitized recordings today
we listeners can gain an appreciation
for how past audiences partaking of the
Benny show in 30-minute episodes aired
weekly over many years were rewarded
with a long familiarity with the
recurring characters situations repeated
gags and inside jokes that Benny and his
writers wove into their episodes and
could reference from years past the
website I have created to accompany this
book
www.jackbennyradio.com also features
material that audiences have not been
able to hear since they were first
broadcast in 1932 to 1936. excerpts from
the scripts of Jack Benny's live
programs for which no record things
survive there are more than 250 episodes
and hopefully some can temporarily
recorded Recreations of some of the best
skits will help bring new audiences and
critical appreciation for the superb
comedic work Benny and Harry Conn
created in the first four years of the
program
a number of comedians from the 1950s
onward have claimed Benny had a
formative influence on them from Carol
Burnett and Bob Newhart to David
Letterman Phil Hartman Kelsey Grammer
Harry Shearer who played a Beverly Hills
Beaver back in the day Albert Brooks and
Kevin Spacey hopefully Benny's Legacy
will continue and the continued
circulation of his radio programs as
Classics of American humor might be the
way to do it ultimately Jack Benny's
accomplishments in radio and Lasting
Legacy in American humor and cultural
history are tremendous and long lasting
and hopefully will impact future
Generations
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Jack Benny and the Golden Age of
American radio comedy by Catherine H
Fuller Seeley read by Stephanie
Henderson
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