Benny Bunnys Birthday
The actual longest laugh known to collectors of The Jack Benny Program lasted in excess of 32 seconds. The International Jack Benny Fan Club [17] reports that, at the close of the program broadcast on December 13, , sponsored by Jell-O , guest Andy Devine says that it is the "last number of the eleventh program in the new Jelly series. According to Benny himself, Mary Livingstone got the biggest laugh he ever heard on the show, on the April 25, , broadcast.
The punchline was the result of the following exchange between Don Wilson and noted opera singer Dorothy Kirsten:. According to Benny, the huge laugh resulted from the long buildup, and the audience's knowledge that Benny, with his pompous persona, would have to break into the conversation at some point.
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A nearly identical exchange occurred over a year earlier, among renowned violinist Isaac Stern , actor Ronald Colman , Jack Benny, and Mary Livingstone. The quartet's back-and-forth, which centered on Stern's recent public performance of a Mendelssohn piece, was heard on an episode first broadcast on February 16, The resulting laughter lasted some 18 seconds, after which Benny retorted, "Mary, that's no way to talk to Mr.
Later in life, while performing as a stand-up comedian in Las Vegas, Benny had just begun to tell an old joke about the salesman, the farmer, and the farmer's daughter: When Davis finally walks offstage and the audience's applause dies down, Benny continues to watch Davis offstage for a few moments, then, as the audience is finally quiet, continues: So the farmer said—" And that's as far as that joke got, because the audience laughed for minutes afterward. In , Benny began his famous radio feud with rival Fred Allen.
Benny, who listened to the Allen show answered in kind at the end of his January 3, show. And the two comedians were off and running. For a decade, the two went at it back and forth, so convincingly that fans of either show could have been forgiven for believing they had become blood enemies.
The humans tried outside again!
In reality, the two men were close friends and mutual admirers. Benny and Allen often appeared on each other's show during the ongoing feud; numerous surviving episodes of both comedians' radio shows feature each other, in both acknowledged guest spots and occasional cameos. On one Christmas program Allen thanked Benny for sending him a Christmas tree, but then added that the tree had died. Benny, in his eventual memoir Sunday Nights at Seven and Allen in his Treadmill to Oblivion later revealed that each comedian's writing staff often met together to plot future takes on the mock feud.
Perhaps the climax of the feud came during Fred Allen's parody of popular quiz-and-prize show Queen for a Day , which was barely a year old when Allen decided to have a crack at it on The Fred Allen Show —an episode that has survived for today's listeners to appreciate. Calling the sketch "King for a Day", Allen played the host and Benny a contestant who sneaked onto the show using the alias Myron Proudfoot. Benny answered the prize-winning question correctly and Allen crowned him "king" and showered him with a passel of almost meaningless prizes.
Allen proudly announced, "Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest," to which Benny joyously declared, "I'm king for a day! It didn't matter that Benny was still in the suit. Allen instructed his aides to remove Benny's suit, one item at a time, ending with his trousers, each garment's removal provoking louder laughter from the studio audience. As his trousers began to come off, Benny howled, "Allen, you haven't seen the end of me! The laughter was so loud and chaotic at the chain of events that the Allen show announcer, Kenny Delmar , was cut off the air while trying to read a final commercial and the show's credits.
Allen was notorious for running overtime often enough, largely thanks to his ad-libbing talent, and he overran the clock again this time. Benny was profoundly shaken by Allen's sudden death from a heart attack in In a statement released on the day after Allen's death, Benny said, "People have often asked me if Fred Allen and I were really friends in real life.
My answer is always the same: You couldn't have such a long-running and successful feud as we did, without having a deep and sincere friendship at the heart of it. I don't think that Jack Benny has an enemy in the world. He is my favourite comedian and I hope to be his friend until he is forty. That will be forever. On the advice of MCA's Lew Wasserman , Jack Benny formed a holding company, "Amusement Enterprises" a tax break major entertainers usually enjoyed in those years , which allowed him to bundle his entire program and personnel into a single commodity.
The company also gave Benny the opportunity to produce and package other radio programs including his summer replacement series starring Jack Paar , and invest in other entertainment ventures, including the production of a feature film, The Lucky Stiff , starring Dorothy Lamour , and the Broadway version of Mister Roberts , starring Henry Fonda. Paley cast a hungry eye upon the comedian. Paley apparently had good reason to believe Benny could be had. In the summer of , he successfully negotiated a deal with Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll , buying their holding company, which owned the Amos 'n' Andy radio show and the rights to those characters , moving the entire "package" from NBC to CBS that fall: Paley reached out to Benny and offered him a deal that would allow that package-buy.
To Paley, according to Metz, that was foolish thinking at best: Paley believed listeners were listening because of the talent, not because of which platform hosted them. When Paley said as much to Benny, the comedian agreed. Because Paley took a personal interest in the Benny negotiations, as opposed to Sarnoff, who had never met his top-rated star, Benny was convinced to make the jump. To sweeten the deal for a very nervous sponsor, Paley also agreed to make up the difference to American Tobacco if Benny's Hooper rating the radio version of today's Nielsen ratings on CBS fell to a certain level below his best NBC Hooper rating.
Benny's bandleader and his singing actress wife now starred in their own hit sitcom, meaning Harris was featured on shows for two different networks. Benny and Sarnoff eventually met several years later and became good friends. Benny later observed that if he'd had this kind of relationship with Sarnoff earlier, when he was Sarnoff's number-one radio star, he never would have left NBC. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the — season, the show appeared every six weeks for the — season, every four weeks for the — season and every three weeks in — For the — season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show.
From the fall of to , it appeared every other week, and from to it was seen weekly. It enjoyed a successful run from until Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks.
I'll see you on television. When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television , but with the addition of visual gags.
Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, a laugh track was added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones obstructing their view. Television viewers became accustomed to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright.
Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show. In fact, for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live taping, with Mary's lines later edited into the tape replacing Joan's before broadcast. Mary Livingstone finally retired from show business permanently in , as her friend Gracie Allen had done. Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson.
Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in , although he did make a guest appearance on the television show Bob Crosby , Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through A frequent guest was the Canadian-born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.
March made an appearance on Benny's show the same year. Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In , Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends and one for his wife, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.
In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the s, the last one airing in January He said that while the ratings were still very good he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised , advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race".
Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer. In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett 's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show , while Benny claimed he never won any of the television honors.
He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan 's Mr. Broadway as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary movies and movie genres on the radio program, and the film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight , became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.
Benny may have had an unbilled cameo role in Casablanca , claimed by a contemporary newspaper article [24] and advertisement [25] and reportedly in the Casablanca press book. That's all I can say. The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, and Don Wilson to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat -phat- bang!
In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.
When some of the characters are arguing at the side of the road, Benny pulls up in his car and considerately asks, "Trouble? Benny teamed with Fred Allen for the best-remembered running gag in classic radio history, in terms of character dialogue. In fact, Benny was a fairly good violinist who achieved the illusion of a bad one, not by deliberately playing poorly, but by striving to play pieces that were too difficult for his skill level.
In one of his show's skits, Benny is a USO performer in the Pacific when playing his violin when he comes under fire; Benny still plays his violin when two Japanese surrender to him—all the other enemy soldiers committed suicide rather than endure listening to Benny's terrible music! A skit heard numerous times on radio, and seen many times on television, had Mel Blanc as a Mexican in a sombrero and serape sitting on a bench.
Jack Benny sits down and begins a conversation. When Benny asks his name, Blanc replies Sy , which would prompt the exchange, Sy? A running gag in Benny's private life concerned George Burns. To Benny's eternal frustration, he could never get Burns to laugh. Burns, on the other hand, could crack Benny up with the least effort. An example of this occurred at a party when Benny pulled out a match to light a cigar. Burns announced to all, "Jack Benny will now perform the famous match trick! Burns observed, "Oh, a new ending!
Benny's Bunny Profile on www.newyorkethnicfood.com
Benny even had a sound-based running gag of his own: The alarm rang off even when Benny opened his safe with the correct combination. The vault also featured a guard named Ed voiced by Joseph Kearns who had been on post down below before, apparently, the end of the Civil War, the end of the Revolutionary War, the founding of Los Angeles, on Jack's 38th birthday, and even the beginning of humanity.
In one appearance, Ed asked Benny, "By the way, Mr. Poor Ed thought a crosstown bus was "a red and yellow dragon". Finally, Ed decides to return to his post fathoms below and stay there.
Jack Benny
Its inane lyrics and insipid melody guaranteed that it would never be published or recorded, but Benny continued to try to con, extort, or otherwise inveigle some of his musical guests including The Smothers Brothers and Peter, Paul and Mary to perform it. None ever made it all the way through.
In keeping with his "stingy" schtick , on one of his television specials he remarked that, to his way of looking at things, a "special" is when the price of coffee is marked down. Another popular running gag concerned the social habits of Benny's on-air orchestra, who were consistently portrayed as a bunch of drunken ne'er-do-wells.
Led first by Phil Harris and later by Bob Crosby , the orchestra, and in particular band member Frank Remley, were jokingly portrayed as often being too drunk to play properly, using an overturned bass drum to play cards on just minutes before a show, and so enamored of liquor that the sight of a glass of milk would make them sick. Crosby also got consistent laughs by frequently joking about his more famous brother Bing Crosby 's vast wealth.
Starting with the October 24, radio show, where Jack proudly announced the purchase of his car, a running joke was that Benny drove an old Maxwell automobile , a brand that went out of business in Although some details such as the car's body style and its exact model year would vary over the years, what remained constant was that Benny's old car was so worn out that it would barely run, but the miserly Benny insisted he could get a few more miles out of it.
Many of the sound effects for the car's clattering engine came from an actual old motor which the sound effects shop had salvaged from a Los Angeles junkyard. However much of the radio audience may have remained unaware that the Maxwell was ever gone, because before long Jack was heard traveling around in a decrepit old car again, and by the end of the s his car would once more be specifically identified as a Maxwell.
When the Jack Benny Program began appearing on television in , a Maxwell Model 25 Tourer became one of the production's standard props. Benny's Maxwell later became a Tourer. In addition to its being on the program, Benny would often make public appearances in Maxwells. He drove a Maxwell onto the stage in one of his last television specials. Benny and his archaic auto were featured in a series of television and print ads for Texaco from the s through the s.
A series of gags were built around the premise that Benny appreciated the value of Sky Chief brand gasoline in keeping his car running smoothly, but was too cheap to buy more than one gallon at a time. When Laurel ultimately passed on appearing, Jack agreed to play it.
According to the commentary on the Criterion edition of the film, his close-ups were filmed on a rear-projection stage at the Paramount studio. After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a stand up comedian and returned to films in with a cameo appearance in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. In fact, he prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns , to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film.
Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well and went on to win an Academy Award for his performance. His roasting of Lucille Ball was his last public performance, and aired on February 7, , several weeks after his death. In October , Benny cancelled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined.
When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent one showed he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Benny went into a coma at home on December 22, He died on December 26, at age At the funeral George Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy but broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Bob Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "For a man who was the undisputed master of comedy timing, you would have to say this is the only time when Jack Benny's timing was all wrong.
He left us much too soon. In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating: I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going. Upon his death, his family donated to UCLA his personal, professional, and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows. The university established the Jack Benny Award in his honor in to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy.
Johnny Carson was the first award recipient.
Benny's Extra Photo Albums
In , Benny was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with three stars. His stars for television and motion pictures are located at and Hollywood Boulevard , respectively, and at Vine Street for radio. When the price of a standard first-class U. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Jack Benny in , as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Chicago , Illinois, U. Los Angeles, California , U. The Jack Benny Program. This article possibly contains original research.
Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. December Learn how and when to remove this template message. This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. October Learn how and when to remove this template message.
Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. There are a few things you should know in advance. Fankz fer kontribyootin' ta mah health an' well-beein'. Thanks for the all the smooches for all of us, Benny!!! We're soo glad to know you and your family too. You have been such sweet friends to us since we joined Bunspace. Mommy always enjoys meeting your mommy. We hope Floyd and your parents are all well. Sending lots of smooches to you and your bunderful family!! I'ma sew glad datchoo likez yoor piccy. Ob kourse, it shore helpz ta haffa hansum bunneh'z piccyz ta wurk wiff!
That is so great that your mom is able to smile so much when she thinks of you. You do have a good disapproving face! Most of us lops are good disapprovers!
Hugs to you and your mom! Remembering you and hoping you have a bunderful time celebrating with your bridge buddies!! You look awesome in your birthday pic. That will be a great party at the beach!! Hugs to your parents. Benny, yoo darlin' bun!!! Koodja bee enny cutier?! Stella iz gonna bee dere tew Remembering you on your special day sweet Benny.
Mommy and I are thinking of you and your family. We hope the day is filled with many hoppy memories of your time together. Hugs to you all! Why thank you Benny! And thanks for the gift! How did you know that I love papaya! Mum gives us some every few days! But yours is more yummy! Hopping by to remember your special day a bit belated, Benny! Hope you had a buntastic day! You're very welcome, Benny!! We hope you and Hoppy had a buntastic time celebrating at the bridge.
You and your family have been such dear friends to us since we joined Bunspace. We hope your parents and Trumper and Floyd are all doing well. Scoot is growing big, he has as much energy as me! He's more laidback, hehe. Hi Benny, you're very welcome for the clover buddy!! We sure did eat a lot of yummy grass in the meadow.
My tummy is full, hehe. Thank you for the mug of yummy green beer you gave me.. Let's hop over to the pub to celebwate St Patty's Day! You didn't need to send me a cuppy cake! Thank you, it looks delicious! Mommy says I need to eat my hay before I can have dessert! It smells so good though! Page content - Global navigation - Login field. Please log in or sign up for additional options Share with a Friend. Apr 26, Birthday: Mar 14, Profile last updated: Sep 27, Gender: Nov 26, Breed: Calgary , AB - Canada.
Hoppy on Aug 28, Hiya Benny!! Madame Minxie Lillian Bunz of Thistle Hall loves her Trinket forever and always on Mar 22, hello lovely Benny xxx I thought I'd leave you an eggie, while our little Biscuit was on your page looking for one which she saw but thought it was a prank and refreshed the page, and it never came back: Stella on Mar 17, awwww, Benny! Queen on Mar 17, Dear Sweet Benny!