St. Joseph News-Press – Nov 2, 1947
-Associated
Press
JACK BENNY’S RADIO GANG . . . Jack Benny, one of radio’s top performers has just signed a three-year contract,
after 15 consecutive years before the microphone. During that time Jack and his
program co-workers, Mary Livingston (his wife, Sadye Marks), Dennis Day, PhilHarris and Rochester have become households words. In above sketch, AP News-feature
Artist Milt Morris pictures the radio comedian and his aids looking over a
script. They are (left to right), back row, Don Wilson, Rochester and DennisDay. Front row (left to right), Mary Livingston, Phil Harris and Jack Benny.
Jack Benny at Times Becomes Fed Up
With Roles He Has Created
By RALPH DIGHTON
HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 1 (AP)—Jack Benny
as not bald.
Jack Benny is not stingy.
That is, Jack is not completely
bald, he is not as stingy as he pretends on his radio program, and he doesn’t
exactly make Dennis Day mow his lawn.
With age and dignity creeping up
on him, radio’s gift to Waukegan (Benny actually was born in Chicago) currently
is torn between two desires. He sometimes gets a little annoyed with the
fiction he has created in the minds of America’s listeners, but—he hates to
toss aside a formula that has made him a fortune.
Benny has just signed a three-year
contract, after 15 consecutive years on the radio. During that time, JackBenny, Mary Livingston (his wife, Sadye Marks), Dennis Day, Phil Harris and
Rochester have followed a standard pattern. You knew what you would have when
you turned on Jack Benny.
But now, what the program will be
like at the end of the contract, no one knows. Benny himself doesn’t know today
what he’ll say on next week’s broadcast. Best guess (Benny’s) is that it will
go on with “the same pattern and the same cast unless we find something that’s
really good.”
Strings It Out
When Benny finds a gag that is
good, he strings it out to the last gasp. The myth about his toupee started
when he had to wear one for a movie. “But that’s nothing,” Jack says. “Practically
every male star in Hollywood has to wear a hair piece of some sort—except Lassie.”
The fabled miserliness had no such
timely peg. It was first used, says Benny, “simply because it was a trait that
any listener could recognize. It was an easy way to get laughs every family has
somebody who is pretty cheap”
“The trouble,” Benny walls, “that
my writers had made it so convincing that I get from 300 to 500 letters a week
berating me for underpaying Dennis and Rochester.”
The secret of Mrs. Kubelskv’s
little boy’s success, Jack believes is twofold.
First he “gives ‘em lots of
variety.” Unlike many other comedians, Jack likes to build up his supporting cast.
“A show with five stars in it is worth more than a show with one star,” he
says. “And I don’t have to work so hard. That way, people never get tired of
any one character.”
The Second Reason
The second reason for Benny’s
professional longevity is that he does not regard his audience as a bunch of
morons.
“Give ‘em a chance to play along
with you,” he says. “The like it. There’s something everybody that makes them love to play
theater with you. They’ll believe you while you’re on the air just for the fun
they get out of it.”
Jack was following this theory
when he tried a new twist in phone conversation with his “sponsor” last year.
The sponsor” supposedly was bawling him out for firing a singing-commercial quartet.
The script wen like this.
Silence—while sponsor talking).
Benny, But
Fifteen seconds silence while sponsor
is talking.
Benny. But
(Fifteen seconds silence
Benny But
(Fifteen seconds silence
Benny: But
Then the band blared, ending the program, and Benny had kept
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