Comedy Greats: Jack Benny
In answer to readers’ emails: here’s another tribute to a great comedian.
If you’re a younger reader, you may not know much about Jack Benny, a huge vaudeville star, who became a huge radio star who became a huge television star. He was one of the 20th century’s most beloved celebrities– a major influence on generations of comedians because he was a master of that elusive quality called “timing” — captured in this old clip of a comedy musical number that looks like it could be on the vaudeville stage — or on The Gong Show.
Note two things:
(1) His humor has some of the “feel” of the old, classic Warner Brothers cartoons. And one of the key actors on his radio and TV shows was Mel Blanc, who did most of the key voices for the Warner Brothers’ cartoons. Jack Benny worked “clean” — and got lots of laughs.
(2) Watch the way he PROLONGS THE LAUGHTER by “scanning” the audience, making them laugh by his reaction to what is going on. Benny was a master of taking a laugh and stringing it out by the way he’d scan an audience or just look into the audiences’ faces. Yes, he used some jokes on his shows — but much of what he did was with attitude, body language and timing (way ahead of his time). He is credited with having invented the situation comedy on radio. His best friend and comedian George Burns once noted that when you read a Benny script it was notable how few standard jokes it contained: the biggest laughs came out of his character and his interactions with others on his shows.
If you’re a comedian or aspiring comedian who’s interested in studying more of Benny’s work, you can get some good episodes of his
TV shows on DVD and also listen to his old radio shows. Some hold up better than others. But it was the TV-version of Benny when people discovered the way he could milk a laugh. If you’re a performer, studying Benny could be quite beneficial.
Above all, his humor was good-natured and had tons of pizzaz. We just discovered this old clip on You Tube and hope you enjoy it: despite the graininess (someone basically filmed a TV screen as this number was done “live”), its energy level will immediately hit you — and we hope it’ll encourage you to seek out and watch more of his wonderful work. MUST VIEWING.
7 Responses to “Comedy Greats: Jack Benny”
Thanks for the Benny Tribute. He is one of my entertainment heroes. I’m going to disagree a little and say his radio programs are his best work. Hearing him talk on the phone to a sponsor showed his masterful timing just as effectively as his hand on the cheek look. The radio programs pushed the absurdity much further than he ever was able to do visually.
Another great thing about Benny on radio was the constant breaking of the wall between audience and performers in a sit-com setting–like marvelling at the fact that he had an audience in his house or explicitly referring to what it says in his script.
Like Seinfeld, the show was ostensibly about his everyday life. The everyday life of a vain, cheap, and incredibly lovable weakling. I’m not sure that he created the sitcom, but he sure played a huge part in making it an American standard.
Joe
Tip of the Hat for the Benny promo … He was tremendous … And you could also add Movie Star … Forget about the horrible Mel Brooks remake … If you want to see the move “To Be Or Not To Be”, get the original with Benny, Carol Lombard …He’s brilliant and hysterical in it …
Peace
JTD
Just to let you know. The radio shows were a bit before my time (he ended his radio show in the 50s when I was a little kid) but I discovered them while living in Spain writing for the Monitor and other papers in the 70s. Armed Forces Radio played a full schedule there of old time radio shows. I have since bought via Radio Spirits CD collections of his shows (including one from his estate that has his first ever radio show) and listen to them on loooooooooong drives. YES. You are right; his radio show was his very best work. He had that medium down to a fine art — producing the classiest radio comedy show ever. If you cut out the musical numbers, you could play them to a teen today (and I have) and they’d love them. He used an early form of irony. From what I’ve read, once he went on TV he realized he couldn’t rely on the sound effects etc. and began to perfect his masterful use of the “pan” of the audience to extend laughs and his visual reactions. Some of his TV shows don’t hold up but a lot of them do. As far as inspiration, Johnny Carson was greatly influenced by Jack Benny, as was Kelsey Grammer (who is by the way not one of my favorites; he has never made me laugh). I’ve used an adaptation of Benny’s pan when I do my family shows and I get the same result on a laugh. Also, if you’re a comedy buff: I collected the entire set of the old Abbott and Costello comedy show (it lasted two sets) which you can get on amazon or on the website run by Lou Costello’s daughter Chris. These are also a treasure chest for aspiring comedians and performers in terms of timing and reactions. Even better: their work on DVD live on the Colgate Comedy Hour. I am NOT talking about watching departed comedians; I’m talking about if you love comedy or are interested in doing comedy there is in fact a comedy heritage and comedy school preserved for you on dvd if you’re willing to look for it. FYI: I consider Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm near classic comedy for the 21st century.It’s a gem of a show and he is superb. A final note on Benny. I was in New Delhi writing for the Chicago Daily News on the day in 1974 when Benny died. The editor sent me a letter saying they could not buy any of the stories I wrote that week because there was “too much Jack Benny.” His death was huge news nationally, but the CDN covered Peoria, IL, where he was born. The CDN’s tribute to him was literally a whole broadsheet of a newspaper…with jumps and sidebars. If you notice in music, a new generation will come in and almost discard the previous generation’s preferences (rockers of the 60s and 70s are bitter about the dominance of rap, etc.). It shouldn’t be that way in comedy since so much good stuff is out there that can be viewed and, if you’re an entertainer, absorbed stylistically. Ditto on standup: there are lots of great dvds out there for someone who does standup to watch and study (timing; joke structure; body language).
I recall some of the old Benny shows on television (looong ago!), as well as the Looney Toons piece he did with “Rochester” and all the rest of the cast. He was definitely a wonderful man, and also very generous of his time and money.
If anyone is interested in some of the radio shows, the Alt.callahans Librarian (that’s me) just found this site through Google.
Joe, even his tv shows were before my time. I was probably watching Wacky Races when he died. I refuse to be limited to what is on the shelf today, although I try to be open to the new. Quality creation of any period is timeless and true students of anything need the perspective of history to do good work. Check out the OTRcat if you want to get a set of mp3′s which contain everything available from Benny’s radio career. From his first Canada Dry show through radio commercials from his post show days. All for about $70. My special favorites are the shows of March ’49, I believe, where he goes to the track, loses $4.75 and can’t let it go. The next week when he double dates with Van Heflin is particularly hilarious.
I agree with you about Curb Your Enthusiasm, although he sometimes strains to get in his final twists. This isn’t to say that I’ve a problem with a formulaic structure (I love Columbo partly for that reason), especially when it is so unique to the performer and so well done. Larry David, too, can use a pregnant pause with the best of them.
Benny’s legacy is alive and well. Carson paid tribute to Benny as his hero and mentor; Letterman did the same for Carson. Jon Stewart an Conan O’Brien have the current generation in stitches and have both paid heartfelt homage to Letterman. Conan, being and old-culture junkie (he loves puppets!) surely knows Benny’s work firsthand.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t Benny and his writer Hary Conn credited withe literally inventing the sit-com format itself?
YES! Remember that old time radio was WAY before my time, but I listened to it and discovered it while living in and writing from Madrid in the mid-to late 1970s. If you go back and listen to many of the old time radio shows, many of them were just rat-a-tat jokefests, essentially vaudeville routines and acts put on the radio. Benny added character and a semblance of plot. If you buy a CD collection that has a large number of his radio shows starting from his first ones, you can see the evolution of his character and how he shifted the focus of his show away from mere jokes to IRONY, SARCASM and ATTITUDE — plus he let the supporting players get big laughs at his own expense. If you watch the Warner Bros. cartoons you’re struck by how similar the tone of the humor is to Benny’s. I haven’t researched it, but Benny’s show was cutting edge for its days on the radio and perhaps that’s why…or maybe they shared some writers (they did share Mel Blanc). So YES he and his writer invented the sitcom format. On TV he was less sucessful but still a huge hit. (Amazon.com has just issued The Phil Silvers Show — a show I remember hazilyi but I ordered it to watch and study Silvers, who repeatedly beat Benny out in the Emmy Awards. When CBS prematurely pulled the plus on Silvers, Silvers career went into a massive decline. Benny was always loved and busy right up until the day he died, even though his weekly TV career had really ended a bit before that. He admitted to one interviewer that even HE wanted to watch Bonanza when it was aired at the same time he was!)
PING:
TITLE: Tribute To Jack Benny
BLOG NAME: Dean’s World
You know, at one time–for a very long time–Jack Benny was one of the most popular and beloved of all American comedians. Yet because his career was more than 90% radio and television, most younger people barely know who he is. …