Vintage

Every month we throw the spotlight on an actor or actress who exemplifies what it means to be a class act. We welcome your emails if you have a suggestion for a future Star of the Month. The Midnight Palace is pleased to present the Star of the Month for July 2009: Jack Benny.

Date of Birth
February 14, 1894, Chicago, Illinois

Date of Death
December 26, 1974, Holmby Hills, Los Angeles, California

Birth Name
Benjamin Kubelsky

Nickname(s)
N/A

Height
5' 8"

Overview:

He was known around the world as a penny-pinching miser, but the reality was that he was generous to a fault. If George Burns, Bob Hope, or Danny Kaye wanted to try out some new material for their acts, he was the one to try it out on. If he fell down on the floor laughing, they knew it was good stuff. He was forever “39”, but as Hope said in his eulogy, “he left us much too soon.”

Benjamin Kubelsky may have been born in Chicago on Valentine’s Day 1894, but it was a temporary stop. His parents, Mayer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs, met and married in Waukegan in 1893. Little Benjamin showed an aptitude for music at the tender age of four. After listening to his mother play a song on the piano, he sat down and played it almost perfectly. Believing their little boy had been blessed with a special gift, they bought him a violin and signed him up for lessons when he was six, but his first teacher felt that Benjamin should learn from a better teacher. Benjamin outgrew the second teacher in two years.

At Chicago’s College of Music, Benjamin impressed Dr. Hugo Kortschalk, who agreed to take him as a student. He told the Kubelskys that, while their son had a rare gift, he would need to practice at least two hours a day. While his parents agreed to this, their son did not; and instead of practicing, he spent much of his time playing games. His grades began to drop at school and he was rarely practicing. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade and was dropped by Dr. Kortschalk. He practiced bookkeeping, working a few hours a day in his father’s haberdashery store. Joining a small band, he played his violin at social functions. He didn’t earn a lot of money this way, but he did attract the attention of the girls, who loved the beautiful music he played.

When he was sixteen, he started playing in the orchestra at the Barrison Theatre, a vaudeville house. When the theatre closed, he began to tour with the pianist, Cora Salisbury, as “Salisbury and Kubelsky”. Threatened with a lawsuit by a lawyer named Kubelik, they became “Salisbury and Benny”, and Benjamin Kubelsky became Ben Benny. That didn’t last long because of another similar sounding name. By then, Cora Salisbury had to quit because of her mother, and Benjamin hooked up with Lyman Woods. Their act became “Bennie and Lyman”. The act was well-received, and they were invited to play the big time, The Palace, in 1917. They bombed. The war saved him from further embarrassment, until a Navy camp show one evening. Playing “The Rosary” on his violin, Benjamin was almost hissed off the stage. Another sailor, William O’Brien, walked out as if it was part of the act, and whispered in his ear, telling him to stop playing and to talk to them. Nervously, Benjamin included O’Brien in his act and began to talk, eventually receiving loud applause, laughter and a life long friend in O’Brien, who would become known to movie audiences as Pat O’Brien.

After the war, and facing more problems with similar sounding names, he finally became Jack Benny. He worked vaudeville as a solo act, telling a few jokes and playing a few songs on his violin. Eventually, he told more jokes, played less, but he continued to carry the violin with him as a prop. During a run in Vancouver, Zeppo Marx invited Jack to a party. It was actually a Passover seder at the home of Henry Marks, his wife, and their two daughters, Ethel and Sadye. Two years later, in San Francisco, he ran into Sadye, by then sixteen, but other than saying hello as he left the theatre for an appointment, he barely looked at her. In 1926, Jack went to dinner with some friends, who introduced Jack to the wife’s younger sister. It was Sadye, and it was then that he fell in love. They were married in January 14, 1927 in Waukegan, and Sadye became Mary Livingstone.

In 1929, Irving Thalberg signed Jack to a five-year contract at $1000 a week. His first movie was Hollywood Revue of 1929, with Jack as the master of ceremonies for the various acts that appeared throughout the film. He didn’t receive a raving review, but MGM picked up his option and cast him in another movie, Chasing Rainbows (1930). MGM picked up his second option, but did not offer him another movie. After asking for his release three times, it was finally granted and the Bennys returned to New York, where Jack appeared in Earl Carroll’s show The Vanities of 1930. Once the show was over, he did a few vaudeville engagements, but the medium was slowly dying out.

Ed Sullivan was a Broadway columnist and also did a radio show in 1932. He asked Jack to come on his program one night, and the two of them would ad-lib a show. The show was heard by an advertising executive, who thought Jack would be a perfect choice for Canada Dry’s radio show. By the end of the season, Jack had been voted the most popular comedian on the air, and was looking for another sponsor. He was sponsored for two years by Chevrolet, but soon signed with General Foods. The Bennys added a daughter, Joan Naomi, to the family in 1935, and moved to the West Coast.

It took a while to find the right formula and cast for the show, but it was well worth the wait. Mary, despite the fact that she was not comfortable performing in front of an audience, joined the cast, which also included singer Dennis Day, bandleader Phil Harris, announcer Don Wilson, Eddie Anderson as Rochester and the multi-talented voice artist, Mel Blanc. The show’s format was simple: an opening song by the orchestra or some banter between Jack and Wilson, followed by either news of the day, jokes about Jack’s perpetual age of 39, or letters from Mary’s mother. Dennis would sing a song, and then a skit based on a variety of subjects would follow.

One of the longest-running topics on the show, besides Jack’s miserly ways, was his feud with fellow comedian Fred Allen. On Allen’s show one evening, Stuart Canin, a ten-year-old violin prodigy, played an excellent rendition of a classical piece. Allen, while complimenting the young man’s performance, quipped, “A certain alleged violinist should hang his head in shame.” On his next program, Jack made some comment about Allen, and the feud was on. One of Allen’s best jabs was about a tree the city of Waukegan was planting in honor of Jack. The tree eventually died due to lack of proper care. Allen, in talking about the incident on his show, said, “Everyone wonders how the tree they planted in Benny’s honor died. It’s very simple. How can a tree live in Waukegan when the sap’s out in Hollywood?” The year that Jack was named the honorary March of Dimes chairman, Allen’s comment was, “So Jack is now the chairman of ‘The March of Dimes.’ The dime hasn’t been made that could march past Benny.”

Jack gave as good as he got. “It’s so hard getting a Christmas present for Fred Allen,” he said one year. “What can you get for a man who has nothing?” When Milton Berle appeared on Allen’s show, Jack said, “Now there’s a combination. Allen and Berle. That’s like two Abbotts and no Costello.” The truth is that Jack and Fred Allen were very good friends. They appeared on each other’s shows several times a year, and got together whenever the opportunity arose. Their “feud” continued for many years, until Allen’s untimely death in 1956 of a heart attack. Milt Josefsberg, one of Jack’s writers, said it was one of only two times he ever saw Jack cry.

Despite the success of his radio show, Jack was not quite done with the movie business. From 1941 to 1943, Jack appeared in four movies. Three he liked: Charley’s Aunt (1941), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and The Meanest Man in the World (1943). His favorite movie was 1942’s To Be or Not to Be, co-starring Carole Lombard.

Charley’s Aunt was the first film in which he wasn’t required to be Jack Benny. Co-starring Kay Francis, Anne Baxter, Richard Hayden, George Seaton and Edmund Gwenn, it is the story of Babbs Babberly (Jack), a student who has been at Oxford for ten years working on a three-year course. Unfortunately, his chances for passing the course are threatened when he angers the proctor, who plans to kick him out of school. He turns to fellow students Charley (Hayden) and James (Seaton), who agree to help him…if Babbs will pose as his aunt, Donna Lucia, from Brazil, so the boys can propose to their girlfriends (Baxter and Arleen Whelan). Babbs reluctantly agrees, and finds himself the object of affection of Stephen Spettigue (Gwenn) and Jack’s father, Sir Francis Chesney (Laird Cregar). All seems to be going well, until the real Donna Lucia (Kay Francis) shows up and sees through Babbs’ disguise immediately. Fascinated by Donna Lucia, Babbs spends the rest of the film determined to get out of his petticoats and back into his pants so he can pursue her. The film did well in 1941, earning two million dollars and ranking number eight at the box office. Take a look at this short clip from To Be Or Not To Be:

Encouraged by this success, Jack began working on his next picture, To Be or Not to Be with Lombard, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart and Lionel Atwell. Joseph (Jack) and Maria (Lombard) Tura, members of a Polish theatre group, are performing Shakespeare’s Hamlet when news comes that Germany has invaded Poland. A young pilot, Lt. Sokenski (Stack), who is in love with Maria, rushes off to join the war. At a bar one evening with other pilots, he realizes that Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges), who claims to be from Warsaw, does not know who Maria is. Alerting his superiors, Sokenski is sent back to Warsaw to warn the resistance, but unable to reach them, gives the message to Maria so she can pass it on. Before she can, she meets Siletsky, who hopes to recruit her as a Nazi spy. He invites her to dinner that evening, she accepts, and leaves. Meeting up with Joseph and Sokenski, they decide that they must kill Siletsky, who is kidnapped and brought to the theatre. Realizing that he sees through their ruse, Sokenski kills him, and Joseph disguises himself as the dead man. What follows is plenty of mistaken identities, daring ploys and narrow escapes, ending with the group foiling the Nazi plans.

Unfortunately, the movie was not well received at the time due to the escalating war overseas. While Lombard received accolades for her performance, Jack and director Ernst Lubitsch were making fun of the very real Nazi threat. It would be years later before the movie would receive the praise and recognition it so richly deserved. The excitement of the upcoming movie premiere was marred by the tragic death of Lombard in a plane crash in January 1942. Upon hearing of her death, Jack himself cancelled his Sunday night show. He was deeply saddened by her death, as he had grown fond of her as a friend. He said, “She was one of the few gals you could love as a woman, and treasure as a friend – and I guess my affection for her covered both areas.”

By this time, the war was in full swing, and due to the rationing of sugar, General Foods withdrew as the sponsor for Jack’s radio show in 1942. From 1942 to 1944, Grape Nuts was his sponsor while he performed his show overseas for the troops. In 1944, Lucky Strike became his sponsor until his show went off the air in 1955, but continued to sponsor his television show until 1959.

Signing Off...

The transition to television was not a quick one for the show. Many of the things that they did on the radio, like the sound effects, did not work as well for television. The Jack Benny Program was broadcast from October 29, 1950 to September 15, 1964 on CBS, and from September 25, 1964 to September 10, 1965, for a total of 343 episodes. It was Jack who decided to end the program. He had been working steadily since 1932, and as he put it, was “tired of the rat race” of broadcast television. But sitting still was not something that Jack did well, and he continued to appear at venues, doing two or three shows an evening, appearing on other comedians’ shows (he was a particular favorite guest of Lucille Ball), accepting honorary degrees and awards. He passed away quietly in his sleep on December 26, 1974, at the age of 80, after a short battle with cancer. A touching commentary on his love for Mary: in his will, he arranged for a single, long stemmed red rose to be delivered to her every day until her death nine years later.

In her book Sunday Nights at Seven, written in 1990, Joan Benny noted her father’s views about his success. "Everything good that happened to me happened by accident. I was not filled with ambition nor fired by a drive toward a clear-cut goal. I never knew exactly where I was going,” he said. He may not have known where he was going, but for over 33 years, on Sunday nights at seven, he took us for a wonderful ride full of laughter and memorable characters. Despite his young age of “39”, I agree with Hope’s assessment that “he left us much too soon”, but what a legacy he left for us to cherish.

Special Links of Interest:
Jack Benny on IMDB
International Jack Benny Fan Club
Jack Benny at the Radio Hall of Fame
Jack Benny's Hollywood

Downloads:
Jack Benny SOTM Wallpaper (1024x768)
Jack Benny SOTM Wallpaper (800x600)