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The Jack Benny Show

Lkeller said:
Was the "color" show a special? in 1965, most half-hour shows were still shot in black and white - especially on CBS and ABC, but even on NBC. It was about a year later that color became typical. Though it's possible an exception was made for a couple of Benny shows. As far back as 63 or 64, they would shoot a few color episodes of normally B&W shows, like Perry Mason.

And sorry to be nit-picky, but the Jack Benny Show was on the radio, on TV it was the "Jack Benny Program".
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Not to be really nit-picky, but on radio it was actually The Jello Program, The Grape Nuts and GrapeNuts Flakes Program and the Lucky Strike Program
 
Even though she has appeared on TV quite a few times with her husband jack, Mary Livingstone HATED to be on TV. Why? Severe shyness in front of an audience. By the mid 60s and 70s it had gotten so bad that in order to just do a cameo in one of Jack's later color specials, Jack Benny asked Mary's ( and Jack's ) friend and neighbor Lucille Ball to appear on the special to "hold her hand" through a scene that lasted less than TWO minutes.

Fred Allen..reading about him he actually was NOT a fan of TV.
 
bk77 said:
Even though she has appeared on TV quite a few times with her husband jack, Mary Livingstone HATED to be on TV. Why? Severe shyness in front of an audience.
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I remember reading something about those giggles of Mary's on the radio show were actually from nerves and not part of the script.
 
My vote for funniest Benny violin line: The time he was getting one of his violin lessons from Professor Le Blanc (Mel Blanc), with Benny playing a basic exercise and Blanc singing along, "Not so tightly with the finger...Pull the switch, don't let me linger..."

As far as Fred Allen being a big fan of "SNL", maybe up to the point of the Conan O'Brien-written "P-word" sketch, or "Colonel Angus".

Fred Allen..reading about him he actually was NOT a fan of TV.
Didn't he have the famous quote about TV being called a medium because it was rare when it was well done?
 
I merely suggested that Fred Allen would be a
fan of SNL, not necessarily television in general,
and I could be wrong there. I can, however,
imagine him watching the more serious programs:
60 Minutes, Sunday Morning, things of that sort.

Television never did find the right format for Allen.
Used to a small radio studio, he found himself on
huge stages with chorus girls, stooges, etc. Steve
Allen once suggested that the ideal format for Fred
Allen would have been the sort of thing Arthur Godfrey
or Garry Moore did: let him talk about whatever was on
his mind (with writers to help him), with a couple of singers
to fill in the slow spots. Then he could have been "himself."
 
Fred Allen I believe was the first media celeb to, well "bite the hand that feeds you" and really didn't care what anyone thought. Despite making a living in his later years from television, the man really didn't care that much for it. at least by reading some of comments about TV makes be believe he was "anti-TV".
Before then I don't think anyone who was in radio or TV never really said anything negative about the media that employed them. Imagine some big radio star of the 40s walking into Paley's office and say "..radio sucks..you and CBS can kiss my ass !!", I highly doubt Paley would have allowed that.

Since then many of celebrities in one field or another have taken the "bite the hand that feeds you" route. In radio for example I have heard over the years that both WABC's Dan Ingram and KHJ's Real Don Steele didn't even own a radio of their own despite those guys making a living from that medium. Not only do many of today's movie and TV stars today often bash Hollywood ( films and TV ) and even in the world of music a lot of them don't even go to the movies nor do they own television sets. Madonna for example it has been reported in the past not only does she have no respect for the music biz but won't even allow her own children to listen to her OWN hits. Nor does she allow her kids to watch TV or listen to radio. Like I said in another post where would Madonna be today had it not been for radio or TV? Of course Madonna has no problem cashing in those big checks she gets from her music, concerts, movies ,radio and of course TV.

Fred Allen in this area he really was ahead of his time.
 
Chris6397 said:
I think you are referring to the W.C. Fields/Charlie McCarthy feud.
Fields:" Your father was a table leg."
Charlie: "Well, your father was under it."
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Yeah Charlie and Fields had a feud too but Fred Allen and Charlie McCartney went at it as well.

The problem with Fred Allen was his looks. If you listen to what he says it can be funny, but when you see him perform his material, it just isn't funny.

It's like on TV show "Reba" when Barbara Jean was fat the fact she was "the other woman," to Reba was funny, suddenly when the actress who played Barbara Jean lost all her weight, the same funny lines and interaction between her and Reba was gone. Big old "lotta woman" blonde stealing Reba's husband is funny, sexy slim, beautiful Barbara Jean saying the same line isn't funny.

And that was Fred Allen's problem, his looks made whatever he said not funny. What was funny over radio seemed rude on TV or in person.

Getting back to Benny, I was listening to an interview he gave in 1950 and he said "while TV is great, radio still has and will always have a place. People would rather listen to a great radio show then look at a dumb TV show." Well I guess he was wrong about that...LOL
 
mleach said:
Fred Allen I believe was the first media celeb to, well "bite the hand that feeds you" and really didn't care what anyone thought. Despite making a living in his later years from television, the man really didn't care that much for it. at least by reading some of comments about TV makes be believe he was "anti-TV".
Before then I don't think anyone who was in radio or TV never really said anything negative about the media that employed them. Imagine some big radio star of the 40s walking into Paley's office and say "..radio sucks..you and CBS can kiss my ass !!", I highly doubt Paley would have allowed that.
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...actually, that's how Henry Morgan was able to go in the late '30s from local announcer at WOR New York to having his own series on Mutual, ABC and NBC. (An interesting telling of that story is on WFMU Jersey City's station blog at http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/07/henry-morgan-fu.html.) And, naturally, two of Morgan's biggest boosters inside the broadcast industry were Fred Allen and Jack Benny...
 
I remember seeing a film clip of Jack Benny playing the violin at Carnegie Hall, so apparently he could really play the violin and the schtick of his poor playing was one of his gags.
 
MikefromDelaware said:
I remember seeing a film clip of Jack Benny playing the violin at Carnegie Hall, so apparently he could really play the violin and the schtick of his poor playing was one of his gags.
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Just as the great Gracie Allen had to be pretty darn intelligent in order to play dumb as well as she did, Jack Benny had to be pretty darn talented in order to play the violin as "badly" as he did.
 
While this thread is about Jack Benny's programs, Fred Allen was unique unto himself. I highly recommend reading the two books Allen penned, "Treadmill To Oblivion" and Much Ado About Me", for great insight into this highly talented individual.
 
I am on the road this weekend in Syracuse. Last night (Sunday 5-25-08) I was watching WSYR-TV 9.2 and they ran two Jack Benny programs -yes programs. One of them had Fred Allen as a guest. He was trying to steal Jack's sponsor. Eddie Cantor had a cameo. It was great! By the way, they were on something called the Variety Channel. Never heard of it. They also ran The Roy Rogers Show and a public domain Bonanza.
 
RicoGregg said:
MikefromDelaware said:
I remember seeing a film clip of Jack Benny playing the violin at Carnegie Hall, so apparently he could really play the violin and the schtick of his poor playing was one of his gags.
Click to expand...

Just as the great Gracie Allen had to be pretty darn intelligent in order to play dumb as well as she did, Jack Benny had to be pretty darn talented in order to play the violin as "badly" as he did.
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Jack's daughter Joan was asked many times about the true extent of her father's violin playing. Apparently, he was only slightly better than he pretended to be in his act, and was not really a 'virtuoso' who played horribly on purpose.
 
Benny once admitted that he took up the
violin as a child but didn't work very hard
at it. When, as an adult, he got serious
about it he found it difficult to manipulate
the instrument (violin players can explain
this), and he blamed this on his inability
to play as well as he would have liked,
although it was still better than he played
in character.
 
All of this brings to mind a question I have had for a long time about some of the classic television shows. How are some of them in the public domain and some not? Did the producers and owners not copyright them originally? Did television shows in the early days have shorter copyright periods? Jack Benny is a good example as some of his 50's era shows are in the PD and others are not. Sorry to show my ignorance on this subject...
 
...well, in Benny's case, I suspect a complicating factor was the constantly shifting status of production. Not only did it flip between film and live-to-kinescope while on CBS (partly to accomodate production of his weekly radio show), for most of that run it was either seen fortnightly (alternating with "Private Secretary" in the mid-'50s -- both programs were sponsored by Lucky Strike) or, in its first years, monthly. Weekly scheduling of the Benny show didn't happen until 1960. And the live-to-kinescope productions would not only have inferior picture quality to the filmed episodes, many of both were filmed or kinnied at CBS' Television City and featured sequences in which Benny stood in front of a curtain with CBS "Eye" logos; obviously, those episodes would probably have caused problems for syndication sales to NBC or ABC affiliates. On top of all this, as on the radio series, the Lucky Strike commercials were woven into the entertainment material rather than presented in breaks; of course, that was most accurately an editing issue, but the chunks taken out because of that would rarely be 60 seconds even each time, leading to a lot of oddly-timed films for syndication. Thus, I suspect most of the episodes that one or more of these elements affected were simply not offered in syndication packages, and the copyrights may have been maintained on only those episodes that were syndicated, under the assumption that only the syndicated episodes had any commercial value...
 
ricksegers said:
All of this brings to mind a question I have had for a long time about some of the classic television shows. How are some of them in the public domain and some not? Did the producers and owners not copyright them originally? Did television shows in the early days have shorter copyright periods? Jack Benny is a good example as some of his 50's era shows are in the PD and others are not. Sorry to show my ignorance on this subject...
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I had wondered the same thing about certain episodes of classic 60's shows like Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, and The Beverly Hillbillies. The best explanation I could find on them was that Viacom, who (I believe) owned those shows allowed certain episodes to fall into the public domain to increase interest in them in the home video market. It's the most sensible explanation I've been able to find.
 
I posted the question without asking my daughter who took copyright law classes as part of her BA at MTSU. She told me the copyright process was involved and somewhat complicated back then and they might not have bothered with a show that they perceived would have no value beyond 18-24 months. There was also a revamping of the process and the rules in the 60's. This coupled with consolidation in the production companies may have led to some copyrights being forgotten and expiring due to oversight.

BTW, if you live in Georgia or have access to GA Public Television, they have been running back to back episodes of Jack Benny, appropriately at 7 Sunday evening.
 
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