Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Jack Benny Program: Cast Photo

The Jack Benny Program aired from October 1950 until September 1965 on CBS and NBC.

Jack Benny had been a regular network-radio personality since 1932. When he made his first tenative forays into television in 1950, it was with a series of specials that aired on an infrequent basis in what would eventually become his regular Sunday night time slot. Ten of them aired during the 1950-1951 and 1951-1952 seasons. From October 5, 1952, through the following January his show was televised once every four weeks, and when he returned again, on September 13, 1953, it was on an alternate week basis that lasted through June of 1960. For his last five seasons, The Jack Benny Program aired every week.

The Jack Benny Program was part situation comedy and part variety show. Jack played a fictional version of himself as he prepared to put on the TV show each week. The format of the show and the personality of its star, so well honed in two decades on radio, made the transition to television almost intact. Jacks' stinginess , vanity about his supposed age of 39, basement vault where he kept all his money, anxient Maxwell automobile , and feigned ineptness at playing the violin were all part of the act-and were , if anything, bolstered by their visibility on the TV show. Added to Jack's famous pregnant pause and exasperated " Well!" were a rather mincing walk, an afected hand to the cheek, and a pained look of disbelief when confronted by life's little tragedies.

The two regulars who were with Jack throughout his television run were Eddie " Rochester" Anderson as his valet and Don Wilson as his announcer and friend. Appearing on a more irregular basis were Dennis Day, Artie Auerbach, Frank Nelson (" Yeeessss"), Mary Livingstone ( Mrs. Benny) and Mel Blanc, all veterans from the radio show. Blanc, the master of a thousand voices ( including Bugs Bunny), was both heard as the engine of Jack's Maxwell and seen as Prof. Le Blanc, his long suffering violin teacher.

Jack's underplayed comedy was as popular on television as it had been on radio. After 15 years as a more or less regular television performer, he cut back his schedule to an occasional special and continued to appear until the year of his death, 1974.

An Article from Time Magazine

Waukegan Wisecracker
Monday, Apr. 17, 1939

Born to a Waukegan, Ill. clothing merchant on St. Valentine's Day 45 years ago, Benjamin Kubelsky was thrown out of his school orchestra, where he played the violin, for making a wisecrack about the conductor. At 16, he was expelled from Waukegan High School for making one wisecrack too many about the principal. In vaudeville and on the radio wisecracking Benjamin Kubelsky, renamed Jack Benny, fared better. In 1937 Waukegan planted beside its city hall a Jack Benny Elm. This year Jack Benny's radio program, outranked in popularity only by that of wooden Charlie McCarthy, will gross him some $390,000.

Last week Waukegan's gift to the U. S. stood in a Federal courtroom in Manhattan. It was guilty by its own admission of cheating the Government of $700, in duty on trinkets for its wife which had been smuggled into the U. S. by notorious Albert N. Chaperau (TIME, Dec. 19, et seq.). Before pronouncing sentence, Federal Judge Vincent Leibell remarked:

"You must feel very much ashamed of yourself, Mr. Benny, standing here as you do today."

"I do," murmured Benjamin Kubelsky, flushing.

"I think," continued Judge Leibell, "it was a very poor return from you to the Government and the citizens of this country who have made so much of you and so much for you, to do something like this." Then as the speechless prisoner paled, reddened, kneaded his fingers, the judge proceeded in the same vein to give him such a tongue-lashing as modern courtrooms seldom hear. Not until half an hour later did Judge Leibell conclude: "It was mighty small of you, and I think you were letting down your country."

Then he fined Benjamin Kubelsky $10,000, imposed a suspended sentence of a year and a day, let him slink from the courtroom.

An Article from Time Magazine

King Benny
Monday, Feb. 12, 1940

In the spirited contest for most popular U. S. radio performer, Comedian Jack Benny has since October 1937 run a close second to a perverse but inanimate object —the saucy ventriloquist's dummy known as Charlie McCarthy. At the 1939 finish, Charlie (Chase and Sanborn Hour) had an estimated 27,000,000 Sunday-night listeners: Jell-O's Jack Benny, an hour earlier on the same NBC-Red network, 24,000,000. Beginning Jan. 7, Standard Brands pared the Chase and Sanborn program to a half-hour, saving some $7,500 in airtime charges, plus salaries of Hollywood fixtures like Dorothy Lamour, Don Ameche.

Last week the first Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting (Crossley) reports for 1940 showed a new king of radio. Jack Benny, a three-time front runner before Charlie came along, was in first place again. In his first month as a half-hour program, Charlie had lost over 1,000,000 listeners. In the same month Jack Benny's chuckly half-hour had picked up an estimated 3.000,000 listeners.

An Article from Time Magazine

Mothers and He Men
Monday, May. 06, 1940

Jack Benny (born Benny Kubelsky) was winding up a smalltime career in vaudeville when bigtime Comedian Eddie Cantor (born Izzy Iskowitz) was taking vaudeville through new Cantortions on the air. This year Jell-O's Jack Benny nosed out Ventriloquist's Dummy Charlie McCarthy as No. 1 man of the air (TIME, Feb. 12). Cantor was not in radio at all, had had no air sponsor since last June.

But he had made a new picture—Forty Little Mothers (M.G.M.). So had Comedian Benny—Buck Benny Rides Again (Paramount). This coincidence was the more curious because both comedians' last pictures were no great shakes. Cantor's Ali Baba Goes to Town left 20th Century-Fox like a visit of the forty thieves. Benny's Man About Town suggested that some Benny fans would rather listen free to than pay to look at their hero.

Buck Benny Rides Again hides Comedian Benny under a ten-gallon hat, takes him west to prove himself a he-man to attractive Ellen Drew. Otherwise it is just a Jack Benny radio program minus Mary Livingstone (Mrs. Jack Benny), and Benny addicts should find it just as entertaining. It has Rochester (Eddie Ander son), Benny's gravel-voiced, colored stooge; Carmichael (the polar bear); the disembodied voice of Fred Allen (whose mock feud with Benny weekly wows their camp followers); tunes, dances, a lot of fancy showmanship, girls and gags. People with a taste for deeper humor are cautioned that unlike the radio, the picture cannot be tuned off at will.

Forty Little Mothers, the Cantor offering, was once Le Mioche (The Kid), a charming French film comedy, though the producers of Le Mioche might not recognize their baby. For once Comedian Cantor is unusually restrained. As a worried bachelor professor who furtively fathers an abandoned boy baby in a girls' seminary, Cantor limits his histrionics to planting wet smacks on the patient infant, singing one lachrymose ditty, Little Curly Hair. Once tears trickle down his nose. But smart Showman Cantor lets cute Baby Quintanilla, and scads of leggy little schoolgirls, among whom are Bonita Granville and Diane Lewis (Mrs. William Powell; TIME, Jan. 15), carry the picture.

Unpleasant surprise: majestic Judith Anderson (the weird housekeeper of Rebecca) cast by one of Hollywood's amazing artistic lapses as a Cantor stooge.

An Article from Time Magazine

Benny & Masterminds
Monday, Apr. 21, 1941

With two months to go before their first year on the air is completed, NBC's Quiz Kids this week were hard on the heels of NBC's Information Please. The juniors' Crossley rating was 11.6 against 11.9 for the senior masterminds. Last week the Quiz Kids did their stuff for the largest audience in radio when they appeared as guests on Jack Benny's Jell-O show. And Jack Benny once again proved himself the most astute gentleman in radio by tying up with the infant marvels for four combined broadcasts.

Unlike regular Quiz Kid shows, their first question-and-answer act with Benny was carefully rehearsed and gags for the program were supplied by Benny's writers. Rated the drollest Jell-O show this year, the program involved a question bee between the Kids and the Benny cast. Typical question addressed to the Kids: Name the five orders of fishes in order of their development, and give examples of each. Typical question addressed to the cast: If you had 20 apples and your mother took away ten and gave back five, how many would you have?

Neatly rigged to permit Benny & friends to triumph, the Jell-O quiz was repeated this week. Posing as a nine-year-old wizard on a quiz board composed of William Shakespeare, aged 6, Isaac Newton, 7, Lady Godiva, 6, and Fred Allen, 8, Benny made a great to-do about coaxing the Quiz Kids into telling him what sort of questions he will be asked when he shows up on their show later. As guest of the Quiz Kids, Benny will be primed on gags but not on questions.

Taking Hollywood by storm, the Quiz Kids were entertained with a party at Walt Disney's studios, kowtowed to by many a star. Special favorite of Benny is eight-year-old Gerard Darrow, who will make another appearance with his chums on the Jell-O show next week. Like all the Quiz Kids, Gerard was slightly miffed to find his autograph in such demand that he had a hard time expanding his own collection.

An Article from Time Magazine

All Hail to Jack Benny!"
Monday, May. 19, 1941

With the U.S. spending billions for defense, radio last week dedicated a great deal of time and money for tribute. The occasion was the start of the tenth year of big-time broadcasting for silver-haired, jello-jowled Comedian Jack Benny, No.1 U.S. radio entertainer. The tribute, carefully prepared by a hard-working phalanx of publicists, was about the biggest thing of its kind radio had ever seen.

To prepare U.S. radio listeners for a week during which it became difficult to tune in without hearing Benny hailed or Jell-O joshed, Variety had published a Benny issue, complete with impressive data on the rise and take* of radio's richest earner. On one program Eddie Cantor recited: "You've come up the hard way. old fellow, I mean the hard way, not the soft way like Jell-O." On another', Punster Fred Allen spent 60 minutes abusing his friendly enemy while Wife Portland tried to finish a squeaky paean beginning: ''All hail to Jack Benny!"

Culmination came with the 800-place banquet, held like most Hollywood shindigs in the Biltmore Hotel Bowl. NBC played host. Master of Ceremonies Rudy Vallee presented Comedians Bob Hope, Burns & Allen, Fibber McGee & Molly (Jim and Marion Jordan), Bergen & McCarthy, George Jessel. He called upon NBC's President Niles Trammell, who ended by giving Benny two gold keys that would unlock any door in NBC's Manhattan or Hollywood headquarters.

At last they came to Benny. He read his speech, with a crack for all comedians present. and an introduction for each of lis assistants (for his famed Negro valet: 'Next week I start Charley's Aunt, and ;hat's one picture Rochester won't steal; he won't be in it."). When the party finished, it was 4 a.m., everybody was right, and they all went home. NBC was proud of its show for Showman Benny. It should have been: the blowout alone cost over $10,000.

In a young industry that still possesses few big names of its own, Jack Benny is a valuable prestige property. With a superb timing, and a disarming shuffling diffidence as his stock in trade, he has led the radio field for eight of his nine broadcasting years. But few days after his superfete, Crossley (Cooperative Analysis of Broadcasting) released its latest ratings. First on the list, instead of Benny, were the everlasting corn-belt comedy favorites, Fibber McGee & Molly. Benny stood second highest.

* Estimated at one half a million a year for total radio and cinema earnings.

An Article from Time Magazine

10,000 Chip
Monday, Dec. 17, 1945

Jack Benny, who makes self-ridicule pay, carried a $10,000 chip on his shoulder last week. The wag from Waukegan asked NBC listeners for 50-word statements be ginning "I can't stand Jack Benny because...." The contest began as a scriptwriter's gag, but Benny took it seriously. Jack will be able to pay the prize money, without damage to his skinflint radio reputation : it will all be chargeable to program promotion, deductible for income tax.

An Article from Time Magazine

One-Man Crowd
Monday, Feb. 18, 1946

When radio needs a new voice—from a barnyard cackle to a French maestro—it is apt to call on Mel Blanc, the "one-man-crowd." Until this week, when radio's unsung bit players and stooges were finally honored by Hall of Fame (ABC, Sun., 6-6:30 p.m., E.S.T.), few listeners knew Mel by name. But millions probably knew him as Jack Benny's English butler, train announcer, parrot, French violin teacher and news reporter; as Burns & Allen's melancholy postman; as Judy Canova's Pedro, Salesman Roscoe Wortle and a chronic hiccougher; as Bob Hope's "Private Snafu"; as Abbott & Costello's Scotsman.

Since radio's tonsils are frequently more highly prized than its brains, Mel's flexible voice is often called in to save an otherwise disastrous show. He can portray 57 different characters, often does eight or ten on a single program. Once the record turntable for sound effects failed. Blanc stepped up to the mike and, using only his voice, squealed like a skidding auto and did a corking good imitation of a bottle being opened and poured. For Warner Bros.'s cartoons, he is the voice of Porky Pig and Bugs Bunny.

At 37, mild-mannered, snood-eyed Melvin Jerome Blanc (pronounced blank) has more job offers than he can fill. He has ducked proposals for a show of his own, prefers to pocket the $2,000 a week he gets from making the big stars a little bigger. That way, he says, he can spend his free time fishing, eating eclairs and running a hardware store in Los Angeles County. Reading his fan mail over Jack Benny's shoulder doesn't bother him one bit.

For an episode guide go to http://www.tv.com/jack-benny-program/show/1765/summary.html

For a Page dedicated to The Jack Benny Program go to http://www.timvp.com/jackbeny.html

For The Jack Benny Fan Club go to http://www.jackbenny.org/

For Jack Benny's Hollywood go to http://www.seeing-stars.com/StarIndexes/JackBenny.shtml

For The Jack Benny Page go to http://members.aol.com/VARTOX/benny.htm

For More on The Jack Benny Program go to http://jtec.freeservers.com/entertainment/radio/benny.htm

For More on The Jack Benny Program go to http://www.loti.com/fifties_TV/The_Jack_Benny_Program.htm

For more on The Jack Benny Program go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jack_Benny_Program

For more on Jack Benny go to http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/B/htmlB/bennyjack/bennyjack.htm

To listen to The Theme Song go to http://www.televisiontunes.com/Jack_Benny_Program_(The).html