Name	Rochester
Settlement type	City
Nickname	'' "The Flour City", "The Flower City", "The World's Image Centre"
Motto	Rochester: Made for Living
Image seal	Rochester NY city seal.png
Map caption	Location of Rochester in New York State
Coordinates region	US-NY
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision type2	County
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision name1	New York
Subdivision name2	Monroe
Government footnotes
Government type	Mayor-Council
Leader title	Mayor
Leader name	Thomas S. Richards (D)
Leader title1	City Council
Leader name1
Unit pref	Imperial
Area magnitude	1 E9
Area total sq mi	37.1
Area land sq mi	35.8
Area water sq mi	1.3
Area total km2	96.1
Area land km2	92.8
Area water km2	3.3
Elevation m	154
Elevation ft	505
Population as of	2010 Census
Population total	210565
Population urban	694,396 (53rd in U.S.)
Population metro	1098201
Population density km2	2368.3
Population density sq mi	6132.9
Population demonym	Rochesterian
Timezone	EST
Utc offset	-5
Timezone dst	EDT
Utc offset dst	-4
Postal code	146xx (14604=downtown)
Postal code type	ZIP code
Area code	585
Latitude	43°9'56" N
Longitude	77°36'41" W
Website	www.cityofrochester.gov
Blank name	FIPS code
Blank info	36-63000
Blank1 name	GNIS feature ID
Blank1 info	0962684

Rochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. The Rochester metropolitan area is the second largest regional economy in New York State according to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, after the New York City metropolitan area. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City. It is the county seat for Monroe County.

Rochester's city population according to the 2010 census is approximately 210,565, making it New York's third most populous city after New York City and Buffalo. The Rochester Metropolitan Statistical Area (Greater Rochester), as of the 2010 census, had a population of 1,054,323, which illustrates growth from the July 1, 2009 estimate. It is at the center of a larger Metropolitan Area which encompasses and extends beyond Monroe County and includes Genesee County, Livingston County, Ontario County, Orleans County and Wayne County. This area, which is part of the Western New York region, had a population of 1,037,831 people at the time of the 2000 Census. As of April 1, 2010, the 2010 Census indicated that this population rose to 1,054,322 .

Rochester was ranked as the sixth 'most livable city' among 379 U.S. metropolitan areas in the 25th edition (2007) of the Places Rated Almanac. The Rochester area also received the top ranking for overall quality of life among U.S. metros with populations of more than 1 million in a 2007 study by Expansion Management magazine. In the same study, Expansion Management rated the area's public schools as sixth best nationwide. In 2010 Forbes rated Rochester as the 3rd best place to raise a family.

Rochester is an international center of higher education, as well as medical and technological development. The region is known for many acclaimed universities, and several of them (notably the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology) are nationally renowned for their research programs. In addition, Rochester has been and continues to be the site of many important inventions and innovations in consumer products. The Rochester area is currently home to corporations such as Kodak, Bausch & Lomb and Xerox that conduct extensive research and manufacturing in the fields of industrial and consumer products.

Founding and early history

from 1938]] Development of modern Rochester followed the American Revolution and forced cession of their territory by the Iroquois after the defeat of Great Britain. Allied with the British, four major Iroquois tribes were essentially forced from New York.

On November 8, 1803, Col. Nathaniel Rochester (1752–1831), Maj. Charles Carroll, and Col. William Fitzhugh, Jr. (1761–1839), all of Hagerstown, Maryland, purchased a 100-acre (ca. 40 ha) tract from the state in Western New York along the Genesee River. They chose the site because its three cataracts on the Genesee offered great potential for water power. Beginning in 1811, and with a population of 15, the three founders surveyed the land and laid out streets and tracts. In 1817, the Brown brothers and other landowners joined their lands with the Hundred Acre Tract to form the village of Rochesterville.

in 1842, replacing the original construction from 1823. It was subsequently used for subway trains and, in the 1920s, the Broad Street Bridge was erected on top of it. This photograph shows how it appeared in 2002.]] By 1821, Rochesterville was the seat of Monroe County. In 1823, Rochesterville consisted of and 2,500 residents, and the Village of Rochesterville became known as Rochester. Also in 1823, the Erie Canal aqueduct over the Genesee River was completed, and the Erie Canal east to the Hudson River was opened. (In the early 20th century, after the advent of railroads, the presence of the canal in the center city was an obstacle; it was re-routed south of Rochester.) By 1830, Rochester's population was 9,200 and in 1834, it was re-chartered as a city.

Rochester was first known as "The Young Lion of the West", and then as the "Flour City". By 1838, Rochester was the largest flour-producing city in the United States. Having doubled its population in only ten years, Rochester became America's first "boomtown".

By the mid-19th century, as the center of the wheat-processing industry moved west with population and agriculture, the city became home to an expanding nursery business, giving rise to the city's second nickname, the "Flower City." Large and small nurseries ringed the city, the most famous of which was started in 1840 by immigrants George Ellwanger from Germany and Patrick Barry from Ireland.

In 1847, Frederick Douglass founded the abolitionist newspaper The North Star in Rochester. Douglass, a former slave and an antislavery speaker and writer, gained a circulation of over 4,000 readers in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean. The North Star served as a forum for abolitionist views. The Douglass home burnt down in 1872, but a marker for it can be found in Highland Park off South Avenue. The city was also home to Susan B. Anthony, an abolitionist who became active in the women's rights movement. At the end of the 19th century, anarchist Emma Goldman lived and worked in Rochester for several years, where she championed the cause of labor in Rochester sweatshops.

After the Civil War, Rochester had an expansion of new industries in the late 19th century, founded by migrants to the city, such as inventor and entrepreneur George Eastman, who founded Eastman Kodak, and German immigrants John Jacob Bausch and Henry Lomb, who combined technical and financial expertise to launch Bausch & Lomb in 1861. Not only did they create new industries and thousands of jobs, but Eastman became a major philanthropist, developing and endowing the University of Rochester, its Eastman School of Music and other local institutions. He also supported the development of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Tuskegee University in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the early 20th century, Rochester became a center of the garment industry, particularly men's fashions. It was the base of enterprises such as Bond Clothing Stores, Fashion Park Clothes, Hickey Freeman, and Stein-Bloch & Co. The carriage maker James Cunningham and Sons founded a pioneer automobile company - Cunningham.

The population reached 62,386 in 1870, 162,608 in 1900 and 295,750 in 1920. By 1950, the population had reached a high of 332,488. With industrial restructuring in the later 20th century, and the decline of industry and jobs in the area, by 2010, the population had declined to 210,565 in the city, although the metropolitan area was considerably larger.

Geography and climate

Rochester is at (43.165496, -77.611504). The city is east of Buffalo, west of Syracuse and sits on Lake Ontario's southern shore. The Genesee River bisects the city.

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which of it is land and of it (3.42%) is water.

Rochester's geography was formed by the ice sheets during the Pleistocene epoch. The retreating ice sheets reached a standstill at what is now the southern border of the city, melting at the same rate as they were advancing, depositing sediment along the southern edge of the ice mass. This created a line of hills, including (from west to east) Mt. Hope, the hills of Highland Park, Pinnacle Hill, and Cobb's Hill. Because the sediment of these hills was deposited into a proglacial lake, they are stratified and classified as a "kame delta". A brief retreat and readvance of the ice sheet onto the delta deposited unstratified material there, creating a rare hybrid structure called a "kame moraine".

The ice sheets also created Lake Ontario (one of the five fresh-water Great Lakes), the Genesee River with its waterfalls and gorges, Irondequoit Bay, Sodus Bay, Braddock Bay, Mendon Ponds, numerous local streams and ponds, the Ridge, and the nearby Finger Lakes.

According to the City of Rochester, the city has of public streets, of water mains, 44 vehicular and eight pedestrian bridges, 11 public libraries, two police stations (one for the east side, one for the west), and 15 firehouses. The principal source of water is Hemlock Lake, which, with its watershed, is owned by the state of New York. Other water sources include Canadice Lake and Lake Ontario. The 30-year annual average snowfall is . The mean July temperature is and the mean February temperature is . The high amount of snow that Rochester receives can be accounted for by the city's proximity to Lake Ontario (see lake effect).

Rochester lies in the Humid continental climate zone (Köppen Dfb) and has four distinct seasons, with often cold and snowy winters. Autumn features brilliant foliage colors, and summer sees generally comfortable temperatures that usually stay in the 80-85 °F (upper 20s °C) range accompanied by moderate to high humidity. Heatwaves are not uncommon during a typical summer. Precipitation is plentiful year round.

Demographics

According to the 2005–2007 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates, the city's population was 50.3% White (41.0% non-Hispanic White alone), 43.2% Black or African American (39.9% non-Hispanic Black or African American alone), 0.9% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.3% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 5.4% from some other race and 3.0% from two or more races. 13.6% of the total population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

In the census of 2000, there were 219,773 people (210,565 counted in the census of 2010), 88,999 households, and 47,169 families residing in the city. The population density was 6,132.9 people per square mile (2,368.3/km²). There were 99,789 housing units at an average density of 2,784.7 per square mile (1,075.3/km²). The racial makeup was 48.30% White, 38.55% African American, 0.47% Native American, 2.25% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 6.58% from other races, and 3.81% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 12.75% of the population. Ancestries include: German (10.9%), Italian (10.0%), Irish (9.6%), English (5.8%), and Polish (2.7%).

As of 1997, Rochester had the largest per capita deaf population in the United States.

There were 88,999 households of which 30.0% had children under 18 living with them, 25.1% were married couples living together, 23.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 47.0% were non-families. 37.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.2% had someone living alone 65 or older. The average household size was 2.36 and the average family size was 3.19.

Web site ePodunk estimates that Rochester has approximately 60% more gay males and lesbians per capita than the national average.

The city population was 28.1% under 18, 11.6% from 18 to 24, 32.2% from 25 to 44, 18.1% from 45 to 64, and 10.0% who were 65 or older. The median age was 31. For every 100 females there were 91.6 males. For every 100 females 18 and over, there were 87.3 males.

The median income for a city household was $27,123, and the median family income was $31,257. Males had a median income of $30,521, versus $25,139 for females. The per capita income for the city was $15,588. About 23.4% of families and 25.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 37.5% of those under age 18 and 15.4% of those age 65 or over.

Crime

In 2006 Rochester had 1259.6 reported violent crimes per 100,000 residents, compared to a national rate of 553.5. For 2006, Rochester had 827 personal crime incidents per 100,000 and 7,173 property crime incidents per 100,000.

With 100 being the national average, Rochester scores the following:

Personal Crime Risk - 170 Property Crime Risk - 134

In 2008, Rochester reported 42 murders (20.5 per 100,000 people), 98 sexual assaults, 1,059 robberies, 1,103 assaults, 2,808 burglaries, 7,060 larceny thefts, and 1,262 auto thefts.

Economy

Rochester is home to a number of international businesses, including Fortune 1000 company Eastman Kodak, as well as several national and regional companies, such as Bausch and Lomb. Xerox was founded in Rochester in 1906 as The Haloid Company, and retains a significant presence in Rochester, although its headquarters are now located in Norwalk, Connecticut. The Gannett newspaper company and Western Union were founded in the Rochester area by Frank Gannett and Hiram Sibley respectively but have since moved to other cities.

Because of the high prevalence of imaging and optical science among the industry and the universities, Rochester is known as the world capital of imaging. The Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester and the Rochester Institute of Technology in nearby Henrietta both have imaging programs. In 2006, the University of Rochester became the largest employer in the Rochester area, surpassing Kodak.

Food and beverage

garbage plate.]] One food product that Rochester calls its own is the "white hot", a variant of the hot dog made by the local Zweigle's company and other companies. Another local specialty is the "garbage plate," first served at Nick Tahou Hots and traditionally includes cube fries, mac salad, meat sauce, onions, mustard and choice of hot dog or hamburger. Many area restaurants feature copies or variations of the "garbage plate" but cannot call it such because of trademarks. Instead the term "plate" is used to indicate it as such. Rochester was home to French's Mustard, whose address was 1 Mustard Street.

Genesee Brewing Company, maker of the Genesee beers, Honey Brown, Dundee Ales & Lagers and Labatt Blue Lime also calls Rochester home.

The Ragú brand of pasta sauce was originally produced in Rochester.

Other local franchises include: Bill Gray's (a hamburger/hot dog joint that lays claim to having "The World's Greatest Cheeseburger"), Country Sweet (known for their chicken wings and BBQ sauce), Boss Sauce, described as a "tantalizing sweet, spicy-hot gourmet after-sauce," was born from the restaurant Eddie's Chicken Coop, Tom Wahl's, DiBella's and Abbott's Frozen Custard. Dinosaur Bar-b-que, which originated in Syracuse, also operates their second franchise downtown in the former Lehigh Valley Railroad station on the Genesee River.

Major shopping centers

Rochester Public Market

The Mall at Greece Ridge

The Marketplace Mall

Eastview Mall

Village Gate Square

Former shopping centers

Midtown Plaza (Closed as of July 29, 2008)

Tallest structures

As of February 2008, the top ten tallest buildings in the city are:

{|class=wikitable |- !rowspan=2|Building name !colspan=2|Height |- !ft !m |- |Xerox Tower | |- |Bausch & Lomb Place | |- |Chase Tower | |- |Kodak Tower | |- |First Federal Plaza | |- |One HSBC Plaza | |- |Hyatt Regency Hotel | |- |Times Square Building | |- |Midtown Tower | |- |St. Michael's Church | |}

Companies

Tower and the Xerox Tower in downtown Rochester]]

Several companies have corporate headquarters in Rochester.

Abbott's Frozen Custard - Ice cream franchise

Ambrosia Software - Software firm

Bausch & Lomb - Contact lens care & eye health

Carestream Health - Health equipment and technology

Eastman Kodak - Photography and Printing

ESL Federal Credit Union - New York State's largest credit union in assets

Genesee Brewing Company - Brewery

Gleason Corporation - Gear equipment manufacturer

Hickey Freeman - handmade suits and clothing, including the Bobby Jones line

Home Properties - Apartment and Properties firm

Monro Muffler Brake - Auto care chain

North American Breweries - Alcoholic beverage company

Rochester Midland Corporation - Chemical manufacturing

Rohrbach Brewing Company - Microbrewery

Wegmans Food Markets - Grocery

Locally founded corporations that have since moved their headquarters to other states include French's, Gannett, Western Union, Champion and Xerox. Humor website eBaum's World was also started in Rochester. Companies that moved their headquarters from the city of Rochester to the suburbs include Wegmans (Gates, NY) and Paychex (Penfield, NY).

Government

Rochester is governed by a "strong mayor" serving as chief executive of city government and a city council consisting of 4 district members and 5 at-large members. Mayor Thomas Richards, a Democrat, was elected in a special city-wide election on March 29. 2011 after the two-term elected mayor, Robert Duffy was elected Lieutenant Governor of New York State in November 2010.

The city's police department is the Rochester Police Department, currently headed by Chief of Police James Sheppard.

Neighborhood Empowerment Team

Enforcement of property code violations in Rochester is handled by the Neighborhood Empowerment Team, or NET. Rather than utilizing a centralized code enforcement office, each neighborhood in Rochester is assigned its own NET office. Some have complained about the lack of consistency in the resulting manner and severity of enforcement. On July 16, 2008, the city announced that two of the NET offices would be closed and another relocated, due to what it had found to be the high cost and low value of operating the decentralized network.

Cityscape

Principal suburbs

Suburbs of the city include: Brighton, Brockport, Chili, Churchville, East Rochester, Fairport, Gates, Greece, Hamlin, Henrietta, Hilton, Irondequoit, Mendon, Ogden, Parma, Penfield, Pittsford, Riga, Rush, Scottsville, Spencerport, Webster, Victor and Wheatland.

Neighborhoods

Rochester has a number of neighborhoods, including the 19th Ward , 14621 Community , Beechwood , Browncroft , Cascade District, Cobbs Hill, Charlotte, Corn Hill , Dewey, Dutchtown, Edgerton, Ellwanger-Barry, German Village, Grove Place , High Falls District, Highland park , Lyell-Otis, Dutchtown Maplewood (10th ward), Marketview Heights , Mt. Read, Northern edge , Otis-Lyell , Park Avenue, Plymouth-Exchange, Southwest, East End, South Wedge, Swillburg , Susan B. Anthony , University-Atlantic, Upper Monroe , and more are all recognized communities with various neighborhood associations. There are also living spaces in Downtown Rochester.

Browncroft

The Browncroft neighborhood is built on the former nursery grounds of the Brown Brothers nursery. The business district situated on Winton Rd has a mix of restaurants and shops. The neighborhood borders the nearby Tryon and Ellison Parks. The Browncroft Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

14621 community

Extending across much of the north-central cityscape of Rochester, now including parts of the old Hudson Avenue and North Clinton neighborhoods, is the 14621 community. Today this neighborhood is predominantly African American and Hispanic,this community suffered being the center of the 1964 riots. The riots did produce some benefits in the long run: the north-central area has been the site of ongoing urban renewal projects since the late 1960s, and, as noted by "JULY ’64" filmmakers Carvin Eison and Chris Christopher, inspired the developent of such important African American organizations such as The Urban League of Rochester as well as Rochester’s first anti-poverty organization (Action for a Better Community), and black community activist organization Freedom, Integration, God, Honor, Today (F.I.G.H.T.). (F.I.G.H.T.) was founded by Rev. Franklin Florence and Deleon McEwen, who would become the first president of (F.I.G.H.T). The establishment of this program came the assistance of Saul Alinsky. However, the neighborhood is still considered the most dangerous part of Rochester and is blighted by crime, drugs and gang activity.

Lyell Avenue

Once an Italian-American neighborhood, there have recently been efforts by to improve the quality of life in this neighborhood. It is known largely for its crime, especially instances of prostitution and drug sales.

19th Ward

The 19th Ward is a southwest neighborhood bordered by Genesee Street, West Avenue, the Erie Canal, and is across the river from the University of Rochester. Now known by its slogan "Urban by Choice," in the early 19th century the area was known as Castle Town, after Castle Inn, a tavern run by Colonel Isaac Castle. By the early 1820s however, the area became overshadowed by developments in the north that would later become downtown Rochester. Due to a tumultuous bend in the Genesee river, the area was home to skilled boatsmen that assisted boats traveling north to Rochester and the area was consequently known during this time as "The Rapids". In the 1890s, as Rochester expanded, the area became a prosperous residential area that thrived as the city grew. By 1930 it was a booming residential area for doctors, lawyers, and skilled workers; it includes the still prestigious Sibley Tract development. Homes in the originally upper-class neighborhood typically have gumwood trim, leaded glass, fireplaces, hardwood floors, and open porches. In the 1960s, property values declined as the population of Rochester did, the area experienced white flight accelerated by school busing, blockbusting, and race riots downtown, and crime increased, with violence, drug use, and neglected property further diminishing property values.

The 19th Ward has had an active community association since 1965, and is known for its ethnic, class, and cultural diversity. The current "Brooks Landing" development is successfully bringing new economic development to the community including an 88-room hotel, office building, of new retail, and Boulder Coffee shop.

Charlotte

Charlotte (shar-LOT) is a lake front community in Rochester bordering Lake Ontario. It is home to Ontario Beach Park, commonly known as Charlotte Beach, which is a popular summer destination for Rochesterians. A new terminal was built in 2004 for the Rochester-to-Toronto ferry service and was later sold after the ferry ceased operations in 2005. The Port of Rochester terminal still exists and has since been completely revamped. It now houses a popular high-end restaurant and event facility—Pier 45 at The Port, the restaurant Cheeburger Cheeburger, the restaurant California Rollin', a coffee shop named The Nutty Bavarian, and an Abbott's Frozen Custard.

Corn Hill

The Corn Hill neighborhood near downtown is one of the nation's best preserved Victorian neighborhoods and a center for art. It is also home to Corn Hill Landing, a shopping and housing strip located on the Genesee River. The annual Corn Hill Art Festival, a two day event held the weekend after the 4th of July, is one of the city's most popular gatherings for art display.

Upper Monroe

Located less than one and one-half miles from downtown, Upper Monroe encompasses 17 streets with 1400 households and approximately 3300 residents. Cobbs Hill Park, with its beautiful reservoir, tennis courts and athletic fields, forms the southeastern boundary of this neighborhood. Highland Park, world renown for its annual Lilac Festival, also is within walking distance. The Upper Monroe Neighborhood Association (UMNA) is a not-for-profit advocacy group representing the residents and property owners of the Upper Monroe neighborhood. Their goals are to ascertain the needs and concerns of the neighborhood and take positive action to address those needs and concerns. The neighborhood is also home to a number of small, local businesses including: Hardpact, Huey's Hair Company, Monty's Krown, Jeremiah's Tavern, and Park Ave. Pets.

East End

The East End is a residential neighborhood in Downtown Rochester but also the main nightlife district. The Eastman Theatre and the Eastman School of Music are in the East End, along with the Little Theatre, an independent film theatre and many clubs, bars and high-end restaurants.

Maplewood

of Rochester from a northeast perspective along the Genesee River.]] Maplewood is a northwest neighborhood located south of Eastman Business Park and between the Genesee River and Dewey Avenue. Much of the area's charm comes from the use of parkways as well as parks and greenspace bordering the river. These features are the result of plans designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Maplewood Rose Garden is the second largest Rose Test Garden in the United States. The Maplewood Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. The area is bordered by Byron street in the north, South Clinton avenue and Interstate 490 on its east, Highland Park on its south, and The Genesee River on the west. Construction of the Erie Canal (the old canal bed which went by the neighborhood is now used by Interstate 490) brought workers to the area, who set up camps for the months that it took to complete this section of the canal. This racially integrated neighborhood is one of the neighborhoods in Rochester currently undergoing the process of gentrification, partially due to a recent increase in homeownership in the area. A lot of young people live in this area. The Linden-South Historic District in South Wedge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.

Susan B. Anthony Neighborhood

This neighborhood is a Preservation District on the National Register of Historic Places, known as the Madison Square-West Main Street Historic District. It encompasses a three-and-one-half block area within walking distance from downtown Rochester, and comprises residential, commercial and industrial buildings. The center of the residential area is Susan B. Anthony Square, a park shown on city maps from 1839, which was designed by the famous Olmstead Brothers. Also within the neighborhood is the Susan B. Anthony House, which was the suffragist’s residence for the last decades of her life, now a museum, as well as the Cunningham Carriage factory built in 1848 on Canal Street. James Cunningham Son & Co. sold more carriages in the United States in the 1880s than all other manufacturers combined. The Canal Street property, which still stands, remained Cunningham's headquarters for more than 100 years.

Swillburg

This wedge-shaped piece of the city is bordered by S. Clinton Avenue, Field St, and Interstate 490. The neighborhood received its moniker when a 19th century Rochester pig farmer utilized the area to collect swill for his swine. The neighborhood association humorously honors its roots by using street signs featuring the Swillburg Pig. The area has one of the highest rates of homeownership in the city and is currently undergoing gentrification as well.

The local elementary school is #35, Field Street, which often sponsors a community garden in its courtyard on Pinnacle Street.

Marketview Heights

Running east from Union Street just north of Main Street, Marketview Heights is best known as the location of the Public Market, which offers a variety of groceries and other goods from marketeers from farms and shops from surrounding areas, primarily on the week-ends.

Homestead Heights

Homestead Heights is located in north-east Rochester. It is bordered on the west by Goodman Street, on the north by Clifford Avenue, on the south by Bay Street, and on the east by Culver Road, which is also the border between the city and the town of Irondequoit. The neighborhood is a mix of residential and commercial. Real estate values are higher on the eastern end of the neighborhood near the Irondequoit border. The neighborhood is approximately 2–2 miles west of the Irondequoit Bay.

Education

The City of Rochester is served by the Rochester City School District which encompasses all public primary and secondary education. The district is governed by a popularly elected seven-member Board of Education. There are also parochial and private primary and secondary schools located within the city. Rochester City Schools consistently post below-average results when compared to the rest of New York State, although on-time graduation rates have improved significantly during the past three years.

Colleges and universities

There are four institutions of higher learning within the city limits of Rochester:

Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

Monroe Community College Damon City Campus

St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry

University of Rochester (including the Eastman School of Music)

Roberts Wesleyan College also located in Rochester is just eight miles (13 km) west of downtown. Additionally, St. John Fisher College and Nazareth College (New York) are located in the nearby suburb of Pittsford.

The Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) was founded in 1829 in Rochester but moved to Henrietta in 1968.

University of Rochester

The University of Rochester (U of R), was ranked as the 37th-best university in the nation by U.S. News & World Report for 2011 and was deemed "one of the new Ivies" by Newsweek. The nursing school has received many awards and honors and the Simon School of Business is also ranked in the top 30 in many categories.

The university is also home to the Eastman School of Music, which was ranked the number one music school in America. It was founded and endowed by George Eastman in his years as a philanthropist. He also contributed greatly to the University of Rochester from wealth based on the success of Eastman Kodak.

Culture and recreation

on East Avenue]] The city of Rochester is home to numerous cultural institutions. These include the Garth Fagan Dance, the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester Museum & Science Center, Strong National Museum of Play, the Strasenburgh Planetarium, Hochstein School of Music and Dance, and numerous arts organizations. Geva Theatre Center is the city's largest professional theatre.

Nightlife

Rochester's East End district, located downtown, is well known as the center of the city's nightlife. It is the stopping point for East Avenue, which along with the surrounding streets is crowded with nightclubs, lounges, coffee shops, bars, and high-end restaurants. The Eastman School of Music, one of the top musical institutes in the nation, and its auditorium are also located within the neighborhood. The Eastman Theatre now plays host to the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and other musical/drama events.

There are other, smaller enclaves of after-hours activity scattered across the city. Southeast is the heart of Rochester's thriving arts scene, particularly in and around the Park Avenue neighborhood (which is known for its many coffee shops, cafes, bistros and boutique shopes). Nearby on University Avenue can be found several plazas like the Village Gate which give space to trendy bars, restaurants and art galleries that stay open late into the night. Monroe Avenue, several streets over, is packed with pubs, small restaurants, smoke shops, theaters and several clubs as well as cigar bars and hookah lounges. All of these neighborhoods are home to many artists, musicians, students and Rochester's large LGBT community.

The South Wedge district, located diredtly below downtown, has seen significant gentrification in recent years and now is the site of many trendy cafes and bars that serve the student community attending the University of Rochester several blocks away from the heart of the neighborhoods. The wedge is quickly becoming one of the most vibrant areas within the city limits, its numerous nightspots keeping the streets busy with college students and young professionals (many of whom live there due to the abundance of affordable housing, thriving nightlife and proximity to many of the region's major hospitals, parks and colleges)

Park lands

Rochester is known for its parks, including Highland, Cobb's Hill, Durand-Eastman, Genesee Valley, Maplewood, Edgerton, Seneca, and Ontario Beach; four of these were designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. The city's Victorian-era Mt. Hope Cemetery includes the final resting places of Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, and George B. Selden. Other scenic sites are Holy Sepulchre and neighboring Riverside Cemetery.

The city has 13 full-time recreation centers, 19 swimming programs, 3 artificial ice rinks, 66 softball/baseball fields, 47 tennis courts, 5 football fields, 7 soccer fields, and 43 outdoor basketball courts. As a legacy of its time as "The Flower City", Rochester hosts a Lilac Festival for ten days every May, when nearly 400 varieties of lilacs bloom, and 100,000 visitors arrive.

Festivals

Rochester has many festivals in late spring and summer, including the Rochester International Jazz Festival established in 2002, the Corn Hill Festival (arts, crafts, and food in this Third Ward neighborhood), the Rochester-High Falls International Film Festival held at the George Eastman House's Dryden Theatre and the Little Theatre downtown), ImageOut, The Rochester Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival held at the Little Theatre, Clothesline Art Festival (artists from the region display their works on the grounds of the Memorial Art Gallery), Park Avenue Merchants Festival, Lilac Festival at Highland Park, St. Patrick's Day parade (March), Rose Festival at Maplewood Park, Irish festival (September), two Greek festivals - one on East Avenue (in June) and one on South Avenue (in September), Gay Pride Festival (July), Puerto Rican Festival(August), Rochester Music Festival, and the Cold Rush Winter Celebration (celebrating winter sports in the Rochester area). In the summer, especially on the Fourth of July, downtown after dark is lit with fireworks and a laser show at the High Falls venue. The most popular of these is undoubtably the Lilac Festival, which attracts many from areas outside of Rochester and draws on average 500,000 people every year.

Media

The Democrat and Chronicle is Rochester's main daily newspaper. The Daily Record, a legal, real estate and business daily, has published Monday through Friday since 1908. Insider magazine (owned by the Democrat and Chronicle), "City" newspaper and the "Freetime" entertainment magazine are free, weekly publications. Rochester Business Journal is the weekly business paper of record. "The Good Life Magazine" is a free bi-monthly publication. There is also a grassroots, democratically-run, Independent Media Center called Rochester Indymedia. Media addressing the needs of Rochester's large African American population include "About... time", and "Minority Report", which has an associated news journal for the area's Latin American population, "La Voz".

Rochester has eight broadcast television stations:

CBS: WROC 8 (cable 8)

NBC: WHEC 10 (cable 10)

ABC: WHAM 13 (cable 13)

PBS: WXXI 21 (cable 11)

Fox: WUHF 31 (cable 7)

MyNetworkTV: WBGT 40/26 (cable 18)

CW CW-WHAM (13-2) (cable 16)

Rochester Community TV (RCTV cable 15)

Rochester has multiple AM and FM radio stations including WXXI (Public Radio; AM News and Talk, FM Classical and Fine Arts), WCMF (Rock and Roll), WBEE (Country), WPXY (Contemporary Hit Radio), WLGZ (Classic Hits), WROC (Sports), WRMM (Adult Contemporary), WDKX (Urban Contemporary Radio), WJZR (smooth jazz), WBER (alternative, independent, and local), WRUR (adult album alternative), WZNE (modern rock), and WHAM (News and Talk Radio), among others.

Time Warner Cable provides Rochester with cable-fed internet service, digital and standard cable television, and YNN Rochester, a 24-hour local news channel.

Former newspapers

Rochester was served by the Rochester Post Express published by the Post Express Print Company from 1882 to 1923. In 1923 the paper merged with the Rochester News Corporation's Rochester Evening Journal to become Rochester Evening Journal and The Post Express and served the area from 1923 through 1937.

Rochester's evening paper for many years was the Times-Union, which merged operations with the Democrat and Chronicle in 1992, going defunct five years later.

Points of interest

, the World's oldest photography museum]] , Rochester Museum & Science Center]]

Blue Cross Arena at the War Memorial

Cobbs Hill Park and Reservoir

Eastman Business Park

Ellwanger Garden

Frederick Douglass Monument

Frontier Field

George Eastman House

Geva Theatre Center

High Falls and the High Falls Entertainment District

Highland Park

Liberty Pole

Little Theatre, one of the oldest art-house movie theaters in the country

Maplewood Park Rose Garden

Midtown Plaza, the nation's first downtown shopping mall

Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester, the nation's first Victorian cemetery

Nick Tahou Hots featuring the Garbage Plate and a charity run in its name

Ontario Beach Park and the Port of Rochester at Charlotte

The Public Market

The Rochester Auditorium

Rochester Contemporary Art Center

Rochester Riverside Convention Center

St. Joseph's Church and Rectory (Rochester, New York)

Seneca Park Zoo, one of the top three family attractions in the area

Strong National Museum of Play, nation's second-largest children's museum housing the National Toy Hall of Fame

Strasenburgh Planetarium, part of the Rochester Museum & Science Center

Susan B. Anthony House

Times Square Building, noted for its "Wings of Victory" statue.

University Avenue and Park Avenue Artistic Districts

University of Rochester

University of Rochester Arboretum

University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and Eastman Theatre

Water Street Music Hall

Sports

Rochester was named the top minor league sports market in the country by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal in July 2005, the number 10 "best golf city" in America by Golf Magazine in 2007, and the fifth-best "sports town" in the country by Scarborough Research in September 2008.

Professional sports

Although Rochester is home territory to the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres, Rochester has several professional sports teams of its own: {|class="wikitable" |- ! Club ! Sport ! Began play ! League ! Venue ! League championships ! Championship years |- | Rochester Red Wings | Baseball | 1899 | International League | Frontier Field | 20 | 1899, 1901, 1909, 1910, 1911, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1939, 1940, 1952, 1955, 1956, 1964, 1971, 1974, 1988, 1990, 1997 |- | Rochester Americans | Ice hockey | 1956 | AHL | Blue Cross Arena | 6 | 1964-65, 1965–66, 1967–68, 1982–83, 1986–87, 1995–96 |- | Rochester Knighthawks | Indoor lacrosse | 1995 | NLL | Blue Cross Arena | 2 | 1997, 2007 |- | Rochester Rhinos | Soccer | 1996 | USL Pro | Sahlen's Stadium | 3 | 1998, 2000, 2001 |- | Rochester Rattlers | Outdoor lacrosse | 2001(2011) | MLL | Sahlen's Stadium | 1 | 2008 |- | Rochester Razorsharks | Basketball | 2005 | PBL | Blue Cross Arena | 4 | 2005-06, 2008, 2009, 2011 |- | Rochester Raiders | Indoor football | 2006 | IFL | Dome Arena (Henrietta) | 2 | 2007, 2008 |- | Western New York Flash | Soccer | 2011 | WPS | Sahlen's Stadium | 1 | 2011 |- | Rochester Lancers | Indoor soccer | 2011 | MISL | Blue Cross Arena | | |}

Among cities in North America with at least seven current professional teams, Rochester was determined in 2007 to be the only one whose teams all had cumulative winning regular season records.

The Rochester Red Wings baseball club, the AAA affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, play in the International League. The Rochester Americans ice hockey team, the AHL affiliate for the NHL Buffalo Sabres, are known as the "Amerks". The Rochester Rhinos soccer club have played for many years in the USL First Division, which is the second-highest level American soccer league. , including the Rochester skyline to the southeast.]]

Lacrosse has seen some popularity in Rochester. The Rochester Knighthawks play box lacrosse in the National Lacrosse League during winter and spring. In outdoor lacrosse, the Rochester Rattlers were a charter member of Major League Lacrosse, but the franchise was transferred to the new Toronto Nationals (MLL) in 2009; the Rattlers will be re-established in 2011 with the transfer of the Chicago Machine franchise. Also during the summer months, the Rochester Greywolves, comprising mostly local talent, play box lacrosse in the semi-pro CanAm Lacrosse League.

Two newer but very successful teams are the Rochester Razorsharks (of the Premier Basketball League) and Rochester Raiders (Indoor Football League); both have dominated their competition, despite some instability in their leagues, and both have championship trophies already. There is also an ownership group looking into bringing indoor soccer to Rochester starting in 2011.

In women's sports, Rochester is the home of the Western New York Flash in Women's Professional Soccer. In prior years, the Rochester Ravens have competed in the semi-pro W-League under a few different names. The Filarets was a notable women's basketball team that played in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

The city also has an independent pro-wrestling league: NWA Upstate.

USA Cycling has an annual tour stop in Rochester; the Rochester Omnium is newly expanded to a three-day professional cycling event featuring the Rochester Twilight Criterium.

The absence of a major pro sports team has not always been the case. From 1920 to 1925, Rochester was home to the Rochester Jeffersons, a charter member of the National Football League. From 1948 to 1957, the Rochester Royals played in the National Basketball Association, winning the NBA championship in 1951. In soccer, the Rochester Lancers played from 1970 to 1980 in the top-level North American Soccer League and became NASL champions in the 1970 season.

Since 1877, 29 teams in eight professional sports have represented Rochester, according to The Rochester Sports Project by local sports historian Douglas Brei. In spring 2006, Brei showed that Rochester's professional sports teams were collectively approaching 25,000 games played. That game was played on June 16, 2006, when Red Wings hosted the Indianapolis Indians at Frontier Field. He also reports that only six active franchises in the history of North American professional sports have played in the same city and same league continuously and uninterrupted since the 19th century: Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, and Rochester Red Wings.

College sports

Almost all area college sports are played at the NCAA Division III level. The exception is the RIT men's ice hockey team, which moved up to the Division I level in 2005, and made it to the NCAA Frozen Four in 2010.

Among junior colleges, MCC is dominant in NJCAA Division II sports. They are also a D-III golf powerhouse and in addition won back to back national championships for women's lacrosse in '10 and '11..

Rochester is the largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the U.S. which does not include at least one college or university participating at the NCAA Division I level in all sports.

Club Sports

Rochester is home to two men's rugby teams, the Rochester Aardvarks and the Rochester Colonials. Both have long histories, with the Aardvarks celebrating their 40th anniversary in 2006, and the Rochester Colonials celebrating 30 years upcoming in 2010. The Aardvarks are one of the few rugby teams in the country to own its own pitch: Aardvark Park in Henrietta, New York, while the Colonials play their matches in the downtown located soccer stadium. The Aardvarks and the Colonials both have hosted local and state-wide tournaments and the Rochester Colonials hosted the 2007 USA Rugby National Collegiate All-Star Championships, Rochester's first national tournament, as well as the 2009 NYS Rugby Upstates Tournament and the 2009 New York State High School Rugby Championships. Both teams participate in the annual Can-Am Rugby Tournament in Saranac Lake, New York in early August. Rochester also has a Women's Rugby club, the Rochester Renegades, who celebrated their 20th anniversary in 2008. The Renegades started the New York State Rugby Women's Division.

The Rochester Bicycling Club is a social and fitness bicycling club.

Rochester is also home to Rochester Rhythm the three time champions of the American Extreme Paintball League or AXBL.

The Rochester, NY Region EWGA chapter, homepage , organizes leagues, golf training, and golf events and networking for the area's amateur women golfers.

Monroe County supports two adult baseball (hardball) leagues - the Rochester chapters of the Men's Senior Baseball League (MSBL) and National Adult Baseball Association (NABA).

Transportation

Maritime transport

There is marine freight service at the Port of Rochester on Lake Ontario, which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

A short-lived, high-speed passenger/vehicle ferry Spirit of Ontario I, nicknamed The Breeze or The Fast Ferry, linked Rochester to Toronto, Ontario across Lake Ontario. It operated between June 17, 2004, and December 12, 2005, and cost the city $42.5 million. It was sold to Förde Reederei Seetouristik, a German company, for $30 million.

Air transport

Rochester is served by the Greater Rochester International Airport. Daily scheduled air service is provided by Air Canada, AirTran, American, Continental, Delta, JetBlue, United, and US Airways. Many of these airlines do not operate mainline service to Rochester; rather, they contract regional airlines to operate flights on their own, smaller aircraft.

In 2010, the GRIA was ranked the 14th-least expensive airport in the United States by Cheapflights. This was considered a major achievement for the county and the airport authority; as recently as 2003, Rochester's ticket prices were among the highest in the country, ranking as high as fourth in 1999.

FedEx founder, Fred Smith, has stated in numerous articles that Xerox Corporation's development of the copier and their need to quickly get parts to customers, was one of the economic issues that lead him to pioneer the overnight delivery business 1971. Due to the fact that Xerox manufactured their copiers in Rochester, the city was one of the original 25 cities that Federal Express serviced on their first night of operations on April 17, 1973.

Mass transit

Amtrak (passenger) and freight lines provide rail service to Rochester. Rochester has intercity and transcontinental bus service via Greyhound and Trailways.

Local bus service in Rochester and its county suburbs is provided by the Rochester-Genesee Regional Transportation Authority (RGRTA) via its Regional Transit Service (RTS) subsidiary. RTS also provides suburban service outside the immediate Rochester area and runs smaller transportation systems in outlying counties, such as WATS (Wayne Area Transportation System).

From 1927 to 1957, Rochester had a light rail underground transit system called the Rochester Subway. It was the smallest city in the world to have one. Over the years there have been privately sponsored proposals put forth that encourage the region to support a new system, possibly using some of the old tunnels. One includes converting the Broad Street bridge tunnel—the former canal aqueduct—into an enhanced pedestrian corridor, which would also could include a Rochester Transportation Museum, and a tram system.

The former canal and subway tunnels have become a frequent source of debate. Several city homeless use the tunnels for shelter, and a few areas near tunnel entrances have gained the reputation as being dangerous. The city has considered multiple solutions for the space including recreating a canal way, putting the subway system back in or filling the tunnels entirely. The plan to fill the tunnels in completely has generated criticism as the cost of filling would not generate nor leverage economic development.

Public support continues to grow for re-watering the original Erie Canal through downtown Rochester. In support of the re-watering efforts, the City released a master plan in 2009 calling for the creation of Rochester's Historic Canal District. A subsequent environmental review documment is set to be released in the near future, seeking additional public input. This district includes both private and public investment that builds upon the rich heritage of the district, educational opportuniites, historic interpretation, architectural significant building and recreational amenities. The City is currently seeking public funds for implementing the first of three major phases of the Canal District.

Major highways and roads that serve the Greater Rochester Area

There are three exits off the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) that serve Rochester. Rochester has an extensive system of contrtolled-access highways (called 'freeways' and 'expresssways') which connects all parts of the city and the Thruway. During the Thruway's construction, a disagreement between the governor of New York and mayor of Rochester resulted in a bypass of downtown Rochester, leaving the city struggling for growth.

Rochester's expressway system, conceived in the 1950s, was designed as two concentric circles with feeder expressways from the west, south and east. The system allows for quick travel within the metropolitan area and a lack of the traffic gridlock typically found in cities of comparable size; in part this is because the system was designed to accommodate an anticipated year-2000 metro population of 5 million, whereas the present-day population is just over one million.

The Outer Loop circles just outside the city limits while the Inner Loop circles around the immediate downtown area within the city proper. From the west are Lake Ontario State Parkway, NY-531 and I-490; Interstate 390 feeds from the south; and NY-104, NY-441, and I-490 approach from the east.

Four Interstate Highways run through the Greater Rochester area:

Interstate 90 (New York State Thruway)

I-90 runs from Seattle to Boston. I-90 connects to I-390 and I-490 to serve the Greater Rochester Area.

Interstate 390 (Genesee Expressway)

I-390 runs south-north, crossing I-90 (exit 46) and routing north through Rochester's western suburbs. Its northern end is at I-490, however it continues north as NY-390 until it merges into the Lake Ontario State Parkway. South of I-90, I-390 runs to Avoca, New York, where it meets up with U.S. Route 15 and the Southern Tier Expressway, I-86.

Interstate 490 (Western/Eastern Expressway)

I-490 runs west-east through Rochester, starting at Le Roy, New York and ending in Victor, New York. It interchanges with the two other Interstates in Rochester: I-390 at the western city limit and I-590 at the eastern limit, as well as connecting at both ends with the Thruway, I-90 (exits 47 and 45). In July 2007, a new bridge over the Genesee River was completed and named the Frederick Douglass-Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge.

Interstate 590

I-590 runs south-north through Rochester's eastern suburbs. Its southern end is at I-390, while the northern end is at I-490; the highway continues north to the shore of Lake Ontario as NY-590.

In decreasing usage is the term "Can of Worms", referring to the previously dangerous at-grade intersection of Interstate 490 and expressway NY-590 on the eastern edge of the Rochester city limits, bordering the suburb of Brighton. In the 1980s, a multimillion dollar project created a system of overpasses and ramps that reduced the danger but resulted in the loss of certain exits.

New York State Route Expressways:

New York State Route 104 (Irondequoit-Wayne County Expressway, West Ridge Road)

NY 104 - Just east of the NY 590 interchange, NY 104 becomes the Irondequoit-Wayne County Expressway and crosses the Irondequoit Bay Bridge. On the other side of the Bay Bridge, in the town of Webster, NY 104 has exits before returning to an at-grade highway at Basket Road.

New York State Route 390

NY 390 is an extension of Interstate 390 from the I-390/I-490 interchange in Gates. The northern terminus is at the Lake Ontario State Parkway in Greece, less than a mile from the Lake Ontario shoreline.

New York State Route 531 (Spencerport Expressway)

NY 531 serves as a connector between the northwestern suburbs of Rochester and Interstate 490.

New York State Route 590

NY 590 is a limited-access extension of Interstate 590 at runs from an interchange between Interstate 490 and I-590 on the Brighton/Rochester border. The northern terminus is at Culver Road in Irondequoit, near Sea Breeze (the western shore of Irondequoit Bay at Lake Ontario).

Inner Loop

The Inner Loop encircles the downtown Rochester area. Unsigned reference New York State Route 940T begins and ends at Interstate 490, and the rest of the Loop is part of I-490 between exits 13 and 15, including the Frederick Douglass - Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge.

New York State Parkways:

Lake Ontario State Parkway

Lake Ontario State Parkway travels from Lakeside Beach State Park in Carlton, Orleans County. The eastern end is at Lake Avenue in the city of Rochester in Monroe County.

Notable residents

:See List of people from Rochester, New York

Sister cities

Rochester has twelve sister cities,

> ! style="background: #811541; color: #FFFFFF" height="17" width="120">Country

	City	County / District / Region / State	Date
		France		Rennes		Brittany		1958
		China		Xianyang		Shaanxi		2007
		Lithuania		Alytus		Alytus County		2009

References

External links

City of Rochester

Greater Rochester Visitors Association

Rochester Wiki

Category:Cities in New York Category:Populated places on the Great Lakes Category:County seats in New York Category:Genesee River Category:Populated places established in the 1810s Category:Rochester, New York metropolitan area Category:Populated places in Monroe County, New York

Name	Jack Benny
Caption	Jack Benny in 1958
Birth name	Benjamin Kubelsky
Birth date	February 14, 1894
Birth place	Chicago, Illinois, United States
Death date	December 26, 1974
Death place	Beverly Hills, CaliforniaUnited States
Show	The Jack Benny Program
Network	NBC, CBS
Style	Comedian
Country	United States

Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly.

Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression, such as his signature exasperated "Well!" His radio and television programs, tremendously popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, were a foundational influence on the situation comedy genre. Dean Martin, on the celebrity roast for Johnny Carson in November 1973, introduced Benny as "the Satchel Paige of the world of comedy."

Biography

Early life

Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky and Emma Sachs Kubelsky. Meyer was a Jewish saloon owner, later to become a haberdasher, who had emigrated to America from Poland. Emma had emigrated from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin, but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week. He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit. They became life-long friends and Miller eventually joined the cast of The Jack Benny Program in the 1960s.

In 1911, Benny was playing in the same theater as the young Marx Brothers, whose mother Minnie was so enchanted with Benny's musicianship that she invited him to be their permanent accompanist. The plan was foiled by Benny's parents, who refused to let their son, then 17, go on the road, but it was the beginning of his long friendship with Zeppo Marx. Benny's future wife Mary Livingstone was a distant cousin of the Marx Brothers.

The following year, Benny formed a vaudeville musical duo with pianist Cora Salisbury, a buxom 45-year-old widow who needed a partner for her act. This provoked famous violinist Jan Kubelik, who thought that the young vaudeville entertainer with a similar name (Kubelsky) would damage his reputation. Under pressure from Kubelik's lawyer, Benjamin Kubelsky agreed to change his name to Ben K. Benny (sometimes spelled Bennie). When Salisbury left the act, Benny found a new pianist, Lyman Woods, and re-named the act "From Grand Opera to Ragtime". They worked together for five years and slowly added comedy elements to the show. They even reached the Palace Theater, the "Mecca of Vaudeville", but bombed. Benny left show business briefly in 1917 to join the U.S. Navy during World War I, and he often entertained the troops with his violin playing. One evening, his violin performance was booed by the troops, so with prompting from fellow sailor and actor Pat O'Brien, he ad-libbed his way out of the jam and left them laughing. He got more comedy spots in the revues and was a big hit, and earned himself a reputation as a comedian as well as a musician.

Shortly after the war, Benny started a one-man act, "Ben K. Benny: Fiddle Funology". But then he heard from another lawyer, this time that of Ben Bernie, another patter-and-fiddle performer who also threatened to sue. So Benny adopted the common sailor's nickname Jack. By 1921, the fiddle became more of a prop and the low-key comedy took over.

Benny had several romantic encounters, including one with a dancer, Mary Kelly, whose devoutly Catholic family forced her to turn down Benny's proposal because he was Jewish. Benny was introduced to Mary Kelly by Gracie Allen. Some years after their split, Kelly resurfaced as a dowdy fat girl and Jack gave her a part in an act of three girls: one homely, one fat and one who couldn't sing. This lasted until, at Mary Livingstone's request, Mary Kelly was let go.

In 1922, Jack accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover seder where he met Sadye (Sadie) Marks, whom he married in 1927 after meeting again on a double-date. She was working in the hosiery section of the Hollywood Boulevard branch of the May Company and Benny would court her there. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in one of Benny's routines, Sadie proved a natural comedienne and a big hit. Adopting Mary Livingstone as her stage name, Sadie became Benny's collaborator throughout most of his career. They later adopted a daughter, Joan.

In 1929, Benny's agent Sam Lyons convinced MGM's Irving Thalberg to catch Benny's act at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny was signed to a five-year contract and his first film role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. His next movie, Chasing Rainbows, was a flop and after several months, Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, Benny was eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares?'..."

Radio

History

Benny had been only a minor vaudeville performer, but he became a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show which ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS. It was consistently among the most highly rated programs during most of that run.

On April 6, 1932, the NBC Commercial Program Department arranged for an audition of Jack Benny for Ayer and its client Canada Dry, after which its head, Bertha Brainard made an assessment of this new comic: “We think Mr. Benny is excellent for radio, and while the audition was unassisted as far as orchestra was concerned, we believe he would make a great bet for an air program.” With Canada Dry Ginger Ale as a sponsor, Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program, beginning May 2, 1932, on the NBC Blue Network and continuing there for six months until October 26, moving the show to CBS on October 30. With Ted Weems leading the band, Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933. The commercial ran twice a week from 9:30 to 10:00, it ran for almost a year.

Arriving at NBC on March 17, Benny did The Chevrolet Program until April 1, 1934. He continued with sponsor General Tire through the end of the season. In October, 1934, General Foods, the makers of Jell-O and Grape-Nuts, became the sponsor most identified with Jack, for the next ten years. American Tobacco's Lucky Strike was his longest-lasting radio sponsor, from October, 1944, through the end of his original radio series.

The show switched networks to CBS on January 2, 1949, as part of CBS president William S. Paley's notorious "raid" of NBC talent in 1948–49. There it stayed for the remainder of its radio run, which ended on May 22, 1955. CBS aired repeats of old radio episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.

Characters

Benny's stage character was just about everything the actual Jack Benny was not: cheap, petty, vain, and self-congratulatory. His comic rendering of these traits became the linchpin to the Benny show's success. Benny set himself up as the comedic foil, allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his character's flaws. By allowing such a character to be seen as human and vulnerable, in an era where few male characters were allowed such obvious vulnerability, Benny made what might have been a despicable character into a lovable Everyman character. Benny himself said on several occasions: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." In her book, Benny's daughter Joan said her father always said it doesn't matter who gets laughs, because come the next day they will say, "Remember the Jack Benny Show, last night, it was good, or it was bad." Jack felt he got the credit or blame either way, not the actor saying the lines, so it had better be funny.

The supporting characters who amplified that vulnerability only too gladly included wife Mary Livingstone as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend (not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie stars like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends such as "Gladys Zybisco"); rotund announcer Don Wilson (who also served as announcer for Fanny Brice's hit, Baby Snooks); bandleader Phil Harris as a jive-talking, wine-and-women type whose repartee was rather risqué for its time; boy tenor Dennis Day, who was cast as a sheltered, naïve youth who still got the better of his boss as often as not (this character was originated by Kenny Baker, but perfected by Day); and, especially, Eddie Anderson as valet-chauffeur Rochester van Jones who was as popular as Benny himself.

And that was itself a radical proposition for the era: unlike the protagonists of Amos 'n' Andy, Rochester was a black man allowed to one-up his vain, skinflint boss. In more ways than one, with his mock-befuddled one-liners and his sharp retorts, he broke a comedic racial barrier. Unlike many black supporting characters of the time, Rochester was depicted and treated as a regular member of Benny's fictional household. Benny, in character, tended if anything to treat Rochester more like an equal partner than as a hired domestic, even though gags about Rochester's flimsy salary were a regular part of the show.

Rochester seemed to see right through his boss's vanities and knew how to prick them without overdoing it, often with his famous line "Oh, Boss, come now!" Benny deserves credit for allowing this character and the actor who played him (it is difficult, if not impossible, to picture any other performer giving Rochester what Anderson gave him) to transcend the era's racial stereotype and for not discouraging his near-equal popularity. A New Year's Eve episode, in particular, shows the love each performer had for the other, quietly toasting each other with champagne. That this attention to Rochester's race was no accident became clearer during World War II, when Benny would frequently pay tribute to the diversity of Americans who had been drafted into service.

After the war, once the depths of Nazi race hatred had been revealed, Benny made a conscious effort to remove the most stereotypical aspects of Rochester's character. In 1948, it became apparent to Benny how much the times had changed when a 1941 script for "The Jack Benny Program" was re-used for one week's show. The script included mention of several African-American stereotypes (i.e. a reference to Rochester carrying a razor), and prompted a number of listeners, who didn't know the script was an old one, to send in angry letters protesting the stereotypes. Thereafter, Benny insisted that his writers should make sure that no racial jokes or references should be heard on his show. Benny also often gave key guest-star appearances to African-American performers such as Louis Armstrong and The Ink Spots.

The rest of Benny's cast included character actors and comedians:

Sheldon Leonard (later a hugely successful television producer and creator) as a tight-lipped racetrack tout

Joseph Kearns (best remembered as cantankerous Mr. Wilson on the television version of Dennis the Menace) as Ed, the superannuated guard to Jack's money vault

Verna Felton as Dennis Day's mother

Frank Nelson, usually as an oily desk clerk or floorwalker, always greeting Benny with an eager Yeeeeeeesss?;

singer/bandleader Bob Crosby (who succeeded Phil Harris in the early 1950s);

Artie Auerbach as the Yiddish-accented Mr. Kitzel ("hoo, hoo, hoo!");

Bea Benaderet, as Gertrude the switchboard operator;

Mel Blanc, who provided several characters' voices, including the railroad station announcer who said, "Train leaving on track five for Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga!". This running gag became so well known that it eventually led to a statue of Benny in Cucamonga. Blanc also was featured with Benny in the classic Si-Sy routine and on radio as the sound of Benny's Maxwell automobile. Blanc is perhaps best remembered as Benny's perpetually frustrated violin teacher, Professor LeBlanc, who was as likely to throw his own and Benny's instrument into the fireplace as he was to have a nervous breakdown before he was out the door.

Other musical contributions came starting in 1946 from the singing quartet the Sportsmen (members: Bill Days, Max Smith, Marty Sperzel and Gurney Bell) singing the middle Lucky Strike commercial. In the early days of the program, the supporting characters were often vaudevillian ethnic stereotypes whose humor was grounded in dialects. As the years went by, the humor of these figures became more character-based.

Benny's method of bringing a character into a skit, by announcing his name, also became a well-known Benny shtick: "Oh, Dennis..." or "Oh, Rochester..." typically answered by, "Yes, Mr. Benny (Boss)?"

Situations

at Jack Benny Way and Rochester Avenue, commemorates the program's famed running gag: "Train leaving on track five for Anaheim, Azusa and Cu-ca-monga!"]]

The Jack Benny Program evolved from a variety show blending sketch comedy and musical interludes into the situation comedy form we know even now, crafting particular situations and scenarios from the fictionalization of Benny the radio star. Any situation from hosting a party to income tax time to a night on the town was good for a Benny show, and somehow the writers and star would find the right ways and places to insert musical interludes from Phil Harris and Dennis Day. With Day, invariably, it would be a brief sketch that ended with Benny ordering Day to sing the song he planned to do on that week's show.

One extremely popular scenario that became an annual tradition on The Jack Benny Program was the "Christmas Shopping" episode, in which Benny would head to a local department store. Each year, Benny would buy a ridiculously cheap Christmas gift for Don Wilson from a store clerk played by Mel Blanc. Benny would then have second (then third, and even fourth) thoughts about his gift choice, driving Blanc (or, in two other cases, his wife and his psychiatrist, as well) to hilarious insanity by exchanging the gift, pestering about the Christmas card or wrapping paper countless times throughout the episode: in many cases, the clerk would commit suicide, or attempt and fail to commit suicide ("Look what you done! You made me so nervous, I missed!") as a result.

In the 1946 Christmas episode, for example, Benny buys shoelaces for Don, and then is unable to make up his mind whether to give Wilson shoelaces with plastic tips or shoelaces with metal tips. After Benny exchanges the shoelaces repeatedly, Mel Blanc is heard screaming insanely, "Plastic tips! Metal tips! I can't stand it anymore!" A variation in 1948 concerned Benny buying an expensive wallet for Don, but repeatedly changing the greeting card inserted—prompting Blanc to shout: "I haven't run into anyone like you in 20 years! Oh, why did the governor have to give me that pardon!?" – until Benny realizes that he should have gotten Don a wallet for $1.98, whereupon the put-upon clerk immediately responds by committing suicide. Over the years, in these Christmas episodes, Benny bought and repeatedly exchanged cuff links, golf tees, a box of dates, a paint set, and even a gopher trap.

In 1936, after a few years broadcasting from New York, Benny moved the show to Los Angeles, allowing him to bring in guests from among his show business friends — such as Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Judy Garland, Barbara Stanwyck, Bing Crosby, Burns and Allen (George Burns was Benny's closest friend), and many others. Burns and Allen and Orson Welles guest hosted several episodes in March and April 1943 when Benny was seriously ill with pneumonia, while Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume appeared frequently in the 1940s as Benny's long-suffering neighbors.

Sponsors

In the early days of radio (and in the early television era, often as not), the airtime was owned by the sponsor, and Benny made a point of incorporating the commercials into the body of the show. Sometimes the sponsors were the butt of jokes, though Benny did not deploy this device as frequently as his friend and "rival" Fred Allen did at the time, or as his cast member Phil Harris later did on his own successful radio sitcom. Nevertheless, for many years Benny insisted in contract negotiations that his writers pen the sponsor's commercial in the middle of the program (leaving the sponsor to provide the opening and closing spots) and the resulting ads were cleverly and wittily worked into the storyline of the show. For example, on one program, Don Wilson accidentally misread Lucky Strike's slogan ("Be happy, go Lucky") as "Be Lucky, go happy", prompting a story arc over several weeks that had Wilson unable to attend the show due to being severely traumatized by the error.

In fact, the radio show was generally not announced as The Jack Benny Program. Instead, the primary name of the show tied to the sponsor. Benny's first sponsor was Canada Dry Ginger Ale from 1932 to 1933. Benny's sponsors included Chevrolet from 1933 to 1934, General Tire in 1934, and Jell-O from 1934 to 1942. The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny was so successful in selling Jell-O, in fact, that General Foods could not manufacture it fast enough when sugar shortages arose in the early years of World War II, and the company had to stop advertising the popular dessert mix. General Foods switched the Benny program from Jell-O to Grape-Nuts from 1942 to 1944, and it became, naturally, The Grape Nuts Program Starring Jack Benny. Benny's longest-running sponsor, however, was the American Tobacco Company's Lucky Strike cigarettes, from 1944 to 1955, when the show was usually announced as The Lucky Strike Program starring Jack Benny.

Writers

Benny was notable for employing a small group of writers, most of whom stayed with him for many years. This was very much in contrast to other successful radio or television comedians, such as Bob Hope, who would change writers frequently. Historical accounts (like those by longtime Benny writer Milt Josefsberg) indicate that Benny's role was essentially that of both head writer and director of his radio programs, though he was not credited in either capacity. In contrast to Fred Allen, who initially personally wrote all of his own radio scripts (and continued to extensively rewrite scripts produced in later years by a writing staff), Jack Benny was often described by his writers as a consummate comedy editor rather than a writer per se. He would often debate the precise wording of jokes, and always sought to ensure the preservation of the integrity of the show's characters above easy gags.

Theme music

During his early radio shows, there was no recurring theme, the program instead opening each week with a different then-current popular song. Throughout the Jello and Grapenuts years, announcer Don Wilson would announce the name of the show, some of the cast, and then state "The orchestra opens the program with [name of song]". The orchestra number would continue softly as background for Don Wilson's opening commercial.

Starting in the Lucky Strike era, Benny adopted a medley of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and "Love in Bloom" as his theme music, opening every show. "Love in Bloom" later became the theme of his television show as well. His radio shows often ended with the orchestra playing "Hooray for Hollywood". The TV show ended with one of two bouncy instrumentals written for the show by his musical arranger and conductor, Mahlon Merrick.

Benny would sometimes joke about the propriety of "Love in Bloom" as his theme song. On a segment often played in Tonight Show retrospectives, Benny talks with Johnny Carson about this. Benny says he has no objections to the song in and of itself, only as his theme. Proving his point, he begins reciting the lyrics slowly and deliberately: "Can it be the trees. That fill the breeze. With rare and magic perfume. Now what the hell has that got to do with me?"

"Your money or your life"

In an episode broadcast March 28, 1948, Benny borrowed neighbor Ronald Colman's Oscar, and was returning home when accosted by a mugger (voiced by comedian Eddie Marr). After asking for a match to light a cigarette, the mugger demanded, "Don't make a move, this is a stickup. Now, come on. Your money or your life." Benny paused, and the studio audience—knowing his skinflint character—laughed. The robber then repeated his demand: "Look, bud! I said your money or your life!" And that's when Benny snapped back, without a break, "I'm thinking it over!" This time, the audience laughed louder and longer than they had during the pause.

The punchline came to Benny staff writers John Tackaberry and Milt Josefsberg almost by accident. Writer George Balzer described the scene to author Jordan R. Young, for The Laugh Crafters, a 1999 book of interviews with veteran radio and television comedy writers: :... they had come to a point where they had the line, "Your money or your life." And that stopped them... Milt is pacing up and down, trying to get a follow... And he gets a little peeved at Tack, and he says, "For God's sakes, Tack, say something." Tack, maybe he was half asleep—in defense of himself, says, "I'm thinking it over." And Milt says, "Wait a minute. That's it." And that's the line that went in the script... By the way, that was not the biggest laugh that Jack ever got. It has the reputation of getting the biggest laugh. But that's not true.

The actual length of the laugh the joke got was five seconds when originally delivered and seven seconds when the gag was reprised on a follow-up show. In fact, the joke is probably not so memorable for the length of the laugh it provoked, but because it became the definitive "Jack Benny joke"—the joke that best illustrated Benny's "stingy man" persona. The punchline—"I'm thinking it over!"—simply would not have worked with any other comedian but Benny.

The actual longest laugh known to collectors of The Jack Benny Program lasted in excess of 32 seconds. The International Jack Benny Fan Club reports that, at the close of the program broadcast on December 13, 1936, sponsored by Jell-O, guest Andy Devine says that it is the "last number of the eleventh program in the new Jelly series." The audience, who loved any sort of accidental flub in the live program, is still laughing after 32 seconds, at which point the network cut off the program to prevent it from running overtime.

According to Jack himself, Mary Livingstone got the biggest laugh he ever heard on the show, on the April 25, 1948 broadcast. The punchline was the result of the following exchange between Don Wilson and noted opera singer Dorothy Kirsten:

:Don Wilson: Oh, Miss Kirsten, I wanted to tell you that I saw you in "Madame Butterfly" Wednesday afternoon, and I thought your performance was simply magnificent. :Dorothy Kirsten: Well, thanks, awfully. It's awfully nice and kind of you, Mr. Wilson. But, uh, who could help singing Puccini? It's so expressive. And particularly in the last act, starting with the allegro vivacissimo. :Don Wilson: Well, now, that's being very modest, Miss Kirsten. But not every singer has the necessary bel canto and flexibility or range to cope with the high tessitura of the first act. :Dorothy Kirsten: Thank you, Mr. Wilson. And don't you think that in the aria, "Un bel dì vedremo", that the strings played the con molto passione exceptionally fine and with great sostenuto? :Jack Benny: Well, I thought-- :Mary Livingstone (to Jack): Oh, shut up!

According to Jack, the huge laugh resulted from the long buildup, and the audience's knowledge that Jack, with his pompous persona, would have to break into the conversation at some point.

A nearly identical exchange occurred over a year earlier, among renowned violinist Isaac Stern, actor Ronald Colman, Jack Benny, and Mary Livingstone. The quartet's back-and-forth, which centered on Stern's recent public performance of a Mendelssohn piece, was heard on an episode first broadcast on February 16, 1947. The resulting laughter lasted some 18 seconds, after which Jack retorted, "Mary, that's no way to talk to Mr. Stern."

Later in life, when performing as a stand-up comedian in Las Vegas, Jack had just begun to tell an old joke about the salesman, the farmer and the farmer's daughter: "So the salesman and the farmer's daughter come to the front door, and the farmer opens the door." At this point, Sammy Davis, Jr. walks onstage behind Jack, the audience screams, and Sammy proceeds to speak and sing and dance about 25 minutes or so, while Jack continues to stand at center stage, quietly watching the spectacle. When Davis finally walks offstage and the audience's applause dies down, Jack continues to watch Davis offstage for a few moments, then as the audience is finally quiet continues: "... So the farmer said--" And that's about as far as that joke got, because the audience laughed for minutes afterward.

The Benny-Allen "feud"

In 1937 Benny began his famous radio "feud" with rival Fred Allen. Allen kicked the "feud" off on his own show, after child violinist Stewart Canin gave a performance credible enough that Allen wisecracked about "a certain alleged violinist" who should by comparison be ashamed of himself. Benny, who either listened to the Allen show or was told about the crack, answered in kind on his own show. And the two comedians were off and running.

For a decade, the two went at it back and forth, so convincingly that fans of either show could have been forgiven for believing they had become blood enemies. In fact, the two men were good friends and each other's greatest admirers. Benny and Allen often appeared on each other's show during the thick of the "feud"; numerous surviving episodes of both comedians' radio shows feature each other, in both acknowledged guest spots and occasional cameos. Benny in his eventual memoir (Sunday Nights at Seven) and Allen in his Treadmill to Oblivion later revealed that each comedian's writing staff often met together to plot future takes on the mock feud. If Allen zapped Benny with a satirisation of Benny's show ("The Pinch Penny Program"), Benny shot back with a parody of Allen's early favourite, Town Hall Tonight. Benny's parody? "Clown Hall Tonight." And their playful sniping ("Benny was born ignorant, and he's been losing ground ever since") was also advanced in the films Love Thy Neighbor and It's in the Bag!.

Perhaps the climax of the "feud" came during Fred Allen's parody of popular quiz-and-prize show Queen for a Day, which was barely a year old when Allen decided to have a crack at it on The Fred Allen Show---an episode that has survived for today's listeners to appreciate. Calling the sketch "King for a Day", Allen played the host and Benny a contestant who sneaked onto the show using the alias Myron Proudfoot. Benny answered the prize-winning question correctly and Allen crowned him "king" and showered him with a passel of almost meaningless prizes. Allen proudly announced, "Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest." To which Benny joyously declared, "I'm king for a day!" At this point a professional pressing-iron was wheeled on stage, to press Benny's suit properly. It didn't matter that Benny was still in the suit. Allen instructed his aides to remove Benny's suit, one item at a time, ending with his trousers, each garment's removal provoking louder laughter from the studio audience. As his trousers began to come off, Benny howled, "Allen, you haven't seen the end of me!" At once Allen shot back, "It won't be long now!"

The laughter was so loud and chaotic at the chain of events that the Allen show announcer, Kenny Delmar, was cut off the air while trying to read a final commercial and the show's credits. (Allen was notorious for running overtime often enough, largely thanks to his ad-libbing talent, and he overran the clock again this time.)

Benny was profoundly shaken by Allen's sudden death of a heart attack in 1956. In a statement released on the day after Allen's death, Benny said, "People have often asked me if Fred Allen and I were really friends in real life. My answer is always the same. You couldn't have such a long-running and successful feud as we did, without having a deep and sincere friendship at the heart of it."

The CBS talent raid

On the advice of MCA's Lew Wasserman, Jack Benny formed a holding company, "Amusement Enterprises" (a tax break major entertainers usually enjoyed in those years), which allowed him to bundle his entire program and personnel into a single commodity. The company also gave Benny the opportunity to produce and package other radio programs (including his 1947 summer replacement series starring Jack Paar), and invest in other entertainment ventures, including the production of a 1949 feature film, The Lucky Stiff, starring Dorothy Lamour, and as a key financial backer of the 1948 Broadway version of Mister Roberts, starring Henry Fonda. While Benny was top of the proverbial heap on NBC, CBS czar William S. Paley cast a hungry eye upon the comedian. Paley apparently had good reason to believe Benny could be had. In the summer of 1948, he successfully negotiated a deal with Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll, buying their holding company, which owned the Amos 'n' Andy radio show (and the rights to those characters), moving the entire "package" from NBC to CBS that fall: he then learned that NBC balked at buying a "Jack Benny" package deal when "Jack Benny" was not the star's real name. Paley reached out to Benny and offered him a deal that would allow that package-buy.

But Paley, according to CBS historian Robert Metz, also learned that Benny chafed under NBC's almost indifferent attitude toward the talent that attracted the listeners. NBC, under the leadership of David Sarnoff, seemed at the time to think that listeners were listening to NBC because of NBC itself. To Paley, according to Metz, that was foolish thinking at best: Paley believed listeners were listening because of the talent, not because of which platform hosted them. When Paley said as much to Benny, the comedian agreed. Because Paley took a personal interest in the Benny negotiations, as opposed to Sarnoff who had never met his top-rated star, Benny was convinced to make the jump. He convinced a number of his fellow NBC performers (notably Burns and Allen, Edgar Bergen, Red Skelton and Kate Smith) to join him.

To sweeten the deal for a very nervous sponsor, Paley also agreed to make up the difference to American Tobacco if Benny's Hooper rating (the radio version of today's Nielsen ratings) on CBS fell to a certain level below his best NBC Hooper rating. Benny's CBS debut on January 2, 1949 bested his top NBC rating by several points while also pumping up the ratings of the show that followed, Amos 'n' Andy. NBC, with its smash Sunday night lineup now broken up, offered lucrative new deals to two of those Sunday night hits, The Fred Allen Show and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show. Benny's bandleader and his singing actress wife now starred in their own hit sitcom, meaning Harris was featured on shows for two different networks.

Benny and Sarnoff eventually met several years later and became good friends. Benny said that if he had had this kind of relationship with Sarnoff earlier, when he was Sarnoff's number-one radio star, he never would have left NBC.

Television

Benny first appeared on television in a brief appearance on the inaugural broadcast of Los Angeles station KTTV (Channel 11) on January 1, 1949. KTTV was the Los Angeles CBS Television outlet at the time.

The television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950 to 1965. Initially scheduled as a series of five "specials" during the 1950–1951 season, the show appeared every six weeks for the 1951–1952 season, every four weeks for the 1952–1953 season and every three weeks in 1953–1954. For the 1953–1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From the fall of 1954 to 1960, it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.

In September 1954, CBS premiered Chrysler's Shower of Stars co-hosted by Jack Benny and William Lundigan. It enjoyed a successful run from 1954 until 1958. Both television shows often overlapped the radio show. In fact, the radio show alluded frequently to its television counterparts. Often as not, Benny would sign off the radio show in such circumstances with the line "Well, good night, folks. I'll see you on television."

When Benny moved to television, audiences learned that his verbal talent was matched by his controlled repertory of dead-pan facial expressions and gesture. The program was similar to the radio show (several of the radio scripts were recycled for television, as was somewhat common with other radio shows that moved to television), but with the addition of visual gags. Lucky Strike was the sponsor. Benny did his opening and closing monologues before a live audience, which he regarded as essential to timing of the material. As in other TV comedy shows, canned laughter was sometimes added to "sweeten" the soundtrack, as when the studio audience missed some close-up comedy because of cameras or microphones in their way. The television viewers learned to live without Mary Livingstone, who was afflicted by a striking case of stage fright. Livingstone appeared rarely if at all on the television show (for the last few years of the radio show, she pre-recorded her lines and Jack and Mary's daughter, Joan, stood in for the live broadcast as the pre-recordings were played), and finally retired from show business permanently in 1958, as her friend Gracie Allen had done.

Benny's television program relied more on guest stars and less on his regulars than his radio program. In fact, the only radio cast members who appeared regularly on the television program as well were Don Wilson and Eddie Anderson. Day appeared sporadically, and Harris had left the radio program in 1952, although he did make a guest appearance on the television show (Bob Crosby, Phil's "replacement", frequently appeared on television through 1956). A frequent guest was the Canadian born singer-violinist Gisele Mackenzie.

Benny was able to attract guests who rarely, if ever, appeared on television. In 1953, both Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart made their television debuts on Benny's program.

Canadian singer Gisele MacKenzie, who toured with Benny in the early 1950s, guest starred seven times on The Jack Benny Program. Benny was so impressed with MacKenzie's talents that he served as co-executive producer and guest starred on her 1957–1958 NBC variety show, The Gisele MacKenzie Show. In 1964, Walt Disney was a guest, primarily to promote his production of Mary Poppins. Benny persuaded Disney to give him over 100 free admission tickets to Disneyland for his friends, but later in the show Disney apparently sent his pet tiger after Benny as revenge, at which point Benny opened his umbrella and soared above the stage like Mary Poppins.

In due course the ratings game finally got to Benny, too. CBS dropped the show in 1964, citing Benny's lack of appeal to the younger demographic the network began courting, and he went to NBC, his original network, in the fall, only to be out-rated by CBS's Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The network dropped Benny at the end of the season. He continued to make occasional specials into the 1970s. His last television appearance was in 1974, on a Dean Martin Celebrity Roast for Lucille Ball. The videotaped show was telecast just a few weeks after his death.

In his unpublished autobiography, I Always Had Shoes (portions of which were later incorporated by Jack's daughter, Joan, into her memoir of her parents, Sunday Nights at Seven), Benny said that he, not NBC, made the decision to end his TV series in 1965. He said that while the ratings were still very good (he cited a figure of some 18 million viewers per week, although he qualified that figure by saying he never believed the ratings services were doing anything more than guessing, no matter what they promised), advertisers were complaining that commercial time on his show was costing nearly twice as much as what they paid for most other shows, and he had grown tired of what was called the "rate race." Thus, after some three decades on radio and television in a weekly program, Jack Benny went out on top. In fairness, Benny himself shared Fred Allen's ambivalence about television, though not quite to Allen's extent. "By my second year in television, I saw that the camera was a man-eating monster...It gave a performer close-up exposure that, week after week, threatened his existence as an interesting entertainer."

In a joint appearance with Phil Silvers on Dick Cavett's show, Benny recalled that he had advised Silvers not to appear on television. However, Silvers ignored Benny's advice and proceeded to win several Emmy awards as Sergeant Bilko on the popular series The Phil Silvers Show, while Benny claimed he never won any of the television honors.

Movies

Benny also acted in movies, including the Academy Award-winning The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt and To Be or Not to Be. He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary movies and movie genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio program, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.

Benny may have had an unbilled cameo role in Casablanca (claimed by a contemporary newspaper advertisement and reportedly in the Casablanca press book In response to a follow-up question in his next column, he stated, "I think you're right."

Benny also was caricatured in several Warner Brothers cartoons including Daffy Duck and the Dinosaur (1939, as Casper the Caveman), I Love to Singa, Slap Happy Pappy, and Goofy Groceries (1936, 1940, and 1941 respectively, as Jack Bunny), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself), and The Mouse that Jack Built (1959). The last of these is probably the most memorable: Robert McKimson engaged Benny and his actual cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie Anderson, and Don Wilson) to do the voices for the mouse versions of their characters, with Mel Blanc—the usual Warner Brothers cartoon voicemeister—reprising his old vocal turn as the always-aging Maxwell, always a phat-phat-bang! away from collapse. In the cartoon, Benny and Livingstone agree to spend their anniversary at the Kit-Kat Club, which they discover the hard way is inside the mouth of a live cat. Before the cat can devour the mice, Benny himself awakens from his dream, then shakes his head, smiles wryly, and mutters, "Imagine, me and Mary as little mice." Then, he glances toward the cat lying on a throw rug in a corner and sees his and Livingstone's cartoon alter egos scampering out of the cat's mouth. The cartoon ends with a classic Benny look of befuddlement. It was rumored that Benny requested that, in lieu of monetary compensation, he receive a copy of the finished film.

Running gags

Benny teamed with Fred Allen for the best-remembered running gag in classic radio history, in terms of character dialogue. But Benny alone sustained a classic repertoire of running gags in his own right, including his skinflint radio and television persona, his perpetual stage age of 39, and his atonal violin playing.

A skit heard numerous times on radio, and seen many times on television, had Mel Blanc as a Mexican in a sombrero and sarape sitting on a bench. Jack Benny sits down and begins a conversation. To each question asked by Benny, Blanc replies Si, Benny asks his name, Blanc replies Sy and when Benny asks where Blanc is going, Blanc replies, "to see his sister", Sue.

A running gag in Benny's private life concerned George Burns. To Benny's eternal frustration, he could never get Burns to laugh. Burns, on the other hand, could crack Benny up with the least effort. An example of this occurred at a party when Benny pulled out a match to light a cigar. Burns announced to all, "Jack Benny will now perform the famous match trick!" Benny had no idea what Burns was talking about, so he proceeded to light up. Burns observed, "Oh, a new ending!" and Benny collapsed in helpless laughter.

Benny even had a sound-based running gag of his own: his famous basement vault alarm, allegedly installed by Spike Jones, ringing off with a shattering cacophony of whistles, sirens, bells, and blasts, before ending invariably with the sound of a foghorn. The alarm rang off even when Benny opened his safe with the correct combination. The vault also featured a guard named Ed (voiced by Joseph Kearns) who had been on post down below before, apparently, the end of the Civil War, the end of the Revolutionary War, the founding of Los Angeles, on Jack's 38th birthday, and even the beginning of humanity. In one appearance, Ed asked Benny, "By the way, Mr. Benny...what's it like on the outside?" Benny responded, "...winter is nearly here, and the leaves are falling." Ed responded, "Hey, that must be exciting." To which Benny replied (in a stunningly risqué joke for the period), "Oh, no—people are wearing clothes now." In one episode of the Benny radio show, Ed the Guard actually agreed when Jack invited him to take a break and come back to the surface world, only to discover that modern conveniences and transportation, which hadn't been around the last time he'd been to the surface, terrorized and confused him. (Poor Ed thought a crosstown bus was "a red and yellow dragon.") Finally, Ed decides to return to his post fathoms below and stay there. The basement vault gag was also used in the cartoon The Mouse that Jack Built and an episode of The Lucy Show.

A separate sound gag involved a song Benny had written, "When You Say I Beg Your Pardon, Then I'll Come Back to You." Its inane lyrics and insipid melody guaranteed that it would never be published or recorded, but Benny continued to try to con, extort, or otherwise inveigle some of his musical guests (including The Smothers Brothers and Peter, Paul and Mary) to perform it. None ever made it all the way through.

In keeping with his "stingy" schtick, on one of his television specials he remarked that, to his way of looking at things, a "special" is when the price of coffee is marked down.

The explanation usually given for the "stuck on 39" running joke is that he had celebrated his birthday on-air when he turned 39, and decided to do the same the following year, because "there's nothing funny about 40." Upon his death, having celebrated his 39th birthday 41 times, some newspapers continued the joke with headlines such as "Jack Benny Dies – At 39?"

Another popular running gag concerned the social habits of Benny's on-air orchestra, who were consistently portrayed as a bunch of drunken ne'er-do-wells. Led first by Phil Harris and later by Bob Crosby, the orchestra, and in particular band member Frank Remley, were jokingly portrayed as often being too drunk to play properly, using an overturned bass drum to play cards on just minutes before a show, and so enamored by liquor that the sight of a glass of milk would make them sick. Remley was portrayed in various unflattering situations, such as being thrown into a garbage can by a road sweeper who had found him passed out in the street at 4 am, and on a wanted poster at the Beverly Hills police station. Crosby also got consistent laughs by frequently joking about his more famous brother Bing's vast wealth.

The Maxwell

from the seat of a c. 1908 Maxwell Roadster]] Starting on the radio show, a running joke was that Benny drove a Maxwell automobile, a brand that went out of business in 1925. Benny's old car was so worn out that it would barely run, but the miserly Benny insisted he could get a few more miles out of it. When a sound effects man missed a cue for the automobile engine, Mel Blanc quickly improvised a vocal imitation of a sputtering car engine that was so funny it became a regular feature of the show. By 1943, Jack Benny's Maxwell had become such a well known aspect of popular culture that it was referenced in the Spike Jones record "The Sound Effects Man".

When the Jack Benny Program began appearing on television in 1950, a 1916 Maxwell Model 25 Tourer became one of the production's standard props. Benny's Maxwell later became a 1923 Tourer. In addition to on the program, Benny would often make public appearances in Maxwells. He appeared behind the wheel of one in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and drove a Maxwell onto the stage in one of his last television specials. Benny and his archaic auto were featured in a series of television and print ads for Texaco from the 1950s through the 1970s. A series of gags were built around the premise that Benny appreciated the value of "Sky Chief" brand gasoline in keeping his car running smoothly, but was too cheap to buy more than one gallon at a time.

Final years

After his broadcasting career ended, Benny performed live as a stand up comedian and returned to films in 1963 with a cameo appearance in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Benny was preparing to star in the film version of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys when his health failed. In fact, he prevailed upon his longtime best friend, George Burns, to take his place on a nightclub tour while preparing for the film. (Burns ultimately had to replace Benny in the film as well and went on to win an Academy Award for his performance).

Benny made one of his final television appearances in the fall of 1972 on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson when Carson celebrated his 10th anniversary. (An audio recording featuring highlights of Benny's appearance is featured on the album Here's Johnny: Magic Moments From The Tonight Show released in 1973.) During this appearance, he stated that he loved the violin so much, "if God came to me and said 'Jack, starting tomorrow I will make you one of the world's great violinists, but no more will you ever be able to tell a joke', I really believe that I would accept that." He also related something Isaac Stern once told him: "You know, Jack, when you walk out in front of a symphony orchestra in white tie and tails and your violin, you actually look like one of the world's great violinists. It's a damned shame you have to play!" Jokes aside, Benny was a serious, dedicated violinist who could play aside Stern and not embarrass himself.

Death

In October 1974, Benny canceled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing, but a subsequent one showed he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Choosing to spend his final days at home, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson and New Zealand crooner John Rowles. He died on December 26, 1974. Bob Hope delivered the eulogy at his funeral. Two days after his death, he was interred in a crypt at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. Benny's will arranged for flowers, specifically a single long-stemmed red rose, to be delivered to his widow, Mary Livingstone, every day for the rest of her life. Livingstone died nine years later on June 30, 1983.

In trying to explain his successful life, Benny summed it up by stating "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."

Upon his death, his family donated to UCLA his personal, professional, and business papers, as well as a collection of his television shows. The university established the Jack Benny Award in his honor in 1977 to recognize outstanding people in the field of comedy. Johnny Carson was the first award recipient. Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin purchased in 1957 to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Benny had commented, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."

Honors

Jack Benny has one star each on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for TV, film, and radio.

Posthumous tributes

When the price of a standard first-class US postal stamp was increased to 39 cents in 2006, fans petitioned for a Jack Benny stamp to honor his stage persona’s perpetual age. The U.S. Postal Service had issued a stamp depicting Jack Benny in 1991, as part of a booklet of stamps honoring comedians; however, the stamp was issued at the then-current rate of 29 cents.

Jack Benny Middle School in Waukegan, Illinois, is named after the famous comedian. Its motto matches his famous statement as "Home of the '39ers".

See also

List of most-listened-to radio programs

References

Further reading

New York Times, April 16, 1953, p43,"Jack Benny plans more work on tv."

New York Times, March 16, 1960, p75, "Canned laughter: Comedians are crying on the inside about CBS rule that public know of its use."

Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks with Marcia Borie, Doubleday & Company, 1978, 322 p.

Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story, Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Warner Books, 1990, 302 p.

CBS: Reflections in a Bloodshot Eye, by Robert Metz, New American Library, 1978.

The Laugh Crafters: Comedy Writing in Radio and TV's Golden Age, by Jordan R. Young; Past Times Publishing, 1999.

Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny, edited by Michael Leannah, BearManor Media, 2007.

Jack Benny v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 25 T.C. 197 (1955).

Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922-1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Further reading

Benny, Jack; Benny, Joan. (1990) Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. Warner Books.

Josefsberg, Milt. (1977) The Jack Benny Show. New Rochelle: Arlington House. ISBN 0-87000-347-X

Leannah, Michael, editor. (2007) Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny. BearManor Media. Contributing authors: Frank Bresee, Clair Schulz, Kay Linaker, Janine Marr, Pam Munter, Mark Higgins, B. J. Borsody, Charles A. Beckett, Jordan R. Young, Philip G. Harwood, Noell Wolfgram Evans, Jack Benny, Michael Leannah, Steve Newvine, Ron Sayles, Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Marc Reed, Derek Tague, Michael J. Hayde, Steve Thompson, Michael Mildredson.

External links

Audio

*Jack Benny Show – OTR Podcast – Daily episodes of The Jack Benny Program in MP3 format with new introductions and Benny Trivia

*Over 350 episodes of The Jack Benny Program in MP3 format

*Two broadcasts (East/West) of The Jello Program: "Christmas Shopping for Perfume and a Necktie" (12/17/39)

Video

Jack Benny at TVGuide.com

Jack Benny Fred Allen Feud

Jack Benny Audio History

International Jack Benny Fan Club

Online audio and video of Jack Benny

Copies of Jack Benny's Radio and TV scripts, with handwritten edits

Free 2 minute download of Humphrey Bogart on the Jack Benny Show

Jack Benny Middle School

Jack Benny Center for the Cultural Arts

"The Friars Club"

Jack Benny papers at the University of Wyoming - American Heritage Center

FBI file on Jack Benny

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