name	Harry Morgan
birth name	Harry Bratsberg
birth date	April 10, 1915
birth place	Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
nationality	American
education	Muskegon High School
alma mater	University of Chicago
occupation	Actor, director, writer
years active	1942–2002
spouse	Eileen Detchon (1940–85) (her death) 4 childrenBarbara Bushman (1986–present)
website	}}

Harry Morgan (born Harry Bratsberg. April 10, 1915) is an American actor. Morgan is well-known for his roles as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on ''M*A*S*H'' (1975–1983), Pete Porter on both ''Pete and Gladys'' (1960–1962) and ''December Bride'' (1954–1959), Detective Bill Gannon on ''Dragnet'' (1967–1970), and Amos Coogan on ''Hec Ramsey'' (1972–1974). He has appeared in more than 100 films.

Biography

Early life and career

Morgan was born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, of Norwegian and Swedish heritage. He was raised in Muskegon, Michigan, and graduated from Muskegon High School in 1933, where he achieved distinction as a statewide debating champion. He originally aspired to a law degree, but began acting while a junior at the University of Chicago in 1935.

Morgan began acting on stage under his birth name, joining the Group Theatre in New York City in 1937, and appearing in the original production of the Clifford Odets play ''Golden Boy'', followed by a host of successful Broadway roles alongside such other Group members as Lee J. Cobb, Elia Kazan, Sanford Meisner, and Karl Malden.

Morgan did summer stock at the Pine Brook Country Club located in the countryside of Nichols, Connecticut, with the Group Theatre (New York) formed by Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford and Lee Strasberg in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Screen debut

Morgan made his screen debut (originally using the name "Henry Morgan") in the 1942 movie ''To the Shores of Tripoli''. His screen name later would become "Henry 'Harry' Morgan" and eventually Harry Morgan, to avoid confusion with the then-popular humorist of the same name.

In the same year, Morgan appeared in the movie "Orchestra Wives" as a young man pushing his way to the front of a ballroom crowd with his date to hear Glenn Miller's band play. Ironically, a few years later, still credited as Henry Morgan, was cast in the role of pianist Chummy MacGregor in the 1954 biopic The Glenn Miller Story.

Screen career

Morgan continued to play a number of significant roles on the big screen in such films as ''The Ox-Bow Incident'' (1943), ''Wing and a Prayer'' (1944), ''Dragonwyck'' (1946), ''The Big Clock'' (1948), ''High Noon'' (1952), and several films in the 1950s for director Anthony Mann, including ''Bend of the River'' (1952), ''Thunder Bay'' (1953), ''The Glenn Miller Story'' (1954), ''The Far Country'' (1955) and ''Strategic Air Command'' (1955); in his later film career he appeared in ''Inherit the Wind'' (1960), ''How the West Was Won'' (1962), ''John Goldfarb, Please Come Home'' (1965), ''Frankie and Johnny'' (1966), ''Support Your Local Sheriff!'' (1969), ''Support Your Local Gunfighter!'' (1971), ''Snowball Express'' (1972), ''The Shootist'' (1976), ''The Wild Wild West Revisited'' (1979), and a cameo in the film version of ''Dragnet'' (1987) with Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks. Besides all of the Anthony Mann films, Morgan was in a number of movies with James Stewart, including ''Strategic Air Command (film)'' (1955), ''The Mountain Road'' (1960), ''How the West Was Won'' (1962), ''The Glenn Miller Story'' (1954) and ''The Shootist'' (1976), also with John Wayne, with whom Morgan also shared scenes in ''How the West Was Won'', featuring Morgan portraying Ulysses S. Grant to Wayne's William Tecumseh Sherman in the John Ford-directed segment of the Cinerama film.

1950s TV roles

Morgan hosted the NBC radio series ''Mystery in the Air'' starring Peter Lorre in 1947. On CBS, he played Pete Porter in ''Pete and Gladys'' (1960–1962), with Cara Williams as wife Gladys. ''Pete and Gladys'' was a spinoff of ''December Bride'' (1954–1959), starring Spring Byington, Dean Miller, Frances Rafferty, and Verna Felton. When Miller and Rafferty died within three months of each other in 2004, Morgan became the last surviving member of the ''December Bride'' cast.

1960s: ''Dragnet'' and other roles

In the 1964–1965 season, Morgan co-starred as Seldom Jackson in the 26-week NBC comedy/drama ''Kentucky Jones'', starring Dennis Weaver.

Morgan is even more widely recognized as Officer Bill Gannon, Joe Friday's partner in the revived version of ''Dragnet'' (1967–1970). Morgan had also appeared with ''Dragnet'' star Jack Webb in two film noir movies, ''Dark City'' (1950) and ''Appointment with Danger'' (1951), and was an early regular member of Jack Webb's stock company of actors on the original ''Dragnet'' radio show. Morgan later worked on two other shows for Webb, 1971's ''The D.A.'' and the 1972–1974 western ''Hec Ramsey.'' Morgan also appeared in at least one episode of Gunsmoke.

''M*A*S*H'' (1975–1983)

Morgan's first appearance on ''M*A*S*H'' was in the show's third season (1974–1975), when he played spaced-out Major General Bartford Hamilton Steele ("That's three e's, not all in a row!") in "The General Flipped at Dawn", which originally aired on September 10, 1974. Steele is convinced that the 4077th needs to move closer to the front line, to be near the action.

Morgan's memorable Emmy-nominated performance impressed the producers of the show. The following season, Morgan joined the cast of ''M*A*S*H'' as Colonel Sherman T. Potter. Morgan replaced McLean Stevenson, who had left the show at the end of the previous season. Col. Potter was a career army officer who was tough, yet good-humored and caring—a father figure to the people under his command. The picture of Col. Potter's wife, on the right side of his desk, is actually that of Eileen Detchon, Morgan's real-life wife at the time. He asked if he could use the picture of his wife, and the producers had no objections.

In 1980, Morgan won an Emmy award for his performance on ''M*A*S*H''. After the end of the series, Morgan reprised the Potter role in a short-lived spinoff series, ''AfterMASH''.

Later years

In 1986, he costarred with Hal Linden in ''Blacke's Magic'', a show about a magician who doubled as a detective solving unusual crimes. The series lasted only one season.

In 1987, Morgan played Martin Vanderhof on a TV series version of Kaufman and Hart's Pulitzer prize-winning play ''You Can't Take It With You''.

In 1987, Morgan reprised his Bill Gannon character for a supporting role in another film version of ''Dragnet'', a parody of the original series written by and starring Dan Aykroyd and co-starring Tom Hanks and Christopher Plummer.

In the 1990s, Morgan played the role of Judge Stoddard Bell in a series of ''The Incident''; ''Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore (TV 1992)'' and ''Incident in a Small Town (1994 TV)'' TV movies starring Walter Matthau. He was on an episode of ''The Simpsons'' as Officer Bill Gannon from ''Dragnet'' in the 7th season ("Mother Simpson") and had a recurring role on ''3rd Rock from the Sun'' as Professor Suter. Morgan directed episodes for several TV series, including two episodes of ''The Alfred Hitchcock Hour'' and eight episodes of ''M*A*S*H''. Morgan had a guest role on ''The Jeff Foxworthy Show'' as Raymond and a guest role on ''Grace Under Fire'' as Jean's pot-smoking boyfriend.

In 2006, Morgan was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.

At 96, Morgan is one of the oldest living Hollywood male actors.

Personal life

Morgan has been married twice: first to Eileen Detchon, from 1940 until her death in 1985, and then to Barbara Bushman Quine (granddaughter of silent film star Francis X. Bushman) from December 17, 1986 to the present. He had four sons with his first wife: Christopher, Charles, Paul, and Daniel (who died in 1989). His grandson Spencer Morgan is a columnist at the ''New York Observer''.

In July 1997, Morgan was charged with abusing his wife a year earlier, after a beating left her with injuries to her eye, foot, and arm. Prosecutors dropped the charges after the 82-year-old actor completed a six-month domestic violence counseling program.

During Morgan's tenure on ''M*A*S*H'', a photograph of Eileen Detchon regularly appeared on the desk of his character, Sherman T. Potter, to represent Potter's wife, Mildred. Mildred was also the name of Morgan's character's wife in ''High Noon'', as well as the name of his wife in the movie ''The Apple Dumpling Gang''. A drawing of a horse, seen on the wall behind Potter's desk, was drawn by Morgan's grandson, Jeremy Morgan. In addition, Eileen was the name of the wife of Officer Bill Gannon on ''Dragnet''.

Filmography

''To the Shores of Tripoli'' (1942)

''The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe'' (1942)

''Orchestra Wives'' (1942)

''The Omaha Trail'' (1942)

''A Scrap of Paper'' (1943)

''Crash Dive'' (1943)

''The Ox-Bow Incident'' (1943)

''Happy Land'' (1943)

''The Eve of St. Mark'' (1944)

''Roger Touhy, Gangster'' (1944)

''Wing and a Prayer'' (1944)

''Gentle Annie'' (1944)

''A Bell for Adano'' (1945)

''State Fair'' (1945)

''From This Day Forward'' (1946)

''Johnny Comes Flying Home'' (1946)

''Dragonwyck'' (1946)

''Somewhere in the Night'' (1946)

''It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog'' (1946)

''Crime Doctor's Man Hunt'' (1946)

''The Gangster'' (1947)

''All My Sons'' (1948)

''The Big Clock'' (1948)

''Race Street'' (1948)

''The Saxon Charm'' (1948)

''Moonrise'' (1948)

''Yellow Sky'' (1948)

''Hello Out There'' (1949)

''Down to the Sea in Ships'' (1949)

''The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend'' (1949)

''Madame Bovary'' (1949)

''Strange Bargain'' (1949)

''Red Light'' (1949)

''Holiday Affair'' (1949)

''Outside the Wall'' (1950)

''The Showdown'' (1950)

''Dark City'' (1950)

''Belle Le Grand'' (1951)

''When I Grow Up'' (1951)

''Appointment with Danger'' (1951)

''The Highwayman'' (1951)

''The Well'' (1951)

''The Blue Veil'' (1951)

''Boots Malone'' (1952)

''Scandal Sheet'' (1952)

''Bend of the River'' (1952)

''My Six Convicts'' (1952)

''High Noon'' (1952)

''What Price Glory?'' (1952)

''Big Jim McLain'' (1952)

''Apache War Smoke'' (1952)

''Toughest Man in Arizona'' (1952)

''Stop, You're Killing Me'' (1952)

''Thunder Bay'' (1953)

''Arena'' (1953)

''Champ for a Day'' (1953)

''Torch Song'' (1953)

''The Glenn Miller Story'' (1954)

''Prisoner of War (1954)

''The Forty-Niners'' (1954)

''About Mrs. Leslie'' (1954)

''The Far Country'' (1955)

''Strategic Air Command'' (1955)

''Not as a Stranger'' (1955)

''Pete Kelly's Blues'' (1955)

''The Bottom of the Bottle'' (1956)

''Backlash'' (1956)

''Operation Teahouse'' (1956)

''Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers'' (1956)

''Star in the Dust'' (1956)

''The Teahouse of the August Moon'' (1956)

''Under Fire (1957)

''It Started with a Kiss'' (1959)

''The Mountain Road'' (1960)

''Inherit the Wind''(1960)

''Cimarron'' (1960)

''How the West Was Won'' (1962)

''John Goldfarb, Please Come Home'' (1965)

''Frankie and Johnny'' (1966)

''What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?'' (1966)

''The Flim-Flam Man'' (1967)

''Star Spangled Salesman'' (1968)

''Support Your Local Sheriff!'' (1969)

''Viva Max!'' (1969)

''The Barefoot Executive'' (1971)

''Support Your Local Gunfighter!'' (1971)

''Scandalous John'' (1971)

''Snowball Express'' (1972)

''Charley and the Angel'' (1973)

''The Apple Dumpling Gang'' (1975)

''The Shootist'' (1976)

''The Cat from Outer Space'' (1978)

''The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again'' (1979)

''The Wild Wild West Revisted'' (1979)

''More Wild Wild West'' (1980)

''The Flight of Dragons'' (1982)

''Dragnet'' (1987)

''The Incident'' (1990)

''Against Her Will: An Incident in Baltimore'' (1992)

''Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick'' (1996)

''Family Plan'' (1998)

''Crosswalk'' (1999)

References

External links

Harry Morgan Interview with Archive of American Television

Category:1915 births Category:Actors from Michigan Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television directors Category:Living people Category:American people of Norwegian descent Category:American people of Swedish descent Category:People from Detroit, Michigan Category:People from Muskegon, Michigan Category:Emmy Award winners

cs:Harry Morgan da:Harry Morgan de:Harry Morgan fr:Harry Morgan (acteur) nl:Harry Morgan no:Harry Morgan pl:Harry Morgan (aktor) ro:Harry Morgan ru:Морган, Гарри simple:Harry Morgan sh:Harry Morgan fi:Harry Morgan sv:Harry Morgan tl:Harry Morgan

Richard Allen Boone (June 18, 1917 – January 10, 1981) was an American actor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns and for starring in the TV series ''Have Gun – Will Travel''.

Early life

Boone was born in Los Angeles, California, the middle child of Cecile (née Beckerman) and Kirk E. Boone, a well-to-do corporate lawyer. He was descended from Squire Boone, younger brother of frontiersman Daniel Boone. Richard's nephew is actor Randy Boone (born 1942); his cousin is actor-singer Pat Boone; his first cousin once removed is actress-singer Debby Boone (Pat's daughter). Boone graduated from Hoover High School in Glendale, California. He attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, but left prior to graduation and tried his hand at oil-rigging, bartending, painting and writing before joining the United States Navy in 1941. He served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II, seeing combat as an aviation ordnanceman and gunner on TBM Avenger torpedo bombers.

Career

After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to study acting at the Actors Studio in New York. Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on Broadway in 1947 in the play ''Medea'' and appeared in ''Macbeth'' (1948) and ''The Man'' (1950).

Elia Kazan used Boone to feed lines to an actress for a screen test for Lewis Milestone. Milestone was not impressed with the actress, but was impressed enough with Boone's voice to summon him to Hollywood where he was given a seven year contract with Fox.

In 1950, Boone made his screen debut as a Marine in Milestone's ''Halls of Montezuma''. In 1953, he played Pontius Pilate in the first released Cinemascope film, ''The Robe''. He had only one scene in the film, in which he gives instructions to Richard Burton, who plays the centurion ordered to crucify Christ. When he was ordered to appear in another film for Fox at the same time as filming ''The Robe'' he ended his contract with the studio.

During the filming of ''Halls of Montezuma'' he befriended Jack Webb, who was then producing and starring in ''Dragnet''. The writer of ''Dragnet'' was preparing a series about a doctor for NBC. From 1954 to 1956, Boone became a familiar face in the lead role of that medical drama, ''Medic'', receiving an Emmy nomination for ''Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series'' in 1955. While on ''Medic'', he also guest starred as the character Everett Brayer on NBC's ''Frontier'' anthology series in the episode "The Salt War."

It was Boone's second television series, ''Have Gun – Will Travel'', which made him a national star with his role as Paladin. The show was first offered to Randolph Scott who turned it down but gave the script to Boone whilst they were making the film ''Ten Wanted Men The show ran from 1957 to 1963, with Boone receiving two more Emmy nominations in 1959 and 1960.

He starred in three movies with John Wayne: ''The Alamo'' (as Sam Houston), ''Big Jake'', and ''The Shootist''.

During the 1960s Boone appeared regularly on other television programs. He was an occasional guest panelist and also a mystery guest on ''What's My Line?'', the Sunday Night CBS-TV quiz show. On that show, he talked with host John Charles Daly about their days working together on the TV show ''The Front Page''. Boone also had his own television anthology, ''The Richard Boone Show''. Even though it aired only from 1963 to 1964, he received his fourth Emmy nomination in 1964. Along with ''The Danny Kaye Show'' and ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'', ''The Richard Boone Show'' won a Golden Globe for Best Show in 1964.

After cancellation of his weekly show, Boone and his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. While living on Oahu, Boone helped persuade Leonard Freeman to film ''Hawaii Five-O'' exclusively in Hawaii. Prior to that, Freeman had planned to do "establishing" location shots in Hawaii but principal production in southern California. Boone and others convinced Freeman that the islands could offer all necessary support for a major TV series and would provide an authenticity otherwise unobtainable. Freeman, impressed by Boone's love of Hawaii, offered him the role of Steve McGarrett; however, Boone turned it down and the role went to Jack Lord, who shared Boone's enthusiasm, which Freeman considered vital. Coincidentally, Jack Lord had appeared with Boone in the first episode of ''Have Gun – Will Travel'', entitled "Three Bells to Perdido." Boone at that time had shot a pilot for CBS called ''Kona Coast'' that he hoped CBS would adopt as a series, but they went with ''Hawaii Five-0''.

The six-foot-one-inch (1.85-m) Boone continued to appear in movies, typically as the villain. These include ''The Raid'' (1954), ''Man Without a Star'' (1955 King Vidor), ''The Tall T'' (1957 Budd Boetticher), ''The War Lord'' (1965 Franklin Schaffner), ''Hombre'' (1967 Martin Ritt), ''The Arrangement'' (1969 Elia Kazan), ''The Kremlin Letter'' (1970 John Huston), ''Big Jake'' (1971 Michael Wayne), and ''The Shootist'' (1976 Don Siegel).

Boone starred in the short-lived TV series ''Hec Ramsey'', which was about the turn-of-the-20th-century Western-style detective who preferred to use his brain instead of his gun, in the early 1970s. He once wryly noted to an interviewer in 1972, "You know, Hec Ramsey is a lot like Paladin, only fatter."

Boone returned to The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, where he had once studied acting, to teach it in the mid 1970s.

In 1965, he came third in the Laurel Award for Best Action Performance; Sean Connery won first place with ''Goldfinger'' and Burt Lancaster won second place with ''The Train''.

Personal life

In his youth, Boone attended the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California near Oceanside. It was at the Academy where Boone was introduced to theatre, under the tutelage of Virginia Atkinson, who spawned theatre interest in many who eventually found their way to Hollywood. Robert Walker, another Academy graduate and member of the school’s theatre club, Masque & Wig, became a close acquaintance of Richard Boone.

Boone was married three times: to Jane Hopper (1937–1940), Mimi Kelly (1949–1950), and Claire McAloon (by whom he had a son, Peter) (1951–1981).

Boone moved to St. Augustine, Florida, from Hawaii in 1970 and worked with the production of Cross and Sword, when he was not acting on television or in movies, until his death in 1981. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. During the 1970s, he wrote a newspaper column for the ''St. Augustine Record'' called "It Seems To Me." He also gave acting lectures at Flagler College in 1972–1973. In his final role, Boone played Commodore Matthew Perry in ''Bushido Blade''. He died soon afterward of pneumonia while suffering from throat cancer in St. Augustine. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii.

Filmography

Film

''Halls of Montezuma'' (1951)

''Call Me Mister'' (1951)

''The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel'' (1951)

''Red Skies of Montana'' (1952)

''Return of the Texan'' (1952)

''Kangaroo'' (1952)

''Way of a Gaucho'' (1952)

''Pony Soldier'' (1952)

''Man on a Tightrope'' (1953)

''Vicki'' (1953)

''The Robe'' (1953)

''City of Bad Men'' (1953)

''Beneath the 12-Mile Reef'' (1953)

''Dragnet'' (1954)

''The Siege at Red River'' (1954)

''The Raid'' (1954)

''Ten Wanted Men'' (1955)

''Man Without a Star'' (1955)

''Robbers' Roost'' (1955)

''The Big Knife'' (1955)

''Battle Stations'' (1956)

''Star in the Dust'' (1956)

''Away All Boats'' (1956)

''The Tall T'' (1957)

''Lizzie'' (1957)

''The Garment Jungle'' (1957)

''I Bury the Living'' (1958)

''Ocean's Eleven'' (1960)

''The Alamo'' (1960)

''A Thunder of Drums'' (1961)

''Rio Conchos'' (1964)

''The War Lord'' (1965)

''Hombre'' (1967)

''Kona Coast (film)'' (1968)

''The Night of the Following Day'' (1968)

''The Arrangement'' (1969)

''The Kremlin Letter'' (1970)

''Madron'' (1970)

''Big Jake'' (1971)

''Against a Crooked Sky'' (1975)

''Diamante Lobo'' (1976)

''The Shootist'' (1976)

''The Last Dinosaur'' (1977)

''The Big Sleep'' (1978)

''Winter Kills'' (1979)

''The Bushido Blade'' (1981)

TV

''The Front Page'' (1949)

''Dragnet'' (1954)

''Medic'' (1954)

''Have Gun – Will Travel'' (1957–1963)

''The Richard Boone Show'' (1963–1964)

''The Mark Waters Story'' (1969)

''In Broad Daylight'' (1971)

''Deadly Harvest'' (1972)

''Hec Ramsey'' (1972)

''Goodnight, My Love'' (1972)

''The Great Niagara'' (1974)

''The Last Dinosaur'' (1977)

''The Hobbit'' (voice of Smaug the Dragon) (1977)

Notes

References

Rothel, David ''Richard Boone: A Knight Without Armor in a Savage Land'' 2000 Empire Publishing

External links

Category:1917 births Category:1981 deaths Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Cancer deaths in Florida Category:Deaths from esophageal cancer Category:People from Honolulu, Hawaii Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:People from St. Augustine, Florida Category:Stanford University alumni Category:United States Navy sailors Category:Western (genre) film actors

de:Richard Boone es:Richard Boone fr:Richard Boone it:Richard Boone pt:Richard Boone sh:Richard Boone fi:Richard Boone sv:Richard Boone

Name	Rick Lenz
Birth date	November 21, 1939 (age 70)
Birth place	Springfield, Illinois }}

Rick Lenz (born November 21, 1939) is an American actor best known for repeating his Broadway role as Igor Sullivan in the 1969 film ''Cactus Flower''.

Career

Hal Erickson of AllMovie Guide says, “tall expressive leading man Rick Lenz has steadfastly avoided pigeonholing as a 'type,' playing gunslingers, victims, villains, patient husbands, insensitive fools, intellectuals, and even a wimpy murder-mystery fanatic in the Hallmark remake of Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt.”

Early Career Educated at the University of Michigan and New York University, Rick Lenz directed the Jackson, Michigan Civic Theater for two years before going to New York to seek work as an actor. In 1965, at the age of 25, he made his Broadway debut in Mating Dance, starring Van Johnson. That show closed on opening night, but it was also Lenz’s big break; stage producer David Merrick was in the audience and soon afterward cast him in the Broadway hit, Cactus Flower as understudy to the juvenile lead, Igor Sullivan. Lenz later took over the role and played it for a year. Film producer Mike Frankovich and Walter Matthau saw him in the part and cast him as Igor in the movie version of Cactus Flower (1969), in which he co-starred opposite Goldie Hawn as well as Matthau and Ingrid Bergman.

In the 1970s, Rick Lenz appeared in several Hollywood movies, including the Disney film, Scandalous John; Where Does It Hurt?, opposite Peter Sellers; Little Dragons, directed by Curtis Hanson; John Wayne’s last movie, The Shootist; Jonathan Demme’s Melvin And Howard and How Do I Love Thee?, based on the novel by Peter DeVries and starring Jackie Gleason and Maureen O’Hara.

Television (1967–2003), Lenz appeared in many popular television programs, including recurring or regular roles on Green Acres; Hec Ramsey (NBC Mystery Movie opposite Richard Boone); Owen Marshall, Councilor At Law; Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man; Murder, She Wrote; Simon And Simon and Falcon Crest. Made for television movies included Reunion, Spooner (Disney), Elvis And The Beauty Queen, Malice In Wonderland with Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Alexander, Dorothy Parker’s Ladies Of The Corridor and the Hallmark Hall Of Fame remake of Hitchcock’s Shadow Of A Doubt.

Recent Years Lenz has pursued his passion for writing and painting. His first play, The Epic of Buster Friend, was produce in 1973 at the Theatre De Lys (now the Lucille Lortell Theatre) in New York City and was later directed for PBS by Michael Kahn. In 1981 Lenz co-wrote the pilot of the ABC television series Aloha Paradise, as well writing several of the episodes.

Rick Lenz now resides in Los Angeles with his spouse, Linda. He has three children, Scott, Charles and Abigail.

External links

Category:1939 births Category:American film actors Category:American television actors Category:Living people

name	Jack Webb
birth date	April 02, 1920
birth place	Santa Monica, California, U.S.
death date	December 23, 1982
death place	West Hollywood, California, U.S.
other names	John Randolph
occupation	Actor, producer, director, screenwriter
years active	1954–78
spouse	}}

Jack Webb (April 2, 1920 – December 23, 1982), also known by the pseudonym John Randolph, was an American actor, television producer, director and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series ''Dragnet''. He was also the founder of his own production company, Mark VII Limited.

Early life

Born in Santa Monica, California, Webb grew up in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. His Jewish father left home before Webb was born, and Webb never knew him. He was raised a Roman Catholic by his Irish-Indian mother. One of the tenants in his mother's rooming house was an ex-jazzman who began Webb's lifelong interest in jazz by giving him a recording of Bix Beiderbecke's "At the Jazz Band Ball".

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Webb lived in the parish of Our Lady of Loretto Church and attended Our Lady of Loretto Elementary School in Echo Park, where he served as an altar boy. He then attended Belmont High School, and later, the St. John's University, Minnesota, where he studied art. During World War II, Webb enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces. After washing out of flight training, he applied for and received a hardship discharge, being the primary financial support for his mother and grandmother.

Career

Acting

Following his discharge, he moved to San Francisco to star in his own radio show on ABC's KGO Radio. ''The Jack Webb Show'' was a half-hour comedy that had a limited run on ABC radio in 1946. By 1949 he had abandoned comedy for drama, and starred in ''Pat Novak for Hire'', a radio show about a man who worked as an unlicensed private detective. The program co-starred Raymond Burr. ''Pat Novak'' was notable for writing that imitated, almost to parody, the hard-boiled style of such writers as Raymond Chandler, with lines such as: ''"She drifted into the room like 98 pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was hot and sticky--like a furnace full of marshmallows."

Webb's radio shows included ''Johnny Modero, Pier 23;'' ''Jeff Regan, Investigator;'' ''Murder and Mr. Malone'' and ''One Out of Seven.'' Webb did all of the voices on ''One Out of Seven'', often vigorously attacking racial prejudice.

His most famous motion picture role was as the combat-hardened Marine Corps drill instructor at Parris Island in the 1957 film ''The D.I.,'' with Don Dubbins as a callow Marine private. Webb's characterization in this role (Sgt. Jim Moore) would be reflected in much of his later acting.

''Dragnet'' and stardom

Webb had a featured role as a crime lab technician in the 1948 film ''He Walked by Night'', based on the real-life murder of a California Highway Patrolman by Erwin Walker, a World War II army veteran and former Glendale police department employee. The film was done in semidocumentary style with technical assistance provided by Detective Sergeant Marty Wynn of the Los Angeles Police Department. ''He Walked by Night'''s thinly-fictionalized recounting of the 1946 Walker crime spree gave Webb the idea for ''Dragnet'': a recurring series based on real cases from LAPD police files, featuring authentic depictions of the modern police detective, including methods, mannerisms, and technical language.

With much assistance from Sgt. Marty Wynn and legendary LAPD chief William H. Parker, ''Dragnet'' hit radio airwaves in 1949 (running until 1954). It was then picked up as a television series by NBC, which aired episodes each season from 1952 to 1959. Webb played Sgt. Joe Friday, and Barton Yarborough co-starred as Sgt. Ben Romero. After Yarborough's death, Ben Alexander joined the cast as Officer Frank Smith.

Webb was a stickler for attention to detail. He believed viewers wanted "realism" and tried to give it to them. Webb had tremendous respect for those in law enforcement. He often said in interviews that he was angry about the "ridiculous amount" of abuse to which police were subjected by the press and the public. Webb was also impressed by the long hours, low pay, and injury rate among police investigators of the day, particularly in the LAPD, which was notorious for jettisoning officers who had become ill or injured in the line of duty. In announcing his vision of ''Dragnet'', Webb said he intended to perform a service for the police by showing them as low-key working class heroes. ''Dragnet'' moved away from earlier portrayals of the police in shows such as ''Jeff Regan'' and ''Pat Novak,'' which often showed them as brutal and even corrupt. According to one ''Dragnet'' technical advisor, when the advisor pointed out that several circumstances in an episode were extremely unlikely in real life, Webb responded, "You know that, and now I know that. But that little old lady in Kansas will never know the difference." ''Dragnet'' became a successful television show in 1952. Barton Yarborough died of a heart attack, and Barney Phillips (Sgt. Ed Jacobs) and Herbert Ellis (Officer Frank Smith) temporarily stepped in as partners. Veteran radio and film actor Ben Alexander soon took over the role of jovial, burly Officer Frank Smith. Alexander was popular and remained a cast member until the show's cancellation in 1959. In 1954, a full-length feature film adaptation of the series was released, starring Webb, Alexander, and Richard Boone.

''Dragnet'' began with the narration "The story you are about to see is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent." At the end of each show, the trial verdict of the suspect was announced by Hal Gibney. Webb frequently re-created entire floors of buildings on sound stages, such as the police headquarters at Los Angeles City Hall and a floor of the ''Los Angeles Herald-Examiner''.

In ''Dragnet'''s early days, Webb continued to appear in movies, notably as the best friend of William Holden's character in the 1950 Billy Wilder film ''Sunset Boulevard''. In 1950, Webb appeared alongside future 1960s ''Dragnet'' partner Harry Morgan in the film noir ''Dark City'', which also featured the first screen appearance of a new young actor named Charlton Heston. In contrast to the pair's straight-arrow image in ''Dragnet'', here Webb played a vicious card sharp in Dark City and Morgan a punch-drunk ex-fighter who tries to talk Heston back into a straight-and-narrow life.

In 1951, Webb introduced a short-lived radio series, ''Pete Kelly's Blues'', in an attempt to bring the music he loved to a broader audience. That show became the basis for a 1955 movie of the same name. In 1959 a television version was made. Neither were very successful. In the early 1960s Webb (along with actor Jeffrey Hunter) formed Apollo Productions. They made the TV series Temple Houston.

In 1963, Webb took over from William T. Orr as executive producer of the ABC detective series ''77 Sunset Strip''. He brought about wholesale changes in the program and retained only Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the role of Stuart Bailey. The outcome was a disaster. Ratings fell and the series was cancelled in its sixth season.

Beginning in early 1967, Webb produced and starred in a new color version of ''Dragnet'' for NBC, this time for Universal Television, which packaged all but one of his subsequent shows. Harry Morgan co-starred as Officer Bill Gannon. (Ben Alexander was unavailable, as he was co-starring in ''Felony Squad'' on ABC.) The show's pilot, originally produced as a made-for-TV movie in 1966, did not air until 1969. The TV movie was based on the Harvey Glatman serial killings. The TV series ran through 1970. To distinguish it from the original series, the year of production was added to the title (''Dragnet 1967,'' ''Dragnet 1968,'' etc.). The revival emphasized crime prevention and outreach to the public. Its attempts to address the contemporary youth-drug culture (such as the Blue Boy episode voted 85th-best TV episode of all time by TV Guide and TV Land) have led certain episodes on the topic to achieve cult status due to their strained attempts to be "with-it", such as Joe Friday grilling Blue Boy by asking him, "You're pretty high and far out, aren't you? What kind of kick are you on, son?"

In 1968, in concert with Robert A. Cinader, Webb produced NBC's popular ''Adam-12'', which focused on uniformed LAPD officers Pete Malloy (Martin Milner) and Jim Reed (Kent McCord), which ran until 1975. Webb also performed the classic "Copper Clappers" sketch during an appearance on ''The Tonight Show'' where a pokerfaced Joe Friday echoed Johnny Carson's equally-deadpan robbery report in which all the details started with "Cl" or least the letter C.

In the 1970s Webb began to expand his Mark VII Limited into other shows. The most successful of his 1970s efforts was ''Emergency!'', which portrayed the fledgling paramedic program of the L.A. County Fire Department. The show become a huge success, running from 1972–79, with ratings occasionally even topping its time slot competitor, ''All in the Family''. Webb cast his ex-wife, Julie London, as well as her second husband and ''Dragnet'' ensemble player Bobby Troup, as nurse Dixie McCall and Dr. Joe Early. There was even a cartoon spin-off, ''Emergency+4''.

Personal life

Webb's personal life was better defined by his love of jazz than his interest in police work. His life-long interest in the cornet and racially tolerant attitude allowed him to move easily in the jazz culture, where he met singer and actress Julie London. They married in 1947 and had two children. They later divorced, and Webb would marry three more times.

Webb's first marriage to Julie London ended in 1954. Subsequently, he married Dorothy Towne in 1955, divorcing in 1957, former Miss USA Jackie Loughery (to whom he was married from 1958 to 1964), and Opal Wright, who married him in 1980 and was widowed by his death in 1982. He had two daughters with Julie London: Stacy (1950–1996) and Lisa (born 1952). Stacy Webb authorized and collaborated on a book, ''Just the Facts, Ma'am; The Authorized Biography of Jack Webb, Creator of Dragnet, Adam-12, and Emergency'', by Daniel Moyer and Eugene Alvarez. It was published in 1999. Stacy did not live to see the publication of the book, having been killed in a car accident three years earlier.

Death

Jack Webb began working on scripts for a revival of ''Dragnet'' with Kent McCord as his partner. However, he died of a heart attack in 1982 at the age of 62.

He was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, and was given a funeral with full police honors. On Webb's death Chief Daryl Gates announced that badge number 714 which was used by Joe Friday in ''Dragnet'' would be retired. Mayor Tom Bradley of Los Angeles ordered all flags lowered to half-staff in Webb's honor for a day, and Webb was buried with a replica LAPD badge bearing the rank of Sergeant, and the number 714.

Webb has two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: for radio at 7040 Hollywood Boulevard, and for television at 6728 Hollywood Boulevard.

Selected filmography

{|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! colspan=4 style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film |- align="center" ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Year ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Film ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Role ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Notes |- | 1932 | ''Three on a Match'' | Boy in schoolyard | Uncredited |- | rowspan=2|1948 | ''Hollow Triumph'' | Bullseye | Uncredited |- | ''He Walked by Night'' | Lee | |- | 1949 | ''Sword in the Desert'' | Hoffman | Uncredited |- | rowspan=4|1950 | ''The Men'' | Norm | Alternative title: ''Battle Stripe'' |- | ''Sunset Boulevard'' | Artie Green | |- | ''Dark City'' | Augie | |- | ''Halls of Montezuma'' | Correspondent Dickerman | |- | rowspan=2|1951 | ''You're in the Navy Now'' | Ens. Anthony "Tony" Barbo | Alternative title: ''U.S.S. Teakettle'' |- | ''Appointment with Danger'' | Joe Regas | |- | 1954 | ''Dragnet'' | Sgt. Joe Friday | Director |- | 1955 | ''Pete Kelly's Blues'' | Pete Kelly | Producer/Director |- | 1957 | ''The D.I.'' | Tech Sgt. Jim Moore | Director |- | 1959 | ''-30-'' | Sam Gatlin | Director |- | 1961 | ''The Last Time I Saw Archie'' | William "Bill" Bowers | Producer |- | 1962 | ''Red Nightmare'' | Narrator | Producer |- |- align="center" ! colspan=4 style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Television |- align="center" ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Year ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Title ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Role ! style="background: #CCCCCC;" | Notes |- | 1951–1959 | ''Dragnet'' | Sergeant Joe Friday | 276 episodes |- | 1956–1957 | ''Noah's Ark'' | Creator of the series starring Paul Burke | 24 episodes |- | 1962–1963 | ''GE True'' | – | Director, 4 episodes |- | 1967–1970 | ''Dragnet 1967'' | Sergeant Joe Friday | 98 episodes |- | 1968–1975 | ''Adam-12'' | – | Writer, 174 episodes |- | rowspan=2|1971 | ''O'Hara, U.S. Treasury'' | Narrator | 1 episode |- | ''The Partners'' | The Commissioner | 1 episode |- | 1972–1976 | ''Emergency!'' | – | Director, 5 episodes |- | 1978 | ''Project UFO'' | Announcer | 1 episode |}

Discography

''Songs from Pete Kelly's Blues'' (1955)

''You're My Girl: Romantic Reflections by Jack Webb'' (1958)

''Golden Throats'' volume 1 (1988)

''Just the Tracks, Ma'am: The Warner Brothers Recordings'' (2000)

References

Further reading

Hugh W. Binyon: Reflections in a Pig's Eye Babcock Publishing; (paperback, 2002)

Michael J. Hayde: My Name's Friday: The Unauthorized but True Story of Dragnet and the Films of Jack Webb; Cumberland House Publishing; ISBN 1-58182-190-5 (paperback, 2001)

Jack Webb: The Badge: The Inside Story of One of America's Great Police Departments; Prentice-Hall; (hardback, 1958)

Maurice Zolotow: The True Story of Jack Webb The American Weekly, September 12, 19, 26, October 3, 1954.

External links

Badge 714 (''Dragnet'' and Webb fan site)

Pat Novak For Hire (''Pat Novak For Hire'' fan site)

AAFCollection.info Pictures of Jack Webb as an Air Cadet at the Rankin Aeronautical Academy at Tulare, California in 1943.

Category:Actors from California Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film producers Category:American military personnel of World War II Category:United States Army Air Forces soldiers Category:American radio actors Category:American television actors Category:American television directors Category:American television producers Category:American television writers Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Edgar Award winners Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:1920 births Category:1982 deaths Category:People from Echo Park, Los Angeles

de:Jack Webb es:Jack Webb fr:Jack Webb it:Jack Webb sh:Jack Webb fi:Jack Webb

Name	Jack Benny
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
Website	}}

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 on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, 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

''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). When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say." 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

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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