Texaco ("The Texas Company") is the name of an American oil retail brand. Its flagship product is its fuel "Texaco with Techron". It also owns the Havoline motor oil brand.

Texaco was an independent company until it merged into Chevron Corporation in 2001. It began as the Texas Fuel Company, founded in 1901 in Beaumont, Texas, by Joseph S. Cullinan, Thomas J. Donoghue, Walter Benona Sharp, and Arnold Schlaet upon the discovery of oil at Spindletop. For many years, Texaco was the only company selling gasoline under the same brand name in all 50 US states, as well as Canada, making it the most truly national brand among its competitors. Its current logo features a white star in a red circle (a reference to the lone star of Texas), leading to the long-running advertising jingles "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star" and "Star of the American Road."^{[citation needed]} The company was headquartered in Harrison, New York, near White Plains, prior to the merger with Chevron.

Texaco gasoline comes with Techron, an additive developed by Chevron, as of 2005, replacing the previous CleanSystem3. The Texaco brand is strong in the U.S., Latin America and West Africa. It has a presence in Europe as well; for example, it is a well-known retail brand in the UK, with around 1,100 Texaco-branded service stations.

History[link]

This section is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (November 2010)

A Texaco fuel station in Miami Beach, Florida

A Texaco fuel dispenser in England, United Kingdom

Founding through 1930s[link]

• 1901 – Founded in Beaumont, Texas. Known as the Texas Fuel Company.
• 1905 – Texaco establishes an operation in Antwerp, Belgium, under the name Continental Petroleum Company.
• 1913 – Texaco acquires control of the Central Petroleum Company.^[1]
• 1914 – Occupied new offices in Houston on the corner of San Jacinto and Rusk.
• 1928 – Texaco becomes the first U.S. oil company to sell its gasoline nationwide under one single brand name in all 48 states (50 states after Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union in 1959).
• 1931 – The Texas Company (Texaco's corporate name) purchases Indian Oil Company, based in Illinois, a move that expands Texaco's refining and marketing base in the Midwest and also gives Texaco the rights to Indian's manufacturing processes of Havoline "Wax Free" motor oil, which becomes a Texaco product and provides the company with a higher-quality motor oil product.
• 1932 – Texaco introduces Fire Chief gasoline nationwide, a motor fuel that meets the octane requirements for fire engines, and promotes it through a radio program over NBC hosted by Ed Wynn, the "Texaco Fire Chief."
• 1936 – Texaco begins supplying the Nationalist rebels in Spain with oil, and continues to do so for the duration of the war, delivering some 3,500,000 barrels (560,000 m³).^[2]
• 1936 – Marketing operations east of Suez (including Asia, East Africa, and Australasia) are placed into a joint venture with Standard Oil Company of California – Socal (Chevron) under the brand name Caltex, in exchange for Socal placing its Bahrain refinery and Arabian oilfields into the venture.
• 1937 – Texaco commissions industrial designer Walter Dorwin Teague to develop a modern service station design. The resulting "Teague" Texaco station design is a functional white building with green trimmings featuring one or more service bays for "Washing", "Marfak Lubrication", etc., an office area with large plate glass window for display of tires, batteries, and accessories, along with "Men" and "Ladies" restrooms featuring Texaco-green tile walls and floors. The Teague station design is typically built of white porcelain tile but local and regional variations could include painted brick, concrete brick, and stucco materials. Other features include red Texaco stars on the upper facade on outer sidewalls and above the service bays, and red lettering spelling out "TEXACO" above the office area. Stations are identified by the street from Texaco's "banjo" sign.
• 1938 – Texaco introduces Sky Chief gasoline, a premium grade fuel developed from the ground up as a high-octane gasoline rather than just an ethylized regular product. Sky Chief is dispensed from a silver gas pump in contrast with the red pump used for Fire Chief gasoline – a move that lasts many years until the early 1960s.
  

  

  1939 Texaco tanker truck by Dodge on display at the Henry Ford Museum.
• 1939 – Texaco becomes one of the first oil companies to introduce a "Registered Rest Room" program to ensure that restroom facilities at all Texaco stations nationwide maintained a standard level of cleanliness to the motoring public. The "Registered Rest Room" program is later copied by other oil companies and continued at Texaco until the energy crises of the 1970s, which was caused by oil embargoes.

1940s and 50s[link]

• 1940 – Torkild Rieber, CEO, is led to resign when his connections with German Nazism, and his supply of oil to the Fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War are made public^[3][4]
• 1947 – Texaco's European marketing operations are also placed into the Caltex joint venture
• 1947 – Texaco merged its British operation with Trinidad Leaseholds under the name Regent; it gained full control of Regent in 1956,^[5] but the Regent brand remained in use until 1968-9.
• 1954 – Texaco adds the detergent additive Petrox to its "Sky Chief" gasoline, which was also souped up with higher octane to meet the antiknock needs of new cars with high-compression engines. A new plant was built in Port Arthur, Texas specifically to manufacture Petrox.
• 1958 – Texaco became the sole sponsor of The Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC-TV. The nightly newscast had had difficulty retaining sponsors since it first took the air in the fall of 1956.
• 1959 – The Texas Company changes its corporate name to Texaco, Inc. to better reflect the value of the Texaco brand name, which represented the biggest selling gasoline brand in the U.S. and only marketer selling gasoline under one brand name in all 50 states.
• 1959 – Texaco acquires McColl-Frontenac Oil Company Ltd. of Canada and changes its name to Texaco Canada Ltd.^[6]
• Late 1950s – Bought Paragon Oil, a major fuel oil distribution company in the northeastern U.S.

1960s and 70s[link]

• 1961 – Texaco introduces the "The Man who wears the Star" campaign with the "Texaco Star Theme" written by W.A. Fredricks. The radio jingle (as of 1961), went as follows:

Texaco fuel station in Poá (São Paulo), Brazil

Both Fire Chief and Sky Chief gasolines are promoted as "Climate Controlled" as various blends of both gasolines are distributed to Texaco stations in various parts of the country.

• 1964 – Texaco introduces the "Matawan" service station design at a station in Matawan, New Jersey. Features include mansard roofing design, service bays moved to the side of station and sheetrock covering over most exterior walls.^[7]
• 1966 – Texaco replaces the long-running banjo sign with a new hexagon logo that had previously been test-marketed with the "Matawan" station design introduced two years earlier. The new logo featured red outline with TEXACO in black bold lettering and small banjo logo with red star and green T at bottom. Texaco also enters agreement with Howard Johnson's for Texaco credit card to be honored for charging of lodging and food at Howard Johnson motor lodges, a widespread trend of the time among major oil companies that would last until the 1973 oil crisis.
• 1967 – Regent name replaced by Texaco at British petrol stations.^[8]
• 1970 – In response to increasingly stringent federal emission standards that would ultimately lead to mandating of unleaded gasoline in 1975 and later-model cars and trucks, Texaco introduced Lead-free Texaco as the first regular-octane lead-free gasoline at stations in the Los Angeles area and throughout Southern California. Lead-free Texaco would become available nationwide in 1974, in time for the introduction of 1975-model vehicles.
• 1978 – Texaco Canada Ltd. merges with Texaco Explorations Canada Ltd. to form Texaco Canada Inc.^[6]

1980s and 90s[link]

• November 21, 1980 – Lake Peigneur/Jefferson Island disaster
• 1982 – The new service station design emphasizes use of dark colors including, black, red and gray. Gasoline products receive name changes with the advent of self-service including Lead-free Texaco to Texaco Unleaded, Fire Chief to Texaco Regular, and Super Lead-free Sky Chief to Texaco Super Unleaded.

• 1985 – On November 19, Pennzoil (represented by famous Houston litigator Joe Jamail) won a US$10.53 billion verdict against Texaco in the largest civil verdict in US history (Texaco established a signed contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Gordon Getty).
• 1987 – Texaco files for bankruptcy; company continues trading under protection of U.S. bankruptcy laws.
• 1988 – Texaco and Saudi Aramco agree to form a joint venture known as Star Enterprise in which Saudi Aramco would own a 50% share of Texaco's refining and marketing operations in the eastern U.S. and Gulf Coast.^[9]
• 1989 – Texaco introduces System3 gasolines in all three grades of fuel, featuring the latest detergent additive technology to improve performance by reducing deposits that clog fuel injection systems. Texaco Canada Inc sold to Imperial Oil with retail operations converted to Esso brand.
• 1991 – The company was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[10]
• 1993 – Several dozen tribal leaders and residents from the Ecuadoran Amazon file a billion-dollar class-action lawsuit against Texaco, as a result of massive ecological pollution of the area and rivers around Texaco's Ecuadorian offshore drilling sites, causing toxic contamination of approximately 30,000 residents.^[11]
• 1994 – Texaco's System3 gasolines replaced by new CleanSystem3 gasoline for improved engine performance.
• 1995 – Texaco merges its Danish and Norwegian downstream operations with those of Norsk Hydro under the new brand HydroTexaco. This joint venture was sold in 2007 to Norwegian retail interests as YX Energi, following the purchase of Hydro by Statoil.
• 1996 – Texaco pays over $170 million to settle racial discrimination lawsuits filed by black employees at the company. It was the largest racial discrimination lawsuit settlement in the U.S. at the time, and was particularly damaging to Texaco's public relations when tapes were released containing ethnic slurs used repeatedly by company officers at high-level corporate meetings.^[12]
• 1998 – Formed joint venture Equilon with Shell Oil Company, combining their Western and Midwestern U.S. refining and marketing.^[13] This gave rise to the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court antitrust case of Texaco Inc. v. Dagher, which cleared both Texaco and Shell of any antitrust liability concerning the pricing of Equilon's gasoline.
• 1998 – Formed joint venture Motiva with Shell Oil Company and Saudi Aramco in which the Star Enterprise operations were merged with the Eastern and Gulf Coast U.S. refining and marketing operations of Shell.^[13]

2000 to 2010[link]

• 2001 – Texaco purchases right to NiMH battery used in electric vehicles, Chevron Corporation then merges with Texaco six days later. Shell purchases Texaco's interest in the Equilon and Motiva joint ventures.^[14]
• 2002 – Shell Oil Company begins converting its Texaco stations to the Shell brand, a process expected to be complete by June 2004, "the largest retail re-branding initiative in American business history."^[15]
• July 2004 – Chevron regains non-exclusive rights to the Texaco brand name in the U.S.^[16]
• August 2005 – Texaco introduces the Techron additive into its fuels in the U.S. and parts of Latin America.^[17]
• July 2006 – Chevron regains exclusive rights to the Texaco brand name in the U.S. and begins opening up gas stations across the U.S. and sold some of its BP and its Citgo stations in the southeast.^[18]
• 2007 – Delek Benelux took over marketing activities for Chevron Global Energy Inc. in Benelux, including 869 filling stations, mostly under the Texaco brand.^[19] Chevron Corporation sold its Conoco stations in Mississippi to the Texaco brand name, a process to be complete at the end of the year.
• April 2010 – Chevron continued to allow independent jobbers to switch to the Texaco brand, such as the small chain of BP gas stations in Mississippi operated by Mississippi Oil/Smith Petroleum as Dandy Dan C-Stores.^[20]
• July 2010 – Chevron and Texaco end retail operations in the Mid-Atlantic US, removing their brand from 1,100 stations in Delaware, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Washington, D.C., and parts of Tennessee.^[21]

Corporate headquarters[link]

Prior to the merger, Texaco's headquarters, a 750,000-square-foot (70,000 m²) building, were in Harrison, New York, near White Plains.^[22][23][24] In 2002, Chevron sold the former Texaco headquarters to Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley bought the building and the surrounding 107 acres (0.43 km²) for $42 million.^[22]

Sponsorships[link]

Racing driver Nigel Mansell driving in the 1993 CART IndyCar World Series

Texaco is associated with the Havoline brand of motor oil and other automotive products. It was one of the sponsors of NASCAR with drivers like Davey Allison, Ernie Irvan, Ricky Rudd, Jamie McMurray, Casey Mears, and Juan Pablo Montoya. Texaco last sponsored the #42 Dodge driven by Montoya. Havoline sponsored a NASCAR race car continuously from the early 1980s through the 2008 season. At the end of the 2008 NASCAR season, Texaco/Havoline officially ended their sponsorship with NASCAR and Chip Ganassi Racing. This brought to a close a 20-plus year relationship with the sport. Texaco has also has also been involved in open wheel racing, sponsoring the Texaco Grand Prix of Houston along with sponsoring drivers like Indianapolis 500 winner Mario Andretti and his son Michael.

Texaco was long associated with the Metropolitan Opera as sole sponsor of its radio broadcasts for 63 years. It was identified as well with such entertainment legends as Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Milton Berle (many of their shows were originally sponsored by Texaco – see Texaco Star Theatre, which includes the sponsorship lyrics of the opening theme: "We're the men of Texaco, We work from Maine to Mexico..."). Berle's program was broadcast in the same time slot as Fulton J. Sheen's religious program for a while, thus leading to Berle's oft-quoted quip, "We both have the same boss – Sky Chief!"

In Latin America, Texaco sponsors Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho. In West Africa, Texaco sponsors the soccer-based comic Supa Strikas.

Environmental issues[link]

From 1965–1993, Texaco participated in a consortium to develop the Lago Agrio oil field in Ecuador. It has been accused of extensive environmental damage from these operations, and faces legal claims from both private plaintiffs and the government of Ecuador. The case has been widely publicized by environmental activists and is the subject of Crude, a 2009 documentary film by Joe Berlinger. Chevron claims that it is being unfairly targeted as a deep pocket defendant, when the actual responsibility lies with the government and its national oil company.

The NiMH chemistry used in modern hybrid vehicles was invented by ECD Ovonics founder, Stan Ovshinksy, and Dr. Masahiko Oshitani of the Yuasa Company^[25][26] In 1994, General Motors acquired a controlling interest in Ovonics's battery development and manufacturing. On October 10, 2001, Texaco purchased GM's share in GM Ovonics, and Chevron completed its acquisition of Texaco six days later. In 2003, Texaco Ovonics Battery Systems was restructured into Cobasys, a 50/50 joint venture between Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) Ovonics.^[27] Chevron's influence over Cobasys extends beyond a strict 50/50 joint venture. Chevron holds a 19.99% interest in ECD Ovonics.^[28] In addition, Chevron maintains the right to seize all of Cobasys' intellectual property rights in the event that ECD Ovonics does not fulfill its contractual obligations.^[29] On September 10, 2007, Chevron filed a legal claim that ECD Ovonics has not fulfilled its obligations. ECD Ovonics disputes this claim.^[30] Since that time, the arbitration hearing was repeatedly suspended while the parties negotiate with an unknown prospective buyer. No agreement has been reached with the potential buyer.^[31] Cobasys's patents relating to NiMH batteries expire in 2015.

In her book, Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, published in February 2007, Sherry Boschert argues that large-format NiMH batteries are commercially viable but that Cobasys refuses to sell or license them to small companies or individuals. Boschert argues that Cobasys accepts only very large orders for these batteries. When Boschert conducted her research, major auto makers showed little interest in large orders for large-format NiMH batteries. However, Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV-4EVs. Because no other companies were willing to make large orders, Cobasys was not manufacturing nor licensing any large format NiMH battery technology for automotive purposes. Boschert concludes that "it's possible that Cobasys (Chevron) is squelching all access to large NiMH batteries through its control of patent licenses in order to remove a competitor to gasoline. Or it's possible that Cobasys simply wants the market for itself and is waiting for a major automaker to start producing plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles."^[32]

In an interview with the Economist, Ovshinsky subscribed to the former view. "I think we at ECD we made a mistake of having a joint venture with an oil company, frankly speaking. And I think it’s not a good idea to go into business with somebody whose strategies would put you out of business, rather than building the business.^[33]"

In December 2006, Cobasys and General Motors announced that they had signed a contract under which Cobasys provides NiMH batteries for the Saturn Aura hybrid sedan.^[34] In March 2007, GM announced that it would use Cobasys NiMH batteries in the 2008 Chevrolet Malibu hybrid as well.

In October 2007, International Acquisitions Services, Inc. and Innovative Transportation Systems AG filed suit against Cobasys and its parents for refusing to fill a large, previously agreed-upon order for large-format NiMH batteries to be used in the electric Innovan.^[31]

In August 2008, Mercedes-Benz U.S. International Inc. filed suit against Cobasys claiming that Cobasys isn’t delivering the batteries it agreed to build for Mercedes-Benz’s planned hybrid SUV.^[35]

Cobasys was sold^[36] in 2009 to SB Li Motive, which is a joint venture formed by Bosch and Samsung to develop lithium ion batteries for automotive applications. The sale price was not disclosed. The German-Korean company will integrate Cobasys as the North American branch of the company. Cobasys will supply batteries to the new Mercedes ML450 hybrid.

See also[link]

	Hudson Valley portal
	Texas portal
	Companies portal
	Energy portal

• Chevron Corporation
• Caltex – joint venture between Texaco and Chevron, now a major international brand name of Chevron Corporation

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Texaco

• Texaco
• Texaco Car of the Decades
• Texaco Xpress Lube
• Havoline
• Chevron
• Regent
• World Internet News: "Big Oil Looking for a Government Handout," April 2006.
• Texaco Alumni Site

Milton Berle
circa 1950
Born	Milton Berlinger (1908-07-12)July 12, 1908 New York, New York, U.S.
Died	March 27, 2002(2002-03-27) (aged 93) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Colon Cancer
Residence	Los Angeles, California
Nationality	American
Other names	Mr. Television, Uncle Miltie
Alma mater	Professional Children's School
Occupation	Actor/Comedian
Years active	1914–2000
Influenced by	Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx
Influenced	Don Rickles, Johnny Carson, Larry the Cable Guy, Nipsey Russell
Home town	New York City, New York
Religion	Judaism and Christian Science
Spouse	Joyce Mathews (1941–1947;1949–1950) Ruth Cosgrove (1953–1989) Lorna Adams (1991–2002)
Children	3

Milton Berle (born Milton Berlinger, July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American comedian and actor. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater (1948–55), he was the first major American television star^[1] and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during TV's golden age.

Early life[link]

Milton Berlinger was born into a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 W. 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. He chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1873–1938), was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954),^[2] eventually became stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous.

Child actor[link]

Berle entered show business at the age of five when he won an amateur talent contest.^[3] He appeared as a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline, filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey.^[4] The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography, he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."

By Berle's account, he continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny's Little Brother, Tess of the Storm Country, Birthright, Love's Penalty, Divorce Coupons and Ruth of the Range. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood—the studios paid—where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Tillie's Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler."

However, Berle's claims to have appeared in many of these films, particularly the 1914 Chaplin Keystone comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance, are hotly disputed by some,^{[citation needed]} who cite the lack of supporting evidence that Berle even visited the West Coast until much later. The newsboy role often claimed by Berle in Tillie was unquestionably played by resident Keystone child actor Gordon Griffith. In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School.

Career[link]

Vaudeville[link]

Around 1920, at age 12, Berle made his stage debut in a production of the musical comedy Florodora. After four weeks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the show moved to Broadway. It catapulted him into a comedic career that spanned eight decades in nightclubs, Broadway shows, vaudeville, Las Vegas, films, television, and radio. By the early 1930s, he had become a successful stand-up comedian.

In the late 1940s, he canceled well-paying nightclub appearances in favor of doing a radio program.^[5] Berle would revive the structure and routines of his vaudeville shows for his debut on TV.^[6][7][8]

Rising star[link]

In 1933, he was hired by producer Jack White to star in the theatrical featurette Poppin' the Cork, a topical musical comedy concerning the repealing of Prohibition. Berle also co-wrote the score for this film, which was released by Educational Pictures.

Berle continued to dabble in songwriting. With Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, Berle wrote the title song for the RKO Radio Pictures release Li'l Abner (1940), an adaptation of Al Capp's comic strip, featuring Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat.^[9] Berle wrote a Spike Jones B-side, "Leave the Dishes in the Sink, Ma."

Radio[link]

In 1934–36, Berle was heard regularly on The Rudy Vallee Hour, and he got much publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners.^[5]

Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale, was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944–1945) could best be described as slapstick radio^{[citation needed]} with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). Kiss and Make Up, on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.^[5]

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, The Milton Berle Show brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were announcer Frank Gallop, Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley and Brazilian singer Dick Farney. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947 until April 13, 1948. Berle's desire to succeed on radio was strong enough to cause him to cancel well-paying nightclub appearances in favor of doing the radio program.^[5]

His last radio series was The Texaco Star Theater, which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen, and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Leo Fuld, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show". It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.^[5]

Mr. Television[link]

In 1948, NBC decided to bring Texaco Star Theater from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual style,^{[citation needed]} characterized by vaudeville slapstick and outlandish costumes, proved ideal for the burgeoning^{[citation needed]} new medium.^[10] Berle modeled the show structure and acts directly from his vaudeville shows, and hired writer Hal Collins to revive his old successful routines.^[6][7]

Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers would not miss Berle's antics.^[4] Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theater before going to the bathroom".^[11][12]

Berle's 1949 television appearance^[4][13] was only experimental. Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets. (Other comedians turned this into a punchline: "I sold mine, my uncle sold his...") After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's first superstar earned Berle the sobriquet "Mr. Television".^[4] He also earned a slightly more familiar nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad-libbed remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed."^[4]

Berle asked NBC to switch from live broadcasts to filmed shows, to make possible future reruns and residuals, and he was not happy when NBC showed little interest. NBC did consent to make a kinescope of each show — a reference copy filmed directly off a TV screen.

He also risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing. In his autobiography, Berle recalled the incident:

Berle's mother Sadie was often in the audience for his broadcasts; she had long served as a "plant" to encourage audiences for his stage shows to laugh.^[3] Her unique, "piercing, roof-shaking laugh"^[3][14] would stand out, especially when he would walk onstage in an outrageous costume. He would feign being startled by her laugh, and would pretend she was a stranger or a heckler, then come up with a response. Example: "Lady, you've got all night to make a fool of yourself. I've only got an hour!"

Berle was offered the use of a new device, the teleprompter, and 25% of the company by its inventor, Irving Kahn, if he would simply begin using the new gadget. He turned the offer down.^[15]

Francis Craig and Kermit Goell's Near You became the theme song that closed Berle's TV comedy shows.^[16]

Berle's TV decline[link]

NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. The problem with Berle's 30-year deal was that NBC could not have realized the relatively short lifespan of a comedian on television, compared to radio, where some careers had thrived for two decades. In part, this was due to the more ephemeral nature of visual comedy (those who do not adapt quickly do not survive), and a single television appearance could equal years of exposure on the nightclub circuit. It has also been said that Berle had less appeal with audiences outside the Borscht Belt as television expanded from big East Coast markets to smaller cities. It is also possible that the positioning of the television set itself was a factor. When Berle's program first hit the airwaves, so few people owned the apparatus that many audiences watched it in public places such as bars, clubs and even in appliance store windows; these were perfect venues for Berle's out-sized personality. However, as more and more people acquired their own televisions, they may have adjusted their tastes to suit the privacy of home.^{[citation needed]}

Texaco pulled out of sponsorship of the show in 1953. Buick picked it up, prompting a renaming to The Buick-Berle Show, and the program's format was changed to show the backstage preparations to put on a variety show. Critics generally approved of the changes, but Berle's ratings continued to fall and Buick pulled out after two seasons.^[17] By the time the again-renamed Milton Berle Show finished its only full season, Berle was already becoming history — though his final season was host to two of Elvis Presley's earliest television appearances, April 3 and June 5, 1956.^[18] The final straw during that last season may have come from CBS scheduling The Phil Silvers Show (aka You'll Never Get Rich and Sergeant Bilko) opposite Berle. Ironically, Silvers was one of Berle's best friends in show business and had come to CBS' attention in an appearance on Berle's program. Bilko's creator-producer, Nat Hiken, had been one of Berle's radio writers.

Berle knew that NBC had already decided to cancel his show before Presley appeared.^[19] Berle later appeared in the Kraft Music Hall series from 1958 to 1959,^[20] but NBC was finding increasingly fewer showcases for its one-time superstar. By 1960, he was reduced to hosting a bowling program, Jackpot Bowling, delivering his quips between the efforts of bowling contestants.^[21]

[edit] Life after The Milton Berle Show

In Las Vegas, Berle played to packed showrooms at Caesars Palace, the Sands, the Desert Inn and other casino hotels. Berle had appeared at the El Rancho, one of the first Vegas hotels, in the late 1940s. In addition to constant club appearances, Berle performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner's The Goodbye People in 1968. He also became a commercial spokesman for the thriving Lums restaurant chain.

He appeared in numerous films, including Always Leave Them Laughing with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr, Let's Make Love with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Loved One, The Oscar, Who's Minding the Mint?, Lepke, Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose and Driving Me Crazy.

Freed in part from the obligations of his NBC contract, Berle was signed in 1966 to a new, weekly variety series on ABC. The show failed to capture a large audience and was cancelled after one season. He later appeared as guest villain Louie the Lilac on ABC's Batman series. Other memorable guest appearances included stints on The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Lucy Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, Get Smart, Laugh-In, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, The Hollywood Palace, Ironside, F Troop, Fantasy Island, and The Jack Benny Show.

Like his contemporary Jackie Gleason, Berle proved a solid dramatic actor and was acclaimed for several such performances, most notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House" on The Dick Powell Show in 1961, a role for which he later received an Emmy nomination. He also played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane crash in Seven in Darkness, the first in ABC's popular Movie of the Week series. (He also played it straight as an agent in The Oscar (1966), and was one of the few actors in that infamous flop to get good notices from critics.)

During this period, Berle was named to the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of charity performances made by a show-business performer. Unlike the high-profile shows done by Bob Hope to entertain the troops, Berle did more shows, over a period of 50 years, on a lower-profile basis. Berle received an award for entertaining at stateside military bases in World War I as a child performer, in addition to traveling to foreign bases in World War II and Vietnam. The first charity telethon (for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation^[22]) was hosted by Berle in 1949.^[23] A permanent fixture at charity benefits in the Hollywood area, he was instrumental in raising millions for charitable causes.

Late career[link]

On April 14, 1979, Berle guest-hosted NBC's Saturday Night Live. Perhaps the comedian saw this as a chance to revisit his live-TV glories of three decades before. Whatever his intention, he seemed to spend as much time trying to upstage the show's youthful cast members as he did trying to work with or complement them. Berle's long reputation for taking control of an entire television production—whether invited to do so or not—was a cause of stress on the set. One of the show's writers, Rosie Shuster, described the rehearsals for the Berle SNL show and the telecast as "watching a comedy train accident in slow motion on a loop." Upstaging, camera mugging, inserting old comedy bits, and climaxing the show with a maudlin performance of "September Song" complete with pre-arranged standing ovation (something producer Lorne Michaels had never sanctioned), resulted in Berle being banned from the show.

As a guest star on The Muppet Show, Berle was memorably upstaged by the heckling theatre critics Statler and Waldorf.^[24] The Statler and Waldorf puppets were inspired by a character named Sidney Spritzer, played by comedian Irving Benson, who regularly heckled Berle from a box seat during episodes of the 1960s ABC series.

Berle at the 41st Primetime Emmy Awards in 1989

Another well-known incident of upstaging occurred during the 1982 Emmy Awards, when Berle and Martha Raye were the presenters of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing. Berle was reluctant to give up the microphone to the award's recipients, from Second City Television, and interrupted actor Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times. After Flaherty would make a joke, Berle would reply sarcastically "Oh, that's funny". However, the kindly, smiling Flaherty's response of "Go to sleep, Uncle Miltie" flustered Berle, who could only reply with a stunned "What...?" SCTV later created a parody sketch of the incident, in which Flaherty beats up a Berle look-alike, shouting, "You'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Miltie!"

One of his most popular performances in his later years was guest starring in 1992 in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air as womanizing, wise-cracking patient Max Jakey. Most of his dialogue was improvised and he shocked the studio audience by mistakenly blurting out a curse word. He also appeared in an acclaimed and Emmy-nominated turn on Beverly Hills, 90210 as an aging comedian befriended by Steve Sanders, who idolizes him but is troubled by his bouts of senility due to Alzheimer's Disease. He also appeared in 1995 as a guest star in an episode of The Nanny in the part of her lawyer and great uncle.

Berle appeared in drag in the video for "Round and Round" by the 1980s metal band Ratt (his nephew Marshall Berle was then their manager).

As "Mr. Television," Berle was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. The following year, he appeared on NBC's Amazing Stories (created by Steven Spielberg) in an episode called "Fine Tuning". In this episode, friendly aliens from space receive TV signals from the Earth of the 1950s and travel to Hollywood in search of their idols, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, The Three Stooges, Burns and Allen—and Milton Berle. (When he realizes the aliens are doing his old material, Uncle Miltie is thunderstruck: "Stealing from Berle? Is that even possible?") Speaking gibberish, Berle is the only person able to communicate directly with the aliens.

Berle was again on the receiving end of an onstage jibe at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards where RuPaul responded to Berle's reference of having once worn dresses himself (during his old television days) with the quip that Berle now wore diapers. A surprised Berle replied, "Oh, we're going to ad lib? I'll check my brain and we'll start even".

Uncle Miltie offstage[link]

In 1947, Milton Berle founded the Friars Club of Beverly Hills at the old Savoy Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Other founding members included Jimmy Durante, George Jessel, Robert Taylor, and Bing Crosby. In 1961, the club moved to Beverly Hills. The club is a private show business club famous for its celebrity members and roasts, where a member is mocked by his club friends in good fun.

Unlike many of his peers, Berle's off-stage lifestyle did not include drugs or drinking, but did include cigars, a "who's who" list of beautiful women, and a lifelong addiction to gambling, primarily horse racing. Some felt his obsession with "the ponies" was responsible for Berle never amassing the wealth or business success of others in his position.

Berle was also famous within show business for the rumored size of his penis. Phil Silvers once told a story about standing next to Berle at a urinal, glancing down, and quipping, "You'd better feed that thing, or it's liable to turn on you!" In the short story 'A Beautiful Child', Truman Capote wrote Marilyn Monroe as saying: "Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood." Saturday Night Live writer Alan Zweibel, who had written many Friars Club jokes about Berle's penis for other comedians, described being treated to a private showing: "He just takes out this— this anaconda. He lays it on the table and I'm looking into this thing, right? I'm looking into the head of Milton Berle's dick. It was enormous. It was like a pepperoni. And he goes, 'What do you think of the boy?' And I'm looking right at it and I go, 'Oh, it's really, really nice.'" At a memorial service for Berle at the New York Friars' Club, Freddie Roman solemnly announced, "On May 1st and May 2nd, his penis will be buried."^[25] Radio shock jock Howard Stern also barraged Berle with an endless array of penis questions when the comedian appeared on Stern's morning talk show on Aug 5, 1988^[26] (Berle was also a guest on the Stern show on Oct 30, 1996^[27]). In Berle's 1988 appearance, when fielding phone calls, Stern purposely asked his producer to only air callers whose questions dealt with Berle's penis.^[28]

Berle was known to have a colorful vocabulary and few limits on when it was used. Surprisingly, however, he "worked clean" for his entire onstage career, except for the infamous Friars Club all-male, private celebrity roasts. Berle often criticized younger comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin about their X-rated humor, and challenged them to be just as funny without the four-letter words.

Hundreds of younger comics, including several comedy superstars, were encouraged and guided by Berle. Despite some less than flattering stories told about Berle being difficult to work with, his son, Bill, maintains that Berle was a source of encouragement and technical assistance for many new comics. Uncle Miltie's son Bob backs up his brother's statement. He was present many times during Berle's Las Vegas shows and television guest appearances. Milton aided Fred Travalena, Ruth Buzzi, John Ritter, Marla Gibbs, Lily Tomlin, Dick Shawn and Will Smith. At a taping of a Donny & Marie, for example, Donny and Marie Osmond recited a scripted joke routine to a studio audience, to little response. The director asked for a retake, and the Osmonds repeated the act, word for word, to even less response. A third attempt, with no variation, proved dismal — until Milton Berle, off-camera, went into the audience, pantomiming funny faces and gestures. Ever the professional, Berle timed each gesture to coincide with an Osmond punchline, so the dialogue seemed to be getting the maximum laughs.

Personal life[link]

After twice marrying and divorcing Joyce Mathews, a showgirl, Berle married Ruth Cosgrove, a onetime publicist on December 9, 1953; she died in 1989.^[14][29] In 1989, Berle stated that his mother was behind the breakup of his marriage to Mathews. He also said that she managed to damage his previous relationships: "My mother never resented me going out with a girl, but if I had more than three dates with one girl, Mama found some way to break it up."^[30] He was married for a fourth time in 1992 to Lorna Adams, a fashion designer 30 years younger than he was, whom he credited for 'keeping him young'. He had two children, Victoria (adopted by Berle and Mathews) and William (adopted by Berle and Cosgrove).^[31] Berle also had two stepdaughters from his marriage to Lorna Adams—Leslie and Susan Brown, who is married to actor Richard Moll.^[32] He also had three grandsons, James and Mathew, the sons of his daughter, Vicki,^[29] and Sgt. Tyler Roe (US Army Iraq/Afghanistan wars), the son of his son, William.

In later life, Berle found solace in Christian Science and called himself a Jew and a Christian Scientist.^[33] Oscar Levant, commenting to Jack Paar about Berle's conversion, quipped, "Our loss is their loss."

Death[link]

In April 2001, Berle announced that he was suffering from a cancerous tumor in his colon, but would not undergo surgery.^[34] At the time of the announcement, Berle's wife said the tumor was growing so slowly that it would take ten to twelve years to affect him in any significant or life-threatening way. Less than one year after the announcement, Berle died on March 27, 2002 in Los Angeles, California from colon cancer.^[32][35]

Berle left detailed arrangements to be buried with his second wife, Ruth, at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank. However, his last wife, Lorna Adams, altered the plan so that he was cremated and interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. In addition to his wife, Berle was survived by a daughter, Victoria, born in 1945; son, William, born in 1961; and Bob Williams, a son, born in 1951.^[36]

Other awards[link]

• On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Berle into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.^[37]

Broadway[link]

• Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1932 (1932) - revue — in the roles of "Mortimer" in the sketch "Mourning Becomes Impossible", "Joe Miller, Jr." in "What Price Jokes", "Frank" in "Two Sailors", "Paul" in "The Cabinet of Doctor X", the "Announcer" in "Studio W.M.C.A." the "Defendant" in "Trial by Jury" and "Milton" in "The Bar Relief"
• Saluta (1934) — musical, co-lyricist and performer cast in the role of "'Windy' Walker"
• See My Lawyer (1939) — play — performer cast in the role of "Arthur Lee"
• Ziegfeld Follies of 1943 (1943) — revue — performer in the role of "Cecil" in Counter Attack, "J. Pierswift Armour" in The Merchant of Venison, "Perry Johnson" in Loves-A-Poppin, "Escamillio" in Carmen in Zoot, "Charlie Grant" Mr Grant Goes To Washington, "'The Micromaniac' Singer" and "'Hold That Smile' Dancer"
• I'll Take the High Road (1943) — play — co-producer
• Seventeen (1951) — musical — co-producer
• The Goodbye People (1968) — performer cast in the role of "Max Silverman"

In popular culture[link]

In the episode titled "The One with the 'Cuffs" of the sitcom Friends, Rachel promises Chandler that she will make him "This generation's Milton Berle", hinting that he had a large penis but "not compared to (Chandler)". In the Family Guy episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", Lois describes her perfect man as having (among other male celebrities' features) "Milton Berle's legendary genitals".

For the initial production of Robert Sherwood's Idiot's Delight starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in 1936, Lunt went to see Berle perform many times and took lessons from him in joke delivery and soft shoe for his characterization of tenth rate vaudeville performer Harry Van. After Lunt had seen Berle perform numerous times and went backstage to meet him, before any introductions could be made, Berle snapped, "Now look here, nobody steals from me. That's my line of work!" After finding out that his fan was none other than the American stage's most gifted and prestigious actor, Berle was flattered and showed Lunt everything he knew. - From Design for Living, Margot Peters' biography of the Lunts.

Filmography[link]

References[link]

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Further reading[link]

• Berle, Milton with Haskel Frankel. Milton Berle, an Autobiography. New York: Dell, 1975. ISBN 0-440-15626-2
• Dunning, John. On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-507678-8
• McNeil, Alex. Total Television. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. ISBN 0-14-004911-8
• Shales, Tom and James Andrew Miller. Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. ISBN 0-316-78146-0
• Berle, William and Lewis, Brad. "My Father, Uncle Miltie". New York: Barricade Books, 1999. ISBN 1-56980-149-5

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Milton Berle

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Milton Berle

• Milton Berle at the Internet Movie Database
• Milton Berle Interview at Archive of American Television
• Milton Berle at AllRovi
• Comedy Central's 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time
• Milton Berle Internet archive Several entries for free stream or download including Texaco Star Theater and Buick Berle Show.
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: Milton Berle
• Museum of Broadcast Communications: The Milton Berle Show
• Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation
• Milton 'Berlinger' Berle's birth certificate
• Milton Berle at Find a Grave
• Lum's TV Commercial with Milton Berle
• Literature on Milton Berle

Listen to[link]

• Free OTR: Milton Berle Show (two episodes)
• Episodes of the 'Milton Berle Show' on Radio at Internet Archive

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since February 2010. It may be in need of reorganization to comply with Wikipedia's layout guidelines. Tagged since November 2007.

Rickie Lee Jones
Rickie Lee Jones performing in 2007
Background information
Birth name	Rickie Lee Jones
Born	(1954-11-08) November 8, 1954 (age 57) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Origin	Los Angeles and Hollywood, California, United States
Genres	Rock, R&B, singer-songwriter, jazz
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Years active	since 1978
Labels	Warner Bros. (1979–1989; 1997–2000) Geffen (1989–1995) Reprise (1995–1997) Artemis (2000–2003) V2 (2003-06) New West (2006-09) Fantasy (2009-present)
Website	RickieLeeJones.com
Music sample
Chuck E.'s In Love noicon Rickie Lee Jones, Chuck E.'s in Love (Warner Bros., 1979)

Rickie Lee Jones (born November 8, 1954) is an American vocalist, musician, songwriter, and producer. Over the course of a five-decade career, Jones has recorded in various musical styles including rock, R&B, blues, pop, soul, and jazz standards. Her songwriting has been characterized as "a blend of bravado and vulnerability [that] wavers on indefinable borders."^[1] She is also known for her unique singing style, especially in live performances. One concert reviewer, describing her rendering of "We Belong Together," states she "reached her apex, skating from swells into near screams into breathy whispers, from pontillist stacatto scats into brassy, trumpetlike bursts."^[2]

In 1999, Jones was listed at #30 in the VH1 list of 100 greatest women of rock^[3].

Biography[link]

Childhood[link]

Rickie Lee Jones was born on the north side of Chicago to Bettye and Richard Jones. Her paternal grandfather, Frank 'Peg Leg' Jones, and her grandmother, Myrtle Lee, a dancer, were Vaudevillians based in Chicago, Illinois. A singer/dancer/comedian, Peg Leg Jones' routine consisted of playing the ukelele, singing ballads, and telling stories. One of four children, her father was a WW2 veteran. A singer, song writer, painter, and trumpet player, Mr. Jones worked as a waiter. Her mother, Bettye, was raised in orphanages in Ohio with her three brothers until she was old enough to leave. Bettye and Richard met in a drug store coffee shop. Rickie Lee was born the third child of four, in Chicago, 1954.

The family moved to Arizona in 1959, and the dry, desolation and heavenly skies ( Little Puffy Clouds) would provide the emotional landscape of her lyrical imagery (Last Chance Texaco, Flying Cowboys) that marks her early music. Her childhood in the Jones family was lonely, her imagination flourished. She grew up riding horses, studying dance, practicing swimming with her AAU coach before and after school. Her brother's accident, when she was 10 years old, changed the direction of her life. Her family moved to Olympia, Washington, where her father finally left the family for good. Rickie Lee finally dropped out of school in her 11th year, took her 'ged' and enrolled in college in Tacoma. She moved to Huntington Beach, California on her 18th birthday, and found her way to Venice, California, and to the boyfriend Mark Vaughan, who would support her in these formative years, as she worked odd jobs and enrolled in Santa Monica College, studying anthropology and music.

Early career[link]

At the age of 21, Jones began to play in clubs in Venice. She met Alfred Johnson, a piano player and song writer, and the two wrote some of her most famous songs in the first week they wrote together, including Company and parts of Weasel and the White Boys Cool. Nick Mathe, a neighbor, took an interest in her music, helped her get publicity photos with Bonnie Shiftman, then at A&M, in the off hours the three of them shot Miss Jones' first pictures. Rickie Lee played her music in showcases, worked with cover bands in clubs, sat in with Venice jazz bands, where her 'my Funny Valentine' became something of a local legend. But it wasn't until she moved to Hollywood that her career took off. She came to the attention of Dr. John and Little Feat's Lowell George in early 1978 through the efforts of Ivan Ulz, and it was Lowell who recorded her song "Easy Money" as the single for his first solo record. Jones also met Tom Waits and Chuck Weiss, whom she wrote about, and for a time, hung out with. When Lenny Woronker and Tommy LaPuma heard about her in 1978, a bidding war ensued, and Jones was signed to Warner Bros. for a five record deal, as an unknown, a girl on unemployment, whose life was about to change the course of pop music at a time when it was highly divided by genre. For if her early career accomplished one thing, it was to bring women out of the folkrock genre and into a more expansive idea. Jones multi genre music and provocative stage show forged the way for all who came after her.

Rickie Lee Jones met Tom Waits at The Troubadour in 1977 after an Ivan Ulz show in which she had sang a few of her songs - and her father's song, the Moon is Made of Gold. The two would-be lovers at the onset of her career, creating a life long association with one another, and harnessing her with his name long after their love affair was over. They were a popular couple at the time (Second City TV skits...) and they moved in together, Waits leaving his Tropicana days, Jones coming off a world wide tour in which she was booked as 'the new voice of America' in Germany, France and England. After their break up, Jones hooked up with pal Sal Bernardi. This long-time collaborator, who inspired her "Weasel and the White Boys", would remain a personal and musical partner for decades. Nominated for 6 grammies, she told her mentor Bob Regher she would not attend the ceremony. Calling him at the last minute, they raced to the event just in time for her to walk up and collect her 'best new artist' trophy, in her leather jacket and boa, signature beret and gloves. Her popular acceptance speech, in which she thanked her lawyer and accountant (this was the year most of the winners, from Dylan to Diamond, were thanking God), became the hallmark, again, for speeches to come.

Jones and Waits were lovers of such enigmatic appeal it would be many decades before the media stopped asking them about one another. In fact, even after the break up, Francis Ford Coppola asked Rickie Lee to collaborate with Mr. Waits on the upcoming film, One from the Heart, but she balked, citing the recent breakup. Francis responded that it would be perfect for the film, since the two characters are separated, and he asked her to reconsider. Realizing the pressure to reunite with Tom Waits, Jones refused the job. It was then that Waits met his future wife, and Jones began work on Pirates, one of the 100 must-hear CDs, a 5 star Rolling Stone record, including We Belong Together, garnering praise from every corner of rock media at the time. Steely Dan, Randy Newman, the Brecker Brothers, and Steve Gadd, are a few of the A-list folk inducted to create the 18 month ordeal that gave birth to her second 'sophomore' effort, a study in the end of her love affair and the darkness that followed.

Early success: 1978–82[link]

By 1977, Jones was performing original material at the Ala Carte club in Hollywood with Alfred Johnson, with whom she had composed "Weasel and the White Boys Cool" and "Company". She was noticed there by rock journalist/attorney Stann Findelle, who wrote about her in Performance Magazine and advised her in her career for a short time. Jones' success on the club scene soon translated into songwriting kudos, when her friend Ivan Ulz introduced Lowell George of Little Feat to Jones' composition "Easy Money" by singing it to him over the telephone. George included the song on his album Thanks, I'll Eat it Here in 1978. It became the only single for George's first solo attempt, and final record before his death. The announcement of George's death was recorded on the same Rolling Stone cover featuring Rickie Lee Jones crouching in a black bra and white beret - an issue that would become the largest selling issue in the magazine's history up to that time.^{[citation needed]} Her appearance - as an unknown (her debut record had been released less than a month before) - on Saturday Night Live television show on April 7, 1979 sparked an overnight sensation. She performed "Chuck E's in Love" and "Coolsville".

A four-song demo of material was circulated around the L.A. music scene in 1978, with Emmylou Harris later recalling that she had heard an early version of "The Last Chance Texaco" on the demo tape. The recordings came to the attention of Lenny Waronker, producer and executive at Warner Bros. Records. Jones was signed to the label, and work commenced on her debut album, co-produced by Waronker and Russ Titelman. Jones was courted by the major labels, and chose Waronker because of his work with Randy Newman, and because, she said, she had a vision of standing in his office the moment she saw his name on the back of Newman's Sail Away album.

Rickie Lee Jones was released in March 1979 and became a hit, buoyed by the success of the jazz-flavored single "Chuck E.'s In Love" (#4 Billboard Hot 100, 1979) and its accompanying video. The album, which included guest appearances by Dr. John, Randy Newman, and Michael McDonald, went to US #3 on the Billboard 200 and produced another US Top 40 hit with "Young Blood" (#40) in late 1979.

Following a successful world tour, the cover of Rolling Stone magazine ^[4], Jones secured five nominations at the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year, Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female, Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, Song of the Year ("Chuck E.'s in Love"), and Best New Artist, which she won at the January 1980 ceremony. She was also voted Best Jazz Singer by Playboy magazine's critic and reader polls. Jones was covered by Time magazine on her very first professional show, in Boston, and they dubbed her "The Duchess of Coolsville."

After moving to New York City, Jones spent the majority of 1981 working on a follow-up album, written and recorded partly in reaction to the break-up of her relationship with Tom Waits sometime between late 1979 and early 1980^{[citation needed]}. The songs were written between September 1979 and June 1981 - when the last lyrics to "Traces of the Western Slope" and the last bass on "A Lucky Guy" were put down. The recording sessions finally yielded Pirates in July 1981.

Rolling Stone remained fervent supporters of Jones, with a second cover feature in 1981 ^[5]; the magazine also included a glowing five-star assessment of Pirates, which became a commercially successful follow-up by reaching US #5 on the Billboard 200. A single, "A Lucky Guy", became the only Billboard Hot 100 hit from the album, peaking at #64, but "Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)" and "Woody and Dutch on the Slow Train to Peking" became minor Top 40 hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart. More importantly, historically, is the fact that in America "Woody and Dutch..." became a kind of commercial mainstay. The finger snaps and jive talk beat were imitated in advertisements for McDonald's, Dr. Pepper, and others.

Jones' quirky fashion as well became quickly edified as well, her skin-tight lycra pant suit, elbow length fingerless gloves, the famous red beret and the red high heels showed up in some capacity everywhere. Pat Benetar can be seen in Rickie Lee suits. Jones' career suffered from a lack of guidance after her mentor Bob Regher died in 1986, and her signature vocal sound was imitated by so many, few people born after 1990 seem to know who she is. Aside from being the first video star (her 11 minute WB short film was so successful in promoting her image that a year later MTV came into being), her influence on pop and jazz was prominent in the early years of her career.

Voted best jazz singer two years in a row by audiences and critics (Playboy and Rolling Stone polls, 1980, 1981), her insistence on covering jazz in a career that clearly was a pop career might have damaged her marketability, but it certainly opened the door for a wider scope of music from pop singers in general. Obscure jazz standards began to show up on the sudden rush of established pop singers to cover jazz standards (the obscure Billy Barnes ballad "Something Cool," for instance, had a rise in popularity after Jones introduced it in concert to rock audiences on her debut tour). Jones' impact on pop music may be rarely measured by the rock media, she was associated with no movement (punk, new wave, country rock) to bring her mileage when her own work was ebbing, but there is no doubt that her appearance turned the tide of pop music from disco to singer songwriter.

Another lengthy and successful tour into 1982 followed, before Jones moved back to California, settling in San Francisco. A partial tour memento, the EP Girl at Her Volcano, was issued originally as a 10" record in 1983, featuring a mix of live and studio cover versions of jazz and pop standards, as well as one Jones original, "Hey, Bub," which was recorded for Pirates. Jones then relocated to Paris.

Period of transition: 1983–89[link]

The remainder of the 1980s found Jones falling out of favor commercially and pursuing a more complex and experimental sound.

Jones settled in France and recorded new material, some of which was released on her third full-length solo album, The Magazine, in September 1984. The Magazine found Jones combining the melodic, jazz-inspired sound of her debut with the complex structures of Pirates, with a more synth-driven sound, owed to working closely with composer James Newton Howard on the album. Alongside the more commercially appealing material, Jones included a three-song suite, subtitled "Rorschachs", exploring multi-tracked vocals and synth patterns. Only the upbeat "The Real End" made it into the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984, peaking at #82.

She began to pursue jazz standards, recording "The Moon Is Made of Gold", which was written by her father, and "Autumn Leaves" for Rob Wasserman's album Duets in 1985. Jones took a four-year break from her recording schedule, largely attributed to the deaths of her mentor Bob Regher and her father, Richard Loris Jones that same year^[6].

Jones returned to the United States in 1987 after a tour of Israel and Norway, and the imminent birth of her daughter brought her home to California. In September 1988, work began on her fourth solo album following another Grammy nomination for her Wasserman collaboration "Autumn Leaves". With songs dating from the mid-1980s, Jones teamed up with Steely Dan's Walter Becker to craft Flying Cowboys, which was released on the Geffen Records label in September 1989. Jones also included some writing collaborations with her husband Pascal Nabet Meyer. "The Horses", co-written with Becker, was featured in the movie Jerry Maguire and became an Australian #1 hit single for Daryl Braithwaite in 1991. The album made the US Top 40, reaching #39 on the Billboard 200, with the college radio hit "Satellites" making it to #23 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. Jones ended the decade on a high note with her duet with Dr. John, a cover of "Makin' Whoopee", winning her second Grammy Award, this time in the category of Best Jazz Vocal Collaboration.

Experimentation and change: 1990–2001[link]

Jones in concert

Following a tour with Lyle Lovett, Jones enlisted David Was to helm her idiosyncratic album of covers, Pop Pop, ranging from jazz and blues standards to Tin Pan Alley to Jimi Hendrix's "Up from the Skies". The album, released in September 1991, was a hit on the Billboard Contemporary Jazz Albums (#8, 1991), but became her least commercially successful record yet, reaching #121 on the Billboard 200.

Soon after, The Orb issued "Little Fluffy Clouds", featuring a sampled Jones interview. However, Jones objected to the unauthorized use of her voice and pursued the issue in the legal system. In 1992 she toured extensively with Rob Wasserman, with whom she had collaborated in the mid-1980s.

Her swan song for Geffen Records was Traffic From Paradise, released in September 1993. The album was slightly more successful than its predecessor, reaching #111 on the Billboard 200, and was notable for its collaboration with Leo Kottke, its musical diversity, and a cover of David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel", which was slated to be the title track for the Oscar-winning film Boys Don't Cry, when Bowie's publishing pulled the plug by asking for too much money from the little independent movie.

A number of television and movies had licensed her work in these years, including Thirtysomething, Frankie and Johnny, When a Man Loves a Woman, Jerry Maguire, Friends with Money and the French film Subway. Jones sang a duet with Lyle Lovett on "North Dakota" for his Joshua Judges Ruth CD.

Jones' first solo shows in 1994 paved the way for her "unplugged" acoustic album Naked Songs, released in September 1995 through a one-off deal with Reprise Records. The album, which reached US #121 on the Billboard 200, featured acoustic re-workings of Jones classics and album material, but no new songs.

Emphasizing her experimentation and change, Jones embraced electronic music for Ghostyhead, released on Warner Bros. Records in June 1997. The album, a collaboration with Rick Boston (both are credited with production and with twenty-one instruments in common), found Jones employing beats, loops, and electronic rhythms, and also showcased Jones' connection with the trip-hop movement of the mid-to-late 1990s. Despite some positive reviews, it did not meet with commercial success, peaking at US #159 on the Billboard 200. There are critics who consider this her best record, and who believe that it had large impact on electronic singer-songwriter music that would emerge 10 years later.

1990 - 1996 seemed to be Jones' lowest professional ebb. Everything she recorded was met with extreme skepticism and even harsh criticism. Her live shows, on the other hand, were lauded as a return to form. She had not really been on a stage in America (at least the eastern half) in eight years when she toured for Flying Cowboys.

Jones' second album of cover versions, It's Like This, was released on the independent record label Artemis Records in September 2000. The album included cover versions of material by artists including The Beatles, Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, and the Gershwin brothers. The album made it onto three Billboard charts — #148 on the Billboard 200, #10 on Top Internet Albums, and #42 on Top Independent Albums. The album also secured Jones another Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.

After starting up her official website, Artemis issued an archival Jones release, Live at Red Rocks, in November 2001, featuring material recorded during the Flying Cowboys era tour of 1989-1990, including a Lyle Lovett duet.

Artistic renaissance: 2002 and beyond[link]

Rickie Lee Jones performing on the Legacy Stage on June 15, 2007.

After Ghostyhead, Jones largely retired from public view and admitted that she had battled writers' block^{[citation needed]}. She spent much of her time at her home in Olympia, Washington, tending her garden and bringing up her now-teenage daughter Charlotte.

Released on the independent V2 in October 2003, The Evening of My Best Day featured influences from jazz, Celtic folk, blues, R&B, rock, and gospel, and spawned a successful and lengthy spurt of touring. The album peaked at US #189 on the Billboard 200. The CD helped to swing her career away from an apparent middle-of the-road perception, a posture she seemed furiously bent on avoiding. She invited punk bass icon Mike Watt (the Minutemen, Iggy Pop) to perform on "It Takes You There", while "Ugly Man" was a direct aim at the George Bush 'regime' evoking, with an anthem-like Hugh Masekela arrangement, what she termed 'the Black Panther horns', and calling for 'revolution, everywhere that you're not looking, revolution.'

Renewed interest in Jones led to the three-disc anthology Duchess of Coolsville: An Anthology, released through reissue specialists Rhino in June 2005. A lavish package, the alphabetically arranged release featured album songs, live material, covers, and demos, and featured essays by Jones as well as various collaborators, as well as tributes from artists including Randy Newman, Walter Becker, Quincy Jones, and Tori Amos.

Also in 2005, Jones was invited to take part in her boyfriend and collaborator Lee Cantelon's music version of his book The Words, a book of the words of Christ, set into simple chapters and themes. Cantelon's idea was to have various artists recite the text over primal rock music, but Jones elected to try something that had never been done, to improvise her own impression of the texts, melody and lyric, in stream of consciousness sessions, rather than read Jesus' words. The sessions were recorded at an artist's loft on Exposition Boulevard in Culver City. When Cantelon could no longer finish the project, Jones picked it up as her own record and hired Rob Schnaf to finish the production at Sunset Sound in 2007, and the result was The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, released on the independent New West Records in February 2007. It included "Circle in the Sand," recorded for the soundtrack to the film Friends With Money (2006), for which Jones also cut "Hillbilly Song." The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard debuted at #158 on the Billboard 200 and #12 on the Top Independent Albums tally. Writer Ann Powers included this on her list of Grammy-worthy CDs for 2007.

For her next project, Jones opted to finish half-written songs dating back as far as 1986 ("Wild Girl") as well as include new ones (the 2008-penned "The Gospel of Carlos, Norman and Smith," "Bonfires"). Working closely with long-time collaborator David Kalish, with whom Jones first worked on 1981's Pirates, Jones released Balm in Gilead on the Fantasy label in November 2009. The album also included a new recording of "The Moon Is Made Of Gold," a song written by her father Richard Loris Jones in 1954. Ben Harper, Victoria Williams, Jon Brion, Alison Krauss and the late Vic Chesnutt all made contributions to the album.

In May 2010 Jones performed at the Sydney Opera House as part of the VIVID festival.^[7]

Other work[link]

In 2001, Jones was the organizer of the web community "Furniture for the People", which is involved in gardening, social activism, bootleg exchange and left wing politics. She has produced records (including Leo Kottke's Peculiaroso), and provided a voiceover for Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, in which she played the Blue Fairy (Known as the Good Fairy or Fairy Godmother in the film). Jones also enjoys gardening.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Rickie Lee Jones - (1979) US #3, UK #18^[8]
• Pirates - (1981) US #5, UK #37
• Girl at Her Volcano (EP) - (1983) US #39, UK #51
• The Magazine - (1984) US #44, UK #40
• Flying Cowboys - (1989) US #39, UK #50
• Pop Pop - (1991) US #121
• Traffic from Paradise - (1993) US #111
• Naked Songs - Live And Acoustic - (1995) US #121
• Ghostyhead - (1997) US #159
• It's Like This - (2000) US #148, UK #185
• Live at Red Rocks - (2001)
• The Evening of My Best Day - (2003) US #189
• Rickie Lee Jones: Duchess of Coolsville - (2005)
• The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard - February 2007 US #158
• Balm in Gilead - November 2009

Singles[link]

Other contributions[link]

• WFUV: City Folk Live VII (2004) - "Mink Coat at the Bus Stop"
• Little Fluffy Clouds (1990–93) - Spoken word sampled by British ambient-house group, The Orb, charting three times on the UK Singles Chart: number 87(1990), number 95(1991), and number 10(1993).
• Scarecrow (1985) - Provided backing vocals on "Between a Laugh and a Tear" by John Cougar Mellencamp

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rickie Lee Jones

• Official Website
• Rickie Lee Jones @ The Tivoli, Brisbane 31st May 2010 (Live Review) - LifeMusicMedia.com

This article, from "Characters" on down, is written like a personal reflection or essay rather than an encyclopedic description of the subject. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (January 2010)

Jack Benny
Jack Benny in 1958
Birth name	Benjamin Kubelsky[1]
Born	(1894-02-14)February 14, 1894 Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died	December 26, 1974(1974-12-26) (aged 80) Beverly Hills, California United States
Show	The Jack Benny Program
Network	NBC, CBS
Style	Comedian
Country	United States

Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 – December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and also a notable violinist. 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[link]

Early life[link]

Jack Benny as part of the Waukegan High School band, 1909.

Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois.^[2] 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.^{[3][4][5][6][7]} 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.^[8] He was joined by Ned Miller, a young composer and singer, on the vaudeville circuit.^[9] 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 renamed 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".^[8] 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.^[8] 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?'..."^[8]

Radio[link]

History[link]

Benny in 1933, when he was newly-arrived at NBC and the host of The Chevrolet Program.

Benny had been only a minor vaudeville performer, but he became a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show that 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.^[10][11]

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.^[12]

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[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (December 2010)

Benny's comic persona changed in the course of his career. At some time he developed the tightwad/cheapskate persona.^[13] This 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 said on several occasions: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny." 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 who was replaced by Day); and Eddie Anderson as valet-chauffeur Rochester van Jones. Singer Larry Stevens was Dennis Day's replacement from 11-5-44 to 3-10-46 while Day was in the Navy.

Rochester was 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 Cu... camonga!". This running gag became so well known (including use in several Bugs Bunny cartoons (which Mel Blanc also voiced)) 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[link]

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 (water colors or oils), 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.

On the broadcast of January 8, 1950, journalist Drew Pearson was the subject of a joke gone wrong. Announcer Don Wilson was to say he heard Jack bought a new suit on Drew Pearson, but said Pearson's name wrong; Don said "Drear Pewson". Later on in the show, comedic actor Frank Nelson was asked by Benny if he was the doorman. Changing the script (by suggestion of the writers), Nelson said, "Well who do you think I am ... Drear Pewson?" The audience laughed for almost 30 seconds.

Sponsors[link]

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[link]

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.^{[citation needed]}

Jack Benny has a reputation for being a master of timing. Since his days at the radio, he often explored the limits of timing for comedic purposes, like pausing a disproportionate amount of time before answering a question.^[13][14]

Theme music[link]

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"[link]

Harry Truman and Jack Benny 3 September 1959

In an episode that was broadcast March 28, 1948, Benny borrowed neighbor Ronald Colman's Oscar, and was returning home when he was accosted by a mugger (voiced by comedian Eddie Marr). After asking for a match to light a cigarette, the mugger demands, "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!" 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^[15] 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"[link]

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[link]

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[link]

Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone, 1960.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^[16][17]

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.^[18]

Benny did many television specials after leaving his regularly scheduled show. This is a promotional postcard for one of them.

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.^[19]

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 The 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."^[8]

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.

Filmography[link]

See Jack Benny filmography

Movies[link]

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 and television programs, 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^[20] and reportedly in the Casablanca press book^[21]). When asked in his column "Movie Answer Man", critic Roger Ebert first replied, "It looks something like him. That's all I can say."^[21] In response to a follow-up question in his next column, he stated, "I think you're right."^[22]

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^[23]), Malibu Beach Party (1940, as himself),^[24] 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[link]

Jack Benny rehearses with members of the California Junior Symphony Orchestra, 1959

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 a skinflint radio and television persona; a perpetual listed age of 39; and ineptitude at violin playing, most frequently demonstrated by futile attempts to perform Rodolphe Kreutzer's Etude No. 2 in C major.

A skit heard numerous times on radio, and seen many times on television, had Mel Blanc as a Mexican in a sombrero and serape sitting on a bench. Jack Benny sits down and begins a conversation. To each question asked by Benny, Blanc replies Si. When Benny asks his name, Blanc replies Sy, which would prompt the exchange, Sy?, Si. And when Benny asks where Blanc is going, Blanc replies, "to see his sister", Sue (Sue?, Si.), who of course sews for a living (Sew?, Si.).

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^[25] 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?"^{[citation needed]}

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.

One Christmas program had Crosby agonizing over what to get Remley:

Benny: "Well, why don't you get him a cordial; like a bottle of Drambuie?" Crosby: "That's a nice thought, Jack, but Drambuie's an after-dinner drink." Benny: "So?" Crosby: "So Remley never quite makes it 'til after dinner."

Crosby also got consistent laughs by frequently joking about his more famous brother Bing's vast wealth.

The Maxwell[link]

Jack Benny shakes hands with Harry S. Truman from the seat of a c. 1908 Maxwell Roadster

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

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

Final years[link]

A mod Benny from his January 1974 special.

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.^[26]

Death[link]

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 John Rowles. He died on December 26, 1974. George Burns, Benny's best friend for more than fifty years, attempted to deliver a eulogy. He broke down shortly after he began and was unable to continue. Bob Hope also delivered a eulogy in which he stated, "This is the only time Jack's timing was all wrong. He left us much too soon." 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."^[8]

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.^[27] Benny also donated a Stradivarius violin purchased in 1957 to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.^[28][29] Benny had commented, "If it isn't a $30,000 Strad, I'm out $120."^[30]

Honors[link]

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

Posthumous tributes[link]

When the price of a standard first-class U.S. 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.^[31]