Benny Jack - Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Jack Benny and the Golden Age of
American Radio Comedy

Jack Benny and the Golden
Age of American Radio
Comedy

Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2017 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Fuller-Seeley, Kathryn, author.

Title: Jack Benny and the golden age of American radio comedy / Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley.

Description: Oakland, California: University of California Press, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017019382 (print) | LCCN 2017021349 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520967946 () | ISBN 9780520295056 (pbk.: alk. paper) | ISBN 9780520295049 (cloth: alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH : Benny, Jack, 1894-1974. | Jack Benny program (Radio program) | Radio comediesUnited StatesHistory and criticism.

Classification: LCC PN 2287. B 4325 (ebook) | LCC PN 2287. B 4325 F 85 2017 (print) | DDC 791.4/0924dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019382

[Manufactured in the United States of America / Printed in China]

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

8 and 9.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I first became interested in Jack Benny as a twelve-year-old Ohio kid in the early 1970s, who loved watching old movies on TV. I prevailed upon my Grandma B. and my Mom to get me for Christmas several books in the Time-Life history of pop culture series This Fabulous Century. The 1930s volume fascinated me with its pictures of glamorous movie actresses, the 1939 Worlds Fair, Orson Welles performing his War of the Worlds broadcast, and especially a photo of two insane-looking men in suits, Jack Benny and Fred Allen, being restrained from attacking each other by their wives, with dialogue from their radio feud printed beneath it. I didnt know much about Benny, other than I had seen some of his guest appearances on TV programs like Ed Sullivan, Laugh-In, and The Lucy Show. I had never lived in a town where TV reruns of Bennys program were shown, but I had seen the 1959 Warner Bros. cartoon, The Mouse that Jack Built, several times on Saturday mornings. I wanted to learn more about Jack Bennys radio program. So I wrote away for one of the Old Time Radio recording catalogs advertised in the revived Liberty Magazine. I remember paying $7.00 of my hard-earned babysitting wages to acquire each cassette tape containing two episodes of Bennys early 1950s radio programs. I listened to a dozen tapes over and over on a small player, coercing my little brothers JK and John to join me. (I am sure it has made them the marvelous fellows they have grown up to be.)

Fast forward forty-five years. Now $7.00 on eBay can buy 750+ Jack Benny radio broadcast recordings, digitized into .mp3 format and downloaded to a single DVD. For free I can access websites like www.archive.org to find episodes, or I can subscribe to Benny podcasts or OTR satellite radio channels. These are excellent times to be a fan of Jack Bennys radio program. To contribute to online resources for enjoyment of Bennys radio comedy, I have created a companion website for this book (www.jackbennyradio.com) where you will find links to radio episodes discussed in each chapter, plus additional photographs, scripts, and memorabilia. I hope you will check it out.

My graduate school training was in social and cultural history, and I have done a lot of research on the history of US film exhibition and moviegoing practices. But it has long been my dream to write about Bennys radio comedy, for despite his importance he has not yet been given his full due in academic scholarship. I am grateful to Michele Hilmes, Susan Douglas, Alan Havig, Arthur Wertheim, James Baughman, and other media historians whose pioneering publications have anchored Jack Bennys place in broadcasting studies. Previously, Joan Benny, Mary Livingstone, Irving Fein, Milt Josefsberg, and the Museum of Television and Radio told Bennys story in biographies published in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s.

A Fellowship for University Teachers awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2013 gave me the time and support to write the manuscript, for which I am extremely grateful.

Helpful archivists assisted me in utilizing Jack Bennys archives at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, and the Center supported me with a travel grant to do my initial research there; I am also grateful for the help I received at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as well as the UCLA Library Special Collections.

Laura Liebowitz, founder and president of the International Jack Benny Fan Club (www.jackbenny.org and on Facebook), and the clubs incredibly knowledgeable and talented members have been a constant source of wonderment. Thanks Laura, Jim, Graeme, Linda, Don, John, Ellen, Matt, Darrel, Ben, Keith, Garth, Brad, Barry, Paula, Emily, R. C., Bill, Jon, Scott, Ira, Shelley, Jeff, Ellen, Martin, Jay, and all the IJBFC members, for your help, advice, encouragement, comradery, and terrific sense of humor.

Thank you to the wonderful colleagues who have read drafts of the chapters and encouraged me through the years I have been working on this project: David Weinstein, Eric Smoodin, Cynthia Meyers, Tom Doherty, Richard Butsch, Alan Havig, Michele Hilmes, Rob King, Colin Tait, Bill Kirkpatrick, Jennifer Hyland Wang, Brendan ONeill, Nora Patterson, Shawn VanCour, Andrew Bottomley, Nick Marx, Ben Schwartz, Kyle Barnett, Richard Butsch, and Dana Polan, plus the Radio Studies Special Interest Group at SCMS, and media historians everywhere. At the University of California Press, thank you for the wise guidance of Raina Polivka and Zuha Khan, and the hard work of production editors Nicholle Robertson and Kate Warne.

Many thanks to my colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin, including Alisa Perren, Tom Schatz, Caroline Frick, Suzanne Scott, Mary Beltran, Charles Ramirez Berg, Cindy McCreery, Paul Steckler, Jeff Miekle, Bert Herigstad, Elana Wakeman, A. J. Bunyard, Mona Syed, Rachel Walker, Char Burke, Gloria Holder and Michelle Monk. Thanks also to the many undergraduate and graduate students who have responded enthusiastically when I talk about Jack Benny, radio history, and comedy studies.

Thanks to the wonderful friends who have read chapter drafts, helped me find radio ephemera, toured historical Benny sites, and been fantastic supporters: Dick Simon, Bonnie Konowitch, Martha Kearsley, J. K. Helgesen, John Helgesen, Art and Kay Seidenberg, John Whiting, Penny Campbell, Karan Sheldon, Don OKeefe, and Dave Bowers.

I am especially grateful for my dear family, who have always supported my research passions. My father-in-law Harry Seeley Jr. patiently read drafts of chapters and has been eternally encouraging. Kendall Seeley is generous with her encouragement and willingness to help. Kenny Seeley is always my best audience and editor, and he never complains about having to eat the Jell-O I feel compelled to make when I have been listening to 1930s Benny radio episodes.