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All American Old Time Radio Show Classic

Jack Benny
Old Time Radio Show

For a small taste of this great series,
listen to the preview below.

This show comes on 8 CDs In MP3 Format

Enjoy over 690 Episodes, with better then 290 hours of classic humor

Born Benjamin Kubelsky, Jack Benny was one of the biggest stars in classic American Radio, in addition to becoming a major television personality. Jack Benny was a comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor. With his signature violin (which he played very well) or his “Well” gesture, he had his audience laughing their heads off. It also helped that his comic timing was fantastic and (once on television) oh, those expressions of his, well, need I say more. One of those tidbits we all love, Jack’s wife, Mary Livingstone (born Sadye Marks) was a distant cousin of the Marx Brothers.

Jack Benny became an enormously successful national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show which ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1948 to 1955 on  CBS, and was consistently among the most highly rated programs during most of that run. The television version of The Jack Benny Program ran from October 28, 1950 to 1965.

Lots of flip flopping occurred with Jack Benny moving back and forth from NBC to CBS. It all started when  Benny came to radio on The Canada Dry Program (the sponsor of the show), beginning May 2, 1932, on the NBC Blue Network. It continued there for six months until October 26, when the show moved to CBS on October 30^th. With Ted Weems leading the band, Jack Benny stayed on CBS until January 26, 1933.

Arriving back at NBC on March 17^th,  Benny did The Chevrolet Program until April 1, 1934. He continued with sponsor General Tires, Jell-O, and Grape Nuts. But in 1944, the practice of using the sponsor’s name as the title faded out, and the show was then known as The Jack Benny Program. Lucky Strike was the radio sponsor from 1944 to the mid-1950s.

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. Some of those guests included: Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Bing Crosby, Burns & Allen (Benny’s best friend in show business was probably George Burns), and many others. Burns & Allen and Orson Welles guest hosted several episodes in March and April of 1943, when Benny was seriously ill with pneumonia, while Ronald Colman and his wife Benita Hume appeared frequently in the 1940s as Benny’s neighbors.

The show returned 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 reruns of old radio episodes from 1956 to 1958 as The Best of Benny.

Now on to the show. Jack Benny’s character was named Jack Benny, he was also just about everything the actual Jack Benny himself was not: cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His masterful comic rendering of these traits became the vital linchpin to the Benny’s show’s success. Benny set himself up as the comedic foil. Thus allowing his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his stinginess, vanity, and pettiness. Jack Benny’s character was seen as human and vulnerable. Remember this was an era where few male characters were allowed such obvious vulnerability. Jack  Benny made what might have been a despicable character into a lovable Everyman character. Benny himself said on several occasions: “I don’t care who gets the laughs on my show, as long as the show is funny.”

During his early radio shows, Benny adopted a medley of “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Love In  Bloom” as his theme song, opening every show. Love In Bloom also became the theme of his television show as well. His radio shows often ended with the orchestra playing “Hooray for Hollywood”.

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 to do his yearly Christmas shopping. Each year, Benny would buy a ridiculously cheap Christmas gift for Don Wilson from a store clerk played by Mel Blanc. He would then drive Blanc to insanity by exchanging the gift countless times throughout the episode.

When talking about The Jack Benny Show, you also have to talk about The Benny-Allen Feud. Benny began his radio “feud” with rival Fred Allen in 1937. 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 (who were actually good friends in real life) were off. 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.

And now on to the supporting cast: Wife, Mary Livingstone as his wisecracking and not especially deferential female friend (not quite his girlfriend, since Benny would often try to date movie starts like Barbara Stanwyck, and occasionally had stage girlfriends such as Gladys Zybisco); Rotund announcer, Don Wilson; Bandleader, Phil Harris as a jive-talking, wine-and-women type whose repartee was rather risqué for its time; Dennis Day, who was cast as a sheltered, naïve youth who still got the better of his boss as often as not (this character was originated by Kenny Baker, but perfected by Day). And, of course, Eddie Anderson as valet-chauffeur, Rochester van Jones, who was as popular as Benny himself.

Rochester broke a barrier down for his race. 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.

As an aside, Frederick W. Slater, Newsman,  St. Joseph, Missouri, recalled when Mr. Benny and his staff stayed at the Robidioux Hotel during their visit to that town; when checking in the desk staff told Mr. Benny that “Rochester” could not stay at the hotel, to which Mr. Benny replied “If he doesn’t stay here neither do I”. The hotel staff eventually relented.

And who can forget Jack Benny’s method of bringing a character into a skit, by announcing his name, which also became a well-known Benny shtick: “Oh, DEN-nis…” or “Oh, ROCH-ester…”  typically answered by, “Yes, Mr. Benny (Boss)?”

Other cast included character actors Sheldon Leonard (one of my favorite successful television producers and creators), Joseph Kearns (who we all can best remember as the cantankerous Mr. Wilson on the television version of Dennis the Menace), Verna Felton as Dennis Day’s mother (best remembered as the Queen of Hearts in Disney’s “Alice in Wonderland”), Frank Nelson, singer/bandleader Bob Crosby (who succeeded Phil Harris in the early 1950s), and, of course, who can forget the remarkably versatile Mel Blanc, who provided several characters’ voices, as well as the famous sound of Benny’s aging auto, an early century Maxwell that was always on the verge of collapsing with a phat-phat-bang! Blanc is probably remembered best, however, as Benny’s perpetually frustrated violin teacher, 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.

So sit back, and laugh and laugh till you can’t laugh any more with Jack Benny and his cast of characters!

The following are the episodes contained on the CDs.

We want to thank Wikipedia for some of the background information on this show.

Presented for your enjoyment is an entire episode for you to sample.

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