Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of watching some
kinescopes of “The Jack Benny Show” that were originally broadcast in the late
fifties and early sixties. The DVD
cover said they were “lost” episodes, though when they’ve been re-mastered and
put on sale, it’s hard to think of them as lost. If you read the liner notes, you’ll discover that they were in a
vault at U.C.L.A. I’m guessing it would
be much more likely for a freshman with an uncertain sexual orientation to get
lost there than a parcel of classic television shows.
After years on the radio, Benny’s delivery is flawless, as
wonderful for what he doesn’t say as what he does. He conveys more by folding his arms or by cutting his eyes than
some modern comics could say with a page of dialogue. Parts of his demeanor (and many of the jokes)
date back to Vaudeville, yet there were many trying to mine the past of comedy
history to achieve television immortality.
Benny succeeded where so many others failed. I began to wonder what made him different. I watched and I watched. I saw some of the episodes four times, into
the late evening. Even when I wasn’t
laughing, I was charmed. He had
something, something that must be lacking from much of today’s comedy, I
thought.
When my seventeen year-old got home that night, it became
clearer. Exhausted from a long day of
working sound in his high school theatre, he sat down and watched the fifty
year-old shows with me…and he laughed.
Then, he laughed some more. I
asked him later what he had found humorous and he responded, “I don’t know…he’s
just funny.”
The mystery was solved in an episode with Milton Berle as a
guest star. “Mister Television” was
signed to a thirty-year contract in 1951, so anxious was NBC to rein in the
star of the “Texaco Star Theater”, but
at the point where he appears on the Benny show, Berle’s show was long
gone. He had been exiled to hosting a
celebrity bowling show, which didn’t last two years.
Berle was lucky he had prodigious choppers, because he
chewed every piece of scenery on the stage (for the uninitiated, that’s
over-acting). Sweaty and desperate, he
went for any and every laugh available, not caring if he upstaged the star of
the show. And then your eye would
travel back to Benny…who with two fingers in his cheek would deliver a stinging
rejoinder without a word.
And there it was. It
was all in his eyes. Not just the way
he looked at the camera, but what was in his eyes when he looked through
the lens, through the co-axial cables, right into our living rooms, fifty years
ago and yesterday. He seemed to say,
“Humor me, folks. I’ll make it worth
your while.”
Jack Benny loved his job, and loved the people he was
working with, even when they went too far.
He also loved his audience. I’ve
watched some comedies since I finished with the Benny set, and seen what looks
like outright contempt for me, as the viewer.
I have something to say to them.
In the inimitable words of Mr. Benny, “Now cut
that out!”
