Trivia / The Jack Benny Program

• Acting for Two:
  • One episode featured Jack and Rochester taking a road trip to Palm Springs. A scene in a gas station featured Mel Blanc playing the gas station attendant, as well as providing voiceovers for the Maxwell's motor and Polly, Jack's parrot.
  • When Dick Van Dyke guest-starred on the show they did a skit involving a murder mystery. Jack was the inspector and Dick was everyone else.
• Channel Hop: The radio show moved from NBC to CBS in 1949, one of a number of shows and personalities that the latter network "raided" from the former.
  • The show had jumped around quite a bit in its radio days: starting on NBC Blue (later ABC) in May 1932, it moved to CBS that October, then to NBC Red (now NBC) in March 1933. It went to NBC Blue in October 1934 and back to Red in October 1936, where it stayed until the great talent raid of 1949.
  • Also, the TV show moved from CBS to NBC for its final season in 1964.
  • The channel hop also affected Phil Harris' show: For a time, Harris would try to "commute" between NBC and CBS (easy to do as the buildings were very close together) to do Benny's on the latter and his own show on the former. However, NBC got fed up, and demanded he choose — his own show, or Benny's. When he chose his own show (partly because Lucky Strike would have imposed him a pay cut on the Benny show), the character of Frankie Remley (a real-life member of Benny's backing orchestra, but played on Harris' show by Eliott Lewis) ended up getting a forced rename, as the character proper belonged to Benny's show — the expedient solution being to turn Lewis into The Danza and have the character go under the name "Eliott Lewis."
• Corpsing: There are many times when Jack tries and fails to not lose it during especially funny moments^note It was not a hard task at all to get Benny to laugh, as his close friend George Burns recounted that Benny would fall into hysterics at the drop of a hat. More often than not he can thank Mel Blanc for making him lose it, particularly whenever they did the "Si Sy" routine. In addition to Jack, Don and Mary were also notorious for corpsing, especially when either of them flubbed their lines.
• The Danza: Most of the main cast, with the exception of Rochester (real name Eddie Anderson), Mary Livingstone (Sadie Marks, though she later had it legally changed to match her character) and Dennis Day (Owen Patrick Eugene McNulty). Mel Blanc is a semi-example as "Professor LeBlanc".
• Irony as She Is Cast: In real life, Jack Benny was actually a very good violinist. It takes a lot of musical talent to be able to play a musical instrument badly for comic effect and having it come out amusing rather than painful.
  • Benny was also, contrary to his "lovable miser" persona, a very generous person in real life. He loved to give big tips to waiters at restaurants, but not wanting to spoil his on-screen persona, he just let the waiters write in the tip amount^note He once, characteristically, quipped that "being cheap costs me a bundle!". He also was free with his money for charity causes, including giving a million dollars to the upkeep of the The Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital (a home for retired actors and other professionals who needed a place to live, among its residents would be Larry Fine of the Three Stooges).
• Marathon Running: On Dec 31 2011/Jan 1st 2012 Digital channel Antenna TV ran "Night of 2012 Laughs" a 20 hour marathon of The Jack Benny Program alternating with The Burns and Allen Show.
  • Since then, it's become a New Year's tradition.
• The Other Darrin:
  • During the show's later years, Mary stopped attending the shows, recording her lines from home. In the studio, she was replaced by her adopted daughter Joan.
• The Pete Best: Several people from the early history of the show. Don Bestor, Johnny Green, Frank Parker. The best example is his writer Harry Conn. Harry Conn was Jack's writer until mid-1936, when he claimed that Jack had no talent of his own and all of his laughs came from his head. Coupled with his wife making a similar remark to Jack's wife Mary Livingstone (i.e., that Mary could only afford her fur stole through Conn's talent), Jack offered him a substantial raise, but Conn demanded equal pay. As a result, he was fired and left Jack without a script. Jack hired two writers named Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin, who greatly refined the show's humor and the characters into what we recognize until the end of the show. Harry Conn barely wrote anything after leaving the show and wound up as a doorman.
• Real-Life Relative: Apart from Jack and Mary, Don Wilson's wife Lois Corbett would often appear on later radio episodes in assorted roles before playing Mrs. Wilson on TV.
• Referenced by...: In Knights of Buena Vista, Mary's Player Character hears a robbery, with the Game Master saying "Your money or your life". Mary calls the victim Jack Benny as she runs to help.
• Screwed by the Network: In 1963, Jack Benny was bluntly told "You're through" by CBS president James Aubrey. That fall, CBS moved back his lead-in The Red Skelton Hour, whose popularity gave a surge to Jack's ratings the previous season, half an hour and put an new untested sitcom in between. Jack was furious, believing that the change would kill his ratings, and promptly got NBC to pick up his show for the 1964-65 season. His fears turned out to be unfounded, however, as the new sitcom, Petticoat Junction, also proved very popular, and his ratings remained strong for 1963-64. Nevertheless, the 1964-65 season turned out to be his last as Jack voluntarily ended the series due to being tired of the "rat race" and advertisers complaining that commercial time costed twice as much on his program than on other shows.
• Throw It In!: That's what Mel Blanc did when the sound effect recording for Benny's Maxwell failed to play on cue. Thinking fast, Blanc took the mike and improvised the sounds himself. The audience loved it so much that Benny decided to dispense with the recording and keep Blanc doing the sounds himself.
• What Could Have Been: The character of Rochester was originally supposed to be an one-shot featuring dialect actor Benny Rubin (the "I dunno" guy later on), who would have performed in blackface, but was rejected for looking "too Jewish". Then Benny apparently offered the role to a black shoe-shine man at the Paramount lot who asked for a rather steep $300. Eddie Anderson finally got the role at an audition.
• You Look Familiar: All of Mel Blanc's roles, lampshaded brutally and constantly.
  Polly Monsieur Benny, my money, please! *rawk*
  Jack Polly! You sounded just like Professor LeBlanc!
  *Beat*
  Jack Come to think of it, you look just like Professor LeBlanc, too...
  • Frank Nelson's many appearances (the roles vary, the character remains constant) also qualify. One episode even has Jack visiting a shrink, convinced that he's losing his mind because he keeps seeing Nelson everywhere he goes!
    • At the end of that ep, Nelson shows up at the doctor's office, feeling the same thing about Jack and fleeing at the mere sight of him. This makes Jack feel better.

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