Jack Benny remembered by his daughter

Jack Benny's Daughter Joan Benny Remembers the Late Star - Closer Weekly

One of Jack Benny’s most famous bits began with a mugger demanding of the notoriously tight-fisted comic, “Your money or your life.” After a laugh-filled pause, the thug repeated, “Look, bud, I said, ‘Your money or your life.’” Jack’s exquisitely timed reply: “I’m thinking it over!” Jack’s carefully cultivated persona portrayed him as a vainglorious cheapskate. In fact, the real Jack was a warmhearted, down-to-earth do-gooder, according to his daughter, Joan Benny. “He gave to a lot of charities, and he did it quietly,” she recently told Closer Weekly at a screening of her father’s classic 1942 film To Be or Not to Be at NYC’s Film Forum. “He was a man of great humility.”

While he was never a big spender, that wasn’t because he was a miser but rather a man of simple tastes. “He would be perfectly happy to drive an old car,” Joan recalled. “His favorite dining was at the local drugstore sitting at the counter, having a chicken-fried steak. He had no pretensions.” Jack’s humble roots reached back to Waukegan, IL, where he was raised as Benjamin Kubelsky, the son of immigrant parents. He was not a good student but excelled at the violin, performing in vaudeville, and entertaining troops during World War I when he was in the Navy. He began telling jokes as part of his act, and “he fell into comedy,” Joan said. “He never planned on it.”

With his note-perfect timing, Jack became a star on radio and television working alongside his wife, Mary Livingstone (real name: Sadie Marks), whom he’d first met at a Passover seder with Zeppo Marx in the early 1920s. They wed in 1927 and later adopted Joan. “My mother was the strict one — I was Daddy’s little girl,” she lovingly recalled. “He would never dare contradict her. When it came to my mother, he was a wuss.” While Jack’s meager violin skills became a running gag, in real life he regretted not keeping up his musical studies when his comedy career was on the rise. Once he took up violin seriously again in his 50s, “He had partial hearing loss,” Joan said. “People thought he was making mistakes to be funny but he wasn’t.”

Jack took comedy seriously, even though he wasn’t naturally witty. “He didn’t have quick comebacks, but he would painstakingly work on scripts, and he knew what was funny,” said Joan, whom he’d often consult. “On Sunday mornings before he did his radio shows, we’d drive to the beach in Malibu or Santa Monica and he’d ask me what I thought of the show. He treated me like I had a brain, which was wonderful.”

When Jack died of pancreatic cancer in 1974 at 80, friends and fellow comics like George Burns and Johnny Carson paid him tribute. “You’d have to say this is the only time when Jack’s timing was all wrong,” Bob Hope eulogized him. “He left us much too soon.” His daughter agreed: “He was so sweet and dear — there is a lot to be learned from him,” gushed Joan. “He was the nicest man I ever knew.”​

 

I heard how he worked the scripts to death. But I think over time, he realized his talent was pretty unique.
It wasn't ego necessarily, he knew that his schtick was perfect and he could always utilize it for (non-cheap) laughs. the scripts needed room for him to work.

 

George Burns was too broken up at the funeral to give the eulogy, so it fell to Bob Hope....

 

I'm such a big Jack Benny fan! One of my favorite episodes of his show is where he's out on the town with a crude loudmouth floozie, up in the balcony of a high-society concert and Stewart and his wife take a seat down below, and of course Jack sees them and tries to get their attention. I was laughing so hard at this -- Stewart and his wife pretending they don't know he's up there and ignoring him, and Benny yelling down and throwing peanuts or something at him to try to get his attention.

 

Benny went on to do many well-rated specials in the decade after CBS cancelled his series(bigger budget shows and in color), looking and sounding as spry as he ever had, and otherwise he was as active as ever until 1974. Pancreatic cancer killed him, abruptly, not CBS.

 

You knew somebody was gonna post it

 

Ol Jack was cool with me,he had that dry sought of humor.

 

Many of those color NBC specials are on YouTube, complete with vintage commercials. They generally hold up better than Bob Hope's specials of the same era, and Benny's attempts at being "contemporary" don't seem as forced.

 

Ouch. Right in the feels. Gloriously beautifully crafted sentence.

 

I love what he said on the Tonight Show to the audience as Carson is sitting at his desk.

I'm paraphrasing...

"Back when he was growing up, I was Johnny's idol. Right? You've said that before right?"

Johnny replies "Many times."

"Then he grew up and he became *my* idol. And I'm telling you folks, it was *much* better the other way."

 

I always enjoyed those when they originally aired.

 

I'd read somewhere that one of the very few times Johnny Carson was publicly emotional was after Jack Benny died.

I love listening to Benny's old radio shows. Time is really brutal on comedy and not too many stand up, but Benny's shows are some of the few that seem timeless.

dan c

 

How can it be? His mere stare was one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

 

Benny used to say he couldn't ad lib but he gets a great one in here.

 

My parents had the wisdom to take me to see Jack Benny in concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in downtown Los Angeles. I was a teenager but along with them, loved watching his TV show. In fact, Sunday Nights at Seven, a book co-written by Jack Benny and his daughter, Joan, is a very fun read.

It's before the show and the houselights are still up. Suddenly there is a commotion in the back of the house. Coming down the aisle is Jack Benny, dressed in a white ice cream/baker suit, complete with a paper cap. He has a tray of snow cones and is selling them to crowd, complaining he's got to do something to make some money. A theater pro, he's projecting his voice so we all can hear but it's tough, I'm laughing so hard. For a guy who said he couldn't ad lib, he's improvising the whole shtick, requesting exact change and fumbling with the coins when he can't get it. It was the funniest opening to a comedy show I've ever seen.

I am so glad I got to see him in concert.

 

One of a handful of really great classic acts.

 

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...n-s-youve-ever-met.31922/page-9#post-17989032

 

Jack Benny’s comedy has aged well. His legendary timing is very durable, it still works in the 21st Century. I love his work.

 

Sure wish they would put out season box sets of his shows from 1950 to 1965.

 

Hard to say. I remember being in high school, which would have been 1967-'71. That jibes with my sister not being there as she went away to college in '66. I was tall enough to easily see he wore one of those change machines on his belt, where you flicked out coins with your thumb. We weren't close - he was on the other side of the theater - so my best guess would be 1969-'71.