Shark Bytes

Nope...the show never jumped the shark. As others have said, Jack Benny's comic timing and the brilliance of the scripts in my mind make it untouchable from shark jumping. The later TV episodes were on NBC, something that hadn't been brought up. NBC was the network that helped make Jack a radio star in 1934 with the Jell-O program, lasting until 1942...then a brief run with Grape Nuts lasted until Lucky Strike became the shows last sponsor, 1944-1955. It's interesting to note that the Jell-O era is best remembered for the early stages of his mock-feud with Fred Allen and for his on-going quest to fire Don Wilson, Phil Harris, and others in the show. The Lucky Strike era is best known for the now-classic routines. It was during the Lucky Strike era that Ronald and Benita Colman became Jack's snooty neighbors on the show. Here's more...

It was during the Lucky Strike program that Frank Nelson and Sheldon Leonard's characters were becoming popular in recurring routines. Frank's role was the clerk or salesman or waiter who greeted Jack with "Yeeeeeeeesssssss????". For those familiar with the show, you'll know what i'm talking about.

Sheldon's role was the race track tout. Artie Auerbach made his debut as Mr Kitzel...Benny Rubin was on hand playing a character who didn't know anything making the phrase "I Dunno!" popular. The Sportsman Quartet became the jingle singers for Lucky Strike. They, too, became a highlight because their weekly jingle would be a parody of a pop song promoting Lucky Strike cigarettes.

Mel Blanc had been a part of the show since 1939 but it wasn't until the mid to late 1940's that his roles were increased.

I got side-tracked a little bit didn't I? Anyway, what I was getting at is, NBC aired the last season of Jack's TV show, 1964-1965. Jack went to CBS radio in 1949 and remained a CBS commodity until 1964. When he made his NBC return, I can't remember from the things i've read if there was a big fanfare or not? I wasn't even born then. I was born in 1976. Well, from what I read "Gomer Pyle" over on CBS is what did in Jack Benny on NBC. After the weekly show ended he did those farewell TV specials on into the early 1970's.

It was touched upon that Jack's comedy and his style of delivery was in sharp contrast to the "hip" "slick" comedians emerging during the 1960's. I don't really feel that Jack's show jumped the shark, even with the appearances of modern pop acts in his later years. I thought it quite humorous when Jack would try and emulate a beatnik type or strive to have acceptance as a hipster but go about it to the extreme, which made it funny.

In some of the books I have on Jack Benny, he himself felt that the radio show was the best because on TV they couldn't do the vault scene very well and it was funnier listening to the sound effects and imagining everything. He also felt, as others have said, that with TV you have to be visual and it doesn't allow for theatre of the mind and there was restrictions on TV. The things that were great on the TV show were purely the visual aspects of actually SEEING the characters after having heard them for years on radio. He made the walk across the stage a visual masterpiece...in addition to the hand to the cheek gesture, which has become as synonymous with him as the violin and the dollar sign for his cheapskate routine.

Jack Benny never jumped any shark...he fell down laughing at it.

i watch a lot of jack benny.s old show;s sush a blessing to me. do you have any other selections that i could get from this program? JANICE

The one show I liked was when Jack Benny was having a jam session at
his house. He invited all these big
stars over to play with him. Tony
Martin played the clarinet, Fred
MacMurray played the sax, Dick Powell
played the trumpet, and Dan Dailey played the drums. But as a last minute
replacement for the banjo player, Kirk
Douglas came with his banjo. They all were gonna play the tune Basin Street
and each player had a solo. Only Kirk
Douglas didnt know how to read music and the only tune he knew was Bye Bye
Blues. So whenever his turn came to do a solo he would play Bye Bye Blues.
But in the end everyone joined Kirk
Douglas playing Bye Bye Blues.

I haven't seen the tv show in more than 20 years, but get to hear episodes of his classic radio show on XM radio. Still funny stuff, that holds up very well after all these years, can't really say that about some of the other old radio comedies, although I they can be somewhat interesting to listen to, kinda like falling in a time warp.

Jack really had a great ensemble of a cast. Rochester was hilarious.

Never jumped. I watched the Jack Benny Program starting as a toddler back in the early 1950s right through to the swinging 60s and it never failed to deliver the laughs.
Of all the old vaudeville comics that made it to TV, Benny was definitely the funniest.
"Oh Rochester"

The JTS moment on the Jack Benny Program indeed came---when Jack had Peter, Paul, and Mary on as guests. What was up with that. PPAM were a talented singing trio for sure but they weren't Jack's kind. They represented the horrible world called counterculture that was taking over America for sure, the end of the good old days. PPAM were amazing. they could make atmosphere different just by showing up somewhere. Sometimes I think they think they really were the Bible's Peter, Paul and Mary (who weren't a trio!).
PS Speaking of just PPAM Peter's song River of Jordan was sang in the spoof film Airplane by teh lady flight attendant. Peter hated that--hey Pete, cool off! No one would have probably ever heard of your song otherwise!

Jack Benny: "I always play UP to my audience". Jack dropped out of high school to pursue show business (vaudeville). He would travel worldwide, playing for troops overseas. He would meet with world leaders. He would be blessed with a long career in radio and television. Yet he never lost his humility, and would sometimes tell reporters his regret over lack of "formal education". He was truly amazed at where he made it in life (read the last two pages in "Sunday Nights At Seven: The Jack Benny Story") and never forgot his luck of the draw.
Never jumped.

Hmm...Did the Jack Benny Program ever jump the shark? I would have to say an emphatic NO, yet I must also agree with the many posters who contend that the radio episodes were better than the television episodes. My agreement is based partly on ignorance, as I've seen only a fraction of the number of tv shows than the number of radio shows I've listened to. There were many jokes that were better listening to them than seeing them, but there were definitely visual gags that were hilarious and might have been more difficult to pull off on radio. Take, for example, the episode where Jack goes grocery shopping. When he passes the table offering the free samples of cake and he takes everything on the table including the silverware, that's very funny. As for the Phil vs. Bob debate, that's like comparing apples with okra (an orange is at least a fruit, but there is NO comparison between apples and okra.) On radio, Phil was definitely the king of the supporting characters for most of his run. However, one of my favorite tv moments in the series is the early episode where Jack is in the middle of his monologue and Bob Crosby just walks on stage, completely ignoring Jack, and just takes over. He tells the stagehands to bring down his backdrop, gives instructions to the band, and then sings an entire song with Jack just standing there staring at the audience and looking pathetic. Incidentally, that was almost a year before Phil left the radio series, yet Bob seemed to already be on the way to becoming part of Jack's television ensemble. So, Jack Benny was incredible, and he never jumped the shark.

I just saw the Peter Paul & Mary episode of the Jack Benny show this evening and it was the sweetest thing, genuinely funny. They have PP&M singing "Blowing in the Wind" on this very dark set, in profile, very serious, and they segue from that to doing this very light stand up comedy with Mr. Benny directly after, no mention of the content of the song, only a definition given to Mr. Benny by Peter explaining what folk music is, and a cute little sketch where Benny tricks them into recording a song for him, and they make up a very funny "folk song" about Mr. Benny - it was very funny!

I take issue with the poster of 3-28-07 who derides hippie culture of the time as "thrill seeking" and nothing else, and describes Mr. Benny as a naive innocent. C'mon kiddo, or whatever you are! Mr. Benny did VAUDEVILLE and BURLESQE, that's where he got his start - do you think a man who started at the bottom and built his own empire was naive? You know he saw every scam and every kind of deranged and deluded person in his lifetime. I'm not saying he did it, I'm saying he saw it, and he did have a very good reputation as a decent human being who gave a lot of people their first breaks on his show. Thrill seeing behavior? Do you know who PP&M were? Do you know anything about how serious the antiwar, anti-imperialist work "hippies" were doing was? Loss of values? Beginning of values, the beginning of the questioning of empire that is the only thing that is going to save us today. If anything, they were the innocents who got their butts kicked by the humorless narrowminded creeps that abound in this world, poor things. I could really cream you in an argument like this, but I won't take the space.

Anyway, if you get the chance, see this charming show in its entirety - it was one of the most charming Benny shows I've seen. And like a ding a ling I didn't record it.

Jack Benny was simply the best. He, like others of his generation, were caught by surprise in the 1960s when values morphed so suddenly. Jack's gentle humor was lost on a crowd of hippie/trippies who only wanted the next thrill. I have an episode of "The Lucy Show" where he does a credible job of playing an aging lecher, and his gentle gags are still fresh and funny. These people were not unworldly-wise; they only believed that there was a place for it, and that was not the media.

Benny was great on his own but Phil made it special. Harris was such a gem that I really wish he and his wife Alice Faye would have made their own successful radio show a tv show (thank god there is a wealth of OTR available). Benny and Harris played off each other almost as well as Hope and Crosby did. comedic perfection.

To "confuse" the title issue a little more, there are some copies floating around with the title, "Sunday With Jack Benny". The network, during the early '60's would re-run Jack's prime time episode on a Sunday afternoon, with said title. (They did this with other shows, such as "Lucy", long before the hours and hours of live Sunday morning talk shows and sporting events we know today). The "cartoon" opening shows an animated Jack Benny driving his broken down Maxwell: as he drives off stage left, his violin case falls off the back, opens, and the words "Sunday With Jack Benny" come out of the violin case and fill the screen...in typical tacky 1960's animated style

As for the title, the matter isn't so cut-and-dried. I recently purchased a DVD with three episodes from the mid-50s, and the panels would say both "The Jack Benny Show" and the "Jack Benny Program." Sometimes a panel with "Show" would appear at the same time that Don Wilson was saying "program." To confuse matters even further, Jack would then come out onto the stage and welcome the audience to "The Lucky Strike Program."

George Burns was quoted as saying he thought Jack Benny was the all-time greatest comic. That's high praise coming from a very funny comic in his own right. THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM was hilarious.