Early Days Productions

EARLY DAYS PRODUCTIONS

JACK BENNY

Jack Benny was born on February 14, 1894 in Chicago, Illinois and grew up in neighboring Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Meyer Kubelsky, a Jewish haberdasher and Emma Sachs Kubelsky, both of whom had emigrated to America from Lithuania. Benny began studying the violin, an instrument that would become his trademark, when he was just six, with his parents' hopes that he would be a great classical violinist. He loved the violin but hated practice. By age 14, he was playing in local dance bands as well as in his high school orchestra. Benny was a dreamer and a poor student and he was expelled from high school. He did equally badly in business school and at his father's trade. At age 17, he began playing the instrument in local vaudeville theaters for $7.50 a week

1894-1974

Stats:

Birth Name: Benjamin Kubelsky

Height: 5' 8"

Hair Color: brown

Eye Color: blue

Nickname: none found

Quote: "[After being presented with an award] I don't deserve this, but I have arthritis and I don't deserve that, either."

In 1922, Jack accompanied Zeppo Marx to a Passover seder where he met Sadye (Sadie) Marks, whom he married in 1927 after meeting again on a double-date. She was working in the hosiery section of May's department store and Benny would court her there. Called on to fill in for the "dumb girl" part in one of Benny's routines, Sadie proved a natural comedienne and a big hit. Adopting Mary Livingstone as her stage name, Sadie became Benny's collaborator throughout most of his career (according to Fred Allen's book on vaudeville, Much Ado About Me, it was a custom for vaudeville comics to put their wives into the act once married, in order to save on expenses and so that the marital partners could keep an eye on each other). They later adopted a daughter, Joan.

In 1929, Benny's agent Sam Lyons convinced MGM's Irving Thalberg to catch Benny's act at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. Benny was signed to a five-year contract and his first film role was in The Hollywood Revue of 1929. His next movie, Chasing Rainbows, was a flop and after several months, Benny was released from his contract and returned to Broadway in Earl Carroll's Vanities. At first dubious about the viability of radio, by this time Benny was eager to break into the new medium. In 1932, after a four-week nightclub run, he was invited onto Ed Sullivan's radio program, uttering his first radio spiel "This is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, 'Who cares..?"

The television version of The Jack Benny Program (which never used the sponsor's name) ran from October 28, 1950 to 1965. The show appeared infrequently during its first two years on TV, then ran every fourth week for the next two years. For the 1953 -1954 season, half the episodes were live and half were filmed during the summer, to allow Benny to continue doing his radio show. From 1955 to 1960 it appeared every other week, and from 1960 to 1965 it was seen weekly.

In October 1974, Benny canceled a performance in Dallas after suffering a dizzy spell, coupled with a feeling of numbness in his arms. Despite a battery of tests, Benny's ailment could not be determined. When he complained of stomach pains in early December, a first test showed nothing but a subsequent one showed he had inoperable pancreatic cancer. Choosing to spend his final days at home, he was visited by close friends including George Burns, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Carson. He succumbed to the disease on December 26, 1974 at the age of 80.

For more information about Jack Benny please visit: Wikipedia

Jack Benny's Selected Filmography

1967 A Guide for the Married Man
1963 It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World
1960 Who Was That Lady?
1959 The Mouse That Jack Built (short)
1945 The Horn Blows at Midnight
1944 Hollywood Canteen
1943 The Meanest Man in the World
1942 George Washington Slept Here
1942 To Be or Not to Be
1941 Charley's Aunt
1940 Love Thy Neighbor
1940 Buck Benny Rides Again
1939 Man About Town
1938 Artists and Models Abroad
1937 Artists & Models
1936 College Holiday
1936 The Big Broadcast of 1937
1935 It's in the Air
1935 Broadway Melody of 1936
1934 Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round
1931 Taxi Tangle (short)
1931 Cab Waiting (short)
1931 A Broadway Romeo (short)
1930 The Medicine Man
1930 Lord Byron of Broadway
1930 The Rounder (short)
1930 Chasing Rainbows
1929 The Hollywood Revue of 1929

Early Days Productions: Jack Benny 02/27/2012

Full Movie: Meanest Man in the World (1943)

Compassionate small-town lawyer Richard Clarke moves to New York City to seek his fortune, but is unsuccessful until he takes a friend's advice and tries to convince the world he's a ruthless heel. Suddenly he's the most popular lawyer in town -- but he could lose his fiancée. - Edited from IMDB

Benny had been only a minor vaudeville performer, but he became a national figure with The Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show which ran from 1932 to 1948 on NBC and from 1949 to 1955 on CBS, and was consistently among the most highly rated programs during most of that run.

Benny also acted in movies, including Broadway Melody of 1936 (as a benign nemesis for Eleanor Powell and Robert Taylor), George Washington Slept Here (1942), and notably, Charley's Aunt and To Be or Not to Be. He and Livingstone also appeared in Ed Sullivan's Mr. Broadway (1933) as themselves. Benny often parodied contemporary movies and movie genres on the radio program, and the 1940 film Buck Benny Rides Again features all the main radio characters in a funny Western parody adapted from program skits. The failure of one Benny vehicle, The Horn Blows at Midnight, became a running gag on his radio and television programs, although contemporary viewers may not find the film as disappointing as the jokes suggest.