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Jack Benny Program Comedy Facts 50's-60's facts

The Jack Benny Show" was a TV staple from 1950 to 1965, and he also appeared in innumerable specials and guest shots. The Jack Benny Show had lots of huge guest stars like Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Jimmie Stewart, and many more. Bugs Bunny's voice Mel Blanc was a regular on the show, as well as his wife Mary Livingston, Dennis Day, Don Wilson, and Eddie Anderson ( Rochester ).

Jack Benny could get bigger laughs with a single gesture, look, or line than anyone.

Fall 1950 - Spring 1952, CBS, Sunday 7:30, irregular broadcasts
Fall 1952 - Spring 1953, CBS, Sunday 7:30, every four weeks
Fall 1953 - Spring 1960, CBS, Sunday 10:00, every two weeks
Fall 1960 - Spring 1962, CBS, Sunday 9:30, every week
Fall 1962 - Spring 1964, CBS, Tuesday 9:30, every week
Fall 1964 - Spring 1965, NBC, Friday 9:30, every week

Trivia

Interred at Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, California, USA.

He and his wife adopted a daughter: Joan Naomi

A middle school in his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois, was named after him. The school football team is the "39ers," (in honor of his insistence that he is 39 years old every year).

Jack Benny once appeared on the TV quiz show, "The $64,000 Question." After answering the first question correctly Benny quit and took home $64.00. His category was violins.

Trademark

Billed himself as "the Original 'Old Blue Eyes'"

His inept violin playing.

Theme song: "Love in Bloom"

Image as penny-pincher.

Never admitted to being older than 39.

Jack Benny Biography 

A former vaudevillian, and after having served in World War I, Ben K. Benny ( his real name was  Benjamin Kubelsky) went to work making movies, "The Hollywood Revue" of 1929 and starred for the first time in "The Medicine Man" (1930). Jack Benny fared much better on radio, where he established his persona as a wisecracking tightwad.

He appeared in a number of 1930s musicals and comedies, including Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934), Broadway Melody of 1936, It's in the Air (both 1935), The Big Broadcast of 1937, College Holiday (both 1936), Artists and Models (1937), and Artists and Models Abroad (1938). Man About Town (1939) brought his radio sidekicks Eddie "Rochester" Anderson and Phil Harris along for laughs; they were reunited in Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), this time in their familiar broadcast characterizations. Love Thy Neighbor (also 1940) was a disappointing effort to bring the phony feud between Benny and fellow funster Fred Allen to the screen, but Benny's next two starring vehicles, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942), were probably his best films. Ernst Lubitsch directed the latter, with Benny as "that great, great actor, Joseph Tura," whose Polish theater group bravely stands up to the Nazis. 

He also brightened George Washington Slept Here (also 1942), The Meanest Man in the World (1943, again featuring Rochester), Hollywood Canteen (1944), The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), It's in the Bag (also 1945, in a guest appearance in this Fred Allen vehicle), and numerous later films in which he took small supporting roles and unbilled cameos, including It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and A Guide for the Married Man (1967).  Benny, who in later years always gave his age as 39, married Sadye Marks in 1927; as Mary Livingstone, she costarred with him on radio and TV, and authored a memoir about him in 1978.

information from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia

Birth Name: Benjamin Kubelsky

Date of Birth:14 February 1894,
Chicago, Illinois, USA

Date of Death:26 December 1974,
Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. (cancer)