Jack Benny had been only a minor vaudeville performer,
but he became an enormously successful national figure with The
Jack Benny Program, a weekly radio show which ran from 1932 to 1948
on NBC and from 1948 to 1955 on CBS, and was consistently among
the most highly rated programs during most of that run.
Benny's stage character was a clever inversion of
his actual self. Though the character was named Jack Benny, he was
also just about everything the actual Jack Benny himself was not:
cheap, petty, vain and self-congratulatory. His masterful comic
rendering of these traits became the vital linchpin to the Benny
show's success. Benny set himself up as the comedic foil, allowing
his supporting characters to draw laughs at the expense of his stinginess,
vanity, and pettiness. By allowing such a character to be seen as
human and vulnerable, in an era where few male characters were allowed
such obvious vulnerability, Benny made what might have been a despicable
character into a lovable Everyman character. Benny himself said
on several occasions: "I don't care who gets the laughs on my show,
as long as the show is funny."
The Jack Benny Program evolved from a variety show
blending sketch comedy and musical interludes into the situation
comedy form we know even now, crafting particular situations and
scenarios from the fictionalization of Benny the radio star. Anything,
from hosting a party to income tax time to a night on the town,
was good for a Benny show situation, and somehow the writers and
star would find the right ways and places to insert musical interludes
from Phil Harris and Dennis Day. (With Day, invariably, it would
be a brief sketch that ended with Benny ordering Day to sing the
song he planned to do on that week's show.)
Benny's first sponsor was Canada Dry Ginger Ale from
1932 to 1933, Chevrolet from 1933 to 1934, General Tire in 1934,
and Jell-O from 1934 to 1942. The Jell-O Show Starring Jack Benny
was so successful in selling Jell-O, in fact, that General Foods
could not manufacture it fast enough when sugar shortages arose
in the early years of World War II, and the company had to stop
advertising the popular dessert mix. General Foods switched the
Benny program from Jell-O to Grape Nuts and Grape Nuts Flakes cereals
from 1942 to 1944, and it became, naturally, The Grape Nuts Show
Starring Jack Benny. Benny's longest-running sponsor, however, was
the American Tobacco Company's Lucky Strike cigarettes, from 1944
to 1955, and it was during Lucky Strike's sponsorship that the show
became, at last, The Jack Benny Program once and for all.
This collection of Jack Benny Greats includes 869
different shows and appearances for a total of 410+ hours of listening
enjoyment.
This product is a DVD collection of Old Time Radio mp3s. It is
designed to be played on your computer DVD drive with standard mp3
software - like Windows media player or its equivalent on Macintosh
computers. The mp3 files on the DVDs can be copied onto CDs for
play in your car stereo, home entertainment center, etc so you can
take your favorite shows with you anywhere you go.
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