So, what have we been up to?
Recently found out that we get Antenna TV, one of the channels higher on our cable dial. And I found out that they play an hour each of Burns & Allen and The Jack Benny Program. If you have the chance, I'd recommend trying it, at least for one night.
George Burns and Gracie Allen had one joke. George Burns would say something, and Gracie would misunderstand it. They got twenty-five years of material out of that. Sometimes George didn't even need to say anything. They had, by the time of the TV show, got enough practice at it to get it just about perfect. I'd recommend everybody watch two episodes; they're generally similar enough to each other that any two will be sufficient.
I was listening to the old radio shows, and I realized that they were making jokes about how old George Burns was. That was all I knew about him, growing up. The jokes about his age went back to before my parents were born. And they kept joking about it for another fifty years, which isn't a bad career.
Jack Benny's radio program is one of my favorites. Unlike Minerva, especially the early ones, reflects this. It spent time on both sides of the fourth wall, usually at the same time. It parodied other shows while remaining fully itself, which I quickly learned was a tougher trick than they made it look. My secondary cast - Peter, Caleb, Sofia, and Goliath - bears a passing resemblance to Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Mary Livingstone, and Don Wilson. Or at least it would've if Goliath ever got lines.
Some comedians are very sensitive about who gets the punchlines, and want to be sure that nobody else on their show is funnier than they are. Jack Benny is famous for not being one of them. He had a very talented cast and wasn't afraid to use them.
Unfortunately, he lost about half of them on the way to TV. By the time the TV show came on, he had been doing this for about thirty years. Longer if you count vaudeville. It feels a bit tired, compared to the energy he had back in the forties. Still, you could do worse.
There aren't many faces that most of you would recognize, but there are a few voices. Gracie's friend is played by Bea Benaderet; if you think that someone on that show talks (and laughs) like Betty Rubble, you'd be right. Mel Blanc played a variety of small parts on Jack Benny's show and voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and a collection of
other cartoon characters too long to list here.