INTRODUCTION
1. Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 1.
2. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 6–15.
3. Susan Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 101.
4. Michele Hilmes, “Is There a Field Called Sound Culture Studies? And Does It Matter?” American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005): 251.
5. Andrew Crisell, Understanding Radio, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006), 22; Jack Gould, “How Comic Is Comic Radio?” New York Times, November 21, 1948, SM22.
6. John K Hutchens, “The Secret of a Good Radio Voice,” New York Times, December 6, 1942, SM 26.
7. Hutchens, “The Secret of a Good Radio Voice”; see also discussion in Hilmes, “Is There a Field.”
8. Hutchens, “The Secret of a Good Radio Voice,” 27. Female performers with high-pitched voices had difficulties in radio, sounding artificial, but Mary Livingstone’s lower tones would register clearly.
9. Larry Wilde, The Great Comedians Talk About Comedy (New York: Citadel, 1968), 39.
10. Joseph Julian quoted in Alan Havig, Fred Allen’s Radio Comedy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992), 10; Joseph Julian, This Was Radio: A Personal Memoir (New York: Viking, 1975).
11. Erik Barnouw, Handbook of Radio Writing: An Outline of Technique and Markets in Radio Writing in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), 57.
12. Art Hanley, Radio Comedy: How to Write It (New York: Humor Business [self-published by Hanley], 1948), Lesson 3, 15.
13. Hanley, Radio Comedy, 16.
14. Hanley, Radio Comedy, 24, 25.
15. Max Wylie, Radio and Television Writing (New York: Rinehart, 1939, 1950), 233.
16. Carroll Nye, “Air Comedian’s Gags Metered for Laughs,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1937, C10.
17. Milton Makaye, “Whiskers on the Wisecrack,” Saturday Evening Post, August 17, 1935, 13, 50.
18. Tad Friend, “What’s So Funny? Science Looks at Why Jokes Work,” New Yorker 78, no. 34 (November 11, 2002), 78–93.
19. ‘Benny the Man vs Benny the Radio Myth,” c. 1945, in Benny scrapbook 1945, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Collection 8922, Box 116.
20. Hanley, Radio Comedy, 26–27.
21. Alan Dale terms it “verbal slapstick;” Dale, Comedy Is a Man in Trouble: Slapstick in American Movies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 7.
22. Friend, “What’s So Funny?”
23. Friend, “What’s So Funny?” 80.
24. Friend, “What’s So Funny?”
25. Hubbell Robinson and Ted Patrick, “Jack Benny,” Scribner’s, March 1938, 13.
26. John Morreale, “Philosophy of Humor,” Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/ First published November 20, 2012.
27. Stephen Leacock, Humor: Its Theory and Technique, with Examples and Samples (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co. 1935).
28. Leacock, Humor, 15.
29. Leacock, Humor, 124–25.
30. Irving A. Fein, Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976); Milt Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show (New York: Arlington House, 1977); Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks, and Marcia Borie, Jack Benny: A Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1978); Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven; Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Havig, Fred Allen’s Radio Comedy.
CHAPTER 1
1. Larry Wolters, “Olsen Recalls First Benny Show on Anniversary; Idea of Kidding Sponsor Was George’s,” Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1935, S6; “With Canada’s Mounted,” Variety, January 19, 1932, 58.
2. “Inside Stuff—Radio,” Variety, June 7, 1932, 49; “Canadians Hear New Program by Canada Dry Ginger Ale,” Montreal Guardian, May 5, 1932, 2.
3. Canada Dry Program, May 2, 1932; Advertisement, Variety, October 1, 1932, 16.
4. “Radio’s Script Act Cycle,” Variety, May 10, 1932, 55; Ben Bodec, “Radio in ’32,” Variety, January 3, 1933, 59.
5. Kathryn H. Fuller Seeley, “Dish Night at the Movies: Exhibitors and Female Audiences during the Great Depression,” in Looking Past the Screen: Case Studies in American Film History and Method, edited by Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 246–75; Alan Havig, Fred Allen’s Radio Comedy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 19–21).
6. See Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).
7. Larry Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished,” Broadcasting and Television, October 1956, 118–26.
8. Fuller Seeley, “Dish Night at the Movies.”
9. Brett Mills, Television Sitcom (London: British Film Institute, 2005); Horace Newcomb, Television: The Critical View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
10. “Annual Radio Poll,” New York World-Telegram (February 1933), in Benny Scrapbook 1933, Jack Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming) Collection 8922, Box 116; Lawrence E. Mintz, “Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation,” American Quarterly 37, no. 1 (1985): 71–80.
11. Holly A. Pearse, “As Goyish as Lime Jell-O? Jack Benny and the American Construction of Jewishness,” Jewish Cultural Studies 2008: 272–90.
12. Robert W. Snyder, The Voice of the City: Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
13. Robert J. Landry, “For Benny It Was Big Time or Nothing; He Wasn’t for Coalminers,” Variety, April 30, 1940, 24, 45.
14. “Majestic, Chicago,” Billboard, September 27, 1920, 9; “Keith’s, Cincinnati,” Billboard, October 1, 1921, 11; “Orpheum, St. Louis,” Billboard, October 31, 1925, 15.
15. “Palace, Chicago,” Billboard, November 15, 1924, 14.
16. “Palace, New York,” Billboard, April 18, 1925, 14. Another review specifically noted that that he used no Yiddish in his act. “Palace, New York,” Variety, September 21, 1927, 26.
17. Abel Green, “The Big Band Cavalcade: A Study in Changing Sounds and Economics,” Variety, January 3, 1968, 151.
18. Maurice Zolotow, “The Fiddler from Waukegan,” Cosmopolitan, October 1947, 49–51, 137–38, 141–46; 142.
19. “Palace, New York,” Variety, April 7, 1926, 26.
20. “Review of Vitaphone No 2997,” Variety, August 29, 1928,15.
21. “Frank Fay,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1961, 1.
22. Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, and Donald McNeilly, Vaudeville Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performances in America, vol. 1 (New York: Psychology Press, 2004), 370–71.
23. Robert Landry, “Frank Fay, One of Real Vaude Greats, Dies at 63,” Variety, September 27, 1961, 2.
24. Maurice Zolotow, “Frank Fay: Mystical Ex-vaudevillian Teams with Invisible Rabbit to Make a Big Theatrical Comeback,” Life, January 8, 1945, 55, 58, 60, 63; 58.
25. Landry, “Frank Fay,” 2, 78; Cullen, Hackman, and McNeilly, Vaudeville Old and New, 369; S. D. Trav, No Applause, Just Throw Money, Or, The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous: A High-Class, Refined Entertainment (New York: Macmillan, 2005), 184.
26. Cullen, Hackman, and McNeilly, Vaudeville Old and New, 21; P 21; Anthony Slide, Encyclopedia of Vaudeville (Oxford: University of Mississippi Press, 2012), 169.
27. Zolotow, “Fiddler from Waukegan,” 142.
28. “Palace, New York,” Variety, May 2, 1931, 26.
29. “Palace, New York,” Variety, January 8, 1930, 103.
30. “New Palace, Chicago,” Variety, December 7, 1929, 18.
31. “Palace, New York,” Variety, November 24, 1928, 17.
32. Variety, January 1, 1930; “Hollywood Chatter,” Variety, September 18, 1929, 4.
33. “Capitol Theater,” Billboard, September, 1932, 11; “Film House Reviews, Variety, February 11, 1931, 52.
34. Canada Dry Program, May 2, 1932 script, Jack Benny Papers, Los Angeles, University of California at Los Angeles Special Collections, Collection 134, Radio Scripts Box 1, file 1.
35. Canada Dry Program, May 2, 1932 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
36. “Were You Listening Last Night,” Pittsburgh Press, May 10, 1932, 11.
37. Canada Dry Program, May 11, 1932, script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
38. Review of Canada Dry Program, Variety, May 10, 1932, 58.
39. “Canada Dry Program,” Billboard, May 14, 1932, 17.
40. Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished,” Broadcasting and Television, October 1956, 122.
41. Jerome Beatty, “Unhappy Fiddler,” American Magazine, December 1944, 142.
42. “Radio Its Own Menace,” Variety, February 21, 1933, 59.
43. Jerald Manning, “Laughter by the Yard,” Radio Mirror November 1938, 40.
44. “Radio Its Own Menace,” Variety, February 21, 1933, 59.
45. Zolotow, “The Fiddler from Waukegan,” 142.
46. Al Boasberg advertisement, Variety, March 1, 1932, 36; Sid Silvers advertisement, Variety, December 8, 1931, 30; “Boasberg Walks on B&A Over Difference in Stage-Air Royalty,” Variety, May 10, 1932, 55; “Authors! Authors!” Variety, August 30, 1932, 57; “Percentage for 2,” Variety, May 31, 1932, 1; “Fleishmann Hour Program,” Variety, October 11, 1932, 58.
47. Al Boasberg advertisement, Variety, March 1, 1932, 36; “Air Getting Ex-Vaude Writers on Rebound,” Variety, May 31, 1932, 56.
48. Fred Allen, Treadmill to Oblivion (Boston: Little Brown, 1954), 70; “Air Gag Writers Are Now Most Highly Paid Writing Contingent,” Variety, May 16, 1933, 43. Milton Makaye, “Whiskers on the Wisecrack,” Saturday Evening Post, August 17, 1935, 12, 13, 50, 52.
49. “Gag Writing: It’s Big Business Now,” Literary Digest, December 12, 1936, 24, 26.
50. “Air Gag Writers Are Now Mostly Highly Paid Writing Contingent,” Variety, May 16, 1932, 43.
51. “Radio Its Own Menace,” Variety, February 21, 1933, 59.
52. “Commission Curbs Contests on Radio,” Pittsburgh Press, May 13, 1932, 24.
53. Canada Dry Program, May 11, 1932 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
54. “Were You Listening Last Night,” Pittsburgh Press, May 10, 1931, 11; May 17, 1932, 12.
55. Canada Dry Program, May 16, 1932 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
56. “Were You Listening?” Pittsburgh Press, June 9, 1932, 20.
57. Canada Dry Program, May 23, 1932 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
58. Ralph M. Blagden, “Laughter Around the Dial” Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1939, 4, 12.
59. “Little Bits from the Air,” Variety, August 23, 1932, 42.
60. “Little Bits from the Air,” Variety, October 18, 1932, 42.
61. James Cannon, untitled, undated newspaper clipping, Benny Scrapbook 1932–1933, Jack Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 90.
62. Bertha Brainard to John Royal, October 7, 1932, NBC Papers, Collection 17AF, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 6, file 63.
63. Bertha Brainard to John Royal October 7, 1932, NBC Records, Wisconsin Historical Society.
64. Canada Dry Program, November 17, 1932 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
65. “Canada Dry Program,” Canton OH Repository, January 20, 1933, 24.
66. Chevrolet Program, March 17, 1933 script, Benny Collection, UCLA.
67. “Jack Benny Is Back,” Ottawa Citizen, March 11, 1933, 7.
68. “Chicago Theater,” Variety, July 4, 1933, 14.
69. Beatty, “Unhappy Fiddler,” 143.
70. Beatty, “Unhappy Fiddler,” 143.
71. O. O. McIntyre, “New York Day by Day,” Rochester (NY) Evening Journal, September 26, 1934, 15.
72. “Jack Benny and Company,” Radio Guide, March 2, 1935, 13.
73. Beatty, “Unhappy Fiddler,” 143.
74. Variety, review of Benny show, October 2, 1935, 40.
75. Variety, March 13, 1935, 35.
76. Carroll Nye, “Benny Rates ‘Tops’ as Dialogue Reader,” Los Angeles Times, May 12, 1935.
77. Carroll Nye, “Radio Writers Need New Type of Humor,” Los Angeles Times, December 1, 1935, C12.
78. Lloyd C Greene, “Radio Broadcasts: Sad Faced Harry Conn, Radio’s Little Known Mogul of Mirth,” Boston Globe, July 14, 1935, A36.
79. Beatty, “Unhappy Fiddler,” 143.
80. Larry Wolters, “News of the Radio Stations,” Chicago Tribune, February 6, 1936, 14.
81. Larry Wolters, “More Listeners Give Views on Broadcast Fare,” Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1936, SW 6.
82. Variety, March 11, 1936, 40.
83. Irving Fein, Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography (New York: G. P. Putnams’ Sons, 1976), 67.
84. Fein, Jack Benny, 66.
85. Laura Leff, 39 Forever, Second Edition, Volume 1: Radio May 1932–May 1942 (North Charleston, SC: Book Surge, 2004), 232.
86. Jell-O Program, March 22, 1936 script, Benny Collection, UCLA. Jack Benny telegram to Harry Conn, March 24, 1936, Benny Collection, UCLA, Box 98, folder 21.
87. Variety, July 14, 1936, 10; “Wedlock, Snyder Arrive for Benny’s Jell-O,” Variety, September 18, 1936, 1.
88. Fein, Jack Benny, 67.
89. Harry Conn to Jack Benny, June 9, 1936, Benny Collection, UCLA, Box 98, folder 21.
90. Harry Conn to Jack Benny, June 9, 1936, Benny Collection, UCLA.
91. Variety, June 24, 1936, 57.
92. “Comedy Writer Lineup for Fall,” Variety, August 19, 1936, 35; Jerald Manning, “Laughter by the Yard,” Radio Mirror, November 1938, 41.
93. “Conn Dropped as Penner’s Gag Composer,” Variety, December 10, 1936, 1, 3.
94. “Harry Conn to Write for Jolson Show,” Variety, January 22, 1937, 3.
95. Variety, March 2, 1937, 11.
96. “Earaches of 1938 Foil for C&S Hour,” Daily Variety, November 23, 1937, 6.
97. “CBS Splurge on Conn Sustainer,” Billboard, October 30, 1937, 9.
98. John H. Heiney, “Harry Conn in Earaches of 1938,” Washington Post, November 21, 1937, TS5.
99. Review of “Earaches of 1938,” Billboard, December 25, 1937, 8.
100. “Eddie Cantor Sued by Dave Freedman,” Variety, April 3, 1935, 35.
101. “Conn Sues Benny,” Variety, August 9, 1939, 31; August 12, 1940, P2.
102. Fein, Jack Benny, 67. Untitled Killgallen clipping, New York Journal American, November 17, 1958, no page, in New York Journal American Morgue archive collection, Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
CHAPTER 2
1. Lucky Strike Program, April 27, 1947.
2. Mary Dalton and Laura Linder, eds., The Sitcom Reader: America Viewed and Skewed (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 85, 101, 106.
3. Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 109.
4. Kathleen Rowe, The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2011), 3–19.
5. Milt Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show (New York: Crown, 1977), 253.
6. See Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven.
7. Harriet Menken, “Laughs from the Ladies,” Delineator, August 1936, 64–65.
8. Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., “Ladies of the Wavelengths,” New York Times, March 13, 1938.
9. Sadie Marcowitz birth certificate, Jack Benny Times 31, no. 3–4 (May–August 2016): 9. The certificate indicates her name as Sadie, but she spelled it Sadye.
10. Mary Livingstone Benny, Hilliard Marks, and Marcia Borie, Jack Benny: A Biography (New York: Doubleday 1978), vii.
11. Livingstone, Marks, and Borie, Jack Benny, 39. Mary claimed she was thirteen when she and Benny met, but actually she was sixteen.
12. Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 36.
13. Livingstone, Marks, and Borie, Jack Benny, 38.
14. “Marriages,” Variety, January 19, 1927, 27.
15. Livingstone, Marks, and Borie, Jack Benny, 50, 54.
16. Livingstone, Marks, and Borie, Jack Benny, 49–50.
17. “Mary Livingstone,” IMDB, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2792434/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_8.
18. Fred Wilson, “She Couldn’t Help Being a Radio Star,” Boston Globe, June 30, 1935, 13.
19. Mary Benny, “Mary Benny Tells Why She Quit Show Biz,” Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1965, A1.
20. Canada Dry Program, May 23, June 15, June 27, 1932 scripts, Jack Benny Papers, Los Angeles, University of California at Los Angeles Special Collections, Collection 134, Radio Scripts Box 1, file 1.
21. Canada Dry Program, July 27, 1932, script, WEAF Masterbooks, NBC Collection, Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.
22. Canada Dry Program, August 1, 1932 script, Benny Papers, UCLA.
23. Jack Benny with Charles Martel, “Never Try to Be Funny,” Tower Radio, September 1934, 21.
24. Canada Dry Program, August 17, 1932 script, Jack Benny papers, UCLA..
25. Canada Dry Program, October 17, 1932, script, Jack Benny papers, UCLA.
26. Canada Dry Program, September 19, 1932, Jack Benny papers, UCLA.
27. Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 68–69.
28. Shlepperman, and then Phil Harris and Dennis Day, would occasionally address Mary by the nickname “Livvy,” which added an informal, flirtatious aspect to how the male cast members interacted with her.
29. Canada Dry Program, September 5, 1932 script(the script alternates between calling her Mary and Sadye), Jack Benny papers, UCLA.
30. Chevrolet Program, February 4, 1934 script, Benny Papers, UCLA..
31. Robert Heinl, “Radio Dial Flashes,” Washington Post, November 21, 1932, 8.
32. Canada Dry Program, January 15, 1933 script, Benny Papers, UCLA.
33. “Benny, at $2750 Is Jolson’s Successor; 2d Top Radio Salary,” Variety February 28, 1933, 49.
34. June 1933 review of Chevrolet Program, Benny Scrapbook 1932–1933, Jack Benny Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 90.
35. Variety, January 2, 1934, 75.
36. Robert Heinl, “Radio Dial Flashes,” Washington Post, April 11, 1933.
37. Robert Heinl, “Radio Dial Flashes,” Washington Post, May 19, 1933, 9.9.
38. Thomas Doherty, review of Jill Watts, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White (Oxford 2001), American Historical Review (December 2002): 1576–77.
39. Jell-O Program, May 30, 1937.
40. Review of show at Palace, Chicago, Variety, July 4, 1933, 14.
41. Fred Wilson, “She Couldn’t Help Being a Radio Star,” Boston Globe, June 30, 1935, 13.
42. Larry Wolters, “How New Radio Season Looks to a Listener.” Chicago Tribune, October 20, 1935, SW6.
43. “Write Comedy Verse! Fatten Your Purse,” Detroit Times, May 4, 1936, Benny Scrapbook 1936, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 90.
44. Untitled clipping, Detroit Times, May 5, 1936, Benny Scrapbook 1936, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 90.
45. “Portland Hoffa, 80, Mrs. Fred Allen in Life and on Air,”, Boston Globe, January 1, 1991, 17.
46. Leah Lowe, “‘If the Country’s Going Gracie, So Can You’: Gender Representation in Gracie Allen’s Radio Comedy,” in Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture, ed. Susan M. Squire (Duke 2003), 237–50.
47. Douglas, Listening In, 116.
48. Lowe, “‘If the Country’s Going Gracie,’” 38.
49. Lowe, “‘If the Country’s Going Gracie,’” 240.
50. George Burns, “Gracie Allen as I Know Her,” Independent Woman, July 1940, 214, quoted in Shirley Staples, Male-Female Comedy Teams in American Vaudeville 1965–1932 (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), 224.
51. Jim Cox, The Great Radio Sitcoms (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 43.
52. Cynthia Clements and Sandra Weber, George Burns and Gracie Allen: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 31.
53. Lowe, “‘If the Country’s Going Gracie,’” 248.
54. Lowe, “‘If the Country’s Going Gracie,’” 244. Gracie and Mary almost never interacted when Gracie guest-starred on the Benny program.
55. General Tire Program, June 15 1934 script, Jell-O Program, April 29, July 7, December 6, 1935, scripts, Benny Papers, UCLA.
56. Untitled article, Detroit Times, Sunday May 10, 1936, Benny Scrapbook 1936, Benny Collection, American Heritage Center, box 90.
57. Advertisement in Modern Romances, 7 (no date, ca. 1935), KFS clippings collection.
58. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 18, 1941. Jennifer Hyland Wang has found fascinating parallels in the humor of Allen Prescott’s daytime household hints radio program of the 1930s and 1940s. Wang, “Recipe for Laughs: Comedy While Cleaning in the Wife Saver,” Journal of e-Media Studies 4, no. 1 (2015), http://journals.dartmouth.edu/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Journals.woa/xmlpage/4/article/454.
59. “Jack Benny and His Gang,” (undated, ca. 1939), [unknown source, in KFS clippings collection].
60. Edgar A Thompson, “Riding the Airwaves,” Milwaukee Journal, May 30 1940, 2.
61. Edwin Schaller, “Jack Benny to Be Absent When Wife Debuts in Picture,” Los Angeles Times, May 5, 1937, A10. “Mary to Star without Jack,” Washington Post, May 30, 1937, T4.
62. Milt Josefsberg noted that she actually had two laughs—“a stage prop laugh which we’d have her use frequently on the air, and her real laugh, which is slightly heavier and heartier.” Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 184.
63. Carroll Nye, “Air Comedians Gags Metered for Laughs,” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1937, C10.
64. Livingstone, Marks, and Borie, Jack Benny, 66.
65. Erik Barnouw, Handbook of Radio Writing: An Outline of Techniques and Markets in radio writing in the United States (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939).
66. Barnouw, Handbook of Radio Writing, 57.
67. Karin Quimby, “Will & Grace: Negotiating (Gay) Marriage on Prime-Time Television.” Journal of Popular Culture 38, no. 4 (2005): 713.
68. Rowe, The Unruly Woman, 3–19.
69. Gerard Jones, Honey, I’m Home!: Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 196.
70. Rebecca Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 22, quoting Richard Zoglin, “Where Fathers and Mothers Know Best,” Time, June 1, 1992, 33.
71. Jerome Neu, Sticks and Stones: The Philosophy of Insults (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 65.
72. Douglas, Listening In, 109, 114.
73. Grape Nuts Flakes Program, November 8, 1942.
74. Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 70.
75. Hank Grant, untitled article in Hollywood Reporter, June 16, 1969, reprinted in Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 137–9.
76. Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 182–83.
77. Lucille Walker, “Mary Livingstone Is the Spark of Benny’s Show,” St. Joseph (MO) News Press, February 18, 1945, 1.
78. Jack Hellman “Chain Breaks,” Variety, March 24, 1952, 44.
79. “It’s Benny Two to One,” Newsweek, March 31, 1947, 67.
80. Mary Benny, “Mary Benny Tells Why She Quit Show Biz,” Chicago Tribune, June 19. 1965, A1. “Mary Livingstone Finally Decides to Work on TV,” Fredericksburg, VA Free Lance–Star, October 27, 1952, 15.
81. Eve Arden interview with Check Schaden, recorded January 31, 1975, available at http://www.speakingofradio.com/interviews/eve-arden/.
82. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, November 9, 1970, 10.
1. Carole S. Vance, “Social Construction Theory and Sexuality,” in Constructing Masculinity, ed. Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis, Simon Watson, and Carrie Mae Weems (New York: Routledge, 1995), 40.
2. Margaret T. McFadden, “America’s Boy Friend Who Can’t Get a Date”: Gender, Race, and the Cultural Work of the Jack Benny Program, 1932–1946, Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 113–34; Alexander Doty, Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 63–80, Scott Balcerzak, Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2013).
3. Douglas, Listening In, 117.
4. Gwenllian Jones, “Gender and Queerness,” in Television Studies, ed. Toby Miller (London: BFI, 2002), 109–12. Michael Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity,” in Feminism and Masculinities, ed. Peter Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 182–99. Kenneth MacKinnon, Representing Men: Maleness and Masculinity in the Media (London: Arnold, 2003). Helene Shugart, “Reinventing Privilege: The New (Gay) Man in Contemporary Popular Media,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 20, no. 1 (2003): 67–91. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television.
5. Julie D’Acci, “Television, Representation and Gender,” in Popular Television Drama: Critical Perspectives, ed. Jonahtan Bignell and Stephen Lacey (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 379, cited in Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 2.
6. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 3.
7. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 3.
8. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 3, quoting Kimmel, “Masculinity as Homophobia,” 185–86.
9. Arthur Asa Berger, Jewish Jesters: A Study in American Popular Comedy (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2001), 3; Maurice Berger, Brian Wallis, Simon Watson, and Carrie Mae Weems, eds., Constructing Masculinity (New York: Routledge, 1995), 2.
10. Lori Kendall, “‘Oh No! I’m a Nerd!’ Hegemonic Masculinity on an Online Forum.” Gender and Society 14, no. 2 (April 2000): 260.
11. Douglas, Listening In, 117.
12. Maurice Zolotow, “The Fiddler from Waukegan,” Cosmopolitan, October 1947, 137.
13. Amiri Baraka, (as LeRoi Jones) JELLO (Chicago: Third World Press, 1970); the play was produced in New York City by the Black Arts Repertory Theatre in 1965.
14. Lucky Strike Program, November 26, 1950.
15. Elijah Wald, The Dozens: A History of Rap’s Mama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 8, 12–13.
16. Wald, The Dozens, 14.
17. Neu, Sticks and Stones, 73–74.
18. “The Mighty Benny-Allen Feud,” Radio Mirror, July 1938, 16–17, 61+, in KFS clippings collection.
19. Lucky Strike Program, March 17, 1946; May 25, 1947; February 12, 1950.
20. Harriet Van Horne, “Allen Quips in as Jack Benny’s Air Guest,” New York World-Telegram, May 26, 1947, 17.
21. Review of Jack Benny at Roxy Theater, Variety, May 28, 1947, 49.
22. John Crosby, “A Salute to a Comic Who Was a Wit’s Wit,” Washington Post, March 21, 1956, 46.
23. Zolotov, “Fiddler from Waukegan,” 51.
24. Leo Calvin Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 354.
25. Martina Kessel and Patrick Merziger, The Politics of Humour: Laughter, Inclusion, and Exclusion in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2012).
26. David Zurawik, The Jews of Prime Time (Hanover, NH: Brandeis/University Press of New England, 2003).
27. Pearse, “As Goyish as Lime Jell-O?”
28. Charles E. Silberman, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985); David Kaufman, Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity: Sandy Koufax, Lenny Bruce, Bob Dylan, and Barbra Streisand (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012).
29. Lawrence J. Epstein, The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America (New York: Public Affairs, 2002).
30. Epstein, The Haunted Smile; Berger, Jewish Jesters; Whitfield, Stephen J. “The Distinctiveness of American Jewish Humor,” Modern Judaism (1986): 245–60.
31. Whitfield, “The Distinctiveness of American Jewish Humor,” 41, 43.
32. Christie Davies, “Exploring the Thesis of the Self-Deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor,” Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 4 (1991): 189–209. Neu, Sticks and Stones, 219–20.
33. Anonymous letter to FBI, dated April 1, 1939, 20. https://vault.fbi.gov/Jack%20Benny/Jack%20Benny%20Part%201%20of%202/view.
34. Sam Levenson, “The Dialect Comedian Should Vanish,” Commentary 13 (January 1952): 168.
35. Marjorie B. Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Psychology Press, 1997).
36. Richard Maltby, “New Cinema Histories,” Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies (2011): 3–40; Kathryn Fuller Seeley, “Shirley Temple: Dreams Come True,” in Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s, ed. Adrienne L. McLean (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011), 44–65.
37. Quimby, “Will and Grace,” 717–18.
38. Ramona Curry, Too Much of a Good Thing: Mae West as Cultural Icon (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Steve Craig, “Out of Eden: The Legion of Decency, the FCC, and Mae West’s 1937 Appearance on The Chase & Sanborn Hour,” Journal of Radio Studies 13, no. 2 (2006): 232–48.
39. Samantha Allen, “Whither the Transvestite? Theorizing Male-to-Female Transvestism in Feminist and Queer Theory,” Feminist Theory 15, no. 1 (2014): 51–52.
40. Samantha Allen, “Whither the Transvestite?” 52.
41. Susan Murray, Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early Television and Broadcast Stardom (London: Routledge, 2013), 142.
42. Murray, Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars, 136.
43. George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940 (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 357.
44. John Royal to Mary McDonough, January 28, 1935, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 38 file Jell-O 1935.
45. Tom Carey to NBC, undated copy, attached to Janet MacRorie to John Swallow, January 19, 1937, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 93, file 15.
46. “NBC War Clinic,” March 17, 1942, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, folder 646.
47. John Lear, “You Can’t Say That on the Air,” Saturday Evening Post, July 12, 1947, 119.
48. Dubuque Buyers Guide, September 19, 1941.
49. Doris Arden, “The Old Girl Is Well Preserved,” Chicago Times, August 17, 1941. Jack Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
50. Review of Charley’s Aunt, Family Circle, September 12, 1941, Benny scrapbook 1941, Jack Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
51. Albany NY Knickerbocker News, August 29, 1941, review; “Jack Benny’s Funny Aunt at the Albee,” Brooklyn Eagle, August 29, 1941; “Benny Likes the Girls but Finds He Has to Play Up to the Men to Keep from Being Detected,” San Francisco Monitor, August 2, 1941; Leo Mishkin, “Screen Presents: CA with JB Is Comedy Success of the Season,” New York Telegraph, August 2, 1941, all Benny scrapbook 1941, Jack Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
52. Harrison Carroll, “Premiere of Jack Benny’s Charley’s Aunt Gay Affair; Comedian Is Clever Choice for Broad Farce,” Los Angeles Herald Express, August 1, 1941.
53. Howard Barnes, “On the Screen,” New York Herald Tribune, August 1, 1941.
54. Edwin Schoallert, “Charley’s Aunt Merrily Lives Again on Screen,” Los Angeles Times, August 1 1941.
55. Winston Archer, review of “Charley’s Aunt,” New York Post, August 1, 1941, Benny scrapbook 1941, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
56. Leo Mishkin, “Screen Presents: Charley’s Aunt with Jack Benny Is Comedy Success of the Season,” New York Telegraph, August 2, 1941.
57. Berwick (PA) Enterprise, August 1, 1941.
58. “Benny’s Oscar,” Boston Globe, March 8, 1942, b6.
59. “Things Overheard on the Radio,” Saturday Evening Post September 5, 1942, 32.
60. Lucky Strike Program, March 28, 1948.
61. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 26–27.
62. Lucky Strike Program, March 26, 1950.
63. Feasey, Masculinity and Popular Television, 26–28, quoting Gwenllian Jones, “Gender and Queerness,” 109; Ela Przybylo, “Crisis and Safety: The Asexual in Society,” Sexualities 14, no. 4 (2011): 444–61.
64. John Crosby, “The Perfect Title,” New York Herald Tribune, February 4, 1948.
65. “Show Folk Frolic Big,” Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1949, B7.
66. “Meet Gracie (Benny),” Radio and Television Best, October 1949, 34–35.
67. Harry Harris, “Around the Dials,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 12, 1952.
68. Variety, March 24, 1952, 44.
69. C. Foster to Irving Fein, March 10, 1952, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 89.
70. Ben Gross printed a viewer response to his review: “Mrs. Clara Winston of Manhattan takes up the favorite pastime of socking the critic. She says I was “dead wrong” in writing that Jack Benny, dressed in woman’s clothes last Sunday, didn’t seem especially funny to me. ‘What’s the matter with a man wearing female clothing? She writes. It is better than looking at naked women. Some females look too shameful to be on television. I thought Jack Benny looked wonderful. He certainly made a better looking woman, from his head to his feet, than a lot of females I have seen. A little innocent fun and comedy never hurt anyone and we certainly need a lot of it these days. I think you are jealous.” “Televiewing and Listening In: with Ben Gross,” New York Daily News, March 17, 1952.
71. Harry Harris, “Around the Dials,” Philadelphia Bulletin, March 12, 1952.
72. Janet Kern, “Benny ‘Knockout’ in Gracie Allen Role; Imitation Gives Jack Some of His Best Repartee of This Season,” Chicago Herald American, March 10, 1952; Bob Francis, “Jacqueline Benny’s Fem Stint with Burns and Allen One of His Best,” Billboard, March 22, 1952, 3.
73. Jack Gould, “Jack Benny, in Impersonation of Gracie Allen, Shows His Mastery of Deadpan Comedy,” New York Times, March 12, 1952.
74. John Lester, “Benny and Burns Fare Not So Well,” no date or newspaper name. Benny scrapbook 1952, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
75. Andy Wilson, “Looking and Listening: Feminine Attire to Get Laughs Leaves Observer Slightly Cool,” Detroit Times, March 14, 1952. Benny scrapbook 1952, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
76. Kansas City Star, March 26, 1952, clipping; Washington (DC) Star, March 11, 1952, Benny scrapbook 1952, Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
77. Roger Swift, “Comedian Benny on Target Again,” Boston Herald, April 21, 1952.
78. Jack Hellman review, Daily Variety, April 12, 1954, 9.
79. “Durante Quip for Quip,” Boston American, April 12, 1954.
80. “Benny in Skirts a Scream; “Plugged Nickel” Fizzles; Comedian Is Good in Gracie Takeoff,” Hollywood Reporter, April 15, 1954.
81. December 12, 1954.
CHAPTER 4
1. Estelle Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study of the American Negro in United States Professional Radio 1922–1953” (MA thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1954), 32.
2. Melvin Ely, The Adventures of Amos ’n’ Andy: A Social History of an American Phenomenon. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1991).
3. Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 100.
4. Christopher Lehman, The Colored Cartoon: Black Presentation in American Animated Short Films, 1907–1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009).
5. Harold Jovien, “‘Rochester’ Was Jack of All Trades before Radio Debut,” Baltimore Afro American, October 6, 1945, 10.
6. Michael Carter, “Jack Benny’s Gravel Voiced Rochester Talks to AFRO,” Baltimore Afro American, February 3, 1945, 5.
7. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 20–21.
8. Hilmes, Radio Voices, xvi.
9. Robert McG. Thomas, “Eddie Anderson, 71, Benny’s Rochester,” New York Times, March 1, 1977, 24.
10. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8; Eddie Anderson, “Meet Rochester, He’s Star on the Jack Benny Sunday Radio Program,” Defender, July 1, 1939, 20.
11. Harold Jovien, “‘Rochester’ Was Jack of All Trades before Radio Debut,” Baltimore Afro-American, October 6, 1945, 10.
12. Obituary, Chicago Defender, August 7, 1948.
13. CBS press release, “Philosophical Pullman Porter Inspired Benny Writers and Rochester Was Born with Eddie Anderson in Role,” December 13, 1948, Eddie Anderson file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives.
14. Frank del Olmo, “Eddie Anderson, Famed ‘Rochester,’ Dies at 72,” Los Angeles Times, March 1, 1977, 3.
15. Florabel Muir, “What’s That, Boss?” Saturday Evening Post June 19, 1943, 15.
16. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8.
17. Harold Jovien, “Rochester Was Jack of All Trades,” The Negro: A Review, February 1, 1946, 4.
18. “Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson Has Had Colorful Career,” California Eagle, June 29, 1939, 2. “Rochester by Way of Harlem,” New York Times, July 2, 1939, 3.
19. “Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson Has Had Colorful Career,” California Eagle, June 29, 1939, 2.
20. Ragtime Billy Tucker, “Cast Dope,” Chicago Defender, November 17, 1923, 8.
21. Michael Carter, “Jack Benny’s Gravel-Voiced Rochester Talks to AFRO,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 3, 1945, 5.
22. Thomas, Anderson obituary, New York Times, March 1, 1977, quoting Muir, “What’s That, Boss? Saturday Evening Post, 1943.
23. “Eddie Rochester Dies in Los Angeles at 71,” New York Amsterdam News, March 5, 1977, A3; Washington Post obituary; George A. Mooney, “Benny Admirer No.1; Eddie (Rochester) Anderson Comes to New York and Thereby Hangs a Tale,” New York Times, January 5, 1941, x10.
24. “Coast Calls Marshall, Ford and Harris,” Defender, January 25, 1941, 21.
25. “Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson Has Had Colorful Career,” California Eagle, June 29, 1939, 2.
26. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8.
27. Defender, August 29, 1925, 6. CBS, “Philosophical Pullman porter”; “Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson Has Had Colorful Career,” California Eagle, June 29, 1939, 2.
28. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8.
29. Eddie (Rochester) Anderson, “Meet Rochester,” Defender, July 1, 1939, 20.
30. Defender, August 16, 1930, 5; Defender, August 23, 1930, 5; “LA Night Clubs Feature Stars,” Defender, April 15, 1933, 5; Defender, May 12, 1934, 9.
31. “Herman Hill Recalls Rochester,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 3, 1977, 1.
32. Defender, December 14, 1935, 8.
33. Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, filmography, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0026655/.
34. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 19–26.
35. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 98.
36. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 30–31.
37. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 118, 355.
38. Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Brian Ward, Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South. University Press of Florida, 2004.
39. Amy M. Ware, “Will Roger’s Radio: Race and Technology in the Cherokee Nation,” American Indian Quarterly 33, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 62–97; “Race Still Dissatisfied: Gulf Co. Claims They Can’t Censor Star,” Atlanta Daily World, January 30, 1934, 1.
40. “NBC’s First All-Negro Opens on Blue Web,” Variety, April 2, 1937, 2.
41. Pittsburgh Courier, April 17, 1937, quoted in Henry T. Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves: A Chronological History of African Americans in Radio and Television Programming, 1925–1955. Vol. 1 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 225–26; Variety, April 14, 1937, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 222–23.
42. Laura Leff, 39 Forever, Second Edition, Volume 1: Radio May 1932–May 1942 (North Charleston, SC: Book Surge, 2004), 223, 225. Jell-O Program, January 19 and February 2, 1936.
43. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 100.
44. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 101.
45. George A. Mooney, “Benny Admirer No.1; Eddie (Rochester) Anderson Comes to New York and Thereby Hangs a Tale,” New York Times, January 5, 1941, x10.
46. Michael Carter, “Jack Benny’s Gravel Voiced Rochester Talks to AFRO,” Baltimore Afro-American, February 3, 1945, 5.
47. Hal Humphrey, “That’s Rochester Who’s Back and Jack Benny’s Got Him,” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1968, SC A2.
48. Jill Watts, Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 129.
49. Hal Humphrey, “That’s Rochester Who’s Back and Jack Benny’s Got Him,” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1968, SC A2. Anderson also acknowledged that Benny copyrighted the name “and years later Jack sold it to Eddie for a dollar.”
50. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 101.
51. Orrin E Dunlap Jr., “Benny at Breakfast: Jack Tells How His Show Is Put Together, Casting of the Troupe Is Explained,” New York Times, April 28, 1940, 128.
52. Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
53. Jell-O Program, October 16, 1938.
54. “As Benny’s Heckling Radio Valet the Ebony Comedian Has All but Lost His Identity as Eddie Anderson,” New York Times, July 2 1939.
55. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8.
56. “On the Air,” Kansas City Plain Dealer, January 14, 1938, 5; California Eagle, December 30, 1937, 1.
57. Lou Layne, “Moon Over Harlem,” Atlanta Daily World, March 5, 1938, 16.
58. “On the Air,” California Eagle, April 21, 1938, 8.
59. “Very Important Member of Jack Benny’s Show Is Eddie Anderson,” New York Amsterdam News, April 2, 1938, 16.
60. “Rochester Drops Character for His Off-Stage Fans,” Baltimore Afro-American, August 19, 1939, 11.
61. Eric Smoodin, Regarding Frank Capra: Audience, Celebrity, and American Film Studies, 1930-1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
62. Thomas Pryor, “To Rochester by Way of Harlem,” New York Times, July 2, 1939, x3.
63. “Radio’s Famous ‘Rochester,’” Pittsburgh Courier, November 12, 1938; Atlanta Daily World, November 14, 1938, 2; “Presenting Eddie Anderson, ‘Rochester’ to Benny,” California Eagle, November 10, 1938, 2B.
64. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 21.
65. Michele Hilmes, “Invisible Men: Amos ’n’ Andy and the Roots of Broadcast Discourse.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 10, no. 4 (1993): 301.
66. John Crosby, “Amos ’n’ Andy,” New York Herald Tribune, December 24, 1947, 34.
67. Hilmes, “Invisible Men,” 319.
68. Jell-O Program, June 25, 1939.
69. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 107.
70. Jell-O Program, March 19, 1939.
71. Orrin E Dunlap Jr., “Benny at Breakfast: Jack Tells How His Show Is Put Together, Casting of the Troupe Is Explained,” New York Times, April 28, 1940, 128.
72. David W. Kellum, “Another Complete Story on Rochester,” Defender, July 8, 1939, 8.
73. Los Angeles Times, February 3, 1939.
74. Man About Town Press Book, June 1939, Paramount pressbook collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
75. Cue, July 1, 1939, Mark Sandrich Papers, file 114, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
76. Howard Barnes, “The Screen,” New York Herald Tribune, July 2, 1939, Mark Sandrich Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
77. “Eddie ‘Rochester’ Anderson Has Had Colorful Career,” California Eagle, June 29, 1939, 2.
78. “Honest Signal,” Variety, October 10, 1939, 4.
79. Buck Benny Rides Again pressbook, March 1940. Paramount Pressbook collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
80. Watts, Hattie McDaniel; Matthew Bernstein, “Selznick’s March: Gone With the Wind Comes to White Atlanta,” Atlanta History 43, no. 2 (1999): 7–33.
81. “Buck Benny Rides Again Will Have Premiere at Victoria,” New York Amsterdam News, April 13, 1940, 21.
82. Maurice Dancer, “3,000 Crowd Streets to Cheer Film Star; Californian Hailed in Big Harlem Demonstration,” Chicago Defender, April 27, 1940, 20.
83. Alvin Moses, “Footlight Flickers,” Atlanta Daily World, May 13, 1940, 2.
84. Dan Burley, “Cops ‘Ride Herd’ at Rochester Premiere,” New York Amsterdam News, April 27, 1940, 1.
85. New York Motion Picture Herald, April 27, 1940; New York Showman’s Trade Review, April 27, 1940; Mark Sandrich Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
86. New York Showman’s Trade Review, April 27, 1940.
87. Howard Barnes, review of Buck Benny Rides Again, New York Herald Tribune, April 28, 1940, Mark Sandrich Papers, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
88. Defender, June 22, 1940, 14.
89. “Rochester Kidnapped on Way to Harvard; 8 Jailed as Riot Follows Snatch,” Baltimore Afro American, May 11, 1940, 14. “Harvard Men ‘Riot’ after Tech Prank, 8 Arrested,” Boston Globe, May 1, 1940, 1. “Harvard Students Riot as MIT Abducts Rochester,” Defender, May 11, 1940, 21.
90. “Negro Population Hails Rochester on Arrival Here,” Boston Globe, May 2, 1940, 8; “Harvard vs. MIT= $35; Seven Students Fined $5 for Riot Avenging Eddie Anderson,” New York Times, May 2, 1940, 23.
91. “Rochester Winner of 1939 Film Award,” Chicago Defender, December 30, 1939, 17; “What 1939 Meant to the Negro in Hollywood,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 20, 1940, 13.
92. “NAACP Gives Academy Awards to Film Actors,” Baltimore Afro American, August 3, 1940, 14.
93. Earl J. Morris, commentary in Pittsburgh Courier, August 29, 1940, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 331.
94. “Schomburg Citations of 1940 Cover Wide Field,” Defender, February 15, 1941, 12.
95. California Eagle, April 24, 1941, 8.
CHAPTER 5
1. Estelle Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study of the American Negro in United States Professional Radio 1922–1953” (MA thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1954), 178; Thomas Cripps, “Amos ’n’ Andy and the Debate over Racial Integration,” in American History/American Television: Interpreting the Video Past, ed John E. O’Connor (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1983), 27.
2. R. J. Smith, The Great Black Way: Los Angeles in the 1940s and the Lost African-American Renaissance (New York: Public Affairs, 2006), 18–19.
3. Smith, The Great Black Way, 18.
4. Joseph Boskin, Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester (New York: Oxford 1986), 179.
5. Earl J. Morris, Pittsburgh Courier, August 29, 1940, quoted in Henry T. Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves: A Chronological History of African Americans in Radio and TV Programming, 1925–1955 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005), 331.
6. “Improved Negro Press: Less Discrimination Than Ever Before by the Public Prints on Negro Photos, Puffs,” Billboard, March 13, 1943, 4, 10.
7. Florabel Muir, “What’s That, Boss?” Saturday Evening Post, June 19, 1943, 15; Kirtley Baskette, “Rochester Van Jones Rides High,” Radio Mirror, January 1940, 31, 49.
8. Ruby Berkeley Goodwin, “Finds Hollywood Is Easing Pressure Against Negroes; More Race Actors Are Getting Roles,” Atlanta Daily World, May 11, 1942, 2.
9. Earl J. Morris, Pittsburgh Courier, August 29, 1940, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 331.
10. “How Rochester Walked in on Benny,” New York Amsterdam News, February 20, 1943, 14.
11. “How Rochester Walked in on Benny.”
12. Lucky Strike Program, April 2, 1944. In a typical typed broadcast script, Rochester’s lines are all printed in standard English, with no dialect (and neither is Artie Aurbach/Mr. Kitzel’s accent noted in his dialogue). On the other hand, informal English spoken by Mary and Phil (wanna, hadda, yeah, Jack’s own dialogue in the script includes “rarin’,” “tootin’,” “gotta,” and “will ya?”) is included.
13. Boskin, Sambo, 180.
14. In one of the last direct references to skin color on the program, on the Lucky Strike Program, February 20, 1944, episode, guest star Groucho Marx visited Jack at home. Once inside the front door, Groucho announced that he was colorblind, commenting that he gave his coat to Jack, and shook Rochester’s hand. Jack responded. “That was me—I’d been in the sun at Palm Springs.”
15. Harold Jovien, “Critic Names Year’s Best Radio Programs,” Defender, September 26, 1942, 9.
16. Review of Duffy’s Tavern, Pittsburgh Courier, January 9, 1943, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 433; Edward Bennett, “Duffy’s Tavern May Be Too Hot for Dixie Houses,” Baltimore Afro American, May 5, 1945, 8; “The radio version [of Duffy’s Tavern] makes listeners feel that Gardiner and Green are not boss and waiter, but that they are two friends, working in the same crummy joint for a living. With Green as the only one who is supposed to have any real education or good common sense. Green is always telling Archie what he thinks of his rattle brained ideas, or belittling him in some way or another.”
17. Bosley Crowther, “Tales of Manhattan,” New York Times, September 25, 1942, 25; Bosley Crowther, “Little by Little: Tales of Manhattan Boosts the Stock of the Short Story in Films,” New York Times, October 4, 1942, 43. See also Miriam J. Petty, Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).
18. “Coast Citizens Picket House Using Film Tales of Manhattan,” Defender, August 22, 1942, 22; participant Wendell Green recalled the picketing in “Weekly Kaleidoscope,” Los Angeles Sentinel, November 2, 1961, A6.
19. John Kinlock “Uncle Tomdom Put Under Glass,” California Eagle, August 7, 1941, 1.
20. Harry Levette, “Wires Hot as Actors Picket Coast Theatre,” Atlanta Daily World, September 2, 1942, 2.
21. “Film Stars Answer Charges by Public Protesting Uncle Tom Roles,” Chicago Defender, August 29, 1942, 7.
22. “Criticizes Actors,” Defender, September 12, 1942, 14.
23. Jill Watts, Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 213–25.
24. Thomas Djya, Walter White: The Dilemma of Black Identity in America (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008), 159.
25. Levette, “Wires Hot as Actors Picket Coast Theatre.”
26. Levette, “Wires Hot as Actors Picket Coast Theatre.”
27. Ruby Berkeley Goodwin, “Defends Movie Colony against NAACP Critics; Says Liberal Spirit Hovers Over Film Lots,” Atlanta Daily World, December 7, 1942, 2.
28. ”Speech of the Week,” California Eagle, April 10, 1941, 10A; Barbara Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War and the Politics of Race 1938–1948 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,1999), 161–62.
29. Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff, “Variety for the Servicemen: The Jubilee Show and the Paradox of Racializing Radio during World War II,” American Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2004): 952–973.
30. Jill Watts, Hattie McDaniel, 208–14.
31. “Rochester Visits Tuskegee” Los Angeles Tribune, January 10, 1944, 15.
32. “Rochester Backs America’s First Negro-Managed War Industry Plant,” Defender, April 4, 1942, 4; Donald Bogle, Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Black Hollywood (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005), 269–74.
33. “Rochester Signs for $125,000 for Five Movie Plays,” Kansas City Plain Dealer, June 19, 1942, 6.
34. “Stormy Weather, Negro Musical with Bill Robinson, at the Roxy,” New York Times, July 22 1943, 15.
35. Fred Stanley, “Hollywood Takes a Hint from Washington: Two Big Negro Musicals Are Under Way,” New York Times, February 7, 1943, X3.
36. Bosley Crowther, “Cleaving the Color Line: A New Attitude toward Negroes Is Apparent in Some Recent Films,” New York Times, June 6, 1943, X3.
37. Phil Carter, “Review Hollywood Offerings since White-Willkie Meeting,” Los Angeles Tribune, November 15, 1943, 18. Rob Roy, “Critic Says Hollywood Caters to South in Pictures; Even Lena Horne Gets Red Light, He Writes,” Defender, June 26, 1943, 10.
38. Smith, The Great Black Way, 86–89.
39. Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Martha Wilkerson, “The Detroit Riots of 1943: A Reinterpretation,” Michigan Historical Review 16, no. 1 (January 1990): 49–72.
40. “Salute Dignified Treatment of US Negroes in Film,” Variety, June 30, 1943, 1, 27.
41. “Hollywood Holding Up Pix Releases in Which Whites, Negroes Mix” Variety, June 30, 1943, 27. “More Negro Scenes Cut Out in Dixie Set New Problem for Pix Producers,” Variety, 1 July 12, 1944.
42. “Think Race Riots Hurt Negro Films,” Defender, July 31, 1943, 18.
43. “Tenn. Mob of Whites Halts Showing of ‘Cabin’ Movie,” Defender, August 7, 1943, 1.
44. Benny to McQueen, May 29, 1944, Jack Benny papers, University of California at Los Angeles, Special Collections, Box 97, file 21.
45. “Butterfly McQueen Case Is Proof There Is, After All, Something in a Name,” Defender, December 7, 1946, 11.
46. “Radio and Race,” Ebony 1, no. 3 (1946): 43.
47. “Two Radio Shows Receive Awards for Racial Amity,” Los Angeles Sentinel, April 11, 1946, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 591.
48. Sklaroff, “Variety for the Servicemen”; Jacqueline Trescott, “Butterfly McQueen: In Prissy’s Shadow,” Washington Post, November 7, 1976, 55.
49. Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes When the Wagon Comes,” Defender, March 11, 1944, 10.
50. Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes When the Wagon Comes,” Defender, February 10, 1945, 8; Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes When the Wagon Comes,” Defender, March 24, 1945, 8.
51. Ramona Loew, “More Negroes in Radio Urged by Norman Corwin,” Defender, February 17, 1945, 2.
52. Pittsburgh Courier, February 24, 1945, in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 537–38.
53. California Eagle, February 1, 1945, 14.
54. “Defends Rochester Crap Shooting,” Defender, February 24, 1945, 10.
55. Carter, “Jack Benny’s Gravel Voiced,” Baltimore Afro American, February 1945.
56. California Eagle congratulated Benny for having Joe Louis in a guest appearance on the show in November 1945, quoted in Sampson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 572–74.
57. Ole Nosey, “Everybody Goes When the Wagon Comes,” Defender, March 24, 1945, 18.
58. “Comedy Rich in Laughs,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 1945, 9.
59. “‘Brewster’s Millions’ Is Barred in Memphis,” New York Times, April 7, 1945, 19.
60. “Rochester Has Too Much Equality—Crump Bans Film,” Defender, April 14, 1945, 1; “‘Brewster’s Millions’ Is Barred in Memphis,” New York Times, April 7, 1945, 19.
61. “Lillian Smith Lashes Pix over Rochester Case Page 1,” Variety, May 24, 1945, 3.
62. “Rochester’s USO Tour Stalled by a Curious Yen for Ofay Muskers,” Variety, May 30, 1945, 2.
63. “Our GI’s in S. Pacific Fiercely Resent ‘Uncle Tom’ Roles,” New York Amsterdam News, September 1, 1945, 1A.
64. Watts, Hattie McDaniel, 235–36.
65. Abe Hill, “Stereotyped Comics Viewed as Drawback,” New Amsterdam News, March 24, 1945, 22.
66. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, March 18, 1946, 6.
67. Samson, Swingin’ on the Ether Waves, 705–13.
68. “Radio and Race,” Ebony 1, no. 3 (1946): 41–43; Larry Wolters, “Radio Lauded for Improving Race Relations,” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 29, 1946, 24.
69. John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford University Press, 1998).
70. “5-a-Week Airshow Looms for Rochester,” Variety, February 10, 1950, 1.
71. “Rochester Will Spoof Whodunits on Own,” Variety, February 15, 1950, 22; “No Lucky Approval on Rochester as Yet,” Variety, February 17, 1950, 5.
72. “This Is Hollywood;” Defender, March 4, 1950, 21; “Hear Radio Show Awaits Rochester’s Return to States,” Defender, June 17, 1950, 21.
73. Milt Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show (New York: Crown, 1977), 83–84.
74. Josefsberg, The Jack Benny Show, 85.
75. “Jack Benny Show Stirs Harlem’s Ire,” Defender, February 11, 1950, 1; Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 186–88.
76. “Protests Jack Benny Show Stereotypes,” Atlanta Daily World, February 15, 1950, 4.
77. Lillian Scott, “Along Celebrity Row,” Defender, February 18, 1950, 8; “Along Celebrity Row,” Defender, March 25, 1950, 8.
78. Al Monroe, “Swinging the News,” Defender, February 18, 1950, 20.
79. “Sorry, Benny Tells Us,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 25, 1950, 1, quoted in Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 186–87.
80. “Editorial: When Racial Jokes Aren’t Funny,” Defender, February 25, 1950, 6.
81. “Jack Laid an Egg,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 9, 1950, A8, quoted in Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 186–88.
82. “Rochester a First,” Atlanta Daily World, April 27, 1950, 1; Los Angeles Sentinel, April 27, 1950, B1.
83. Liberty cover, November 29, 1942; Time cover, September 22, 1947; Quick, April 22, 1950; Life, May 8, 1950.
84. Donald Bogle, Primetime Blues: African Americans on Network Television (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002), 55.
85. Rob Roy, “Out of Hearts of Stars Came TV and Radio Bids to Sepia Artists,” Defender, January 2, 1954, 18.
86. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study.”
87. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 61–62, 78.
88. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 71–72.
89. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 73.
90. Edmerson, “A Descriptive Study,” 75, 355; Earl Brown, “Rochester Still Says Yassuh to Jack Benny,” New Amsterdam News, August 4, 1951, 6.
91. Hal Humphrey, “That’s Rochester Who’s Back and Jack Benny’s Got Him,” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1968, SC A2.
92. Gerald Weales, “What Were Blacks Doing in the Balcony? The Day LeRoi Jones Spoke on Penn Campus,” New York Times, May 4, 1969, SM 38–40, 44, 54, 56, 58.
93. Hal Humphrey, “That’s Rochester Who’s Back, and Jack Benny’s Got Him,” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1968, SC A2.
1. Pat Weaver, “If I Were Running the Network Again,” Sponsor, August 26, 1963, 26; “Star Salesman of the Airwaves,” Kiplinger’s, 1962.
2. Sponsor, September 2, 1963, 32.
3. Ralph Lewis Smith, A Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting in the US 1920–1955 (New York: Arno, 1979).
4. Josefsberg quoted in Larry Oakner, And Now for a Few Laughs from Our Sponsor: The Best of Fifty Years of Radio Commercials (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002).
5. Draper Daniels, “Humor in Advertising,” in Copywriter’s Guide, ed. Elbrun French (New York: Harper, 1959), 137; Oakner, And Now for a Few Laughs, xix.
6. Cynthia Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising and the Golden Age of Radio (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013); Roland Marchand, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity 1920–1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Stephen R. Fox, The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising and Its Creators (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984).
7. Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor.
8. Daniels, “Humor in Advertising,” 147.
9. Daniels, “Humor in Advertising,” 140.
10. Daniels, “Humor in Advertising,” 137.
11. Pat Weaver, “If I Were Running the Network Again,” Sponsor, August 26, 1963, 25–26.
12. Elbrun French, “To Integrate or Not Integrate,” in Copywriter’s Guide, ed. Elbrun French, 222.
13. See discussion in Marchand, Advertising the American Dream.
14. Curt Peterson to Bertha Brainard, “Canada Dry” memo, April 15, 1932, in NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 6, file 63 “Jack Benny 1932.”
15. Daniels, “Humor in Advertising,” 140.
16. Jack Benny and Charles Martel, “Never Try to Be Funny,” Tower Radio, September 1934, 20, 21+.
17. Larry Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished,” Broadcasting and Television, October 1956, 118–26.
18. Margaret McFadden, “Warning—Do Not Risk Federal Arrest by Looking Glum!”: Ballyhoo Magazine and the Cultural Politics of Early 1930s Humor,” Journal of American Culture 26, no. 1 (March 2003): 124–34. Marchand, Advertising the American Dream, 312–14.
19. “Now That It Has a Sponsor,” Printers’ Ink Monthly, January 1939, 15.
20. Ben Bodec, “Radio in ’32,” Variety, January 3, 1933, 58.
21. Variety review, August 30, 1932, 50.
22. Lucky Strike Program, December 3, 1950.
23. “Waring All Set with Old Gold, Benny Maybe,” Variety, January 24, 1933, 32.
24. Chevrolet Program, March 3, 1933.
25. Ben Bodec, “Radio in ’32,” Variety, January 3, 1933, 17; June 1933 review of Chevrolet program, Forum, no page, in Benny Scrapbooks, Box 90, Press clips 1932–1933, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
26. Chevrolet Program, May 23, 1933 script, Benny Papers, UCLA Library Special Collections.
27. Benny show review, Variety, October 10, 1933, 37.
28. Beverly Kimes, Chevrolet, a History from 1911 (Cherry Hill, NJ: Automobile Quarterly, 1986), 70.
29. Variety, January 9, 1934, 33; Variety, February 27, 1934, 1.
30. “When the New Prez Likes Soft Music, Brother, Its Soft Music or Else,” Variety, February 27, 1934, 1. “Dropping Jack Benny as Sales at Height Irks Chevy Dealers,” Variety March 13, 1934, 29.
31. “Kindergarten for Sponsors,” Sponsor, June 18, 1951, 22–25, 56.
32. “Shortage of Comedians and Time Hits GM, Which Eyes Jack Benny,” Billboard, August 11, 1934, 7.
33. Bertha Brainard to Niles Trammell, February 17, 1934, NBC papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 24, folder 11.
34. “Air Briefs,” Billboard, March 3, 1934, 13.
35. Letters to the editor, Radio Mirror, October 1934, 54. General Tire Program, April 27, 1934.
36. General Tire Program, September 28, 1934, script. Benny Papers, UCLA Special Collections.
37. Jim Ramsburg, Network Radio Ratings 1932–1953 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 23.
38. “Let Them Eat Cake,” Fortune, October 1934, v 10, 68–75, 122, 124, 126, 129–30, 132, 135, 137.
39. Meyers, A Word from Our Sponsor, 152–54.
40. “Let Them Eat Cake,” Fortune.
41. Fox, The Mirror Makers, 157.
42. Jell-O Program, October 21, 1934 script, Benny Papers, UCLA Special Collections.
43. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, July 1962, 6.
44. Fortnight, November 12, 1951, 28, quoted in Selected Radio and Television Criticism, ed. Anthony Slide (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1987), 98–99.
45. Don Wilson, “Introduction,” Modern Radio Advertising, ed. Charles Wolfe (New York: Printer’s Ink, 1953) 537–38.
46. Jell-O Program, March 8, 1936.
47. Wolfe, Modern Radio Advertising, 44.
48. Jell-O Program, April 16, 1939.
49. Marsha Cassidy, “Touch, Taste, Breath: Synesthesia and Sense Memory and the Selling of Cigarettes on Television, 1948–1971,” in Media Convergence History, ed. Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 34–45; Bruce Lenthall, Radio’s America: The Great Depression and the Rise of Modern Mass Culture (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007). Jason Loviglio, “Sound Effects: Gender, Voice and Cultural Work of NPR,” Radio Journal 5 (2007): 2–3, 67–81.
50. “Jack Benny’s Vacation Broadcast,” Radio Mirror, September 1937, 14.
51. “Medal Award for Excellence to Young & Rubicam,” Advertising and Selling, vol. 30, February 15, 1940, 70.
52. Ad for A Night at the Opera, Variety, November 6, 1935, 45–46.
53. Review of Paramount Theater, Billboard, July 8, 1939, 24.
54. Bertha Brainard to Sidney Strotz, December 14, 1938, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 94, file 26.
55. “Should You Hitch Your Product to a Star,” Sales Management, March 1, 1939.
56. “Thru Sugar’s Domino,” Billboard, April 4. 1936, 24.
57. “Ad Group Honored for Achievements,” New York Times, February 25, 1937, 40.
58. “Town Hall of Air Chosen for Award,” New York Times, May 5, 1938, 26; Also Warren Dygert, Radio as an Advertising Medium (New York: McGraw Hill, 1939).
59. “Medal Award for Excellence to Young & Rubicam,” Advertising and Selling, vol. 30, February 15, 1940, 70.
60. Everhard Meade, “Future Role of the Adv. Agency in Radio and TV Programming,” Variety, January 4, 1950, 102; John McDonough, “Y&R at 75,” Advertising Age 68, no. 44 (November 2, 1998).
61. Weaver interview, Sponsor, September 2, 1963, 33.
62. Town Hall Tonight, December 30, 1936 script, 11–12, Fred Allen Papers, Boston Public Library.
63. S. I. Steinhauser, “Ben Bernie and Jack Benny Plan Two Gun Feud with Allen,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 4, 1937, 71.
64. Fred Allen Papers, Boston Public Library.
65. S. I. Steinhauser, “Increased Popularity is Fred Allen Reward for Jack Benny Feud,” Pittsburgh Press, March 7, 1937, 48; “Riding the Airwaves with BCL,” Milwaukee Journal, March 18, 1937, 34.
66. “Benny Renewal Marred by Clash Over Production,” Billboard, March 16, 1940, 9.
67. “Rising Radio Sales Help Meteor,” Literary Digest, n.d., Benny 1937 scrapbook, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 110.
68. Variety, September 29, 1944.
69. Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished.”
70. “Battle of Agencies over Jack Benny,” Broadcasting, March 10, 1941, 18.
71. “Benny-Smith Swap Products,” Variety, March 4, 1942, 26.
72. “Why Sponsors Change Agencies,” Sponsor, December 1947, 15–17, 47–49; “Rising Radio Sales Help Meteor,” Literary Digest, March 1937; Benny 1937 scrapbook, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 110.
73. Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished”; “Benny’s Break with General Foods, Y&R, Laid to Bad Exploitation Job,” Variety, March 1, 1944.
74. “Jack Benny Divorcing Grape Nuts for Pall Mall and $3,900,000 Deal?” Variety, February 23, 1944, 1, 23.
75. Contracts between Benny and American Tobacco Company, April 10, 1944, Benny Papers, University of California at Los Angeles, Box 88, file 1.
76. “George Washington Hill Dead; Great Exponent of Advertising,” Printers Ink 216 (September 20, 1946) 49, 144.
77. Alan Havig, “Frederick Wakeman’s The Hucksters and the Post War Debate over Commercial Radio,” Journal of Broadcasting 28, no. 2 (Spring 1984): 192.
78. Sponsor, December 1946, 46.
79. “Hollywood Inside,” Variety, August 27, 1947, 2.
80. “GW Hill Repeats as LS-MFT Slogan Builds into Top Laugh Gag,” Variety, January 19, 1944, 45.
81. “GW Hill Switches from Big Spot Advertising,” Variety, November 8, 1944.
82. “Luckies Reported Dropping Kyser,” Variety, October 18, 1944, 1.
83. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, October 23, 1944, 4.
84. “LSMFT for Benny,” Variety, August 24, 1944.
85. Richard W. Pollay, “Targeting Tactics in Selling Smoke: Youthful Aspects of 20th Century Cigarette Advertising,” Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice (Winter 1995): 9.
86. Review of Benny program, Variety, October 4, 1944, 24; Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished.”
87. Review of Benny radio program, Woman’s Day, January 1945, Benny scrapbook 1945, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Box 116.
88. George Washington Hill to Jack Benny, October 20, 1944, Benny Papers, University of California at Los Angeles, Special Collections, Box 98.
89. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, November 20, 1944, 4.
90. “Don Wilson, 81, Announcer Who Was Jack Benny’s Foil,” New York Times, April 27, 1982, B8.
91. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, October 11, 1946, 8.
92. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, October 11, 1946, 8.
93. “You Can’t Say That!” Sponsor, July 1947, 45–46.
94. Lucky Strike Program, October 16, 1949.
95. Lucky Strike Program, May 16, 1952.
96. Lucky Strike Program, March 21, 1948; November 23, 1947; May 30, 1948; April 25, 1948; January 12, 1947.
CHAPTER 7
1. “Seven Wonders Named,” n.d. [1937], Benny scrapbook 1937, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming; “Hollywood Inside,” Variety, January 21, 1937, 2. Apparently, the book apparently was never published.
2. Philip K Scheuer, “Stars Reap Profit from Side Money; Commercial Plugs and Radio Acts Fill Coffers of Film Folk,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 1937, C1.
3. “There’s a Difference: Movies and Radio Are Neatly Weighed by a Jester Who Approves of Both,” Detroit Free Press, n.d. [1936], Benny scrapbook 1936, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
4. Caroll Nye, “Galaxy of Radio Stars Coming to Hollywood in Summer and Fall Series,” Los Angeles Times, May 25, 1936, 14.
5. Michele Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990).
6. See Jonathan Gray, Judd Ethan Ruggill, “Convergence: Always Already, Already.” Cinema Journal 48, no. 3 (Spring 2009): 105–6.
7. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting; Ruggill, “Convergence,” 107.
8. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting, 1.
9. Rick Jewell, “Hollywood and Radio: Competition and Partnership in the 1930s.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 4, no. 2 (1984): 125–41.
10. Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, “Dish Night at the Movies: Exhibitors and Female Audiences during the Great Depression,” in The American Film History Reader, ed. Jon Lewis and Eric Smoodin (London: Routledge, 2014), 246–75.
11. Hilmes, Radio Voices.
12. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting.
13. Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992).
14. Jack Jamison, “This Is the Life; Jack Benny Doesn’t Laugh at Life—but He Lets Life Laugh at Him!” Radio Guide, July 10, 1937, 8–9.
15. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 49–77.
16. Laura Leff, “Do You Know,” Jack Benny Times 27, no. 3–4 (May–August 2012): 6.
17. Weldon Melick, “Genius in a Fog,” Radio Mirror, February 1937, 79.
18. Canada Dry Program, May 25, 1932, script in Benny Papers, UCLA Special Collections.
19. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting, 66–67.
20. General Tire Program, June 8, 1934, script in Benny Papers, UCLA Special Collections.
21. “All Jack Benny Needs Is More Time for Jobs,” San Francisco Call, no date, Benny 1934/35 scrapbook, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
22. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting, 69.
23. Don Gilman to John Royal, January 26, 1937, report on conversation with Will Hays. NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society Box 93, file 15.
24. Dan Wheeler, “The Curious Case of Radio’s Hidden Censorship,” Radio Mirror, March 1937, 34–35, 75.
25. Irving A. Fein, Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), 182–83.
26. “To Sunny California” New York Times, December 22, 1935, xx, 1.“California Beckons,” New York Times, December 20, 1936, section xx, i, “California Southland” New York Times, May 2, 1939, section xx, 6;
27. “California Southland” New York Times May 2, 1939, section xx, 6.
28. Hilmes, Radio Voices, 4–5, 11, 13.
29. “Benny at Breakfast,” New York Times, April 28, 1940, 128.
30. Hollywood: Tourists Accommodated,” New York Times, March 22, 1936, X4; Joseph Taylor, “Film Lots Play Host,” New York Times, April 10, 1938, I59.
31. Los Angeles: A Guide to the City and Its Environs (Works Progress Administration, NY: Hastings House, 1941).
32. Janet MacRorie to Lenox Lohr, December 26, 1937, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 92, file 43.
33. “California Southland.”
34. “Main Street,” Albany(NY) Evening Recorder, July 17, 1941, 4.
35. “Benny Broadcasts Create Furor,” Palm Springs Desert Sun, February 21, 1941.
36. Hilmes, Broadcasting and Radio; Hilmes, Radio Voices; and Meyers A Word from Our Sponsor.
37. Alton Cook, “Rule Film Stars on Radio; Movie Companies to Take Full Charge of Their Stars’ Activities on the Air,” New York World Telegram, March 9, 1937.
38. “Pix-Air Tie Dubious: Harrington Predicts Star Sponsor Grief,” Variety, October 30, 1936, 1, 5.
39. “Hollywood Challenges the East as Center of Radio,” New York Times, October 1937. Orrin E. Dunlap Jr., “The Swing to California,” New York Times, October 17, 1937, 190.
40. Hilmes, Hollywood and Broadcasting, 72–73.
41. Catherine Jurca, Hollywood 1938: Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
42. Don Gilman to John Royal, January 26, 1937, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 93, file 15.
43. Keith Kiggins to John Royal, October 28, 1938, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 94, file 10.
44. Janet MacRorie, “Radio’s Contributions to the Motion Picture Industry,” December 1, 1938, NBC Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Box 94, file 10,
45. Jurca, Hollywood 1938.
46. “Directors Last Long in Filmland,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1938; Joe Pearson, “Mark Sandrich,” Hollywood Motion Picture Review, July 9, 1938, both in Sandrich scrapbook, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Mark Sandrich Papers.
47. Motion Picture Herald, July 17, 1939.
48. “Bally Rings Bell,” Variety, October 30, 1939, 204. “H’wood Junket-Minded for Its Big Pix,” Variety, October 30, 1940, 8.
49. Variety, June 9, 1939, 2. “General Foods Pony Up, Saves Benny Deal Fete for Waukeganites,” Variety, June 21, 1939, 8.
50. Bosley Crowther, “There’s Nothing Like a Gala ‘World Premiere’,” New York Times, April 21, 1940. “Jack Benny Makes Good in His Old Home Town,” Variety, June 26, 1939, 3.
51. Man About Town, Paramount Studios advertisement, n.d. [1939], in Sandrich scrapbooks, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Mark Sandrich Papers; Box Office Digest, June 29, 1939.
52. Louise Barber, “Mark Sandrich,” Hollywood Motion Picture Review, August 5, 1939.
53. Preview of Man About Town, Variety, June 8, 1939, 3.
54. Picture Reports, June 8, 1939, Man About Town script, June 24, 1939, Sandrich scrapbook f113, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Mark Sandrich Papers.
55. Motion Picture Herald, July 17, 1939.
56. Box Office, June 17, 1939, 27.
57. Archer Winsten, review of Man About Town, New York Post, June 29, 1939, Benny scrapbook 1939, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
58. Variety, May 3, 1940, 2.
59. “Here Is What General Foods Is Doing,” Buck Benny Rides Again pressbook, in Paramount pressbook collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
60. “Wanger Strong Advocate of Radio as a Pre-selling Medium for New Pix; Cites Buck Benny, Singapore,” Variety, September 18, 1940, 8.
61. “Benny Film New Tops at NY Paramount,” Box Office, May 6, 1940; “Freeman Urges Exhibs. to Build Up Attendance,” Film Daily, June 20, 1940, 1, 10.
62. Review of Buck Benny Rides Again, Variety, April 17, 1940, 13.
63. Jimmy Starr, Buck Benny Rides Again review, Los Angeles Herald Express, April 11, 1940; Nelson Bell, review of Buck Benny Rides Again, Washington Post, May 17, 1940, 13; Philip K Scheuer, “Jack Benny Comedy Hero in ‘Western’,” Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1940, A10.
64. Box Office Digest, April 15, 1940.
65. Kenneth McCaleb, “Screening a Radio Program,” New York Mirror, April 21, 1940, 13.
66. B. R. Crisler, “The Screen: Buck Benny Rises Again (Through a Riot) at the Paramount,” New York Times, April 25, 1940, 28.
67. Variety, November 13, 1940, 1, 56.
68. “Boy Meets Facts” Time, July 21, 1940; “Wanger Strong Advocate of Radio as a Pre-selling Medium for New Pix.”
69. “Crosby, Benny, Colman Paramount’s Male Tops,” Variety, January 3, 1940, 29.
70. Today’s Cinema, London, May 31, 1940; Daily Film Renter, London, June 3, 1940, Sandrich scrapbooks, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Mark Sandrich Papers.
71. Washington Times Herald, May 7, 1940.
72. Box Office Digest, January 8, 1941. Sandrich scrapbooks, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Mark Sandrich Papers.
73. Love Thy Neighbor, Paramount Pressbook Collection, Margaret Herrick library.
74. Review of Love Thy Neighbor, Variety, December 25, 1940, 16.
75. Bosley Crowther, “The Screen: Love Thy Neighbor,” New York Times, December 18, 1940, 32.
76. Bosley Crowther, “Out of Thin Air,” New York Times, December 22, 1940.
77. Crowther, “Out of Thin Air,” 103.
CHAPTER 8
1. “King Benny,” Time, February 12, 1940.
2. George Rosen, “1948 Peak Year for Radio,” Variety, October 25, 1948, 155; See also Alan Havig, “Critic from Within: Fred Allen Views Radio,” Journal of Popular Culture 12, no. 2 (1978): 328–40.
3. Ralph Lewis Smith, A Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting in the United States 1920–1955 (New York: Arno, 1979).
4. Amanda Lotz, “On ‘Television Criticism’: The Pursuit of the Critical Examination of a Popular Art,” Popular Communication 6 (2008): 20.
5. Cleveland Amory, “Jack Benny’s $400 Yaks,” Saturday Evening Post, November 8, 1948, 25, 81, 82, 84, 86, 89.
6. “Radio, Vaudeville & Camps,” Time, April 13, 1942.
7. “By Request,” Time, February 11, 1946; “The Lower Globaler,” Time, October 18, 1943; “Entertainers,” Time, October 11, 1943.
8. “It’s Benny Two to One,” Newsweek, March 31, 1947, 66–68.
9. “Radio Must Train ’em to Solve Problem of Vanishing Writers,” Variety, July 14, 1943.
10. “Benny, Sans Writers, Others to Go, May Quit Radio Work,” Variety. June 17, 1943, 1, 7.
11. “Deny Benny Asks Leave from Air,” Variety, June 23, 1943.
12. Billboard reported: “Four new writers have joined Jack Benny show: Cy Howard, Milt Josefberg, ‘Tack’ Tackaberry and George Balzer will handle scripting” (October 2, 1943). Cy lasted only about thirteen weeks before leaving, and Sam Perrin would become the fourth writer.
13. Variety, December 15, 1942, 3.
14. “Hollywood Inside,” Variety, May 29, 1945, 2.
15. Jack Gould, “Kate and Jack,” New York Times, October 15, 1944, X7.
16. “Hollywood Inside,” Variety, April 12, 1945, 2.
17. “It’s Benny Two to One,” Newsweek, March 31, 1947, 66–68. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, November 1, 1945, 4.
18. “It’s Benny Two to One,” Newsweek, March 31, 1947, 66–68.
19. “One-Man Crowd,” Time, February 18, 1946.
20. Laura Leff claims that the first time Mel Blanc did the Maxwell engine was March 2, 1947. 39 Forever, Second Edition, Volume 2, Radio October 1942–May 1955 (North Charleston, SC: Book Surge, 2006), 250.
21. Amory, “Jack Benny’s $400 Yaks,” 84.
22. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, December 3, 1945, 4.
23. “Mr. Benny Relaxes,” New York Times May 26, 1946, x7.
24. Amory, “Jack Benny’s $400 Yaks,” 86.
25. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, December 6, 1945, 4.
26. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, December 13, 1945, 4.
27. Lucky Strike Program, February 3, 1946.
28. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, January 10, 1946, 6.
29. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, January 28, 1946, 6.
30. Lucky Strike Program, January 27, 1946, script in Jack Benny Papers, UCLA Special Collections, Box 30, folder 4.
31. George Rosen, “Dialers Sour on Free Sugar,” Variety, February 6, 1946, 1.
32. “Mr. Benny Relaxes,” New York Times May 26, 1946, x7.
33. “Most Improved Numbers over Last Season in Past Few Weeks,” Variety, March 27, 1946, 8.
34. “It’s Benny Two to One,” Newsweek, March 31, 1947, 66–68.
35. Robert J. Landry, “Wanted: Radio Critics,” Public Opinion Quarterly 4, no. 4 (December 1, 1940): 620–630.
36. Landry, “Wanted: Radio Critics,” 625.
37. Landry, “Wanted: Radio Critics,” 629.
38. Gerd Horten, Radio Goes to War: The Cultural Politics of Propaganda during World War II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).
39. Robert J. Landry, “The Improbability of Radio Criticism,” Hollywood Quarterly 2, no. 1 (October 1946): 66–70.
40. Ralph Lewis Smith, A Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting in the US 1920–1955 (New York: Arno, 1979).
41. “Critic on the Hearth,” Theatre Arts, January 1951, 32–36.
42. Smith, Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting, 32.
43. Review of Maxwell House Coffee Time, Variety, October 6, 1948, 30.
44. “Appraising the Radio Editors,” Variety, January 23, 1946, 25.
45. Orrin Dunlap, “Altering the Acts Is a Trick; Radio’s 1935–36 Line Up Follows Last Year’s Show Almost to a ‘T’.” New York Times, September 8, 1935, x11.
46. George Rosen, “Radio Programming Deadened,” Variety, August 15, 1945, 23.
47. “Let’s Face It,” Variety, March 13, 1946, 35.
48. Variety, March 1946, 25.
49. “Gags Have Grown Up,” n.d. [1945], 9–11, Benny scrapbook 116, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Jack Benny Papers.
50. Gilbert Seldes, “Notes and Queries,” Esquire, March 1946, 78.
51. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, February 21, 1946, 6; Milt Josefsburg, The Jack Benny Show (New York: Arlington House, 1977), 205.
52. John Crosby, “The Art of the Insult,” New York Herald Tribune, October 14, 1946, 27.
53. John Crosby, “The Art of the Insult.”
54. Smith, Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting, 238, quoting Jack Gould, “How Comic Is Radio Comedy,” New York Times, Sunday magazine, November 21, 1948.
55. Gilbert Seldes, “Actor for a Night,” Esquire, June 1946, 107–8.
56. Josefsburg, The Jack Benny Show, 206.
57. John Crosby, “In the Footsteps of Harold Lloyd,” New York Herald Tribune, May 6, 1946; “Don Quinn vs. Sinclair Lewis,” New York Herald Tribune, May 20, 1946.
58. “Inside Stuff—Radio,” Variety, May 22, 1946, 38.
59. John Crosby, “Breakfast with Freddie and Tallulah,” New York Herald Tribune, May 19, 1946.
60. Variety, May 15, 1946, 49.
61. Crosby, “Don Quinn vs. Sinclair Lewis.”
62. John Crosby, “Fourteen Years of Jack Benny,” New York Herald Tribune, May 30, 1946. The Benny show had been broadcast May 26, 1946.
63. “Crosby Column Spurs Newspapers Generally,” Variety, August 21, 1946, 35.
64. Variety, August 21, 1946, 35.
65. “Reporter with a Hammer,” Newsweek, vol. 28, September 16, 1946, 66, 69; “For Listeners Only,” Time, August 5, 1946.
66. Billboard, October 12, 1946, 3.
67. John Crosby, “The King Is Dead! Long Live the Dean!” New York Herald Tribune, October 7, 1946.
68. John Crosby, “Burns and Allen,” New York Herald Tribune, September 18, 1946.
69. John Crosby, “Twilight of the Gods,” New York Herald Tribune, November 6, 1946; “Twilight of the Gods, Part 2,” New York Herald Tribune, November 7, 1946.
70. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, October 31, 1946, 6.
71. John Crosby, “The Fall Fashions in Jokes,” New York Herald Tribune, September 30, 1946.
72. John Crosby, “The Nelsons of Rogers Road,” New York Herald Tribune, January 19, 1946.
73. New York Herald Tribune, December 30, 1946, 31.
74. “Crosby’s First Anniversary,” Newsweek, May 19, 1947, 66.
75. Gilbert Seldes, “Actor for a Night,” 107.
76. Josefsburg, The Jack Benny Show, 206.
77. John Crosby, “The Jack Benny Mystery,” New York Herald Tribune, January 6, 1947.
78. Lucky Strike Program, January 5, 1947.
79. John Crosby, “Innocents in Hollywood,” New York Herald Tribune, February 19 and 20, 1947.
80. “Don’t Look Now . . . But Your Radio’s Static,” Variety, October 8, 1947, 25.
81. John Crosby, “Radio and Who Makes It,” Atlantic Monthly, January 1948, 23–29.
82. Crosby, “Radio and Who Makes It,” 25.
83. Crosby, “Radio and Who Makes It,” 26–27.
84. Jack Gould, “The Peabody Awards,” New York Times, March 24, 1946; John E. Reid Jr., “Half Century of Peabody Radio: A Descriptive Analysis,” Journal of Radio Studies (1992): 143–50.
85. Gould, “How Comic Is Radio Comedy.”
86. Jack Benny, “Gentlemen of Depress,” Variety, January 5, 1949, 8.
87. John Crosby, “Down with the Critics,” New York Herald Tribune, January 7, 1949.
88. Crosby, “Radio and Who Makes It,” 29.
CHAPTER 9
1. Kathryn H Fuller-Seeley, “Learning to Live with Television: Technology, Gender, and America’s Early TV Audiences,” in The Columbia History of Television, ed. Gary Edgerton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 91–110.
2. John Crosby, New York Herald Tribune, November 26, 1948.
3. http://www.tvhistory.tv/Annual_TV_Households_50–78.JPG.
4. Harriet Van Horne, “TV’s Unkind to Benny, on Third Try,” New York World Telegram and Sun, April 2, 1951.
5. James L Baughman, “Nice Guys Last Fifteen Seasons: Jack Benny on Television, 1950–1965,” Film & History 30, no. 2 (2000): 29–39. Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 236–44; Ralph Lewis Smith, A Study of the Professional Criticism of Broadcasting in the US 1920–1955 (New York: Arno, 1979), 249: Smith says it was painless; Irving A. Fein, Jack Benny: An Intimate Biography (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976), 142–44.
6. George Rosen, “Appraising the Video Comics,” Variety, November 8, 1950, 59.
7. Janet Kern, “Televiews,” Chicago Herald American (no date but presumably May 21, 1951); “Benny May Go All TV Next Year,” Variety, January 24, 1952, 1.
8. John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
9. Gerard Jones, Honey, I’m Home!: Sitcoms: Selling the American Dream (New York: Macmillan, 1993). 50; Dunning, On the Air.
10. Jack Gould, “Radio and Television: Case of Fred Allen, TV’s Problem Child, Who Has Failed to Attain His Proper Niche, Discussed,” New York Times, October 31, 1951, 34; Variety, February 25, 1954.
11. “‘Show for Show’s Sake’ Slogan As High Cost Precludes Top Talent Programs,” Variety, May 14, 1947, 39.
12. “‘Show for Show’s Sake,’” 39.
13. Ben Gross, “Looking and Listening: Benny Reveals Secret,” New York Daily News, undated article [1947], in Benny scrapbook 88, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
14. Virginia MacPherson, “Benny Fears Advent of Television” The News, Tonawanda NY, September 25, 1947.
15. George Rosen, “1948 Peak Year for Radio,” Variety, October 25, 1948, 155.
16. See Tom Kemper, Hidden Talent: The Emergence of Hollywood Agents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).
17. “Television Raids Scare Radio,” Variety, April 28, 1948, 1.
18. Benny also credits Irving Fein, whom he had hired to handle PR but who became an astute business manager. Benny and Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven, 238.
19. “NBC ‘Buys’ Jack Benny for 4 Million,” Variety, November 10, 1948, 1. See Eric Hoyt. “Hollywood and the Income Tax, 1929–1955,” Film History: An International Journal 22, no. 1 (2010): 5–21.
20. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, November 18, 1948, 8.
21. See Pat Weaver, “If I Were Running the Network Again,” Sponsor, August 26, 1963, 25–26.
22. Larry Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished,” Broadcasting and Television, October 1956, 118–26.
23. Thanks to Richard Simon for this link: http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-federal-individual-income-tax-rates-history-1913-2013-nominal-and-inflation-adjusted-brackets.
24. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, January 6, 1949, 6.
25. Laura Leff, 39 Forever, Second Edition, Volume 2, Radio October 1942–May 1955 (North Charleston, SC: Book Surge, 2006), 24–26.
26. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, January 6, 1949, 6.
27. Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished.”
28. “Benny Heading into Video; Aims Show for Tele When It’s Ready for Him,” Variety, December 30, 1948, 6.
29. Special Los Angeles Times section, March 8, 1949, Benny scrapbook 118, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
30. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, March 10, 1949, 6.
31. Arthur Altschul, “Jack Benny Considers His Future,” New York Times, April 10, 1949, x9.
32. Altschul, “Jack Benny Considers His Future.”
33. Larry Wolters, “Jack Benny Set for One Video Show a Month; It Will Be Vaudeville—and Expensive,” Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1949, B13.
34. Jack Gould, “Television Lesson; Shows Should Be Staged for the Home Audience,” New York Times, October 15, 1950, x13.
35. “Benny Passes Up All but Live Television Shows,” Variety, July 26, 1949, 1, 11.
36. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, August 22, 1949, 6.
37. BBDO memo, July 26, 1949, from Wick Crider to Jack Donove about the American Tobacco account and a potential Benny TV show, found by Cynthia Meyers in Bruce Barton papers, box 75, American Tobacco folder, Wisconsin Historical Society, NBC Records.
38. Joe McCartney, “What Do You Think of Television, Mr. Allen?” Life, July 4, 1949, 69. See also discussion in Alan Havig, Fred Allen’s Radio Comedy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) and Arthur Frank Wertheim, Radio Comedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979).
39. Evelyn Bigsby, “Year of Decision; Jack Benny Knows That Television Is Breathing Heavily Down His Neck. It Is Not a Question of Whether He Will Do It, But When,” Radio-Television Life, October 20, 1949, 33, in Benny scrapbook 1949, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
40. Review of “The Big Show,” Variety, November 6, 1950.
41. “Hooper Inaugurates His ‘Shift of Accent’ Ratings,” Variety, March 22, 1950, 24; Crosby, New York Herald Tribune, November 26, 1948.
42. Douglas Gomery, Shared Pleasures: A History of Moviegoing in America (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); Richard A. Easterlin, “The American Baby Boom In Historical Perspective,” in Population, Labor Force, and Long Swings in Economic Growth: The American Experience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), 76–110.
43. Wayne Oliver, “TV to Hit 5,000,000 Sets Soon; Keeping a Dizzy Pace,” Binghamton (NY) Sunday Press, March 5, 1950, 10C; Variety, March 22, 1950, 24.
44. Christopher, “Stars Shine Best When Polished.”
45. Benny TV program Oct 28 1950,” script located in Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=kkgb0020.
46. “Big Numbers for First Broadcast,” Telecasting, November 13, 1950, 68.
47. Janet Kern, “Televiews,” Chicago Herald American, October 31, 1950. Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
48. Dwight Newton, “Day and Night with Radio and Television,” San Francisco Examiner, November 15, 1950, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116, Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
49. Jack Gould, “Jack Benny Show Has Video Debut,” New York Times, October 30, 1950, 33.
50. Review of Jack Benny Program, Bridgeport Herald, November 1950, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
51. Review of Jack Benny Program, Billboard, November 4, 1950, 12.
52. John Crosby, “Jack Benny Makes His Bow,” New York Herald Tribune, November 14, 1950, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
53. George Rosen, “A B C Ds of Video Comedy,” Variety, December 13, 1950, 1, 43.
54. Goodman Ace, “TV and Radio: Big Bargain from Waukegan,” Saturday Review of Literature, November 11, 1950, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
55. Jack Benny Program, January 28, 1951 script, in Truth Tobacco Industry Documents, https://industrydocuments.library.ucsf.edu/tobacco/docs/#id=kkgb0020.
56. Lucky Strike Program, January 5, 1947.
57. Mary Wood, “Benny’s Turkey a Very, Very Sad Affair,” Cincinnati Post, January 30,1951, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116, Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
58. Larry Wolters, “That L-O-N-G TV Kiss Outlasted Its Welcome,” Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1951, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
59. “Now Ladd Has Earned Critic’s Purple Heart,” Louisville Courier Journal, February 11, 1951, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116. Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
60. “A Reader Finds Women in Video Too Revealing,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1951, N-A9.
61. “A Reader Finds Women in Video Too Revealing.”
62. Anthony La Camera, “TV Easy Step for Jack Benny,” Boston Advertiser, December 16, 1951.
63. Susan Murray, Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early Television and Broadcast Stardom (London: Routledge, 2013), 95–99.
64. Review of Jack Benny Program, Variety, December 19, 1951, 27.
65. Review of Jack Benny Program, Billboard, October 18, 1952, Jack Benny scrapbook 1950–52, Box 116, Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
66. Review of Jack Benny Program, Billboard, January 10, 1953, Jack Benny scrapbook 1952–59, Box 23, Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
67. Arthur Marx, “No. 1 Master of Timing,” New York Times Magazine, February 13, 1955, 207.
68. “Benny in Skirts Is a Scream,” Hollywood Reporter, April 15, 1954, Jack Benny scrapbook 1952–59, Box 23, Jack Benny papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
69. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, December 13, 1951, 8.
70. “Tobacco on the Air,” Sponsor, September 1948, 227–29, 94–97.
71. “Lucky Strike, CBS Beseech Benny to Continue in Radio,” Variety, February 18, 1952, 14; Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, March 17, 1952, 6.
72. “Jack Benny Program Budget Cut to 18 G,” Variety, April 4, 1952, 1.
73. “BBDO’s Ben Duffy Pleads with Benny to Continue Radio,” Variety, March 7, 1952, 9; Review of Benny show, Variety, September 17, 1952, 38.
74. Walter Ames, “Top Names Are Still on Radio,” Los Angeles Times, November 22, 1953.
75. Laura Leff, 39 Forever: Volume 2, Radio October 1942–May 1955, second edition (North Charleston SC: Book Surge, 2006)6, 24–26.
76. Ruth Elgutter, “Fireside Viewing,” Toledo (OH) Times, March 11, 1952; Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, January 18, 1954, 10; “In TV, Each Viewer’s a Critic; Jack Benny Finds ‘Strain’ Mounting,” Variety, January 26, 1954, 1.
77. Jack Hellman, “Light and Airy,” Variety, March 31, 1955, 11; Goodman Ace, “TV and Radio: A Penny’s Worth of Jelly Beans,” Saturday Review of Literature, January 8, 1955, in Benny scrapbook 1955, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming; Larry Wolters, “End of an Era—Jack Benny Is Quitting Radio,” Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1955, C1.
78. Goodman Ace, “A Penny’s Worth of Jelly Beans.”
79. Donald Freeman, “Radio Still Holds Imprint of TV 1959,” San Diego Union, September 30, 1956, np in Benny scrapbook 88, Benny Papers, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.
80. Review of Jack Benny Hour, Variety, March 20, 1959, 26; Review of Jack Benny Hour, Variety, March 25, 1959, 50; Cecil Smith, “Benny’s Birthday Bash Was a Beaut,” Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1969, F11.
CONCLUSION
1. Peter Kovacs, “Big Tobacco and Broadcasting, 1924–1960: An Interdisciplinary History,” PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2017.
2. Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009).
3. Johnny Carson’s 1949 honors thesis, “How to Write Comedy for Radio,” is available in digital form through the University of Nebraska’s website: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/theaterstudent/1/.
4. Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (New York: Warner Books, 1990).
5. Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, July 1962, 6, notes “Jell-O will again sponsor his banter after a 20-year lapse (though some people think he’s never had any other sponsor.”
6. Derek Kompere, Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television (London: Routledge, 2006).
7. Avi Santo, Selling the Silver Bullet: The Lone Ranger and Transmedia Brand Licensing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015).
8. Eleanor Patterson, “Radio Redux: The Persistence of Soundwork in the Post Network Era,” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, 2016.
