My greatest gift to all of you - THE JACK BENNY COLLECTION

[Jack Benny]

Always looking for a way to pay you folks back for all the wonderful shows you have shared with me over the years,and now I think I've found it thanks to Shirley and Gary!

‎Shirley Ann Worthen‎ to Jack Benny Fans (New)
February 13 ·
THE JACK BENNY "EXTRAS" AUDIO COLLECTION...still the way Jack would have wanted it: FREE!

Message from W. Gary Wetstein:

It's a huge pleasure at last, thanks to the existence of this great Facebook group, to be able to share with many fellow Jack Benny fans all at once this HUGE collection of "extras", a truly indispensable companion to the set of high quality mp.3s of the Jack Benny radio series we've posted about earlier.

Note that because I had very little to do with these for the most part, I can brag about them freely! These were nearly all encoded by a friend from his own recordings, some of which are mind-blowingly rare and precious. Again, in cases where you may already have a copy of a particular show, I can pretty much guarantee that the versions here are far superior, since I've compared versions extensively along the way to insure the best of all available versions is represented here (nearly always the versions encoded by my friend). I've contributed some shows here and there, but this is really the culmination of decades of his devotion to collecting all things Jack Benny.

Included here are:

- All the Jack Benny guest shots--ALL--we've been able to find after decades of collecting, on any radio series Jack or one of his major castmates popped upon in a prominent way. A few more have turned up for me very recently which I need to add, but really, folks, this is an astounding collection of guest shots across a huge variety of series.

- Interviews with Jack, the cast members, the writers, and even Joan Benny

-Tributes and specials dedicated to Jack, including the outstanding 12 part "Speaking of Radio" series on the Benny series, and many more covering a span of 5 decades of tributes and memorial shows.

-Live appearances, including Friar's Roasts and live stage shows never accessible before. For instance: Jack's 1953 stage show at the Curran Theater in San Francisco, which is a *classic*!

-Master recordings of some episodes of the latter years of the Benny radio show, in ultra, ultra, ultra high quality sound, direct from the CBS reels before the necessary editing was done to make them ready for broadcast. There are interactions with the audience/audience warmups, flubs, actors subbing for the ones who would be spliced in later (such as Mary!)--it's a rare glimpse into what it would have been like to be in the studio audience for the recording of a Jack Benny radio show in the mid 1950s.

-Rehearsal recordings from the same period, which include priceless examples of those minute discussions Jack was said to get into about the finest points of a joke's wording. We've read about it in various books, but now we can hear it for ourselves firsthand! He truly was a master joke "editor".

-Special broadcasts done by all (or most) of the Jack Benny cast, including a remote from Cairo, Egypt in 1943, and an hour long Christmas special from 1956--after the radio series had gone off the air!

-Much, much more. I sound like a TV infomercial pitchman, but really...so much more. smile emoticon

Please enjoy the material, share it with anyone you want to, burn audio discs, spread the links around--whatever you want to do! This is truly a monumental collection put together by a lifelong diehard Jack Benny collector--my contributions are but a drop in the bucket here. I had a lot more to do with the encoding of the radio series itself I'm just glad to be able to help carry out my friend's wish to make sure these precious recordings are as accessible as possible to as many fans as possible!

*For instructions on downloading Dropbox files, please see the first "Comment" for this post.*

*For another very important link, the high quality, most complete set of Jack Benny radio shows available (for which these "Extras" are meant to be a companion to), please see the second "Comment" for this post.*

Link to "Extras": https://www.dropbox.com/sh/pyikbm2x3unw ... gdR_a?dl=0

Link to Complete HQ Jack Benny Collection
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xrsabbmi1usu ... Paf6a?dl=0

[epeterd]

Sounds too good to be true. Wonder how they found all this stuff. I'll have to check it out.

Peter

[Moose Hatrack]

It's definitely worth checking out. I downloaded "Masters" and "Rehearsals" last night and skimmed through them. Not only do you hear (I think it is) Jeanette standing in for Mary, you also hear (again, I think it is) the actor who plays Roy standing in for Rochester.

[Ray Faiola]

This is an amazing collection. I've been going through Jack's entire run for the past few months. I'm up to Feb of 1947. What is most enlightening is to be able to appreciate the linear development of the writing, the cast, their characters, the style and technical aspects of the program. Lucky me, I have a nearly two hour commute each morning and afternoon and I have the entire program on a 32gb data stick which goes into my car radio. THANKS GARY!

[Alex Buck]

Is this legit? It sounds great but the links don't work.

[Yhtapmys]

Is this legit? It sounds great but the links don't work.

Alex, I think you need a Dropbox account for it to work.

Yhtapmys

[Yhtapmys]

I've been going through some of shows in this collection and there are some wonderful things.
It's interesting to hear the version of the Christmas shopping show of 1954 before it was cut down a few minutes for length. Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet lost some dialogue. I'll bet whoever did the editing wished that digital editing had been invented. I don't envy him sitting there with a grease pencil and a razor blade making all those cuts.
The 1946 Freedom of Opportunity show with a fictionalised (and badly overacted) version of Jack's boyhood has a familiar voice who isn't identified. The commercial announcer is Myron Wallace, who was working in Chicago at the time (the show was produced in Chicago). It wasn't long before he headed to New York and changed his name to Mike Wallace.

Yhtampys

[loveinbloom99]

Wow - what a treat!! Thank you so much for sharing. I had to severely clean up my hard drive to make room, but totally worth it

BTW if anyone wants to download these the most efficiently, use a download manager - I have jdownloader and all I did was copy and paste the dropbox link into the program, it automatically parsed it and downloaded every single mp3 and arranged it into the same folders that they were on in the dropbox. Any decent free download manager should do the same!