Jack Not a Fan of Radio

[Yhtapmys]

I promised in another part of the forum to post a Sheilah Graham column of November 2, 1947. I've had to recreate it from snippets from bad scans on Google News, so the paragraphs may not be correct and an adjective in the Amos N Andy line is missing because I couldn't figure out what it was.

I suspect the movie Jack didn't make was the one of the same name released in 1949 starring Milton Berle (with Iris Adrian in a part). The New York Times mentions in a January 1947 edition he had signed for it.

Stage Fright Driving Benny Off the Air
But Jack Figures His Nerve Will Hold Out for 5 More Years
By SHEILAH GRAHAM
“Yes, in four or five years I shall give up radio,” says Jack Benny, puffing calmly on a large cigar. “I expect to be very tired by then,” he adds. He means of radio.
“I’m not much of a radio fan,” confesses the man who has been consistently among the first top Hooper rating lords ever since the system was started.
Now I’ll tell you what goes on backstage—or rather off stage—with Mr. Benny.
Jack is now starting his 16th consecutive year in radio—12 of them at the same time (on Sunday). But he is still nervous before each show. “You’d never guess it,” says Jack. People who see me just before I go on stage say I haven’t a nerve in my body. But stage fright is one of the reasons why I want to get out of the business in a few years. Nearly everyone feels the same—except Ingrid Bergman and Barbara Stanwyck; they’re always completely calm before a show.”
Jack doesn't believe even Crosby is as calm as he seems to be before a show. Yet I’d take bets that he is.
I ask Jack what has happened to his plan to star in his movie, “Always Leave Them Laughing.” “The script wasn’t that hot,” says Benny, who shudders when you mention his last movie, “The Horn Blows At Midnight.” “I have no desire to make another picture unless it’s worth giving up my golf for.
Jack plays golf seven days a week, but says he is in the same class as Hope and Crosby. But, next to traveling, it’s his favorite outdoor activity.
Jack has just returned from a USO tour of the United States.
“Mary (Livingstone) didn’t go with me. She hates to travel and she hates to hear me talk about it. I usually come home every day with a handful of pamphlets. I’m always ready to go somewhere.” The Bennys are going to adopt another child. They already have 13-years-old Joannie. “We should have done it years ago,” Jack tells me. “We have a big house and now, with Joan away in school, it s very lonely for us.” The lucky baby probably will be a European war orphan.
We get to talking of the radio comics of tomorrow. I’ve heard a lot of moaning about “where are they to come from.” Even Mr. Benny doesn't know.
“There’s no way of training future comedians today,” he tells me. “In the old days there was vaudeville—you traveled all over the country, did five shows a day, and when you hit the spotlight you knew your job. Today kids have to make good their first time out.” Jack believes that if Dennis Day and Jack Paar are careful with their writing they will be the two big stars of the future.
Here is the Benny system for having a good show.
“I have four writers now. I used to have two, and at one time I only had one. After each show on Sunday we have a huddle on the idea for the show the following week. Then I forget it completely until the following Thursday morning. The writers start work again on Wednesday, the day before.” One of the secrets of success, according to Jack: “We don’t worry about the show being great—we just see that it isn’t lousy. We never try to follow a ‘great show’ with another great show. We just do our best each time.”
Jack has made recordings of each of his shows for the past 12 years. “I can’t get into my bedroom because of records of my shows.”
Jack’s favorite comedy show on the air is “Amos and Andy”—“because of the great writing job; it s like a play.” Jack prefers the story-line radio show to the gag show, such as Bob Hope’s. “But one of the reasons Bob has such a big following is because people don’t have to stay glued with their ears to the radio or they lose the plot. They can listen for awhile, then talk, then listen again. But then again, some people like to listen all the time and follow the storyline.”
When his radio days are over, Jack says he d like to do a play on Broadway. “I was going to do stock this summer in ‘The Front Page.’” Jack would have played the part made famous in the movies by Pat O’Brien. “But I couldn’t be bothered to learn it all just for two weeks.”
Jack used to smoke 15 cigars a day. Now he swears he only smokes one. “I never smoked anything in my life until I was 36,” he tells me, and his smoking was an accident. “I had to smoke a cigar smoke a cigar in an Earl Carroll show.”
Jack says that his doctor wants him to drink more than he does. "Drinking is good for the arteries," he assures me with a straight face.

transcribed by yhtapmys

[Moose Hatrack]

Adopt another baby? Was that just a throwaway tidbit for this particular reporter, or were Jack and Mary really considering another adoption? Did that ever come up anywhere else? Thank you for yet another gem Yhtapmys. May your searches always be rewarding!

[Yhtapmys]

Adopt another baby? Was that just a throwaway tidbit for this particular reporter, or were Jack and Mary really considering another adoption? Did that ever come up anywhere else? Thank you for yet another gem Yhtapmys. May your searches always be rewarding!

I have no doubt that if he told that to Sheilah Graham, he must have been serious.

I don't have all of Jack's biography books, so I don't know if this was revealed in any of them.

Finding anything new about Jack in old papers is almost impossible, even if I was capable of searching them properly. 99% of the material is radio/TV listings or flack pieces about his latest movie. Anything after about 1965 or so is very restrospective about his career and familiar territory to probably everyone reading here.

yhtapmys

[Moose Hatrack]

Now I'm curiuos about Sheilah Graham. Did she have a reputation among celebrities as a square shooter?

[Yhtapmys]

Now I'm curiuos about Sheilah Graham. Did she have a reputation among celebrities as a square shooter?

She must have, MH; she wrote for Variety. You'll notice the post (not from Variety) isn't full of blind items or snipping. She was next on the rung with Louella and Hedda when it came to Hollywood columns.

I don't know if she did any radio like the other two did, but I suspect so because she was well-enough known.

Yhtapmys

[shimp scrampi]

That is a piece of unusual information on the Bennys proposing to adopt another child. It would certainly be an odd thing to mention as an offhand comment in an interview if they hadn't really seriously considered the idea. Neat finds Yhtapmys!

[Sammy Jones]

I love the comment about not being able to get into his room because of all the recordings! It's a good thing for all of us that he took his airchecks seriously.

Somewhere in "Sunday Nights at Seven" Joan talks about carefully removing a Benny show ET from its sleeve and listening in Jack's bedroom...