The Lively Arts By Milton R. Bass
GEORGE BALZER has been writing comedy material for Jack Benny for 21 years now, and there’s very little in the world left to surprise him. But a few weeks ago he came home from a golf match to learn a piece of news his wife had heard over the radio that afternoon. “Billy Graham is going to be Jack’s guest to open the season,” she told her husband. Since he is the only paid comedy writer in the family, Balzer was inclined to take her seriously. He immediately got on the phone and called his partner, Sam Perrin, who has also been writing for Benny for 21 years. Perrin had heard nothing about it, and was unable to believe it.
The two of them called their other two writing partners, Hal Goldman and Al Gordon, the
“new boys” who have been with Benny only 16 years. It was true, and the group had to come up with a script that would be funny and at the same time not detract from the dignity of Mr. Graham’s calling.
YOU CAN judge for yourself how well they did on Tuesday night, Sept. 24, at 9:30 over Channel 10 when the Benny show starts its new season. Going by past performances, you can assume the show will present Mr. Graham in a funny but dignified manner.
George Balzer is a 48-year-old lookalike of E. G. Marshall, the star of “The Defenders.” He and Sam Perrin not only have conquered the worlds of radio and television writing, but right after World War II they wrote a Broadway hit, “Are You With It?” that ran over a year.
Comedy writers, as viewers of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” well know, take their material from the world around them. The Benny writing team is no exception, and personal incidents in their own or their friends’ lives make up the plot lines they hang their jokes on.
There is little strain working on the Benny show as Benny is a calm, reasonable, nice man who has taken his success and money in stride. The writers work Mondays through Fridays on each script, from around 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and on Fridays Benny comes in to check over the script. This is the only tense period of the week as he reads through while the writers wait for his reaction.
IF HE keeps smiling and nodding and chuckling a bit to himself, the week is over and they are on their own till Monday. But if he frowns a bit and pauses here and there and shakes his head, there is work to be done. Sometimes the writers will defend the line or bit or scene to the death, and Benny will take a chance on it. But if he says once and for all, “I don’t like it,” it is out. The series already has 15 shows in the can and is forging strongly ahead with the rest. After Billy Graham, you will be seeing guest stars like Robert Goulet, Carol Burnett, Clint Walker, Johnny Carson, the Jimmy Stewarts, Jayne Mansfield and Bobby Darrin. There is also a completed version of Jack Benny’s interpretation of “Robinson Crusoe.”
ALTHOUGH he doesn’t look it, Jack Benny is 69 years old. Most of the time he doesn’t
feel it either, and he has no intentions of quitting as long as the audience doesn't feel it either. He has all the money anyone could ever need and all the comforts, but as Balzer put it, “What would he do if he wasn’t working?” An audience is lifeblood to a comedian, and it’s still pumping strong for Jack Nenny.
Most comedy writers are sad-looking men who seem strongly in need of a friend. That is because they are strongly in need of a friend. Few comedy writers stick with a star for many weeks, let alone months. At the first sign of trouble on a show the call immediately
goes up: “Change the writers.”
But George Balzer lias been writing (at a pretty penny) for Jack Benny for 21 years now, and he sits in his chair with a gentle smile on his face and a civilized view of the world. He looks just like a man who’s got the last laugh.
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