Rochester mention in Not a Genuine Black Man

[Melanie]

Is anyone keeping a list of mentions of the Benny gang in various places?

Here's a Rochester mention in the new Brian Copeland (comic) bio

Not a Genuine Black Man: Or, How I claimed My Piece of Ground in the

Lily-White Suburbs NY: Hyperion 2006 Prologue xiii

"...I love watermelon, but I won't buy one at the store. I refuse.

I'm not going to shuffle up to the clerk at Safeway with a big green melon

under my arm. Rochester I ain't!

"Hellooo, Mr. Benny. I done gots us the dessert!"

Not me. Sorry."

[Yhtapmys]

Is anyone keeping a list of mentions of the Benny gang in various places?

Here's a Rochester mention in the new Brian Copeland (comic) bio.

Pfft. Eddie Anderson will be funnier than whoever this guy is, ever hopes to be.

Yhtapmys
"Drive your blues away"

[LLeff]

"...I love watermelon, but I won't buy one at the store. I refuse. I'm not going to shuffle up to the clerk at Safeway with a big green melon under my arm. Rochester I ain't!

How ironic. I work for Safeway. And I recently heard that we'd done some research that showed that minorities preferred interacting with kiosks because they feel that there's less of a chance of them being discriminated against.

Does this mean that Rochester would shop at Safeway? I guess that supports our low price advertising...

[Roman]

Rochester NEVER talked like that even in the 1930s when that sort of dialogue was fairly common in radio and the movies. Rochester's role was groundbreaking in so many ways and if Copeland is unaware of that it only reflects his ignorance, not Jack or his writers' supposed racism.

[JohnM]

Is anyone keeping a list of mentions of the Benny gang in various places?

I was intrigued to see Jack mentioned in a recent biography of country music legend Hank Williams. It was only a brief mention, but the context was interesting, as was the fact that their paths even crossed at all. Williams’ career was short, and although it coincided with Jack’s peak years in the late 40s and early 50s, they were stars in two completely different domains.

Apparently, a Hollywood contingent including Jack, Burns and Allen, Milton Berle, Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope joined the last great traveling medicine show across the south in ’51 or ‘52, sponsored by the Hadacol elixir company, which went bankrupt during the tour. Berle and Hope mocked Williams and co-star Minnie Pearl on stage, who they hadn’t really known at all before, at first. But the tour was in Opry country, and that didn’t go down too well. Hope wound up asking the promoter not to have to follow Williams, who ended up closing the show each night.

Any country singers ever guest on the radio program?

[Gerry O.]

Is anyone keeping a list of mentions of the Benny gang in various places?

I was intrigued to see Jack mentioned in a recent biography of country music legend Hank Williams. It was only a brief mention, but the context was interesting, as was the fact that their paths even crossed at all. Williams’ career was short, and although it coincided with Jack’s peak years in the late 40s and early 50s, they were stars in two completely different domains.

Apparently, a Hollywood contingent including Jack, Burns and Allen, Milton Berle, Dorothy Lamour and Bob Hope joined the last great traveling medicine show across the south in ’51 or ‘52, sponsored by the Hadacol elixir company, which went bankrupt during the tour. Berle and Hope mocked Williams and co-star Minnie Pearl on stage, who they hadn’t really known at all before, at first. But the tour was in Opry country, and that didn’t go down too well. Hope wound up asking the promoter not to have to follow Williams, who ended up closing the show each night.

Any country singers ever guest on the radio program?

Wow, I can't imagine Berle and Hope heckling and ridiculing those Opry icons right in Opry country! It's a wonder those two guys got out of there alive!

Back then there wasn't the "crossover" factor in entertainment that we see today. In later years we would see urban-oriented entertainers like Jack Benny, George Burns and Dean Martin appear in Nashville and even star in country music-themed TV specials, but in the early 1950's, urban and rural entertainment WERE two entirely different worlds, and Berle and Hope must have been looked at as two wiseguy City Slickers who had no business making fun of country music entertainers.

Now if a rural-oriented comedian like Pat Buttram heckled Hank Williams or Minnie Pearl, the ridiculing would have been taken in good-natured fun, and the Opry crowd probably would have eaten it up.

[JohnM]

Yes, and "rural oriented" back then was called "hillbilly" - I should have asked if any hillbilly singers had ever appeared on Jack's show!

I was amazed that what was basically a Medicine Show was still happening at that time, AND, that major stars got involved. (There's an interesting Wikipedia entry for Hadacol which mentions this tour ("Caravan")). I was wondering how Jack would have managed this with the grind of the weekly show, but Hank and Minnie had the same kind of weekly commitment -- to appear on the Grand Ole Opry every Saturday night -- and flew a charter back to Nashville each week. Jack could have done that too, but it would have been a much longer trip to LA!

[Roman]

It's not really all that surprising that Jack got involved with this. I'm sure the promoters of the tour paid Jack and the other stars generously to obtain their services (are things any different today?). Since Jack was off the air from June through September, he could easily fit it into his schedule.

[Yhtapmys]

Wow, I can't imagine Berle and Hope heckling and ridiculing those Opry icons right in Opry country!

I can imagine it. The logic likely is - if they can make fun of Judy Canova, why not Minnie Pearl?

I don't suppose the biography states what Williams thought of it.

Yhtapmys
"Drive your blues away!"

[JohnM]

Wow, I can't imagine Berle and Hope heckling and ridiculing those Opry icons right in Opry country!

I can imagine it. The logic likely is - if they can make fun of Judy Canova, why not Minnie Pearl?

I don't suppose the biography states what Williams thought of it.

Sort of...

"The truly big names like Hope and Berle had signed on for occasional appearances, and both of those ran afoul of Hank's drawing power. Berle, for example, had tactlessly whipped out a bandanna and begun faking a crying jag for all to see while [Dick] Haymes sang 'Old Man River'; the crowd loved it, but not one of the [Drifting] Cowboys [Williams's band] did--they confronted Berle and threatened to break a guitar over his head if he did that when Hank was singing one of his sad songs of unrequited love. What happened to Hope when he was scheduled to follow Hank in Louisville soon topped the list of Hank Stories. Hank had reluctantly agreed to allow Hope top billing that night--after all, this was Bob Hope--but he was going to make him pay. He performed the whole package, from 'Lovesick [Blues]' to 'Cold, Cold Heart', and he took so many encores that LeBlanc [the name of the promoter - not the Professor!], serving as master of ceremonies, couldn't introduce Hope over the roar of the crowd. When it finally subsided, Hope shuffled onto the stage, wearing the oversized cowboy hat he had worn in his recent movie 'Paleface', and said, 'Just call me Hank Hope.' When he finished his monologue he buttonholed LeBlanc and got a promise that he would never have to follow this Hank Williams again."

Excerpted from "Lovesick Blues: the Life of Hank Williams", by Paul Hemphill.

[JohnM]

"rural oriented" back then was called "hillbilly" - I should have asked if any hillbilly singers had ever appeared on Jack's show!

Just happened to watch an episode of the TV program on Google Video, which would have been right around this same time (1952), which featured guest Dorothy Shay, "The Park Avenue Hillbilly". She sang a (pop) song, then introduced a sketch featuring "some of her kin folk", "Zeke Benny and the Mad Mountain Men" - with Jack, Remley, Bagby and others, including a 10 year old girl, all hillbillied up playing "You are My Sunshine" on fiddles etc. The costumes and dialogue were pretty outrageous mockery of "rural oriented" people - I wonder if this episode came before or after the Hadacol tour?

At the end in the spoken credits, Don Wilson named one of the guests as the "Beverly Hillbillies" -- about 8 or 10 years before Paul Henning's hit sitcom of the same name debuted!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... pr=goog-sl

[Maxwell]

That episode is one of the episodes on the 5 DVD set my son got me for Christmas. Most of the shows come from the period 1954-56, so that would be my guess as to the timeframe. If I'm right, that would have come a couple of years after the date given for the Hadacol tour.

"rural oriented" back then was called "hillbilly" - I should have asked if any hillbilly singers had ever appeared on Jack's show!

Just happened to watch an episode of the TV program on Google Video, which would have been right around this same time (1952), which featured guest Dorothy Shay, "The Park Avenue Hillbilly". She sang a (pop) song, then introduced a sketch featuring "some of her kin folk", "Zeke Benny and the Mad Mountain Men" - with Jack, Remley, Bagby and others, including a 10 year old girl, all hillbillied up playing "You are My Sunshine" on fiddles etc. The costumes and dialogue were pretty outrageous mockery of "rural oriented" people - I wonder if this episode came before or after the Hadacol tour?

At the end in the spoken credits, Don Wilson named one of the guests as the "Beverly Hillbillies" -- about 8 or 10 years before Paul Henning's hit sitcom of the same name debuted!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... pr=goog-sl

[JohnM]

That episode is one of the episodes on the 5 DVD set my son got me for Christmas. Most of the shows come from the period 1954-56, so that would be my guess as to the timeframe. If I'm right, that would have come a couple of years after the date given for the Hadacol tour.

I estimated 1952 because earlier in the episode Jack mentioned getting ready to go to New York for a testimonial dinner celebrating his 20 years in radio. But after I posted, I did some searching on Dorothy Shay - one of the hits was an episode guide that listed it as 11/4/1951.

The list also showed two or three other episodes in later years that reprised the characters of Zeke Benny and the Mad Mountain Boys.

So - this may all be old hat to those who've known the tv show for a long time - (I've only seen a couple episodes so far).

[Maxwell]

That episode is one of the episodes on the 5 DVD set my son got me for Christmas. Most of the shows come from the period 1954-56, so that would be my guess as to the timeframe. If I'm right, that would have come a couple of years after the date given for the Hadacol tour.

I estimated 1952 because earlier in the episode Jack mentioned getting ready to go to New York for a testimonial dinner celebrating his 20 years in radio. But after I posted, I did some searching on Dorothy Shay - one of the hits was an episode guide that listed it as 11/4/1951.

The list also showed two or three other episodes in later years that reprised the characters of Zeke Benny and the Mad Mountain Boys.

So - this may all be old hat to those who've known the tv show for a long time - (I've only seen a couple episodes so far).

That's what I get for not checking with tv.com before posting! That would put it at just about the time of the Hadacol tour.

I also have to admit that I only viewed that episode once, on Christmas Day, and that I viewed the entire 24 episodes within 24 hours, so I probably should have just kept my big mouth shut before offering an opinion.

Now if LL would just do that "39 Forever TV Edition"....

[LLeff]

The Dorothy Shay show was indeed 11/4/51.