sunday nights at seven the jack benny story

The format of The Jack Benny Show was flexible. Benny made only four television shows in his first season. In 1948, the entertainer, who had just signed a deal with the Music Corporation of American (MCA) that allowed him to form a company to produce the program and thereby make more money on it, was lured to CBS, where he stayed through the remainder of his radio career and most of his television years. Most of his films capitalized on his radio fame (e.g., The Big Broadcast of 1937), although a couple of pictures, Charley's Aunt (1941) and To Be or Not to Be (1942) showed that he could play more than one character.īenny's radio program spent most of its run on NBC. According to Benny, comedy was based on seven principles: the joke, exaggeration, ridicule, ignorance, surprise, the pun, and the comic situation. He starred in a regular radio program from 1932 to 1955, establishing the format and personality he would transfer almost intact to television. Two months later, Benny was the host of his own radio program.

In 1932 Benny hit the radio waves, featured on his friend Ed Sullivan's talk show.

With this national exposure in film, Benny became a star. In 1928 he appeared in the short film Bright Moments and in 1929 headlined in the films Hollywood Revue of 1929 and Chasing Rainbows, and in Medicine Man (1930). Benny, which ultimately got him noticed by the film industry. After his naval stint he created a solo vaudeville act, touring as comic and dancer under name Ben K. After spending several years on the road with various partners in piano-violin duos he served in the Navy during World War I, where his talent for stand-up comedy was revealed. He worked in his father's haberdashery shop, then at age 16 he got a job playing violin in the orchestra pit of the town's Barrison Theater. Although there is now a school named after him in Waukegan (Jack Benny Junior High School), Benny's education consisted of one term at Central High School.

He brought a relationship-oriented, humorously vain persona honed in vaudeville, radio, and film to television in 1950, starring in his own television series from that year until 1965.īorn Benjamin Kublesky on February 14, 1894, the comedian grew up in Waukegan, Illinois. Jack Benny was among the most beloved American entertainers of the 20th century.

Sunday nights at seven the jack benny story