The Jack Benny Show – Casting For Television Special
An evening pause: Originally aired January 1, 1961. For those too young to know, Benny had two running gags that help explain some of the humor. First, he was ridiculously cheap, and second, he never admitted he was older than 39. Above all, you must recognize the intended silliness of everything said or done.
Note also that the telegram delivery man is Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and almost all Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
An evening pause: Originally aired January 1, 1961. For those too young to know, Benny had two running gags that help explain some of the humor. First, he was ridiculously cheap, and second, he never admitted he was older than 39. Above all, you must recognize the intended silliness of everything said or done.
Note also that the telegram delivery man is Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and almost all Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
I have heard the radio program on nostalgia programs. Mr. Benny’s humor holds up well over time.
I don’t think I’m that old but I’ve always enjoyed listening to radio shows. For a while I was on a Jack Benny kick. A couple years ago I was paying for something my three year old daughter asked to hold the dollar bill. She studied the portrait of Washington for a bit and asked me, “Is that Jack Benny?”
I’m no “snowflake”… And as everyone should know, I’m an advocate of free speech… I would not advocate, ever, for this clip to be censored, but ( and I only watched the first half, I found it to be slightly rasist , very sexist, and most importantly to my mind, pointing out the fact that some people, even way back when, couldn’t afford food and medical care at the same time in the US of A.
It might be funny to those of you that could afford both, but it just struck me as an early SNL sketch…. Pointing out a genuine point with ironic humour.
Some nicely done comedy, but also filled with with problematic issues
Not the best evening pause I have witnessed here.
Lee S: You are very unfairly applying your standards to the 1950s and 1960s. Benny was one of the first entertainers to give a lot of very visible jobs to blacks. In doing so he faced fierce opposition, mostly coming from the southern states controlled by Democrats. He did so regardless, and helped forge the way for the civil rights movement.
“pointing out the fact that some people, even way back when, couldn’t afford food and medical care at the same time in the US of A.”
The same exists today to some degree and in some places in America. So what?
Sometimes a cigar is just funny.
Funny whether it be dark humor, racist humor, misogynist humor, mother-in-law humor, Swedish humor, whatever.
By your standard there should only be “approved” comedy. And you and your kind will be the arbiters of what is funny and what is not funny? You’re not funny, your scary. That is not comedy. (And as we both know we can agree on much, but not here)
No thank you.
To Lee S.
I would like to restate a comment I made on this web site years ago:
” In 1998 I was getting private hospitalization insurance in Washington State. It cost $40/month($55 for over 65’s), with $500 deductible, with 20% copay up to $2000 total maximum!!! I kid you not. Affordable and sane.
Then “progressives” in Washington state invoked Obamacare lite(~1998 health care “reforms”) which restricted and mandated the Washington private policies, in ways you would expect “progressives” fools to do. The health care private insurers warned that this would cause prices to skyrocket. And so it came to pass within a few years.
Don’t allow anyone to say private healthcare was not affordable.
“Progressives” could simply not “stand” that it was not free for some guy living in a van down by the river, that’s all…but they were not willing to simply provide “free care” with general funds…that would cost real state money. So they forced the burden on others(as “progressives” authoritarian despots always do), and destroyed a VERY affordable private system in the process. Obamacare is the federal version of the same story.
Even vouchers for the “poor” using that private system would have cost far less than what we have gotten.
Almost certainly, these facts will not matter to “progressives”. They will find some way to ignore them. The tragedy is that a “Tyranny of the Majority” can force those authoritarian inanities on the rest of us.
But I suspect even “conservative” republicans like Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell would not propose going back to the totally free market insurance principles (no Government mandates/restrictions at all) that created such an affordable sane health insurance market…and prices from now on will always be exorbitant, and options limited.”
If someone could not afford hospitalization insurance back then it was almost always because of their own mistakes, choices, or foolishness, not because of excessive cost. The free market produced the best product at lowest cost. That is no longer true. Leftist (Democrat) inanity now reigns supreme nearly everywhere in society, and in nearly every government and media reaction and position.
Jack Benny’s programs are available free on the Amazon Prime channel
I love old time radio. I usually just hit the shuffle button and listen to random episodes of Gunsmoke or Dragnet, they help me fall asleep. The old cigarette advertisements are really neat, like Fatima or Lucky Strike etc. A different time . . .