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.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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 . . .