Jack Benny and The Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Abstract

Comedian Jack Benny had a long and successful career, achieving success in vaudeville by the mid-1920s and lasting in each of the major entertainment media of his times until his death late in 1974. So it is no surprise that his influence still echoes in comic characterizations and in the ever-evolving form of the television situation comedy.Benny came to radio from vaudeville at a time when it was becoming extremely popular (circa 1932) and lasted in the medium to the end of its reign (circa 1952, as television took hold). His role as an innovator and eventual master of radio has been addressed previously, but not with the depth and clarity of this meticulous and scrupulously researched volume by mass media scholar and self-confessed longtime Benny fan Kathryn Fuller-Seeley (xi, 314). Fuller-Seeley's love of and respect for her subject is obvious, though it never gets in the way of her scholarship.The author uses Benny's radio career as the springboard for an investigation into many topics covered in the nine chapters of the book. Each chapter ends with a summary paragraph and another paragraph leading into the next chapter. These help to provide clarity and unity to the multifaceted aspects not only of Benny's career but also of Fuller-Seeley's multipronged investigation into Benny and his comedy universe.Future scholars of broadcasting in the United States (both radio and television), the classic Hollywood era, American humor, and Jack Benny will find much of interest here, and not just for the subject matter but for its academic rigor. There are twenty-eight well-chosen and relevant images, each fully annotated, which are useful in supporting and clarifying the cultural zeitgeist. Fuller-Seeley has also included a well-developed index of over 105 entries. The list of sources is quite detailed, distinguishing, for instance, between the categories of trade publications, fan publications, periodicals, and magazines. She also includes a comprehensive bibliography as well as extensive citations and notes for each chapter. In addition, Fuller-Seeley notes that Benny's radio show produced 922 episodes, of which 750 exist in some form or another, and she has extensive knowledge of them all (317). Unfortunately, it isn't made clear how many of these 750 are broadcasts of the same shows. Through most of the show's history, two different live broadcasts of each show had to be performed due to time zones and FCC regulations. Benny and his staff often altered jokes for the second broadcast, but Fuller-Seeley chose not to explore these differences.The book is structured into two main sections, a cultural history (part 1) and a media industry analysis (part 2). The cultural history section first covers the evolution in Benny's comic character from his vaudeville incarnation as an abrasive, vain, smart aleck into the restrained but still egotistical, much put-upon, and frustrated persona that he became. This look into the development of his comic persona and comic perspective is of special use to humor scholars.That section moves into an exploration of how women were portrayed in the series, focusing on the characterization of actress Mary Livingston, Benny's real-life wife. Fuller-Seeley demonstrates that Benny's show largely avoided the rampant and accepted feminine stereotypes of the time, both comic and otherwise, stating that the series showed “a great deal of respect and affection for women” (85). The author's arguments are convincing and well supported in this largely overlooked area of classic-era radio humor. Fuller-Seeley then addresses the issue of masculinity in Benny's comic persona and radio series, as well as his Jewish background in an intriguing section titled “Benny and Jewish Male Identity” (94-97).The cultural history section concludes with two chapters investigating the character of Rochester, portrayed by African American entertainer Eddie Anderson. Anderson and the show had a difficult time trying to avoid offending various sections of their network, sponsors, and audience, as the show was simultaneously too progressive in its treatment of the Rochester character for some elements and too racist for others. Fuller-Seeley expands on this dilemma in the next chapter that covers Benny's and Anderson's growing popularity and appearances in films and at shows for the military during WWII, concluding with an account of the character's move to television and into the dawn of the civil rights movement (184-97). Fuller-Seeley argues that despite a few lapses (181-83), once the Rochester character was established, the show usually managed to avoid the more noxious racial stereotypes of the time, and she details this balancing act aspect quite well.The second section of the book consists of four chapters dealing with Benny and his series as aspects of the media industry, covering commercial enterprises, media criticism, and the changing mass-mediated landscape (188-308). As the star of a series on commercial networks, Benny not only had to please his audience and the network but also his advertisers.Even after he had established his radio persona, Benny still starred in films as other characters. Fuller-Seeley explores the few films he made playing his radio persona in the next chapter, describing this phenomenon as “intermedia” (223-49). Missing here is reference to Benny's appearance in Fred Allen's It's in the Bag (1945); it may have proved fruitful to investigate Benny's part in this film given the chapter's topic and issues. Nevertheless, this chapter is useful because it explores the neglected connection between radio comedians and their concurrent work in film.The volume ends with two fascinating chapters. The first deals with contemporaneous critiques of Benny and his series. As the leading radio comic with a series usually at or near the top of popular ratings, Benny and his series were a prime target for media criticism at the time. Fuller-Seeley then discusses Benny's move into television. His television series left the air in 1965, but Fuller-Seeley provides examples of how he still traded on the show's familiar tropes and characters in his television specials, guest appearances, and talk-show appearances during the last decade of his career.The author states that this volume is not meant as a full biography of Benny or his career (7). Instead, she aims to provide a thorough examination of his place in US popular culture and humor. Minor quibbles aside (e.g., with so many lists of sources, why not a separate filmography?), this book can be recommended to all with an interest in culture studies, humor, media and entertainment studies, broadcasting, Jack Benny, and many other subfields.