Episodes
-
At 11:30AM CBS interrupted their scheduled mid-day programming for a newsbreak and a speech from Charles De Gaulle.
Born in 1890, De Gaulle was a decorated soldier during the First World War. He repeatedly admonished his superiors for outdated nineteenth century fighting techniques which included bayonet charges against heavy artillery. De Gaulle’s company became known for sneaking into German territory to spy on the enemy. He was a fierce combat veteran, having been shot in the knee, the left hand, being gassed, and receiving a bayonet wound. He was eventually captured by the Germans, spending thirty-two months as a POW.
In between the wars he was a strong supporter of tanks and mobile armored divisions. During the German invasion of May 1940, De Gaulle led an armored division counterattack, and was soon appointed Undersecretary for War.
Refusing to accept his government's armistice with Germany, De Gaulle fled to England. He led the Free French Forces and later headed the French National Liberation Committee, emerging as the undisputed leader of Free France. De Gaulle became head of the Provisional Government of the French Republic three days before D-Day. On D-Day he was campaigning for his Provisional Government to be recognized as an official full government. -
The woman you just heard is famed New York character actress Jan Miner. In the mid-1940s Jan was on multiple soap operas, like Lora Lawton.
Many top shows were produced by Frank and Anne Hummert. The Hummert radio ties grew from the prominent Chicago advertising agency, Blackett-Sample-and Hummert. Frank Hummert was a celebrated copywriter. His wife, Anne Schumacher Ashenhurst Hummert began as an editorial assistant and quickly earned respect throughout the organization thanks to her ingenuity, insight, and resolve.
By the 1940s, the duo controlled four-and-a-half hours of national weekday broadcast schedules. They brought in more than half of the network daytime hour advertising revenue and their shows received more than five million pieces of correspondence annually. When they switched their productions from Chicago to New York, they began employing some of New York’s most famous character actors.
At 11AM eastern time from New York, Amanda of Honeymoon Hill signed on starring Joy Hathaway. The show used a familiar Hummert theme: The common girl who marries into a rich, aristocratic family. She lived in the fictional Honeymoon Hill in Virginia.
When Amanda Of Honeymoon Hill signed off, another Hummert show, Second Husband, signed on at 11:30 starring Helen Menken. Ms. Menken is perhaps best remembered today as Humphrey Bogart’s first wife, but she was a talented actress in her own right. Throughout its history, one of the show’s announcers was Andre Baruch. -
Missing episodes?
-
At 10AM CBS resumed programming with their mid-morning soap operas. First up was Valiant Lady, starring Joan Blaine. Joan was a valiant lady because she sacrificed a promising Broadway career for her father’s sake, then married a “brilliant but unstable" surgeon.
People like the just-heard Mandel Kramer loved working on soap operas from New York.
At 10:15AM Light of the World signed on starring Bret Morrison as “the Speaker.”
The show was a soap opera version of the stories of the bible and featured some of New York’s best talent like Mandel Kramer, Louise Fitch, and Alexander Scourby.
This D-Day broadcast was the very first episode of Light of the World on CBS. It had been running on NBC since March of 1940. It would run on CBS until August of 1946 before once again being picked up by NBC until June 2nd, 1950.
When Light of the World signed off, The Open Door signed on at 10:30. Created by Sandra Michael, The Open Door was a purposely slow-moving, character building show built around Dean Eric Hansen of the fictional Vernon University.
The stories involved people in his life: their problems, lives, and loves. The star, Dr. Alfred Dorf had known Sandra Michael since her childhood in Denmark. He’d come to America to establish a church in Brooklyn and was the true inspiration behind the character.
Unfortunately, the agency handling the sponsor’s account didn’t like the direction of the series. They pressured Sandra Michael into changing the show, but she resisted and the show was canceled after June 30th, 1944.
Once The Open Door signed off, Bachelor’s Children signed on at 10:45. It featured Hugh Studebaker as Dr. Bob Graham, a bachelor who took in his dying friend's 18-year-old twin daughters. Marjorie Hannan played Ruth Ann, the kind, thoughtful twin, and Patricia Dunlap played Janet, the fiery and impulsive twin. Olan Soule played Sam Ryder. He was, perhaps, best known for co-starring with Barbara Luddy on The First Nighter. -
At 9AM eastern war time, CBS World News signed on with Douglas Edwards reporting. On D-Day Edwards was twenty-six years old. He’d been hired in 1942 by CBS as a reporter and understudy for John Daly.
When Daly was sent overseas to cover the war in 1943 Edwards was promoted to lead The World Today, World News Today, and Report to the Nation. In 1945, Edwards was sent to London to cover the final weeks of the war with Edward R. Murrow. He was then appointed the network's news bureau chief in Paris and assigned to cover post-war elections in Germany and the start of the Nuremberg trials.
By this time, fourteen thousand Canadian troops had taken Juno Beach, pressing inland. British and American forces, including those at Omaha, took control of their beachheads. The Allies brought in tanks, tended to the wounded and cleared away mines on the beaches. They also started pressuring German forces at Caen. Hitler finally agreed to send reinforcements to Normandy.
Once World News Today signed off Robert Trout was back on the air for the final forty-five minutes of the special news broadcast. -
I just phoned CBS news headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I’m told that they’ll resume scheduled programming at 10AM. NBC has canceled all programming until further notice. Mutual and The Blue Network are interspersing news throughout the day.
The Stock Exchange will observe two minutes of silence and Mayor La Guardia will be holding a rally in Madison Square.
As for me, I’ve been momentarily dismissed. I’m heading home to get some rest. Meanwhile, let’s listen to Bob Trout. Charles Shaw will report from London with a man-on-the-street reaction while Ned Calmer and Don Pryor will introduce French Colonel Morrison who’ll describe the area of the invasion landings.
This will take us to 6:30 AM. -
As part of my job I’ve been sent by CBS to Union Square. I decided to stop by my high school alma mater, I’m at the Church of St. Francis Xavier on sixteenth street. They’re having a sunrise mass filled with prayer for our soldiers and other war workers. The people are stoic. Now isn’t the time to lose ourselves in emotion.
Sunrise is at 5:25AM. I hear American troops have turned the tide of battle at the Omaha landing point, with warships backing them up at sea.
Give a listen to the CBS broadcast. David Anderson, Arthur Mann, Paul White, and Edward R. Murrow have reports from London. Quentin Reynolds will describe Eisenhower’s speech to occupied Europe, while Bill Henry and Joe McCaffrey report from Washington. -
The man you just heard was CBS news reporter Robert Trout. Born in Wake County, North Carolina on October 15th, 1909, he grew up in Washington, D.C., entering broadcasting in 1931 as an announcer at WJSV, an independent station in Alexandria, Virginia. In the summer of 1932 WJSV was acquired by CBS, bringing Trout into the young network.
He soon became an invaluable member of William S. Paley’s team, and was the first person to publicly refer to FDR’s radio programs as Fireside Chats.
On Sunday night, March 13th, 1938, after Adolf Hitler's Germany had annexed Austria in the Anschluss, Trout hosted a shortwave "roundup" of reaction from multiple cities in Europe—the first such multi-point live broadcast on network radio. Years later, journalist Ned Calmer remembered that moment.
Trout also played a key role in Edward R. Murrow’s development as a broadcaster. By the time war had come to the US, Trout was in New York and Murrow had put together the staff of international war correspondents known as the Murrow Boys.
At 4:15 AM eastern war time on the morning of Tuesday June 6th, 1944, Bob Trout was in the CBS newsroom at 485 Madison Avenue emceeing an overnight broadcast that brought the first eye witness account of the invasion from reporter Wright Bryan.
Bryan stood an imposing six-foot-five and covered the story from a transport plane dropping airborne troops. Later in 1944 Bryan was wounded and captured by the Germans. He spent six months in hospitals and in a POW camp in Poland before being freed by Russian troops in January 1945.
This broadcast took listeners up to 5 AM. eastern war time. Along with Wright Bryan, it featured analysis from George Fielding Elliot, commentary by Quentin Reynolds, and reports from John W. Vandercook and James Willard.
At 5AM over CBS Major George Fielding Elliot gave an analysis of the known information. Elliot was a second lieutenant in the Australian army during World War I. He became a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and later a major in the Military Intelligence Reserve of the US Army. He wrote fifteen books on military and political matters and was a longtime staff writer for the New York Herald Tribune.
After Elliot spoke, Richard C. Hottelet reported from London with the first eye witness account of the seaborne side of the invasion. Edward R. Murrow hired Hottelet that January. On this day he was riding in a bomber that attacked Utah Beach six minutes before H-Hour and watched the first minutes of the attack. He would later cover the Battle of the Bulge.
At 7AM French time, the Allies began deploying amphibious tanks on the beaches of Normandy to support the ground troops and sweep for defensive mines. American troops faced heavy machine-gun fire on Omaha Beach, the most heavily fortified landing point of the invasion. Roughly twenty-five-hundred U.S. soldiers were killed on the beach in the bloodiest fight of the day.
This fighting took the timeline to Eisenhower’s official announcement at 3:32 Eastern War time. -
Tuesday, June 6th, 1944 at about 12:45 in the morning. We’re at Bill Pogue’s Bar on the Corner of 88th street and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan. I just finished a twelve hour shift. I need a nightcap before I go back into that low-hanging fog. Did you hear the President tonight? We took Rome. One up and two to go.
____________
Only the German outlets that are saying the invasion has started. Paris radio just aired news bulletins and didn’t say anything. London radio told Hollanders to stay off bridges and roads, but that could be normal instructions. You want to know something? I don’t think the Germans are lying. I think this is it. This is D-Day, June 6th, 1944.
____________
It’s 3:30 in the morning on June 6th, 1944. I’ve just left CBS news headquarters at 485 Madison Avenue. I parked in Times Square on purpose. I wanted to see if there was any reaction. A few servicemen came out of a bar. I told them the news. They joined others in front of cabs who were tuned to either CBS or NBC. The news cutaway from band remotes sounded haunting.
There are scattered lights in apartment windows and one radio shop, closed for the evening, has a loudspeaker blaring CBS.
I won’t be sleeping tonight. I’ve been assigned to take the temperature of the emotions people are feeling. The long and short of it is that we still have no allied confirmation about a French coastline invasion. The president was on the radio last night with one of his fireside chats talking about the allies taking Rome. If he knew something about France, he didn’t tip his hand.
Bob Trout should be on the air right about now. Bob’s a good man. To kill time he was going to take his microphone into the CBS newsroom, giving a taste of what a nerve center is like with chaos brimming.
10PM New York time on June 5th was 4AM on the morning of the 6th in France. At that moment seven-thousand allied ships left England under cover of darkness. They were loaded with allied troops, primarily from Britain, the US, and Canada for Operation Overlord.
The soldiers were split up to invade five landing points along the coast of northern France. The beachheads were code named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Sword, and Juno.
At midnight, while I was drinking at Bill Pogue’s allied bombers were bombarding the coastline. Personnel carriers flew inland to drop off paratroopers. The paratroopers' job was to attack bridges and seize several key points to cut off the Nazi supply lines.
An hour later, while distracting the Germans at Pas-de-Calais, allied warships dropped anchor off the coast of Normandy to wait for dawn and provide cover for the landing ships.
By 2AM, more than thirteen-thousand paratroopers had been dropped into France, with four-thousand more flying in on gliders. They continued landing troops for the next two hours. The Germans saw the paratroopers, but failed to grasp just how big the invasion was to be.
By 5AM, Allied battleships had begun firing on the Nazi defenses while the first landing ships went ashore. German and Allied ships clashed in the first skirmishes at sea. As the sun rose, the landing operation was fully underway. The Allied battleships stopped firing as their landing boats approached the shore at 6:30AM, dubbed “H-Hour” for the designated moment of the invasion.
The landing ships were tightly packed together. Allied troops dealt with heavy gunfire. Many men were killed before they could reach the beach. Nevertheless, the Allies managed to land their troops, and the fight for the beaches began. -
In Breaking Walls episode 151 it’s the spring of 1944 and Jack Benny’s sponsor, General Foods, thinks he’s in a slump. Benny got mad and it changed the broadcasting landscape forever. Tonight, we’ll find out how and why.
——————————
Highlights:
• Benny's Early Radio Career in the 1930s and Ratings Peak
• Early Problems with General Foods
• Dennis Day Leaves for World War II
• Jack Fires General Foods, Signs with American Tobacco
• Dick Haymes Replaces Dennis Day as Singer
• The Importance of Benny’s Supporting Cast
• Jack’s Split Personality
• Danny Kaye Guest Stars To Play Jack in A Movie
• The Last General Foods Sponsored Show
• Looking Ahead to D-Day’s 80th Anniversary
——————————
The WallBreakers:
http://thewallbreakers.com
Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.
To support the show:
http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers
——————————
The reading material used in today’s episode was:
• Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny
• On The Air — By John Dunning
• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg
As well as articles from
• Broadcasting Magazine
• Radio Daily
• Variety
And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny’s 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way.
——————————
On the interview front:
• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.
• Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org
• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney
• Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver.
• Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson
——————————
Selected music featured in today’s episode was:
• The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky
——————————
A special thank you to Ted Davenport, Jerry Haendiges, and Gordon Skene.
For Ted go to RadioMemories.com, for Jerry, visit OTRSite.com, and for Gordon, please go to PastDaily.com.
——————————
Thank you to:
Tony Adams
Steven Allmon
Orson Orsen Chandler
Phil Erickson
Gerrit Lane
Jessica Hanna
Perri Harper
Thomas M. Joyce
Ryan Kramer
Earl Millard
Gary Mollica
Barry Nadler
Christian Neuhaus
Ray Shaw
Filipe A Silva
John Williams
Jim W.
WildEyeWheel
——————————
WallBreakers Links:
Patreon - patreon.com/thewallbreakers
Social Media - @TheWallBreakers -
In the fall of 1944 after Jack’s switch to Lucky Strike, General Foods did move a show opposite Jack. It wound up being The Kate Smith Show.
The company uprooted Smith’s Friday program, countering Benny with a One-Hundred-Seventy-Thousand-Dollar ad campaign. While they did temporarily put a dent into Benny’s rating, Kate Smith lost forty-percent of her audience, dropping to ninety-third place in the overall ratings.
The following season General Foods moved her back to Friday, but Kate Smith never again had another Top-fifty show.
Well, that brings our look at Jack Benny’s show in the spring of 1944 to a close. I mentioned that Benny’s last episode for General Foods aired on June 4th, 1944.
Our next episode of Breaking Walls will move only two days into the future, for perhaps the most important day in broadcasting history.
Next time on Breaking Walls, we spotlight radio broadcasting on June 6th, 1944 to align ourselves with the Country’s heartbeat on the day the invasion of western Europe finally began.
The reading material used in today’s episode was:
• Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny
• On The Air — By John Dunning
• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg
As well as articles from
• Broadcasting Magazine
• Radio Daily
• Variety
And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny’s 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way.
On the interview front:
• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.
• Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org
• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney
• Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver.
• Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson
Selected music featured in today’s episode was:
• The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky -
June 4th, 1944 was the last Grape Nuts Flakes sponsored Jack Benny Program. Jack took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods and their agency Young and Rubicam for ten years of partnership. Six days later, the American Cigarette and Cigar Company deposited two hundred thousand dollars in a special exploitation account for the program.
On June 23rd they wrote to Jack stipulating some terms of the agreement. The program would be broadcast live coast-to-coast 7:00PM eastern war time, with a transcribed rebroadcast by transcription between 12:30 and 1:00AM New York time for West Coast stations.
In August, Benny left on a three-week USO tour of Australia and the South Pacific.
On August 28th, American Tobacco announced that Pall Mall’s product scarcity didn’t justify a twenty-five thousand dollar per week expenditure. Lucky Strike would sponsor the show. The following week they announced a comprehensive, multimedia ad campaign. It was estimated to cost over a quarter million dollars.
This changed the company with which Jack was signed from the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to the American Tobacco Company, and was made official on September 26th, 1944. -
While the cast of Jack Benny became famous in their own right, Benny’s show had great guest-stars, as Dennis Day remembered.
On the May 28th, 1944 episode Jack is in talks with Warner Brothers to make a film about his life. Naturally Jack thinks he’ll star, write, and direct it. Unfortunately for him, Warner Brothers has other ideas. They want Danny Kaye to play Jack and Jack to play Jack’s father. -
With Jack’s contract with General Foods nearing its close, the only thing left to do was count down the remaining episodes.
On May 21st, 1944, Jack and the gang discussed split personalities. Jack thinks it's ridiculous, but later realizes he has one too. In other news this episode marks the debut of the spoof commercial for Sympathy Cough Syrup. Its tagline “Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys” became famous. -
By the Spring of 1944 Jack Benny’s cast had become its most familiar incarnation. Frank Nelson had begun to develop into Benny’s nemesis, as he remembered in this interview clip.
Phil Harris was a lovable and vain drunk. Mel Blanc could play any character imaginable. Others like Bea Benaderet, John Brown, and Sarah Berner rounded out the cast. Most importantly Jack was known to be the exact opposite of his character.
On May 14th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program was broadcast live at Camp Adair, Oregon. -
In early May 1944 Jack and the rest of his cast were still traveling around military bases in the Pacific Northwest. On May 7th they were at the Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Washington as Dick Haymes continued substituting for the now departed Dennis Day.
The rating for this episode was 20.1, although lower than his season average, it was still tied for third overall, and first on Sunday evenings. -
Hey everybody James Scully here, host of Breaking Walls. If you've been listening to this show for years on this RSS feed, I want you to know that you can also subscribe to the show on Youtube — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc.
I'm asking people who listen here on the RSS feed to subscribe on Youtube because Youtube offers the easiest path to monetizing this show.
I'm going to be fully transparent right now: There have been times in the history of this podcast that via RSS feed, Breaking Walls has had as many as 27000 - 30000 monthly downloads, but even with that, it's very hard to monetize the show via traditional podcast channels. However, I've been able to clear the monetization hurdles on Youtube, so please subscribe there. If you happen to listen on a computer or on a phone, I would appreciate if you listened via Youtube.
I'm also going into Youtube and slowly uploading all shows from Breaking Walls' archive in individual podcast playlists on Youtube. This way, everything that for years now has fallen off the RSS feed here doesn't matter. You can get all those archived shows FREE OF CHARGE on Youtube. Your listening for free will enable me to earn money, and I'd appreciate that very much.
So once again — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc
Keep getting out there, keep breaking those walls, and I'll catch you on the flip side. -
By the spring of 1944, Benny’s ratings had continued slipping. That season, his 23.7 rating meant he’d lost roughly four million weekly listeners in just three years. At the end of this season, his contract with General Foods was up. Here's Jack Benny talking about that time.
There was tension between the two parties because Benny had helped save Jell-O from going out of business. Jack was also upset with what he felt were second-rate accommodations provided by General Foods during the cast’s ongoing army base trips.
Since Benny had full control of his show as NBC guaranteed him the Sunday time slot over any sponsor Benny could sell his program to the highest bidder. Benny’s management team quietly held a sealed auction for sponsorship on February 24th.
George W. Hill, the President of American Tobacco, wanted Benny’s show. His chief account executive was thirty-six-year-old Pat Weaver, the future president of NBC.
A surprise winner was announced: Ruthrauff & Ryan, agency for American Tobacco’s Pall Mall cigarettes, bid twenty-five thousand dollars per-week for three thirty-five week seasons. That’s roughly Four-Hundred-Forty Thousand Dollars today.
The weekly money was payable to Benny for all payroll and production costs. They also included an additional two-hundred-thousand dollars, or three-point-five million today, over the three years for marketing and promotion. American Tobacco also agreed to pay for any network and carrier line charges. The advertising community was stunned.
General Foods considered retaliating against Jack by moving The Fanny Brice Show to CBS opposite the Benny program. They also publicized the fact that they were now sponsoring three programs, The Aldrich Family, The Meredith Wilson Show, and Mr. Ace and Jane, for the same cost as just the Benny program.
On April 10th, 1944, Jack officially signed a three-year contract with the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to advertise Pall Mall cigarettes for twenty-two thousand dollars per broadcast, including a West Coast rebroadcast.
The three-year contract would begin on July 1st, 1944, and run through June 30th, 1947. American Tobacco also had a three year option to renew.
Benny was the executive producer. He funded the entire production cost out of his pay. In the case that any cast member, or Jack himself, missed a program, Jack was to furnish a substitute actor for ten thousand dollars, at his own expense. If Jack was absent for six consecutive broadcasts, American had the right to terminate the current season, but not the entire contract.
Jack also had to make up for any of his absences by adding additional programs at the end of the season.
In the midst of this, on April 30th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program signed on from the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Seattle, Washington. With Dennis Day gone to war, Dick Haymes substituted as the program’s singer. -
On April 23rd, 1944 The Jack Benny Program took to the air, broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia. It would be Dennis Day’s last show until March 17th, 1946. He’d be departing for the Navy.
In April of 1944 Dennis Day was twenty-seven years old. He’d been starring on Jack Benny’s show since 1939, rounding into a very talented performer. Day had great comic timing and the ability to mimic voices well. That year, he’d appear on film in Music in Manhattan opposite Anne Shirley. -
Mel Blanc joined the show on February 19th, 1939. Benny was adding a new touch to the miser theme: a polar bear, who would live in his basement and help protect his money. The bear was christened Carmichael, and in 1941, according to Rochester, he ate the gas man.
On Sunday December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Manila, thrusting the United States into World War II. That evening, The Jell-O Program signed on at 7PM eastern time. This is audio from that night.
Benny’s show peaked in 1941 with an average rating of 30.8. By 1942 Jack was beginning to get into disagreements with General Foods.
Variety reported as early as 1939 that the sponsor wanted to change Jack’s sponsorship to Grape Nuts Flakes. Jack resisted the move. The Jell-O brand had become uniquely associated with Benny.
However, by 1942 with wartime sugar rationing, General Foods pushed the product change through. Variety reported on March 4th, 1942 that Benny would take Grape Nuts Flakes, while Kate Smith would now be sponsored by Jell-O.
General Foods claimed the output of Jell-O would be so limited by the fall that they couldn’t justify the cost of Benny’s show. The Jack Benny Program cost General Foods twenty-two-thousand dollars per week. Kate Smith’s show only cost ten thousand.
With the October 4th, 1942 season premiere the show became The Grape-Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny. Benny wasn’t thrilled, also feeling General Foods hadn’t done enough to promote his show. After back-to-back seasons with a rating over thirty points, Benny 1942-43 rating slipped to 26.3, losing roughly two million listeners.
Jack had a unique contract. Thanks to a verbal agreement with NBC’s President Niles Trammel, Jack controlled his Sunday timeslot. At the end of Jack’s next contract he was free to approach any sponsor, pending NBC’s approval. It meant that General Foods could lose their top star and their top time slot. -
In March of 1932 Jack Benny was headlining on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when friend Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on Ed’s radio show. At the time Benny had no great interest in radio, but he went on Sullivan’s quarter-hour show March 19th, 1932, as a favor.
His first line was “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?”
Canada Dry Ginger Ale’s advertising agency heard Benny and offered him a show. Benny debuted on NBC’s Blue Network on May 2nd, 1932.
This initial series aired Mondays and Wednesdays. Benny’s wife of five years, Sadye Marks, who’d performed with him on Vaudeville, joined the cast on August 3rd as Mary Livingstone. In storyline she was a young Benny fan from Plainfield, New Jersey. Eventually she read humorous poetry and letters from her mother, and much later she would become a main deflator of Benny’s ego.
On October 30th, 1932 the show moved to CBS. During this time Benny began ribbing his sponsor in a gentle, good-natured way. Canada Dry got upset, and despite a rating in radio’s top twenty, they canceled the show after January 26th, 1933.
Chevrolet, which had recently lost Al Jolson, was waiting in the wings. On Friday, March 17th, 1933 at 10PM from New York, Benny debuted with The Chevrolet Program over NBC’s Red Network.
The June 23rd, 1933 episode was the last of the season as well as Mary Livingstone’s twenty-eighth birthday. Howard Claney was announcer with Frank Black as orchestra leader and James Melton as the tenor.
When the show returned in the fall it was on Sundays at 10PM from New York. Benny’s program slowly began to morph from variety into more developed comedic skits. He also started to show the character traits that would come to define his persona. Unfortunately, Chevrolet didn’t like the series and fired him after the April 1st, 1934 episode.
But, the General Tire Company immediately scooped him up. Benny debuted on their program the following Friday, April 6th, 1934 at 10PM. There, he first worked with announcer Don Wilson.
Wilson would remain with Benny until 1965. Often the butt of weight-based jokes, Wilson’s deep belly laugh that could often be heard above the studio audience and his deep, rich voice became a show trademark. This is audio from that April 6th, 1934 episode.
That summer Mary and Jack adopted their daughter Joan. She was two weeks old. Jack later said in his autobiography that as Joan grew older, she came to look like he and Mary. She had Mary’s face with Jack’s blue eyes and his love for music.
Benny, Don Wilson, and Mary Livingstone worked together, along with tenor Frank Parker and orchestra leader Don Bestor on The General Tire Show until September 28th, 1934. Then, General Foods came calling. They wanted Benny’s help saving a gelatin product of theirs called Jell-O, which was getting badly beaten by Knox Gelatin in sales.
On October 14th, 1934 Benny moved to Sunday nights at 7PM from NBC’s Blue Network. His rating immediately leapt into the top five.
On April 7th, 1935 the show was regularly broadcast from New York for the final time. The Jell-O Program would be moving to Hollywood. Benny simultaneously made Broadway Melody of 1936 and It’s In The Air on film.
Until the mid-1930s, New York and Chicago were the main broadcasting hubs. Frank Nelson remembered early Hollywood radio. Nelson began working with Benny in June of 1934.
Even in 1935, it was still more costly for shows to originate from Southern California. Here’s actress Mary Jane Higby, who grew up in Los Angeles, but moved to New York in 1937, explaining why.
On November 3rd, 1935 Kenny Baker joined the show as the new singer. That year, Benny’s show climbed to second overall in the ratings. The following year Benny made The Big Broadcast of 1937 on film, and on October 4th, 1936 Phil Harris debuted as the new band leader.
With Phil Harris in place, Benny’s most-famous cast was taking shape. - Show more
