Comments on: Jack Benny Christmas Shows

Jack Benny Christmas Shows

dhammond — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:02:03 -0800

Enjoy a heaping helping of old time radio with classic Christmas specials from The Jack Benny Show.

You can find plenty of extra yuletide fun at Archive.org.

By: miss lynnster

miss lynnster — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:42:07 -0800

Jack Benny as seen by a tv comedy writer.

By: dhammond

dhammond — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 22:49:45 -0800

Good link, misslynster. Ken Levine did play-by-play for the Orioles when I was growing up in Baltimore. Didn't know he had a blog.

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:32:02 -0800

To me, Ken Levine will always be the high-pitched Top 40 DJ who used the air name Beaver Cleaver... because who but he would dare? Which takes us full circle radio-wise.

By: briank

briank — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:18:36 -0800

Thanks for the great link.

By: Faze

Faze — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 07:55:23 -0800

Miss lynnster -- Thanks for the Levine link. I kept waiting for him to say "Benny was horrible that night -- a total bore -- a loser. I should have seen the Beatles!" But, just like everyone else in showbusiness, he had nothing but good things to say about Benny. It's truly amazing. You know, just about all of Benny's radio programs can be gotten on MP3 discs for almost nothing here on the web. I've got everything that's available on tape and MP3, and have listened through just about all of it over the past 10 years. Let me tell you, listening to the development of this program since the early 1930, and following the introduction and development of the characters over the next two decades is one of those wonderful life experiences -- like reading through P.G. Wodehouse's entire Jeeves and Bertie cycle, or Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" -- that, although it is only a minor work of art, enriches your life beyond reason. The show was a little weekly masterpiece that almost never lets you down. My favorite episode is December 27, 1937 -- a fairly routinely marvelous hodgepodge of running jokes, ending in a "Buck Benny" skit. Near the end, Mary Livingstone, Andy Devine and the whole cast break into the song "Sing, Baby, Sing," that is to me the most perfect expression of pure, careless joy on earth.

By: Pressed Rat

Pressed Rat — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 13:43:38 -0800

But over on WWOZ their playing both sides of Santa's Got A Brand New Bag by James Brown

By: pax digita

pax digita — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 07:51:48 -0800

Jack Benny is probably the only comedian ever to get a belly laugh out of me by staring into middle distance with a bemused expression. It's inexplicable and wonderful.