“One lousy rehearsal—that’s all I ask

I apologize for the brief hiatus on my Jack Benny project yesterday, but I needed a day to sort of get caught up with some activities outside of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. We (and that’s the royal “we”) resume with a broadcast from January 8, 1950, in which a spoonerism from announcer Don Wilson becomes a beaut of a “boomerang” gag later on in the broadcast:

DON: Ladies and gentlemen, 1949 is gone and forgotten—but to Jack Benny, 1950 will always be remembered—because nineteen-fifty is what he paid for his new suit…and here he is, Jack Benny!
(audience applause)
JACK: Thank you, thank you…hello again, this is Jack Benny talking—and Don, I want to ask you something…how did you know that I bought a new suit?
DON: I heard it on Dreer Pooson’s…
(loud laughter from audience)

What the portly Mr. W meant to say was, “I heard it on Drew Pearson’s broadcast.” Pearson was a political commentator and journalist famous for his column Washington Merry-Go-Round, a feature of the Baltimore Sun newspaper which began in the 1930s and continues on today, written by his protégé Jack Anderson (and Douglas Cohn). Benny has some fun at Don’s expense, ribbing him about a recent announcing award he’s won and displaying utter disbelief that Wilson muffed the line. In actuality, Wilson was one of the show’s most notorious blooper artists; Mel Blanc wrote in his autobiography that he and Bea Benaderet would often place bets on what line the announcer would screw up. One notorious boo-boo had Wilson mangling the Lucky Strike slogan “Be Happy, Go Lucky” to “Be Lucky, Go Happy”—and the bad part about this was, according to writer Milt Josefsberg, is that he “usually made them at the top of his lung capacity.” (The fluffs, however, did inspire the writers—on the next week’s broadcast, they wrote in a series of jokes that had each cast member opening the door to a room that contained Don endlessly repeating “Be Happy, Go Lucky…Be Happy, Go Lucky.”

Jack then jokes around with Phil Harris (I love Jack’s nickname for Phil, “The Bashful Blonde From Elbow Bend”—a play on the 1949 Betty Grable film comedy) and Mary Livingstone, and then receives a phone call from Rochester about a visit from the life insurance agent:

ROCHESTER: The man from the life insurance company was here about that policy you’re takin’ out and he asked me a lot of questions…
JACK: Well, I hope you answered them right…
ROCHESTER: Oh, I did…when he asked me your height, I said five-foot-ten…
JACK: Uh-huh…
ROCHESTER: …your weight, a hundred and sixty-four…
JACK: Uh-huh…
ROCHESTER: …your age, thirty-nine…
JACK: Uh-huh…
ROCHESTER: We had quite a roundtable discussion on that one…
JACK: Wait a minute, Rochester—why should there be any question about my age?
ROCHESTER: Oh, it wasn’t the question…it was the answer we had trouble with…
JACK: Oh…well, I’ll straighten that out when I see him…what other questions were there?
ROCHESTER: Well…the color of your eyes, blue…
JACK: Uh-huh…
ROCHESTER: …the color of your hair, blonde…
JACK: You told him I was a blonde?
ROCHESTER: You must be…I got the red, brown and black ones in the Bendix…
JACK: Oh, yes…what else happened?
ROCHESTER: Well…then I told him what you wanted…and he said that never in the history of the life insurance business has a policy been made out that way…
JACK: Well, didn’t you insist that I want it that way, Rochester?
ROCHESTER: Yeah, but he told me that no matter what you say, you can’t be your own beneficiary…

The second half of this broadcast showcases “Murder at Romanoff’s,” a comedy-mystery spoof that features “Prince” Michael Romanoff, “Rat Pack” restaurateur, and guest stars Frank Sinatra, Rosalind Russell and Gene Kelly. Jack is Captain O’Benny of the Beverly Hills Police, and when he’s notified of a murder at the restaurant, he and his men, O’Day and O’Wilson, arrive at the scene:

JACK: Okay, men—this is Romanoff’s restaurant…that man in that red uniform and gold braid must be the doorman…I’ll ask him (SFX: walking) pardon me, are you the doorman?
DOORMAN: Well, who do you think I am—Dreer Pooson?

It’s one of the loudest and longest laughs in the history of the Benny program (I clocked it at 25 seconds)—but the story behind the laugh line is a fascinating one. The doorman—played by Benny nemesis Frank Nelson—was originally supposed to say: “Well, who do you think I am—Nelson Eddy?” (The Nelson Eddy joke is a reference to the singer-actor’s role as a Canadian Mountie alongside Jeanette McDonald in the 1936 film Rose-Marie.) Milt Josefsberg picks up the story in the book The Jack Benny Show:

The new answer not only undid Jack, but it had the same hysterical effect on the cast, crew, and musicians, all of whom had heard Frank rehearse the regular written line about “Nelson Eddy” and all of them thought “Dreer Pooson” was an ad-lib on his part.

What actually happened was that when Don made his fluff the writers, listening to the program’s proceedings in the control booth, got the happy idea of changing Frank’s line. We quickly motioned to him where he was sitting on stage waiting his turn. We got him into the booth, suggested our change, and he immediately penciled in our new line.

In listening to this show, considered by many to be one of Jack’s funniest, you can see that the “Dreer Pooson” fluff was contagious—Mary muffs one of her lines, and the Sportsman Quartet misses an important sound cue. All Jack can do is ad-lib: “One lousy rehearsal—that’s all I ask…”

In the second of two Benny broadcasts, originally heard over CBS February 12, 1950, Jack is broadcasting from New York, having spent two weeks there. Many of the New York broadcasts often found him staying at the mythical Acme Plaza Hotel, a seedy dive that apparently had Jack’s accommodations below street level. (In this broadcast, Jack and Mary are surprised by Don’s sudden appearance, but it’s not intentional on the announcer’s part—he just happened to fall down an open manhole...) Jack is awakened at 4:00 in the afternoon (his room has no window, so he lost track of the time) and gets a phone call in the hall from Phil:

PHIL: Hiya, Jackson! It’s about time you answered!
JACK: Oh, hello, Phil…did you have any trouble getting this hotel?
PHIL: No, I just dialed BO-7236 and Airwick answered…
JACK: Now cut that out…what’d you call for, anyway?
PHIL: Well, look…we’ll soon be going back to California and I wanted to know if it’s all right with you if Alice and I stopped off at Niagara Falls for a few days…you know, that’s the place to go for a honeymoon…
JACK: But, Phil—you and Alice were married eight years ago…didn’t you go on a honeymoon then?
PHIL: Yeah, but this time we’d like to go without Remley…
JACK: Phil…you took Remley on your honeymoon?
PHIL: Didn’t know it ‘til we got there—somebody tied him to the back of the car…

Then Mary drops in to pay Jack a visit:

JACK: Mary, when you said you’d come right over to this hotel, I wasn’t sure that you would…
MARY: Well, I have a confession to make…I only came out here out of curiosity…
JACK: Oh…
MARY: …and Jack, this Acme Plaza Hotel certainly is different…
JACK: What do you mean, different?
MARY: Well, I waited in the lobby…I asked the clerk for your room and he said it was six floors down…
JACK: All right, so you had to take the elevator…
MARY: Some elevator…they lowered me in a bucket…
JACK: Mary…
MARY: …they got a picture of John L. Lewis in the lobby…
JACK: Mary…
MARY: …some of the bellboys are on a three-day week…
JACK: Oh, stop! Be happy you found the place…you have any trouble?
MARY: No, I was lucky…I got in a cab and said, “Driver, do you know where the Acme Plaza is?” and he said, “Yes, ma’am…I used to live there when I was out of work…”

Since the Sportsmen didn’t make the trip with Jack and his cast (come to think of it, neither did Dennis Day—perhaps he couldn’t get the time off from his other show), the Ink Spots reprise their Lucky Strike commercial parody from April 4, 1948 to the tune of “If I Didn’t Care.” But the real treat on this program is the second half, which salutes the “Allen’s Alley” segment of The Fred Allen Show; on this broadcast, Jack imitates Fred (with a clothespin on his nose) and Mary takes on the role of Portland Hoffa. (Allen was one of the few people Benny actually tried to imitate, usually with hilarious results—one of the classic Benny programs comes from February 8, 1948, in which Jack’s take-off on the film Nightmare Alley ends with a riotous spoof of “Allen’s Alley,”) But Jack and Mary are joined by three Fred Allen Show alumni: Kenny Delmar (as Senator Claghorn), Parker Fennelly (Titus Moody) and Peter Donald (Ajax Cassidy). The fourth member of the Alley is a surprise appearance from Mr. Kitzel (Artie Auerbach), who knows it’s Jack impersonating Fred: “With those blue eyes, you didn’t fool me for one second.”