“Yes, please.”

Day 4 of my Jack Benny project found me listening to a broadcast from October 8, 1939; a show which introduces the last member of the classic Benny show ensemble. He was born Eugene Patrick McNulty, but he became much more recognizable and famous as the program’s tenor vocalist and resident scatterbrain: Dennis Day.

Throughout the show’s broadcast history, the Benny program for one reason or another favored tenors as vocalists: James Melton, Frank Parker and Michael Bartlett were among the early singers. Kenny Baker joined Jack’s cast on November 3, 1935, but left at the end of the 1938-39 season and defected to the enemy’s camp, a.k.a. The Fred Allen Show. In this first broadcast of the 1939-40 season, Benny and his writers lay down the foundation for Dennis’ arrival—even making an amusing joke about Baker’s departure as Jack and the gang are en route to the studio:

(SFX: two horn toots)
JACK: Who are tooting at, Rochester?
ROCHESTER: There’s Kenny Baker…
JACK: Kenny Baker? Where?
MARY: There he is! Sitting on his front porch…
JACK: Oh yes! Hello Kenny! Oh Kenny!!
MARY: He can’t answer, he’s on another program…

Once the program is underway, the show’s regulars are questioning Jack about Baker's replacement (Mary has a nice gag that emphasizes Jack’s cheap qualities when she informs Don that Jack was originally going to hire his pet canary to take Kenny’s place) and Jack announces that Dennis is due to arrive at the studio with his mother. (Phil: “Is she my type?” Jack: “Yes, Phil…she wears a skirt…”) Finally, the big moment arrives:

(SFX: door knock)
JACK: Hey, that must be Dennis Day and his mother…listen, fellas—before they come in, I wanna tell you something…while they’re here I want you to show me a little courtesy and respect…I’d like to get this kid started out on the right foot…now remember that…
PHIL (obsequiously): Okay, Mr. Benny…
JACK: That’s more like it…
(SFX: another knock on door)
MARY (sweetly): There’s somebody at the door, kind sir…
JACK: All right, don’t overdo it…come in? (SFX: door open) Well! How do you do, Mrs. Day? Come right in!
VERNA: Thank you…come along, Dennis…
JACK: Yes, yes…come in…well, I’m glad you found the studio all right, Mrs. Day…did you take a cab like I told you to?
VERNA: Yes—it was a dollar sixty-five…here’s the slip…
JACK: Oh…
PHIL: You sure walked into that one…
JACK: Oh, well…I don’t mind…
MARY: Then smile…
JACK: Mary, I’ll mind my face and you mind your business…oh, Mrs. Day—I want you to meet the members of my cast…this is Mary Livingstone, Don Wilson and Phil Harris…
VERNA: How do you do…?
(Cast ad-libs “How do you do, Mrs. Day”, etc.)
JACK: …and this is her little boy, Dennis…
VERNA: Say hello to the people, Dennis…
DENNIS: Hello to the people…
MARY: Oh, fine…
JACK: Well, naturally, Mary—he’s a little nervous…aren’t you, Dennis?
DENNIS: Am I, Mother?
VERNA: Certainly not!

The part of Mrs. Day was played on The Jack Benny Program by veteran character actress Verna Felton, usually cast in comedic roles (her famous being the grandmother of Red Skelton’s “mean widdle kid”) but was equally adept in dramatic parts as well. Mrs. Day remains one of her most memorable characterizations; a formidable harridan who looked after Dennis’ interests and bullied Benny around, convinced that he was trying to exploit her son (she may have been right about this one; Day’s “contract” required him to mow Benny’s lawn once a week). Her presence was such that even on programs which she did not appear the mere mention of her name generated huge audience laughs. Benny’s attitude toward her can be summed up in this memorable line: “How can a basso profundo like that have a tenor for a son?”

JACK: Now, Mrs. Day…I realize, this being Dennis’ first time here, that you’re not aware of our schedule…we have a very definite starting time…
VERNA: You have?
JACK: Yes…we do our first broadcast exactly at 4:00 Pacific time—and our repeat broadcast at precisely 8:30…now is that clear?
VERNA: Perfectly…and when is pay day?
JACK: Pay day?
MARY: When it’s springtime in the Rockies…
JACK: Miss Livingstone, please…oh, he’ll get paid, Mrs. Day—don’t worry about that…now, Dennis, I think that about covers everything…that’s all there is, and that’s all you have to know…you’re here to sing, so just be on time and do your best…now, are there any questions?
DENNIS: Yes—when do I get some funny lines?
JACK: Funny lines?
PHIL: I know how you feel, bub…

It would do a disservice to Day to state that he was essentially a carbon copy of Kenny Baker’s persona—because with the passage of time, the tenor proved he had a lot more on his plate than just a great voice. He proved to be an excellent mimic, doing hilarious impressions of personalities like Ronald Colman and Jerry Colonna (his Colonna was so dead-on that on one Benny broadcast—in which the cast did a take-off on Bob Hope’s program—some of Colonna’s friends called his wife and asked how the mustachioed comedian could be on the Benny program at the same he was touring overseas with Hope). Day also possessed a gift of impeccable timing, at times rivaling that of Phil Harris and even Benny himself. His character gradually became a male Gracie Allen, using—as John Dunning notes—“logical irrelevancies in a way that drove Benny crazy.”

Day was later rewarded with a spin-off series, A Day in the Life of Dennis Day, which began on NBC October 3, 1946. While it didn’t quite have the same comic punch as, say, Phil Harris’ great sitcom (with wife Alice Faye), it remained consistently entertaining and amusing, ending its five-year run in 1951. (Actually, the funniest thing about Day’s program wasn’t the show itself, but the fact that Dennis would lord over Benny the fact that he had two shows to Jack’s one. As Harris commented on one broadcast after a typically inane observation by Day: “Me having two shows I can understand—but this kid is a mystery.”)

After this broadcast, I listened to a show from October 18, 1942—a remote originating from Arizona’s Williams Field in front of an audience of G.I.’s. This one was a bit of a letdown; it has a funny premise featuring Jack donating his beloved Maxwell to the scrap drive to assist the war effort, but its execution falls sort of flat. (The second half of the show features a dream sequence in which Jack finds himself bombardier aboard the Maxwell, which has been transformed into a plane.) As a rule, my favorite Benny shows are the post-1943 efforts, when Jack had his classic writing quartet—George Balzer, Milt Josefsberg, John Tackaberry and Sam Perrin—in place; the pre-1943 shows, written by Bill Morrow and Ed Beloin have a tendency to be a little too zany for my tastes. Still, even a lesser Benny is better than most anything else, and it’s a good representative of the remote broadcasts Jack often did in Bob Hope-like fashion, beginning in May of 1941.