WELL! REFLECTIONS ON THE LIFE AND CAREER OF JACK BENNY
Michael Leannah, Editor
For my mother and father, Millie and Francis.
Copyright 2006 BearManor Media
All Rights Reserved
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword
I Remember Jack by Frank Bresee
The Sweetest Music This Side of Waukegan by Clair Schulz
In The Movies with Jack Benny by Kay Linaker with Janine Preston
Finding Himself in the Footlights: Jack Benny in Vaudeville by Pam Munter
The Women in Benny’s Life: An Examination of Jack’s Luck with the Fairer Sex in Radio, Movies and Television by Mark Higgins
Benny’s War by B. J. Borsody
Cheapskate Benny or Generous Jack? By Charles A. Beckett
Balzer on Benny by Jordan R. Young
To Be or Not To Be: Jack Benny in Hollywood 1940-1945 by Philip G. Harwood
Jack Benny and Fred Allen: The Fierce Fighting Of Good Friends by Noell Wolfgram Evans
My Adventures in Hollywood by Jack Benny
Benny’s Floopers and Blubs (Uh, Bloopers and Flubs) By Michael Leannah
Better Play, Don by Jack Benny
Jack and Johnny: To Each a Fan, To Each a Friend by Steve Newvine
From The Cradle to The Grave: The Births And Deaths of The Principal Characters of “The Jack Benny Program” by Ron Sayles and Michael Leannah
What’re You Laughing At, Mary? The Comic Voice of Mary Livingstone by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley
Mel Blanc: Man of a Thousand Voices by Marc Reed
Jack Benny: Cartoon Star by Derek Tague and Michael J. Hayde
Jack Benny: Guardian Angel by Steve Thompson
Timing Is Everything by Jordan R. Young
Finding Jack Benny in Today’s Waukegan By Michael Mildredson
Afterword
Acknowledgements
Recommended Reading
"Jack was probably the greatest thing that ever hit the planet."
--Iris Adrian
FOREWORD
Rare is the person whose life is so rich and prolific as to warrant documentation in a biography. For some so honored, one biography isn’t enough; several need to be written to cover all of the many and varied angles and aspects of a life well-lived. Jack Benny’s life-story has been told in volumes thick and thin, but still people want to write -- and read -- more about him.
Well! Reflections on the Life and Career of Jack Benny is not a biography. The writers in this volume zero in on one aspect of Benny’s life or career, analyze it, pore over it, offer an opinion of it. Personal memories are explored. Reprints of two obscure magazine pieces written by Benny himself are featured.
Some aspects of Benny’s life and career are left untouched. Mary Livingstone’s contributions to Benny’s radio show are detailed; Rochester’s are not. We learn much about Mel Blanc, but Bea Benaderet is overlooked. Seventeen writers (including Benny) collaborated on this project. Had seventeen different writers been chosen to participate, seventeen different topics would likely have been covered. Perhaps a sequel to Well! will address the omissions of this volume.
The material within these covers was compiled with the dedicated listener of old-time radio in mind, but we hope the “uninitiated” find interest and enjoyment here too. Perhaps the book will impel them to seek out and learn of Benny’s radio, movie, and TV work.
Iris Adrian, whose quote opens this book, performed with Benny, frequently playing the sassy waitress on his radio show. Perhaps, dear reader, by the time you finish the last chapter, you’ll come to share her assessment of this national treasure we call Jack Benny.
The writers here have chipped away at a mountain of material and produced a pile of nuggets for your enjoyment. So put “Love in Bloom” on the CD player and hit the repeat button. Then settle in and enjoy the trip back in time and into the life of one truly wonderful human being.
Michael Leannah
Sheboygan, Wisconsin 2006
Picture #1
I REMEMBER JACK
by
Frank Bresee
Jack Benny was a guest on my “Golden Days of Radio” program over a half dozen times during the 29 years the program was on the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. He was also one of the hosts on the twelve-hour KFI 50th Anniversary program I wrote and produced in 1972. On that show, Jack spoke about his early days in vaudeville and his rise in the world of entertainment.
Jack enlisted in the navy during World War I and entertained his mates with his violin playing. During a benefit performance, his solo bombed, so he put down the instrument and started talking and joking. The audience liked what they heard, and a comedian was born.
After the war, Benny plied his comedy on several vaudeville circuits, playing from coast to coast. At the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles he met and fell in love with the woman who became his wife, Sadye Marks. He courted her at her workplace, the May Company in Los Angeles, a situation frequently worked into his radio and TV shows.
In 1932, at age 38, Benny was a Broadway headliner appearing in the Earl Carroll Vanities. Ed Sullivan, a popular columnist of the day, invited Benny to be a guest on his New York radio show. Jack’s first words on radio are well documented: “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?’” Lots of people cared. Jack soon became the top radio personality on the air. Success notwithstanding, friends and colleagues remembered him more for his kindness and consideration than for his fame and fortune.
Johnny Grant, the honorary mayor of Hollywood, appeared on my show in 2006 with a story to tell about Jack Benny. Johnny first came to Hollywood in the 1940s, looking for a job in radio. He hailed from Lexington, Kentucky and was a personal friend of the famous tobacco auctioneer F. E. Boone, featured in the Lucky Strike commercials on Jack’s show. Benny hired Johnny to do the cigarette announcements for the show.
When Johnny read the commercial (“I’ve been smoking Luckies for 27 years …”) the audience started to giggle. Johnny, you see, was only 23 years old and looked a great deal younger than that. How could he have been smoking Luckies for 27 years? Jack was on NBC at the time, and there were two broadcasts, one for the east and a repeat “live” broadcast later for the west coast. The producer released Johnny Grant from his duties on the second show.
Benny stepped in and said, “Don’t fire the kid. Just put him behind a curtain so the audience can’t see him.” The idea worked, and over the years Johnny Grant announced frequently on Benny’s show.
Another story highlighting Jack’s thoughtfulness concerns the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters, a group of over 800 radio and TV individuals who gather six times a year to honor members of the broadcast community. Honorees have included Bob Hope, Edgar Bergen, Jim Jordan (Fibber McGee), Bing Crosby, Rudy Vallee, Art Linkletter, and Chet Lauck and Norris Goff (Lum and Abner).
Jack’s manager, Irving Fein, wouldn’t allow Jack to be honored because such an event would open the floodgates; everyone would want a piece of Jack Benny. Jack, however, figured out a way to acknowledge the honor bestowed upon him by the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters. When a friend of his was to receive an award, Jack asked if he could join his friend on the dais. The Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters were therefore able to honor Jack in a satisfactory, though discreet, way.
Jack Benny was one of a kind. It’s hard to believe it’s been over thirty years since he left us, but he will never be forgotten. His radio shows, television programs, and theatrical motion pictures will be with us forever.
THE SWEETEST MUSIC THIS SIDE OF WAUKEGAN
by
Clair Schulz
When someone mentions the subject of music on The Jack Benny Program, most people think of the vocals performed by Dennis Day, the singing commercials done by The Sportsmen Quartet, the band numbers of Phil Harris’s orchestra, or the theme songs “Love in Bloom” and “Hooray for Hollywood.” But truly the sweetest sounds heard on the show were the melodies that came from the dialogue.
In their scripts the writing team of John Tackaberry, Milt Josefsberg, George Balzer, and Sam Perrin (with some later help from Hal Goldman and Al Gordon) created a pattern of metrical speech that became an integral part of the show. By using repetition, catchphrases, pauses, and running gags, the Benny team produced rhythms that didn’t necessarily prompt the audience to tap their feet, but did have them rolling in the aisles.
The writers took full advantage of Jack’s wonderful sense of timing. After Don Wilson or Phil Harris pulled a corny joke, Benny inserted perfectly-spaced repetitions of their names followed by an insult along the lines of “Don…Don… Moby Dick” or “Phil…Phil… Denatured Boy.” The tune stayed the same, only the last part of the lyric changed: the first name was spoken twice, then came the sarcastic cognomen intended to squelch the joker.
Two was also the magic number when Jack invited trouble by hailing a character portrayed by Frank Nelson. Whenever Benny said, “Oh, waiter…waiter,” “Floorwalker…floorwalker,” “Usher…usher,” “Doctor . . . doctor,” or just “Mister…mister,” we knew the next word we heard would be a rapacious “YESSS!” delivered with the glee of a vulture about to descend on its prey.
The banter between Benny and Nelson frequently allowed both men to employ one of their pet expressions. Jack posed a “you asked for it” question like “Are these eggs fresh?” or “Do you enjoy aggravating me?” and Frank let him have it with his elated squeal of “Oooh, are they!” or “Oooh, do I!” after which Jack provided counterpoint with an infuriated “Now cut that out!”
The Sportsmen also annoyed the star of the show with commercials that veered from delivering the sponsor’s message into silly patter songs. Benny’s attempts to stop them took the form of “Wait a minute” repeated usually four times, ending in a crescendo of frustration that sometimes generated the biggest laugh of the half-hour. The routine became so well established that on the January 19, 1947 program, as Jack listened to the quartet over the phone, the audience used their imagination to “hear” the song spin out of control until Benny reached the boiling point.
Another one of Jack’s famous exclamations emerged when he was on the receiving end of a tirade. When Don castigated him for his cheapness with a tongue-lashing that began “You are without a doubt the most parsimonious . . .” or when an auto dealer said that Jack’s Maxwell was “without a doubt the oldest, worst, most beat-up piece of junk I have ever seen,” we knew it was the storm before the calm that would be culminated by an offended “Well!” delivered with all the finality of a stick hitting a kettle drum.
Jack employed a different tactic when needled by Mary Livingstone. He’d simply repeat the last part of the comment twice in a derisive chorus. Mary’s gibes usually focused on his tight-fisted reputation or his age; sometimes she hit both targets with one shot, as on the Thanksgiving show of 1949: “You haven’t paid for a turkey since you chipped in with the Pilgrims,” to which Benny replied with an echoing: “Chipped in with the Pilgrims, chipped in with the Pilgrims.”
Eddie Anderson in his role as Rochester used a line of skepticism, delivered in his characteristic rasp. When Jack told Rochester to check the pockets for dollar bills before sending his suit to the cleaners, or when he suggested that Errol Flynn might star in a movie based on Jack’s life, a refrain of four words said what everyone was thinking: “Oh, boss, come now!”
Although Mel Blanc was not a regular cast member, his versatility as “The Man of a Thousand Voices” made him an audience favorite. His entrance as Professor LeBlanc, Benny’s long-suffering violin instructor, seldom varied: scratching of a bow on strings, followed by a metronomic “No, no, no, Monsieur Benny.” When his ears and patience could take no more dissonance, he unleashed his expletive of “Sacrebleu!,” enunciated lyrically and sounding so much like a blessing that Jack’s response to the curse was “Thank you.”
The litany between Benny and the Mexican character Blanc assumed is still a pleasure to hear.
JACK: What’s your name?
MEL: Sy.
JACK: Sy?
MEL: Si.
Back and forth the two would go in a seesaw rhythm that included similar-sounding s words such as soy and sore. The duet became a trio when Bea Benaderet joined them as Sy’s sister Sue who liked to sew.
Whenever Benny walked into a railroad station, it was a downbeat signaling Mel to assume the role of the announcer proclaiming, “Train now leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga,” a triad of cities as euphonious as Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe. The variations on this theme seemed endless with the writers occasionally having Mel stop after “Cuc–,” giving Jack a line of dialogue, and then letting the other shoe drop with “–amonga.” On the Benny program of December 11, 1949, Blanc announced departures in bouncy rhymes: “Train leaving on Track 1 for Baltimore and Washington/It’s leaving now so you better run,” “Train leaving on Track 3 all the way to Schenectady/Just one stop at Kansas C,” and “Train leaving on Track 2 for Asheville, Nashville, Kalamazoo/Takes on water at Waterloo.” Each bit was punctuated with a “shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits” drum riff.
Blanc’s ability to vary delivery in his roles as Polly the Parrot or as the bakery clerk in the “Cimarron rolls” routine hit the right note with audiences, and the writers knew he would be right on key in other roles as well. As a boxer named Punchy, Blanc used the peculiarity of sniffing between words to provide a highlight on the May 22, 1949 show. Jack doubts the fighter’s claim that he was once a member of Guy Lombardo’s band. Punchy replies, “Oh, yes (sniff), yes (sniff sniff), yes I was,” perfectly mimicking the schmaltzy coda of the Royal Canadians.
The show’s other supporting actors played virtually the same arrangements in every appearance. As the tout, Sheldon Leonard’s opening chord was always the same: “Hey, bud, bud.” And his response to Jack’s course of action was always the definitive “uh-uh.” By employing racetrack terms, the writers rode the nag gags through many variations on a theme, occasionally providing a switch by having Jack get the horselaugh such as on the March 23, 1952 show when he declined coffee even though “it’s a sleeper” in favor of tea because “it’s in the bag.”
Artie Auerbach’s Mr. Kitzel had music in his speech if not in his heart right from “Hello, Mr. Benny,” which he sang as much as said. Even when he wasn’t reciting versions of his “Pickle in the middle and the mustard on top” pitch, or warbling “hoo hoo hoo” as if he were ringing his version of the NBC chimes, the patterns of Auerbach’s Jewish dialect had a rhythmic rise and fall that made his banter with Benny sound like a well-orchestrated chorus.
Conversely, Jack’s dialogue with the characters assumed by Benny Rubin hit the same note in a composition that might have been titled “Information Pleas.” The pattern never varied: Jack would ask three related questions such as “How much weight is Our Fancy carrying?,” “What is the name of the jockey?,” and “How long is the race going to be?” The answer to each question was the same: “I don’t know,” delivered in a slur that sounded more like “I dunno.” Jack would then explode with a fourth question such as “If you don’t know anything about the races, what are you doing behind that desk?” Rubin completed the bit with his reason for being: “I had to get behind something. I lost my pants.” It might seem like a long way to go for a punch line and a quick exit, but as long as Rubin got laughs the writers kept playing that old familiar strain.
Another version of the “Three Benny Opera” occurred with some regularity in Jack’s battle of words with Dennis Day. Day would offer an overture that teased Benny’s curiosity, such as declaring that he was going to have his tonsils removed. After the three queries, “Are your tonsils infected?,” “Has your throat been sore?,” and “Have you been catching colds?,” are answered negatively, Jack irritably demands an explanation, then regrets it when he becomes the recipient of an inanity like “A doctor friend is coming over and I don’t know how else to entertain him.”
Jack marched to a different tempo when someone else played the part of the inquirer. Although Bea Benaderet had a recurring role as Gertrude Gearshift (one of the telephone operators who provided off-key intermezzos with cohort Mabel Flapsaddle), she also portrayed nurses and receptionists requesting information from Benny. The series of questions and answers took on a sing-song pattern that often came back to the same refrain. This dialogue from January 21, 1951 is typical of the antiphonal exchanges:
BEA: Your name?
JACK: Jack Benny.
BEA: Your address?
JACK: 366 North Camden Drive.
BEA: Your age?
JACK: 39.
BEA: Your height?
JACK: 5 feet 10½.
BEA: Your weight?
JACK: 155.
BEA: Your age?
JACK: 39.
BEA: Color of hair?
JACK: Brown.
BEA: Color of eyes? Oh, they’re blue, aren’t they?
JACK: Bluer than the feet of a Sicilian wine presser.
BEA: Complexion?
JACK: Fair.
BEA: Your age?
JACK: 39.
BEA: Your occupation?
JACK: Comedian.
BEA: I thought so.
The Benny team loved words and when they found a tune they liked they found ways to play it on their own hit parade for many weeks. During World War II they introduced Sympathy Soothing Syrup and, not just content with the music of its alliteration, decided to capitalize on the advertising gimmick of reversing the spelling of a product’s name. They invented a catchy jingle for “yip-yip yhtapmys” that eventually spread to Ronald and Benita Colman, Jack’s neighbors, who also sang its phrases and praises.
The mellifluous sound of Benny’s advertising agency, Batten, Barton, Durstine, and Osborn, was too much for the writers to overlook so they built an entire show (November 21, 1948) around Jack’s attempts to call the agency, whose name, according to Mary Livingstone, sounded like “a trunk falling downstairs.”
On April 24, 1949, the writers again demonstrated that they could satirize Madison Avenue in a lilting way when Jim Backus, as car salesman Plain Bill, promoted an automobile’s most distinctive feature, a “dynaflex superflowing unijet turbovasculator which is syncromeshed with a multicoil hydrotension dual vacuum dynamometer.” The function of this wondrous accessory? It empties the ashtray. Never ones to waste a good gimmick, the writers had Mary and Rochester sing it again that night and brought it back the following week so Phil Harris could wrestle with the melodic mouthful.
Although Phil’s character on the show was that of a tippling boor spouting malapropisms, the lines he spoke frequently evinced the flair of a brash illiterate. He would burst onstage with “O.K., fellows, here’s Harris the star,/So tear up your passes and staaay where you are,” “So far, folks, this show has smelled,/But Harris is here and I’m jet-propelled,” “O.K., folks, you‘re all in clover,/’Cause Harris is here and this lull is over” and other couplets that he hammered home with a heavy-handed invitation for applause in the form of “Lay it on me!” Sometimes after inserting a pun, he laughed it up and blew his own horn with a non-rhyming but still rhythmic boast, such as “Oh, Harris, many brave hearts are asleep in the deep, but you’re awake every minute,” or “Oh, Harris, you may not be the star, but without you the show is nothing, nothing.”
On one show Jack marveled aloud about Phil’s hammy behavior by claiming that “If he was half as good as he thinks he is, he’d be twice as good as he is,” then wondered further with “What kind of a joke was that?,” which underlined one of the unwritten commandments of the writers: sound is sometimes more important than sense.
A notable example of nonsense carrying the day (and the show) occurred on the April 4, 1954 program when Benny, playing a psychiatrist, stated that his name was “William Jackson, Ph.D., B.A., LL.B. M.A., B.S., M.D.” He then proceeded to wrap his lips around the fourteen letters to produce six syllables of gibberish, indicating that his last name was, indeed, Phdballbmabsmd.
Although the writers frequently employed poetic devices (a hillbilly sketch on the November 27, 1949 show was built around the humor in the rhyming of names Em, Lem, Shem, and Clem), the dialogue itself formed the heart of the symphony that was The Jack Benny Program. Much of the humor came simply from the give-and-take in straight line/punch line form, but the Benny team excelled in setting up jokes to match the peerless delivery of the show’s star by devising routines in measures of three, four, or five parts. Most of the shows contain instances of this structure; two examples are given here.
On the May 11, 1952 program Jack asked questions from another room while Rochester and his friend Roy cleaned the living room. Jack asked, “Where’s my shoe brush?” and Rochester answered, “Right next to your shoes.” Then Jack said, “Where’s my hairbrush?” Rochester’s answer of “Right next to your hair” was the zinger that seemingly ended the number, but the Benny team wasn’t done with the tune yet. Jack got the last laugh: “Where’s my toothbrush? And don’t be funny.”
On the first show of the 1952-53 season, Benny, while looking at the labels on his various keys, explained to Rochester the meanings of the abbreviations on each one: WT for wardrobe trunk, DD for desk drawer, and LC for linen closet. Jack then said, “BA,” and waited for Rochester’s question: “What does that one open?” Jack’s answer: “Bank of America.” After the laugh and applause, an encore followed with Jack reading, “SM” and Rochester obligingly asking, “What’s that?” “Santa Monica branch.”
The pattern of building routines in three or more parts of harmonic progression -- from Benny’s banter with Dennis, to his conversations with Phil, to Mary’s letters from her mother – usually reached a climax as emphatic as the clashing of cymbals. The cadence of the dialogue became so ingrained in the actors that they adjusted to bloopers or hesitations without missing a beat. The errors often drew bigger laughs than the original lines ever promised, which demonstrated that even when out of sync the cast played in perfect harmony.
The Benny writers knew a good thing when they wrote it and when they heard it, so clinkers (Dreer Poosen, Chiss sweeze, grass reek) at times were reprised. The writers brought back the refrains of running gags (“What happened to the gas man?,” “Did you hunt bear?”) until they limped. Similarly, songs riding high on the record charts (“Come On-A My House,” “Hernando’s Hideaway,” “Mule Train”) were squeezed into the scripts as much as possible.
The musicality of The Jack Benny Program is readily apparent when one listens to the parody the Beverly Hills Beavers offered on the April 23, 1950 broadcast. The children’s voices (even the growl of the youngster playing Rochester) do not sound very much like the cast members they are impersonating, yet Mary’s sassiness, Phil’s braggadocio, Dennis’s daffiness, and Jack’s exasperation come through in well-orchestrated strains of parrying and thrusting. Jack and Mary, who sat in the audience with the radio listeners that night, liked what they heard and could have said what we think whenever we listen to the beloved series: “They’re playing our song.”
To call the Benny writing team composers and to label Jack and his fellow actors virtuosos would be presumptuous, but just as Big Bands played a unique style of music, the scripts of The Jack Benny Program have distinctive patterns tailored to performers whose special delivery made that show sound different from any other on the air. So let the good times roll for the fans of one Benny who snap their fingers to the beat of “Sing, Sing, Sing” and for those who favor the other Benny who hold their sides to the rhythm of “Laugh, Laugh, Laugh.”
IN THE MOVIES WITH JACK BENNY
by
Kay Linaker
(From an August 26, 2004 Interview. Transcribed by Janine Preston)
In Man About Town (1939), I played the part of Jack Benny’s British secretary. My character worked for Jack when he was in England. I was a guide for him, a Mother Superior-type. I had a good time playing that role.
The director, Mark Sandrich also did the next Benny picture and he said to the office, “Now for this part I want an American Kay Linaker.” They said, “Kay Linaker's not really British, you know.” Sandrich said, “Oh yes, she is. She just finished working for me, and I want the same type of person.”
So the casting director called my agent. When I came on the set, Mark looked at me and said, "You're here under false pretenses. I need an American for this part." I said, "But I am an American." He said, "No, no, no, no -- you're British." I told him I was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Very definitely an American.
He said, “Go on over to Wardrobe.”
So I saw Edith Head, who was the designer for Paramount, a most talented woman. She liked me because I was easy to fit and I could wear the kind of clothing she liked, which were for tall, slim brunettes.
I was quite tall. This was in a time before the models came out to California and were put under contract. They had to find a place for all of these lovely people, and every once in a while they did a film in which they could use a lot of beautiful girls who were not necessarily actresses, but models. Occasionally some of them did make it in acting -- Cobina Wright, Jr. was in Charlie Chan in Rio (1941). I was different. I developed a reputation for being a working actress, and for five or six years I was very, very busy.
I did a couple of films for John Ford. Now if you were in a John Ford picture and showed you were easy to get along with and were professional in behavior, you stood a good chance of becoming a member of what was known as the Ford Stock Company. And that meant he found a place for you, no matter what the picture was. I was lucky to find a place in the John Ford Stock Company.
Then came World War II. Having no skills in the song-and-dance department, and not being a stand-up comedian like Martha Raye, I couldn't go on USO tours. But I wanted to make a viable contribution to the war effort, so I joined the American Red Cross. When the Red Cross looked over my application, they found I had a college degree and that I had taken psychology courses. I’d chosen the courses to help me in understanding human nature, with the goal of becoming a better character actor.
They said I belonged in their hospital unit. Now the only drugs they dispensed at that time were sleeping pills. There were no programs for psychiatric patients and a lot of returnees were having problems, so my first assignment at the psychiatric hospital was quite a challenge. When they found out about my “background,” which amounted to just a couple of courses in psychology, I was put into the psychiatric department of the Red Cross services.
When they brought in the women who had been at Pearl Harbor, a girl came into our recreation hall. Something set her off, and she started climbing the steam radiator on the wall and was badly burned. After that they put me in charge and we developed a special service to help people with such problems.
I met my husband [Howard Phillips] when I was in the Red Cross. When I got married, I failed to notify the Screen Actors Guild and other unions as to my whereabouts. Kay Linaker went out of existence and Kate Phillips came in. I've never been sorry.
When I was teaching in Canada, I was asked to play a part in a summer theater. Before taking a role, I had to find out what I owed Actors Equity. So I got in touch with the union in Canada and they found that I had not taken an honorable withdrawal when I joined the Red Cross. But since I was one of the first two hundred members of the Screen Actors Guild, dues had been paid to Equity and the Screen Actors Guild. Back then, most of us didn’t have a sense for legal matters and the red tape that went with it.
When Jack Benny was doing Man About Town, he had some problems with the government because he bought some jewelry for Mary – two diamond bracelets, one with emeralds, the other with sapphires – from a man who had smuggled the jewelry into the country. Of course, according to the law, ignorance is no excuse. Jack was in great trouble.
We were in the middle of the picture. I was sitting outside my canvas dressing room when Jack came tearing out of his dressing room. His business manager had just gone in to see him, and I saw Jack running to the telephone.
"But this is not true,” he said. “Somebody is out to get me!” He pleaded his case the best he could, then rang off, saying, “I've got to get a hold of my manager. I can't do anything more right now. I've got to go."
We spent the rest of the day working around Jack. For three days he was out of control with himself -- he could hardly talk -- so we shot around him. Finally, after paying a hefty fine, he returned and got back to work.
I had a wonderful time making Buck Benny Rides Again. We filmed on location in the desert outside of Victorville, California. Mary and everybody brought their kids up for a weekend. Roch brought his children, as did Mark Sandrich. It was awfully dull for them, though, because they had to sit still and be quiet on the set.
I felt sorry for the kids so I started playing games with them. We played “Living Statues.” I had a portable wind-up record player. They danced and jumped around. When I stopped the music, they had to freeze. Then we guessed who each one was pretending to be, Sophie Tucker or Garbo or whoever. We’d give treats if they fooled us, which they did constantly.
I called Paramount many years later to get some film for one of my students who was doing a picture. She had tried to get a release for some footage, but the cost of it per frame was exorbitant, so I called for her. I spoke to the person in charge of the archives.
"I wonder if I could speak to somebody about getting some film for a student of mine."
"Well, since you have done films at Paramount, I think this comes under the category of previous players not having to pay for footage."
"But how did you know I’ve done work for Paramount?"