We’ve got Jack Benny on the brain, mostly thanks to Mark Evanier, who has had a spate of posts about the great comedian.
Evanier has had several posts lately about trying to discern whether or not Benny made a small cameo in the classic movie “Casablanca”. This latest one looks like he might have been successful. If you look at the large version of the image, which shows the full length of the man walking behind Sam the piano player, his gait is very much like Benny’s. So much so that Jack Benny’s daughter has said that she believes it is him.
Now, this morning, Cory Doctorow has a post at Boing Boing about how CBS is blocking the release of some long-lost episodes of the Jack Benny Show from the 1950s and early 1960s. The copyright has long expired on these episodes, so they actually belong to the public domain, but CBS doesn’t want the hassle and expense of releasing them, despite impassioned pleas from Benny fan groups and the official sanction of the Benny estate. Here’s a link to the source article for the Boing Boing story, which explains many of the details and the efforts to convince CBS to release the films. This being the 21st Century and all, you can rest assured that there is a Facebook group you can join to show your support.
Dick Cavett, who occasionally blogs in the New York Times, had a recent remembrance of Jack Benny, too. In typical Cavett fashion, the story is really about himself, but told in that charmingly droll and self-effacing way that Cavett has. He is mostly skewering Tiger Woods and remarking on the price of being a public figure, and Jack Benny appears at the end to set up a hilarious punch line. Anyone who has ever read much about Benny and knows about his real personality (as opposed to the elaborate stage persona of the cheap guy) will instantly recognize the absolute truth and genuine humor of the story.
And back again to a link from Mark Evanier: a YouTube clip of Jack Benny and Mel Blanc performing the famous and hilarious “Si, Sy, Sue” sketch on an episode of the TV series. Blanc played dozens of incidental characters on the radio version of the show, and despite being a bit more limited due to his recognizable physical appearance carried a number of them over to television. THIS, my friends, is COMEDY:
