About Me
Though born in a Chicago hospital, I am a Waukegan boy through and through. The son of a Polish immigrant haberdasher, I studied the violin from an early age (I really could play, though I was certainly no virtuoso), and managed to find work in local theatre orchestras. As a teenager, I gave vaudeville a try with a musical act in partnership with pianist Cora Salisbury, but this first fling at show business was only fitfully successful. During World War I, I was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where, while appearing in camp shows, I first began telling jokes in between violin selections. I returned to vaudeville with a comedy act, slowly building myself up into a headliner. I made my first radio appearance on Ed Sullivan's interview show on March 29, 1932; within a year I had my own show, which would evolve over the next two decades into one of radio's most popular programs. I met with equal success when I moved into television in 1950. There are few comedy fans in existence who aren't familiar with the character I played on the air: The vain, tone-deaf, penny-pinching, eternal 39-year-old who spent his life being flustered and humiliated by his supporting cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Dennis Day, Frank Nelson, Mel Blanc, Don Wilson et. al.); nor need my fans be reminded that this character developed gradually, rather than springing full-blown upon the world way back in 1932. What is usually de-emphasized in the many accounts of mine} life and career is my sizeable body of movie work. I myself insisted that most of my films were no good, and many casual viewers have been willing to accept my word on this. Actually, my films, while not all classics, were by and large moneymakers, and never anything to be truly ashamed of. My first feature appearance was as the wisecracking emcee of MGM's The Hollywood Revue of 1929. I followed this with a comic-relief role in Chasing Rainbows (1930) and an uncharacteristic straight part in the low-budget The Medicine Man (1930). I was a perfectly acceptable semicomic romantic lead in It's in the Air (1935), Artists and Models (1936), Artists and Models Abroad (1936), and in my appearances in Paramount's College and Big Broadcast series. Whenever I expressed displeasure over my film career, I was usually alluding to those pictures that insisted upon casting me as Benny the Famous Radio Comedian rather than a wholly different screen character. Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934), Man About Town (1939) and Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), though enjoyable, are totally reliant upon my pre-established radio character and "schtick" for their laughs, and as such aren't nearly as effective as my actual radio appearances. My most disappointing movie vehicle was Love Thy Neighbor (1940), designed to cash in on my phony feud with fellow radio humorist Fred Allen. Not only was the film uninspired, but also outdated, since the feud's full comic value had pretty much peaked by 1937. Many of my best films were made during my last four years in Hollywood. 1941's Charley's Aunt was a lively adaptation of the old Brandon Thomas theatrical chestnut (though it did have to work overtime in explaining why a man in his forties was still an Oxford undergraduate!); 1942's George Washington Slept Here, likewise adapted from a stage play (by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart), was a reasonably funny comedy of frustration; and yet another stage derivation, 1943's The Meanest Man in the World (based on a George M. Cohan farce), allowed me to go far afield from my truculent radio persona by playing a man who is too nice for his own good. My finest film, bar none, was the Ernst Lubitsch-directed To Be or Not to Be (1942), in which I, if I do say so myself, was superbly cast as "that great, great Polish actor" Joseph Tura. My final starring feature, the much maligned Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), was an enjoyable effort, and not by any means the unmitigated disaster I used to joke about on radio. The film's problem at the box-office was that it was a comedy fantasy, and audiences in 1945 had had their fill of comedy fantasies. After Horn Blows at Midnight, my theatrical film appearances were confined to guest spots and unbilled gag bits (e.g. The Great Lover and Beau James). In 1949, I produced a Dorothy Lamour movie vehicle, The Lucky Stiff; in addition, my JM Productions, which produced my weekly television series from 1950 through 1965, was also responsible for the moderately popular TV adventure series Checkmate (1960-62). In 1974, I was primed to restart my long-dormant movie career by appearing opposite Walter Matthau in the film adaptation of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys; unfortunately, I didn't, guess what happened. My role was eventually played by my life long friend George Burns. But now my dear audience, I'm back.
