Radio and television comedian Jack Benny was born on St. Valentines Day in 1894 (he died the day after Christmas in 1974.) Since this is the holiday that celebrates romantic love, I thought it best to include the love of Benny's life, Mary Livingstone, whom he married in 1927. Mary was a fixture on Benny's radio show (where she played not his wife but his secretary), but with the switch to television in the 1950s, she developed a crippling case of stage fright, and her TV appearances were sporadic. Here's one of those sporadic appearances, her stage fright quite unnoticeable:
Romantic comedy with some women's gymnastics thrown in.
From 1955 to 1970, Mary Livingstone didn't appear on TV at all, but Benny finally managed to convince her to appear on this Nixon Administration-era special:
Lucille Ball's appearance toward the end of that clip reminds me that she was a Beverly Hills neighbor of the Bennys for a number of years. Lucy did not like Mary Livingstone, once referring to her as a "hard-hearted Hannah" and complaining that she kept Jack on a "short leash". In fact, there doesn't seem to have been much fondness for Mary among Benny's immediate circle of friends. Benny's best friend, fellow comedian George Burns, tried putting it in context: "Mary wasn't a bad person, she was just difficult, a little jealous and insecure. She didn't want to have better things than her friends had, particularly Gracie [Allen, Burn's wife and comedy partner]; she wanted to have the same things, but more of them. And bigger." Gracie herself once confided, "Mary Benny and I are supposed to be the dearest of friends, but we're not. I love Jack and I can tolerate Mary, but there are some things about her I don't like." The Benny's adopted daughter Joan wished her mother "could have enjoyed life more." None of this says much for Mary, huh? As always, there's a wrinkle. Outside that immediate circle of friends, things were said about the husband. The fey mannerisms that so superbly abetted Benny's almost supernatural comic timing led to some speculation--David Niven and Paul Lynde were among the speculators--that when he wasn't performing, he wasn't...performing. At least not his husbandly duties. The bedroom joke in the above video may have been no joke, certainly not to Mary. Denials on Benny's part notwithstanding, his interests were rumored to lie elsewhere, and given the mores of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, that could have been potentially career-damning if found out. Was this, then, a marriage of convenience? Was Mary Jack's beard? Well (to borrow a Bennyism), all that can be said for sure is that people often lead complicated lives, even celebrities. Especially celebrities.
Interesting. So you are saying Benny was...not terribly interested in women in that special kind of way? The world of film and stage was rather full of that kind of stuff, as we have learnt in these later years.
ReplyDeleteAndrew, what I'm really trying to say is that the world of film and stage at a certain point in the past was rather full of gay-straight marriages, of which the Bennys may be one possible example. As these types of marriages become less and less common (and of course when they were more common no one even knew they were gay-straight marriages, which was the whole point), it interests me as to what exactly made them tick, and to what extent real, albeit nonsexual, affection took place, and what were the stresses on the straight partner in such a marriage. Think of this post as a LGBTQ sociological inquiry.
DeleteI always did wonder about Benny and his marriage.
ReplyDeleteSo did I, Mitchell, but if it was a gay/straight marriage, I never thought about what effect it might have had on straight Mary's psyche until I found out researching this post that Jack's best friends (as well as his adopted daughter) didn't particularly care for her. Regardless of whether Mary went into holy matrimony with her eyes wide open or only had her innocence shattered afterwards, going along with such a ruse may have affected how she acted around other people. Of course, she could have been cold and distance even before she married or met Benny. Still, he sent her those roses. The whole thing is intriguing (as well as probably none of my business.)
DeleteHi, Kirk!
ReplyDeleteHappy 129th birthday in heaven to funnyman Jack Benny! To me, Benny was genuinely funny, not "supposed to be funny because millions think so" funny. From the moment he appeared on stage or set, I was smiling and primed for entertainment and laughter, because I loved his style and knew he always delivered. I thoroughly enjoyed that first video clip, the department store scene with Benny and his wife Mary. Did you notice how often Jack used the word "lookit" in that sketch? It was common to hear that word spoken by characters in movies and TV shows in the mid 20th century and earlier, but not anymore, at least in my experience. I referenced the etymology of "lookit" and learned that the word was used in the imperative sense to mean "look at it," "look at what I am saying" or simply "look!" To expand on your discussion of Jack's impeccable comic timing, I loved his trademark deadpan reaction to a punchline or to a surprising or shocking act such as the woman jumping from the counter and landing in a split. Jack would often drag out his reaction, milking it for laughs. He'd break the fourth wall and look directly at the camera or studio audience, look around at other characters on the set and even look offstage as if searching for a hidden candid camera and implying that he suspected he was the victim of a prank.
My family regularly watched The Jack Benny Program with Rochester, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Mary and others in the cast. It doesn't mean much to me that Lucille Ball didn't like Mary very much. Millions loved Lucy, but I didn't like her very much. My folks and I regularly watched the Burns & Allen Show and Gracie's opinion of Mary carries more weight with me.
If having one red rose delivered to your wife every day isn't romantic, isn't a sign of love and affection, then I don't know what is. Am I to understand that Benny was suspected of having a secret gay life?
Whatever the case, Jack Benny was one of the all time greats. I remember how upset Johnny Carson became when Benny died, because Carson idolized him. Thanks for paying a V-Day birthday tribute to the incomparable Jack Benny.
Austin Powers' V-Day dance party is in full swing at Shady's Place and you're invited to attend. Enjoy the rest of your week, good buddy Kirk!
"'supposed to be funny because millions think so' funny."
DeleteShady, you're not suggesting MIND CONTROL?!?!?!?!?!?!
As far as the "lookits" go, your ears must be sharper than mine because I didn't catch it the first time. I did just now
because I was on the lookout for it. But there's always subtle changes in language that goes on. You weren't around when I did my multi-part Star Trek series, but in the final installation, I pointed out that the characters on the original series talked in 1960s colloquialisms, and not only was that unlikely to be the case 300 years in the future, people even now aren't talking quite that way 50 years after the show has gone off the air!
I can't really tell you whether Lucille Ball or Gracie Allen was the better judge of character, only that that's how Mary Livingstone came across to people in Jack Benny's circle and I wondered why this was so.
One reason I was very delicate when discussing Jack Benny's possible sexual orientation is because I didn't want this post to perceived as an expose of Benny, but reading all these comments, I think maybe I wasn't delicate enough! When I first found out that Benny was born on Valentine's Day, and decided to do a post on it, I wasn't even going to bring up his sexuality (though admittedly it was on my mind), but the anti-Mary attitudes of his friends took me by surprise, and somehow it was all connected in my mind, and I decided to go with it. As for the long-stemmed roses story (confirmed by Snopes.com) that can be a sign of real love no matter whose bedroom somebody would rather be in. It's complicated.
I'll try to make it to your place either tonight or, much more likely, tomorrow. Even if someone dies, I'll still come over.
Isn't it pretty much generally accepted today that Jack Benny was gay?
ReplyDeleteDebra, I think Jack Benny's persona may seem more obviously gay now than it did when he was alive, but I don't see any kind of consensus that he was gay in actuality. There's more consensus regarding J. Edgar Hoover than Benny, and Hoover was never even seen resting his hand on his cheek! I did go to a few web sites where there were raging debates as to Benny's possible gayness. One line of argument against it was that every one is basing this opinion on his performing style, which was comically contrived in the first place, and that Benny was merely PRETENDING to be gay in the same way he was pretending to be a miser. I don't know if I buy THAT, but it's at least worth considering.
DeleteAnyway, as I told Shady, this post wasn't really meant as an expose on Jack Benny, only that when I discovered the anti-Mary opinions of his friends, the two things just kind of just immediately attached to each other in mind. If I could do that with atoms as well as I do it with thoughts, I could earn a Nobel Prize as the discoverer of cold fusion.
In that first video Mary had all the good lines.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Mike, but it was the way Benny reacted to those lines.
DeleteHe equaled Oliver Hardy when it came to the comic double-take.