Jack Benny Christmas Shows
December 23, 2007 10:02 PM   Subscribe

Enjoy a heaping helping of old time radio with classic Christmas specials from The Jack Benny Show.

You can find plenty of extra yuletide fun at Archive.org.
posted by dhammond (7 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
Jack Benny as seen by a tv comedy writer.
posted by miss lynnster at 10:42 PM on December 23, 2007


Good link, misslynster. Ken Levine did play-by-play for the Orioles when I was growing up in Baltimore. Didn't know he had a blog.
posted by dhammond at 10:49 PM on December 23, 2007


To me, Ken Levine will always be the high-pitched Top 40 DJ who used the air name Beaver Cleaver... because who but he would dare? Which takes us full circle radio-wise.
posted by wendell at 12:32 AM on December 24, 2007


Thanks for the great link.
posted by briank at 6:18 AM on December 24, 2007


Miss lynnster -- Thanks for the Levine link. I kept waiting for him to say "Benny was horrible that night -- a total bore -- a loser. I should have seen the Beatles!" But, just like everyone else in showbusiness, he had nothing but good things to say about Benny. It's truly amazing. You know, just about all of Benny's radio programs can be gotten on MP3 discs for almost nothing here on the web. I've got everything that's available on tape and MP3, and have listened through just about all of it over the past 10 years. Let me tell you, listening to the development of this program since the early 1930, and following the introduction and development of the characters over the next two decades is one of those wonderful life experiences -- like reading through P.G. Wodehouse's entire Jeeves and Bertie cycle, or Anthony Powell's "Dance to the Music of Time" -- that, although it is only a minor work of art, enriches your life beyond reason. The show was a little weekly masterpiece that almost never lets you down. My favorite episode is December 27, 1937 -- a fairly routinely marvelous hodgepodge of running jokes, ending in a "Buck Benny" skit. Near the end, Mary Livingstone, Andy Devine and the whole cast break into the song "Sing, Baby, Sing," that is to me the most perfect expression of pure, careless joy on earth.
posted by Faze at 7:55 AM on December 24, 2007


But over on WWOZ their playing both sides of Santa's Got A Brand New Bag by James Brown
posted by Pressed Rat at 1:43 PM on December 24, 2007


Jack Benny is probably the only comedian ever to get a belly laugh out of me by staring into middle distance with a bemused expression. It's inexplicable and wonderful.
posted by pax digita at 7:51 AM on December 25, 2007


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