Oh, Mr. Varkentine...come now!

I've been noticed by the web page for The Jack Benny 39 cent stamp campaign. I share space on the page with (among others) a couple of non-entities named Neil Gaiman and Mark Evanier. I'm sure they're proud to be associated with me, even in this meager way.

As I've mentioned before, Benny is one of my all-time favorites from the golden age of radio. Actually, he's one of everyone's favorites from the golden age of radio, and...holy cow. I just found out that YouTube has a couple of short clips of a filmed recording of The Jack Benny Program in 1942.

This is the second part:



I want to make a sidenote here to say a few words abour Rochester, a little "let the clicker beware" if you will. His routine with Benny in the above clip makes use of some racist stereotypes, something his portrayal was sadly not free of up through about the second world war. I'm posting it because I believe the routine is still funny, due largely to Eddie Anderson and Benny's gifts as comic actors.

In his book Prime Time Blues, Donald Bogle makes the case that Benny & Anderson were the originators of the black/white comedy team we've seen so many variants on since, and I agree. First in performance and then in writing, as the staff got more "hip" to the realities of the black experience of living in America in the first half of the 20th century, Anderson's Rochester always transcended stereotype.

Benny was the acknowledged master of comedy timing, but Anderson was nearly his equal at the skill. That is why, in my view, such troubling material as they performed still holds up...which is more than I can say for Amos and Andy.

That team was just as popular in their day if not more so, but nowadays it's just not funny anymore, at least not to me (and for reasons that have nothing to do with the racial content). Anderson's characterization can still be appreciated today, both if understood as in the context of its time and because, again, it's just so funny.

That's what I think, anyway. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.