Jack Benny’s Daughter Remembers the Comic Legend’s Life, His Friendship with George Burns and Much More

Long time fan of your dad’s here, having been introduced to ‘The Jack Benny Program’ back in the ‘60s by my grandmother.

That’s really nice to hear. When I think about him, I actually think about him being on the radio. I love the radio show; in fact, I actually really liked it better than the television show. The radio show was so funny and I listened to it not long ago — well, I say not long ago, but it was actually about 10 years ago when I was asked to do an interview about him and somebody gave me the tapes of the old radio shows. I hadn’t heard them since I was a child, but I listened to these old tapes and was laughing my head off.

It’s unfortunate there’s not a greater modern day appreciation for him and other comics of his era.

I agree with you about that, but time marches on — to use an old cliché. When I was a child, I remember my father and George Burns talking about vaudeville, which I was too young to have seen. But the way they talked about it, I felt like I was really deprived of something. Most people are really not aware of the entertainment of that time, when vaudeville was the form of entertainment.

Given that Father’s Day is here, what was your relationship with your dad like?

Oh, it was a very good one. I absolutely adored him and I’ve often said he was the nicest man I’ve ever known. And I think anybody who knew him said that, that he was a truly nice man. Which is apparently rather unusual for comedians. Do you remember the name Abbe Lane? She was on the bill with my dad as an opening act and I got to know her. She said, “You know, your father was so unusual. I’ve worked with every comedian in the business and they are all totally insane, but your dad was the best.”

He wasn’t your normal father, because he had a No. 1 priority for him which was the show. I’m not sure whether I came in first or second, but I think the show came first. That was fine. We were actually very close, because my mother didn’t like to go out much so I went with my dad to all the baseball games. And I traveled with him when he went to different cities, playing concerts. On top of that, he was a great grandfather. He adored his first grandson, Mike. When I was married and had children, I lived not too far away, so dad would come over every two or three days for a cup of coffee and to see his grandchild.

Considering his fame and success, was it tough for him to keep his feet on the ground?

He was famous. There was even a magazine article, I believe in was in 1938, that the most recognized voice in America was first Jack Benny and second FDR. Somebody else told me when I was writing my book that in New York when it was hot, and this was before air conditioning, if you were playing on the street, with all the windows open you never missed a word of The Jack Benny Show, because everybody was playing it on their radios and the sound was coming out of the windows. But through it all, I’d say he remained pretty unaffected and unchanged.

His career spanned from vaudeville to radio, television and even some movies. What do you think his appeal was?

I don’t have an answer for that. He said in an interview that he had all the foibles that normal people have and they identified with him. The miser, the somewhat pompous, somewhat put upon guy — all the things that he was on that show, he said was a reflection of the population in general. People identified with that and they also knew in spite of his character, he only played being cheap. People knew that he was a nice man under whatever it was he was playing. He came across as being a really nice person.

What would surprise people about your father?

I don’t think they’d be the least bit surprised. I think he was everything that people assumed he was. I mean, he came across as a very gentle man. As a matter of fact, in the cemetery it says, “Here lies a gentle man,” and that’s the best way to describe him over everything else. He rarely lost his temper — though sometimes he did — and he was happy go lucky. And he loved his fans. He loved signing autographs. He loved being famous. There was a time when I believe he went to a country in the Caribbean where they didn’t know him and didn’t speak English. He spent a day there and nobody asked him for his autograph, so he was on the next plane home. Like I said, he really did like being famous, signing autographs and talking to his fans.

Given that Eddie Anderson, who played Rochester on ‘The Jack Benny Program’, was black, did that ever cause controversy?

It was a very different time. It’s interesting that people don’t take that into consideration in many ways. People think, “Isn’t it awful that there were minstrel shows?” Well, not at the time. At the time it was very popular and nobody thought anything of it. It was of its time and times have changed. But the truth is, my dad had no racial prejudices whatsoever. I grew up in a house where our religion was talent. It didn’t matter what church you went to, what color your skin was — nothing mattered. But, if you were talented, well okay then. And Eddie Anderson was talented. He was wonderful in the role he played on the show and that’s all that mattered. People were perfectly cool with it, and if you remember my dad’s relationship with Rochester, Rochester always got the best of him.

Creatively, was it difficult for him to sustain that character for so many years or was it just second nature to him?

As far as I know, he just did it without a problem. A lot of people get burned out doing something for so many years and they’ll sit there and say, “I don’t want to do this anymore,” but it seems like he was very happy to do it. He was also very lucky, because that character he created made the transition very easily from radio to television. Unlike other radio shows that couldn’t make that transition to television. Fred Allen was a great radio show, but didn’t make it to television.

How did the book ‘Sunday Nights at Seven’ come about?

My father worked with a ghostwriter on an autobiography that was never published. It was put away in a closet somewhere and didn’t come to light until after my mother died. I’d read it, but it wasn’t really fully developed. After he died I had been approached about writing a book, but I didn’t feel I could write a book about my father. I said, “How can you write a book about a nice man? It’s not Mommy Dearest and nobody’s going to read this.” So I didn’t do anything about it. Then I got a call from Warner Books or an agent and I thought about the autobiography.

It occurred to me that I could do a book combining his autobiography with my version of life with my father. So it would be one chapter from him, then one chapter from me. I could bind the two lives, and it really worked well. The way it went is that there would be recollections of the war when he went overseas to entertain the troops. So I read his chapter and then started thinking about what I was doing during that time and what it was like when he came home from being in Europe, meeting him at the train and doing things together. That’s how I kind of combined his story and my story.

No conversation about your father would be complete without mentioning his friendship with George Burns. What was George’s super power that he could get your father to literally fall off his chair laughing?

We’d have to be talking for three hours to cover that. George Burns was the funniest man of all time in my life. He and my dad were joined at the hip. They adored each other and it all started way back in the days of vaudeville. At the time, my father was a bigger star than Natty — we called him Natty, because his real name was Nathan Birnbaum — but they just connected with each other. A perfect example of what went on between them is that they would call each other on the telephone and telephones not being what they are today, in the middle of the conversation the phone went dead. For some reason — I don’t know why — my father thought that George had hung up on him deliberately and he thought that was very funny and called him back.

George told me, “If your dad thought that was funny, that was good enough for me, because I thought your father was great. So I’ll do it again.” And he did. It became a routine that in the middle of the conversation, he would hang up on him. It went on from there to doing others things and together they were beyond funny. They were, forgive me, pee-in-your pants-funny. You were on the floor laughing and it got so crazy. There are so many stories I could go on with of what Natty did to my father to make him laugh. The best was when they were at the Hillcrest Country Club. George walked in, sat down and was very quiet. He didn’t say anything.  All of a sudden, my father started laughing and Natty said, “Jack, what are you laughing at? I didn’t do anything.” And my father said “Yes, but you didn’t do anything on purpose.”

Scroll down for a visual trip to the past with Jack Benny and some celebrity friends.

Jack Benny and Fred Allen (1940)

Jack Benny and Carole Lombard (1942)

Jack Benny and Judy Garland (1945)

Jack Benny, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck and Ann Sheridan (1945)

Jack Benny and Richard Nixon (1959)

Jack Benny and Jack Paar (1959)

Jack Benny and Dinah Shore (1950)

Jack Benny and Shirley Temple (1953)

Jack Benny and Jane Wyatt (1958)

Jack Benny and Phil Silvers (1959)

Jack Benny and Danny Thomas (1959)

Jack Benny and Lucille Ball (1964)