by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2011 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved
Back in August I had
downloaded an episode of the Jack Benny Program from archive.org which was from the 1958 season (the original air date was
April 6) and featured Ronnie Burns, adoptive son of George Burns and Gracie
Allen (and his tall Anglo good looks and chiseled features, which these days
reminded me of a young Mitt Romney, made it all too clear that he was not George and Gracie’s biological progeny!), doing a lame rock song called
“She’s Kinda Cute” in what I guess was a bow to the youth audience.
Fortunately, the main part of the show was a good deal better than Ronnie’s
kinda silly song; there was a great gag with Rochester (Eddie Anderson) calling
Benny while he’s in the middle of his show to tell him that his new suit
arrived, only because of how little Benny had been willing to pay for it, the
tailor hadn’t put it in a box; instead he actually wore it to Benny’s house, took it off and left it there. While we see
Rochester there’s a knock on Benny’s door — it’s the tailor’s partner,
delivering the second pair of pants (and having to leave without any pants). “It’s a good thing for the censors he didn’t buy any
underwear!” says Rochester.
But the main attraction for this show is a plot
line featuring Don Wilson’s jealous hissy-fit that George Burns’ son has got on
the Benny show before his son
Harlow (Dale White) has. Harlow turns out to be an overgrown baby — they
actually feed him in a high chair, and both he and dad eat an entire turkey for
their meal (though this was an Easter Sunday show originally, the turkey gag
made it quite appropriate viewing for the eve of Thanksgiving!) — indeed, he
seems to be anticipating the entire “adult baby” schtick: though he’s the size of a grown man he’s clearly behaving like a
child, and the gag is that his parents (his mom is played by Lois Corbett) are
stunting his emotional growth big-time. There’s also a neat gag in which every
time Don Wilson stomps the floor in anger, plaster comes falling from the
ceiling on top of him. The show was then sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes,
and whoever uploaded it blessedly left the commercials in it — which were a
trip: not only are we no longer accustomed to seeing tobacco commercials on TV
but the commercials themselves, crudely animated and (in one case) featuring
some Latino stereotypes so obnoxious the Frito Bandito comes off as a model of
cultural sensitivity by comparison — an additional bit of cultural history to a
show that’s quite appealing on its own even if it evokes nostalgia for a time
when the common run of ordinary mainstream TV was this good!
