Burglar: "Your money or your life?"

Loooooonnnngggg pause.

Burglar: "C'mon, c'mon, your money or..."

Benny: "I'm thinking about it!"

'Nuff said.

What a sweet irony...the world's most famous flint-hearted cheapskate was in fact a warm, generous and courageous man.

"Si"

Take my wife, please!

Yes, I know Jack Benny didn't say it... Look at the byline of this post!

My all-time favorite OTR show. Jack used recurring gags (he used them splendidly, in fact), but he didn't make them old or dull. He had guest stars, but he always used them in interesting ways. He plugged products, but could kid around with them. He was the star, but most of the jokes were about him. Simply put, he was a rare, one-in-a-kind breed.

Of course, we all know that it was Rochester who was the star of the show.

Now cut that out, Gordon Rochester!

"Oh Mister...Mister..."
"E-YESSSSSSSSS!"

Here's another great moment:
Kids, "We tossing around the football. Can you come out and play?"
Jack, "Aw gee, I can't. I have to take my violin lessons."

The best recurring bit was the vault. He had not one, but two drawbridges, a moat with alligators, and a watcher down there for so long he remembers Paul Revere but doesn't know things like Los Angeles and women.

The watcher's best bits included lines like, "Could I have a razor? I'm beginning to step on it."
Jack, "Eh, no. Then you'll just have to start wearing clothes."

The best fat jokes at the expense of Don Wilson was:
Don, "I've lost 20 pounds."
Jack, "Don, you losing 20 pounds is like Los Angeles losing a bucket of smog!"

Some of the best bits involving the dim-witted Dennis Day included lines like:
Dennis, "I won't go swimming at the beach anymore. The last time I went, everyone there was laughing at me."
Jack, "So you won't be packing a bathing suit?"
Dennis, Oh, bathing suit!!"

Help me out here; I'm trying to make a list of recurring bits.

1. Jack Benny is Cheap
2. Mary Livingstone's Poetry
3. Dennis Day/Kenny Baker is ••••••
4. Phil Harris' band is a bunch of miscreants. Phil Harris is Vain.
5. Mary works for the May Company. She has weird letters from her mother.
6. "Yes, Boss!"
7. "Yes, please."
8. Don Wilson is fat. He goes on and on about a sponsor.
9. "Oh, what she said!"
10. The Sportsmen sing weird, weird songs.
11. "Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Waaaait a minute!"
12. "Yeeeeeeees?"
13. "Train leaving at Track 5..."
14. "Hey, bud, bud, c'mere a minute."
15. The Colmans Hate Jack
16. Carmichael the Polar Bear
17. Mr. Kitzel
18. "That's What I Like About the South"
19. "Metal tips or plastic tips?"
20. The one-season bits: Jack writing a song, Jack hearing the echo.
21. Jack and Fred Allen.
22. The Vault
23. The Maxwell
24. The Violin Lessons with LeBlanc
25. Jack Benny's Age
26. "Si."

I know there were a lot more, especially in the show's earlier days. Anybody wanna add on?

27. Now cut that out!

28. Hmm...

29. Jack is a member of a kids' club, The Beavers, where he is a hero of exaggerated status in their eyes. Football champion, war hero, etc.
30. Annual ringing in the baby new year. Casting out the old year (played by Benny).
31. Buck Benny rides again (usually featuring Andy Devine).
32. Dennis Day's mom is more of a man than his dad is. She bullies Jack. Both Dennis folks are often (couched in Dennis' odd deliveries) trying to get rid of him.
33. Jack's ego was always on parade and always getting trampled on. Such as his violin playing, his acting career, his naval career, his image, his true age.
34. Mary's sister, Babe, who was no babe. She is desperate for a man but her masculine voice and image perpetually wards off potential dates.
35. Switchboard operators Mabel and Getrude. I wonder if Mabel is a play on "Ma Bell".
36. Jack's pet ostrich.
37. Jack's pet parrot.

RE #10: The Sportsmen Quartet did not only filk popular songs of the time to suit whatever their sponsor was at the time e.g. Lucky Strikes, their ongoing bit was that they never spoke other than through their songs. They always responded when spoken to in unison with a harmonious "Hmmmmmmm".

RE #11: Funny how Jack was better at the "wait a minute! wait a minute! wait a minute! WAAAAAIT A MINUTE!!" (Almost always says it at least four times) than Mel Blanc was. I'll grant that the din Blanc was trying to cut through dampened his effect, but even a telephone operator, trying to interrupt the Sportsmen singing a jingle over the phone that their three minutes are up couldn't execute the gag as well as Benny. Jack had a knack for blowing his stack.

RE #13: The train leaving Track 5 was always for Aneheim, Azuza, and /KOO Kamuga/ always got laughs thanks to Blanc's delivery. Now I know where the Bugs Bunny cartoons get their Cucamunga(sp?) references. Moreover, a lot of Bugs Bunny gags that may have gone over our heads when we were kids, certainly over today's generation's heads came from Old Time Radio such as the Jack Benny Program. Such as the Foghorn Leghorn cartoon featuring the Race Track Bookie, "Hey bud, c'mere, uh-uh..." played by Sheldon Leonard.

RE #15: The Coleman's never really hated Jack. Ronald and Bonita just happened to move in next door to Jack and found out what an unbearable borrower he is. Because of Jack's cheap nature, he borrowed everything you can think of. From sugar and eggs, to lawnmowers. Now I know that these were the Coleman's featured as quails who adopted Beaky Buzzard in that classic WB cartoon. I'm uncertain whether Ronald played himself or was impersonated.

Jack's polar bear was his first pet for at least two seasons, then came the ostrich for a season, they were both dropped and forgotten unceromoniously in favor of Jack's permanent pet Polly the Parrot (Blanc).

I think Mr. Kitzel was formely Schlepperman.

And Metal Tips/Plastic Tips is in reference to a Christmans Gift Jack kept changing his mind on what kind of sloelaces to get Don Wilson, which sent the department store clerk (Blanc) into insanity. The bit is not repeated but revisited every Christmas show.

38. "YIPE!!"

39. Evertime Jack wants to tune in a radio program, he searches the dial and always gets a female singer hideously off-key. Also frequently tunes into a bogus commercial annouced by Frank Nelson, e.g., "Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys!" (/Yi tap m s/). As Jack continues to search the dial, getting more frustrated, he keeps landing the dial on the singer and the Nelson commercials.

From the vault: Remember Ed, the watchman has been living in the underground vault for years cut off from the outside world.

Ed: "Thanks for the Christmas present Mr. Benny. A calendar. But what is this picture?"

Jack: "That's a girl."

Ed: "A girl?"

Jack: "Yes. She's holding a telephone."

Ed: "Telephone?"

Jack: "Yes, Ed. It was invented in 1876."

Ed: "The girl?"

Jack: "No no. The telephone."

The long-running Jack Benny program was not without its nits, namely changed premises.

The vault was a long-time running gag but was almost always played as a first-time bit. Ed, the watchman always greets Jack like it's been years since Jack came down to the vault. He always assumes Jack has come down to put money IN the vault when he's actually came down to take some money OUT.
Ed always says something different when Jack says he's going to open the vault; like:
"Shall I take a sleeping pill?"
"Shall I take a suicide pill?"
"Are you going to gas me out again?"
"Should I gouge out my eyes?"

When The Sportsmen Quartet were introduced, the routine went that Jack was bamboozled into hiring the quartet to sing for $500.00 every week, which was an obscene amount of money compared to whatever he was presumably paying the rest of his cast. Years later, when new contract disputes came up. The quartet were not on speaking terms with Don Wilson when they found out he makes more money than them. In that episode, they were make $100.00 a week. Jack solved the problem by lowering Don's salary to $100.00 a week. Don was uncharacteristically pleased at Jack's method for fairness.

One program spent the entire episode on how Jack found Rochester. It started off as an auto accident where Jack was at fault yet he was going to sue Rochester's employers (a cab company owned by guest stars Amos and Andy) and Rochester acted like he was at fault. Since Amos and Andy were already going bankrupt and feared losing the lawsuit, they sacrificed Rochester to serve as Jack's valet. They just left Rochester on Jack's doorstep and Jack naturally accepted him as payment. Then a year later, the writers made it appear Rochester answered a want ad for a valet who will only sleep in pajama bottoms while Jack sleeps in pajama tops so that Jack economizes by making use of the pair of pajamas.