One last radio program - *1956* Christmas Shopping!

[shimp scrampi]

Anyone know the background of the 1956 radio Christmas special Jack and gang did, with Frances Bergen and June Allyson as guests? I heard it for the first time today, and was surprised to learn of its existence. Basically it's a straight-up Jack Benny Program that runs about 10 minutes longer.

Did this air amidst the "Best of Benny" reruns? Why'd Jack come back and do one last radio round with the whole gang?

Seems to me we might want to correct the Benny history to mark December 21, 1956 as the "last original radio broadcast" as opposed to the closer of the 1954-55 season. Interesting!

[Yhtapmys]

Anyone know the background of the 1956 radio Christmas special Jack and gang did, with Frances Bergen and June Allyson as guests?

I haven't heard it, so here's a dumb question .. was it cut down from a TV show soundtrack?

The 21st was a Friday, btw.

Yhtapmys

[shimp scrampi]

No, it's clearly a radio program with "radio" gags (i.e., that would be given away by a visual), and Jack says at the end "thanks for letting me do this special radio broadcast". The file I have is AFRS so there aren't commercials to clue in more on the origins. The 12/21 date I get from the listing here in the audio library.

It's remarkable though how much it is basically another "last" Benny radio episode. I would expect after the weekly show ended Jack might come back and host a one-off special program of different format - variety acts or whatever - but this has Don announcing, Mary, Roch, Dennis, the Sportsmen, Bob Crosby, Mel Blanc, Benny Rubin - the whole deal, doing their usual Christmas thing.

[JohnM]

Anyone know the background of the 1956 radio Christmas special Jack and gang did, with Frances Bergen and June Allyson as guests? I heard it for the first time today, and was surprised to learn of its existence. Basically it's a straight-up Jack Benny Program that runs about 10 minutes longer.

Did this air amidst the "Best of Benny" reruns? Why'd Jack come back and do one last radio round with the whole gang?

Seems to me we might want to correct the Benny history to mark December 21, 1956 as the "last original radio broadcast" as opposed to the closer of the 1954-55 season. Interesting!

Wow. I am downloading it already. Thanks for sharing.

[JohnM]

It's remarkable though how much it is basically another "last" Benny radio episode. I would expect after the weekly show ended Jack might come back and host a one-off special program of different format - variety acts or whatever - but this has Don announcing, Mary, Roch, Dennis, the Sportsmen, Bob Crosby, Mel Blanc, Benny Rubin - the whole deal, doing their usual Christmas thing.

And there's plenty of references to Mary, Dennis, Don, etc. being on his staff, just like nothing had changed.

Definitely 1956 - there's an Elvis Presley, and he hadn't become a national phenomenon until 1956 - his first Edu Sullivan appearance was in the Fall of the that year.

Nice to hear Don introduce Jack as the "Dean of American Comedy", and Jack took offence, thinking it made him sound ancient.

[TheSportsmenQuartet]

Does anyone have a copy of this show that features The Sportsmen? I only have the AFRS version that they're not on.

[Jack Benny]

Here is a link to the show - http://www.archive.org/download/JackBenny1956ChristmasSpecial/December_1956_Jack_Benny-Christmas_Special.mp3

My assumption is that Jack had the intention of doing one of these every year, but that it just didn't happen as his TV show became more and more time consuming. Isn't this about the time the TV show went weekly? Jack often commented that he didn't like looking back, but was more interested in moving forward. Doing more radio was unfortunately for us looking backward, I'm afraid. I would have loved it if Jack made a yearly radio special from 1956 thru 1974, but it wasn't meant to be.

[shimp scrampi]

Since we're reviving discussion of this for the chat next month, I checked the NYT radio listings between 12/15 and 12/23 1956. Both Sundays were listed as Jack Benny reruns (the "Best of Benny", and there was no Friday 12/21 broadcast of this show, at least in New York.

This couldn't have been an AFRS exclusive, otherwise, why would they need to edit it down to take out the Sportsmen?

Weird. What bizarro time portal did this show fall out of?

[shimp scrampi]

OK, that didn't take long. The correct airdate for this is December 2 1956. There is a rehearsal photo of Jack, Mary and June Allyson noting the broadcast in the NYT on that date. It aired from 5:05-6:00pm, so the 40ish- minute version in circulation must be pretty severely edited.

[Yhtapmys]

OK, that didn't take long. The correct airdate for this is December 2 1956. There is a rehearsal photo of Jack, Mary and June Allyson noting the broadcast in the NYT on that date. It aired from 5:05-6:00pm, so the 40ish- minute version in circulation must be pretty severely edited.

Btw, WBBM listings show the first show from 4:15-5pm, and then a second show from 6-6:30pm. That doesn't mean it ran 45 minutes; it just means the newspaper listings are in 15 minute increments. News is listed at 4pm.

Yhtapmys

[shimp scrampi]

Yeah, WCBS had the same thing, this special, then This Is Your FBI, followed by a Benny rerun. Not sure on the time duration discrepancy. Seems to me on intuition rather than anything I know for sure that a 45 minute original length just seems more plausible than a 55.

To top it all off, on this night, you could turn to the TV and see Jack getting locked in the Tower of London, three Benny shows on the network air in one night, one way or another.

And, as a late addendum to Jack Benny's post above, the TV show didn't go weekly until the 1960-61 season, still a few years off. Jack was still on the every-other-week schedule at this time.