Breaking Walls James Scully

June 4th, 1944 was the last Grape Nuts Flakes sponsored Jack Benny Program. Jack took out a full page ad in Variety thanking General Foods and their agency Young and Rubicam for ten years of partnership. Six days later, the American Cigarette and Cigar Company deposited two hundred thousand dollars in a special exploitation account for the program.

On June 23rd they wrote to Jack stipulating some terms of the agreement. The program would be broadcast live coast-to-coast 7:00PM eastern war time, with a transcribed rebroadcast by transcription between 12:30 and 1:00AM New York time for West Coast stations.

In August, Benny left on a three-week USO tour of Australia and the South Pacific.

On August 28th, American Tobacco announced that Pall Mall’s product scarcity didn’t justify a twenty-five thousand dollar per week expenditure. Lucky Strike would sponsor the show. The following week they announced a comprehensive, multimedia ad campaign. It was estimated to cost over a quarter million dollars.

This changed the company with which Jack was signed from the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to the American Tobacco Company, and was made official on September 26th, 1944.

While the cast of Jack Benny became famous in their own right, Benny’s show had great guest-stars, as Dennis Day remembered.

On the May 28th, 1944 episode Jack is in talks with Warner Brothers to make a film about his life. Naturally Jack thinks he’ll star, write, and direct it. Unfortunately for him, Warner Brothers has other ideas. They want Danny Kaye to play Jack and Jack to play Jack’s father.

With Jack’s contract with General Foods nearing its close, the only thing left to do was count down the remaining episodes.

On May 21st, 1944, Jack and the gang discussed split personalities. Jack thinks it's ridiculous, but later realizes he has one too. In other news this episode marks the debut of the spoof commercial for Sympathy Cough Syrup. Its tagline “Sympathy spelled backwards is Yhtapmys” became famous.

By the Spring of 1944 Jack Benny’s cast had become its most familiar incarnation. Frank Nelson had begun to develop into Benny’s nemesis, as he remembered in this interview clip.

Phil Harris was a lovable and vain drunk. Mel Blanc could play any character imaginable. Others like Bea Benaderet, John Brown, and Sarah Berner rounded out the cast. Most importantly Jack was known to be the exact opposite of his character.

On May 14th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program was broadcast live at Camp Adair, Oregon.

In early May 1944 Jack and the rest of his cast were still traveling around military bases in the Pacific Northwest. On May 7th they were at the Naval Air Station in Whidbey Island, Washington as Dick Haymes continued substituting for the now departed Dennis Day.

The rating for this episode was 20.1, although lower than his season average, it was still tied for third overall, and first on Sunday evenings.

Hey everybody James Scully here, host of Breaking Walls. If you've been listening to this show for years on this RSS feed, I want you to know that you can also subscribe to the show on Youtube — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc.

I'm asking people who listen here on the RSS feed to subscribe on Youtube because Youtube offers the easiest path to monetizing this show.

I'm going to be fully transparent right now: There have been times in the history of this podcast that via RSS feed, Breaking Walls has had as many as 27000 - 30000 monthly downloads, but even with that, it's very hard to monetize the show via traditional podcast channels. However, I've been able to clear the monetization hurdles on Youtube, so please subscribe there. If you happen to listen on a computer or on a phone, I would appreciate if you listened via Youtube.

I'm also going into Youtube and slowly uploading all shows from Breaking Walls' archive in individual podcast playlists on Youtube. This way, everything that for years now has fallen off the RSS feed here doesn't matter. You can get all those archived shows FREE OF CHARGE on Youtube. Your listening for free will enable me to earn money, and I'd appreciate that very much.

So once again — www.youtube.com/@thewallbreakersllc

Keep getting out there, keep breaking those walls, and I'll catch you on the flip side.