Breaking Walls James Scully

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.

By the spring of 1944, Benny’s ratings had continued slipping. That season, his 23.7 rating meant he’d lost roughly four million weekly listeners in just three years. At the end of this season, his contract with General Foods was up. Here's Jack Benny talking about that time.

There was tension between the two parties because Benny had helped save Jell-O from going out of business. Jack was also upset with what he felt were second-rate accommodations provided by General Foods during the cast’s ongoing army base trips.

Since Benny had full control of his show as NBC guaranteed him the Sunday time slot over any sponsor Benny could sell his program to the highest bidder. Benny’s management team quietly held a sealed auction for sponsorship on February 24th.

George W. Hill, the President of American Tobacco, wanted Benny’s show. His chief account executive was thirty-six-year-old Pat Weaver, the future president of NBC.

A surprise winner was announced: Ruthrauff & Ryan, agency for American Tobacco’s Pall Mall cigarettes, bid twenty-five thousand dollars per-week for three thirty-five week seasons. That’s roughly Four-Hundred-Forty Thousand Dollars today.

The weekly money was payable to Benny for all payroll and production costs. They also included an additional two-hundred-thousand dollars, or three-point-five million today, over the three years for marketing and promotion. American Tobacco also agreed to pay for any network and carrier line charges. The advertising community was stunned.

General Foods considered retaliating against Jack by moving The Fanny Brice Show to CBS opposite the Benny program. They also publicized the fact that they were now sponsoring three programs, The Aldrich Family, The Meredith Wilson Show, and Mr. Ace and Jane, for the same cost as just the Benny program.

On April 10th, 1944, Jack officially signed a three-year contract with the American Cigarette & Cigar Company to advertise Pall Mall cigarettes for twenty-two thousand dollars per broadcast, including a West Coast rebroadcast.

The three-year contract would begin on July 1st, 1944, and run through June 30th, 1947. American Tobacco also had a three year option to renew.

Benny was the executive producer. He funded the entire production cost out of his pay. In the case that any cast member, or Jack himself, missed a program, Jack was to furnish a substitute actor for ten thousand dollars, at his own expense. If Jack was absent for six consecutive broadcasts, American had the right to terminate the current season, but not the entire contract.

Jack also had to make up for any of his absences by adding additional programs at the end of the season.

In the midst of this, on April 30th, 1944 The Jack Benny Program signed on from the Puget Sound Navy Yard in Seattle, Washington. With Dennis Day gone to war, Dick Haymes substituted as the program’s singer.

On April 23rd, 1944 The Jack Benny Program took to the air, broadcasting from Vancouver, British Columbia. It would be Dennis Day’s last show until March 17th, 1946. He’d be departing for the Navy.

In April of 1944 Dennis Day was twenty-seven years old. He’d been starring on Jack Benny’s show since 1939, rounding into a very talented performer. Day had great comic timing and the ability to mimic voices well. That year, he’d appear on film in Music in Manhattan opposite Anne Shirley.

Mel Blanc joined the show on February 19th, 1939. Benny was adding a new touch to the miser theme: a polar bear, who would live in his basement and help protect his money. The bear was christened Carmichael, and in 1941, according to Rochester, he ate the gas man.

On Sunday December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and Manila, thrusting the United States into World War II. That evening, The Jell-O Program signed on at 7PM eastern time. This is audio from that night.

Benny’s show peaked in 1941 with an average rating of 30.8. By 1942 Jack was beginning to get into disagreements with General Foods.

Variety reported as early as 1939 that the sponsor wanted to change Jack’s sponsorship to Grape Nuts Flakes. Jack resisted the move. The Jell-O brand had become uniquely associated with Benny.

However, by 1942 with wartime sugar rationing, General Foods pushed the product change through. Variety reported on March 4th, 1942 that Benny would take Grape Nuts Flakes, while Kate Smith would now be sponsored by Jell-O.

General Foods claimed the output of Jell-O would be so limited by the fall that they couldn’t justify the cost of Benny’s show. The Jack Benny Program cost General Foods twenty-two-thousand dollars per week. Kate Smith’s show only cost ten thousand.

With the October 4th, 1942 season premiere the show became The Grape-Nuts Flakes Program Starring Jack Benny. Benny wasn’t thrilled, also feeling General Foods hadn’t done enough to promote his show. After back-to-back seasons with a rating over thirty points, Benny 1942-43 rating slipped to 26.3, losing roughly two million listeners.

Jack had a unique contract. Thanks to a verbal agreement with NBC’s President Niles Trammel, Jack controlled his Sunday timeslot. At the end of Jack’s next contract he was free to approach any sponsor, pending NBC’s approval. It meant that General Foods could lose their top star and their top time slot.

In March of 1932 Jack Benny was headlining on Broadway as part of Earl Carroll’s Vanities when friend Ed Sullivan invited him to appear on Ed’s radio show. At the time Benny had no great interest in radio, but he went on Sullivan’s quarter-hour show March 19th, 1932, as a favor.

His first line was “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Jack Benny talking. There will be a slight pause while you say, ‘Who cares?”

Canada Dry Ginger Ale’s advertising agency heard Benny and offered him a show. Benny debuted on NBC’s Blue Network on May 2nd, 1932.

This initial series aired Mondays and Wednesdays. Benny’s wife of five years, Sadye Marks, who’d performed with him on Vaudeville, joined the cast on August 3rd as Mary Livingstone. In storyline she was a young Benny fan from Plainfield, New Jersey. Eventually she read humorous poetry and letters from her mother, and much later she would become a main deflator of Benny’s ego.

On October 30th, 1932 the show moved to CBS. During this time Benny began ribbing his sponsor in a gentle, good-natured way. Canada Dry got upset, and despite a rating in radio’s top twenty, they canceled the show after January 26th, 1933.

Chevrolet, which had recently lost Al Jolson, was waiting in the wings. On Friday, March 17th, 1933 at 10PM from New York, Benny debuted with The Chevrolet Program over NBC’s Red Network.

The June 23rd, 1933 episode was the last of the season as well as Mary Livingstone’s twenty-eighth birthday. Howard Claney was announcer with Frank Black as orchestra leader and James Melton as the tenor.

When the show returned in the fall it was on Sundays at 10PM from New York. Benny’s program slowly began to morph from variety into more developed comedic skits. He also started to show the character traits that would come to define his persona. Unfortunately, Chevrolet didn’t like the series and fired him after the April 1st, 1934 episode.

But, the General Tire Company immediately scooped him up. Benny debuted on their program the following Friday, April 6th, 1934 at 10PM. There, he first worked with announcer Don Wilson.

Wilson would remain with Benny until 1965. Often the butt of weight-based jokes, Wilson’s deep belly laugh that could often be heard above the studio audience and his deep, rich voice became a show trademark. This is audio from that April 6th, 1934 episode.

That summer Mary and Jack adopted their daughter Joan. She was two weeks old. Jack later said in his autobiography that as Joan grew older, she came to look like he and Mary. She had Mary’s face with Jack’s blue eyes and his love for music.

Benny, Don Wilson, and Mary Livingstone worked together, along with tenor Frank Parker and orchestra leader Don Bestor on The General Tire Show until September 28th, 1934. Then, General Foods came calling. They wanted Benny’s help saving a gelatin product of theirs called Jell-O, which was getting badly beaten by Knox Gelatin in sales.

On October 14th, 1934 Benny moved to Sunday nights at 7PM from NBC’s Blue Network. His rating immediately leapt into the top five.

On April 7th, 1935 the show was regularly broadcast from New York for the final time. The Jell-O Program would be moving to Hollywood. Benny simultaneously made Broadway Melody of 1936 and It’s In The Air on film.

Until the mid-1930s, New York and Chicago were the main broadcasting hubs. Frank Nelson remembered early Hollywood radio. Nelson began working with Benny in June of 1934.

Even in 1935, it was still more costly for shows to originate from Southern California. Here’s actress Mary Jane Higby, who grew up in Los Angeles, but moved to New York in 1937, explaining why.

On November 3rd, 1935 Kenny Baker joined the show as the new singer. That year, Benny’s show climbed to second overall in the ratings. The following year Benny made The Big Broadcast of 1937 on film, and on October 4th, 1936 Phil Harris debuted as the new band leader.

With Phil Harris in pla

In Breaking Walls episode 150 we parachute into Easter Sunday, 1944 for a day of radio, recollections, and reconciliation.

It’s now less than two months before D-Day and U.S. citizens are awaiting word of a full-scale European invasion with held breath.

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Highlights:
• Cracks In The Nazi Foundation
• Invitation To Learning at 11:30AM
• Ceiling Unlimited with Joseph Cotton at 2PM
• The Life of Riley at 3PM
• Bulldog Drummond at 3:30PM
• The Shadow at 5:30PM
• The Catholic Hour & Radio Hall of Fame at 6PM
• The Great Gildersleeve at 6:30PM
• Jack Benny and The Mysterious Traveler at 7PM
• Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy at 8PM
• Fred Allen at 9:30PM
• Bob Crosby and The Thin Man at 10PM
• Duke Ellington and The News at 11:15PM
• Looking Ahead to Jack Benny Changing Sponsors

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The WallBreakers:
http://thewallbreakers.com
Subscribe to Breaking Walls everywhere you get your podcasts.

To support the show:
http://patreon.com/TheWallBreakers

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The reading material used in today’s episode was:
• Treadmill to Oblivion & Much Ado About Me — By Fred Allen
• Citizen Welles — By Frank Brady
• On The Air — By John Dunning
• Invitation To Learning — By Martin Grams Jr.
• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg


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On the interview front:
• Don Ameche, George Balzer, Jack Benny, Conrad Binyon, Himan Brown, Joseph Cotton, Shirley Mitchell, Brett Morrison, Les Tremayne, and Paula Winslowe spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Jackson Beck, Edgar Bergen, and Hans Conreid spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Ralph Bell and Himan Brown spoke to SPERDVAC. For more info, go to SPERDVAC.com

• Jack Kruschen and Shirley Mitchell spoke to Jim Bohannon in 1987

• Jack Benny spoke with Jack Carney

• Fred Allen spoke with Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg

• Parker Fennelly spoke with David S. Siegel

• Duke Ellington spoke with Dick Cavett

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Selected music featured in today’s episode was:
• Besame Mucho — By Jimmy Dorsey and His Orchestra
• Danse Macabre — By Camille Saint-Saëns

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A special thank you to Ted Davenport, Jerry Haendiges, and Gordon Skene.

For Ted go to RadioMemories.com, for Jerry, visit OTRSite.com, and for Gordon, please go to PastDaily.com.

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Thank you to:
Tony Adams
Steven Allmon
Orson Orsen Chandler
Phil Erickson
Gerrit Lane
Jessica Hanna
Perri Harper
Thomas M. Joyce
Ryan Kramer
Earl Millard
Gary Mollica
Barry Nadler
Christian Neuhaus
Ray Shaw
Filipe A Silva
John Williams
Jim W.
WildEyeWheel