Breaking Walls James Scully

In the fall of 1944 after Jack’s switch to Lucky Strike, General Foods did move a show opposite Jack. It wound up being The Kate Smith Show.

The company uprooted Smith’s Friday program, countering Benny with a One-Hundred-Seventy-Thousand-Dollar ad campaign. While they did temporarily put a dent into Benny’s rating, Kate Smith lost forty-percent of her audience, dropping to ninety-third place in the overall ratings.

The following season General Foods moved her back to Friday, but Kate Smith never again had another Top-fifty show.

Well, that brings our look at Jack Benny’s show in the spring of 1944 to a close. I mentioned that Benny’s last episode for General Foods aired on June 4th, 1944.

Our next episode of Breaking Walls will move only two days into the future, for perhaps the most important day in broadcasting history.

Next time on Breaking Walls, we spotlight radio broadcasting on June 6th, 1944 to align ourselves with the Country’s heartbeat on the day the invasion of western Europe finally began.

The reading material used in today’s episode was:

• Sunday Nights at Seven — by Jack and Joan Benny
• On The Air — By John Dunning
• Network Radio Ratings — By Jim Ramsburg

As well as articles from
• Broadcasting Magazine
• Radio Daily
• Variety

And a massive special thank you to William Cairns for providing me with invaluable research on Benny’s 1940s run. William has a Jack Benny book on its way.

On the interview front:
• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, Frank Nelson, and Don Wilson spoke with Chuck Schaden. Hear these full chats at Speakingofradio.com.

• Mel Blanc and Mary Jane Higby spoke to Dick Bertel and Ed Corcoran for WTIC’s The Golden Age of Radio. Hear these interviews at Goldenage-WTIC.org

• Jack Benny, Dennis Day, Phil Harris, and Don Wilson were with Jack Carney

• Dennis Day was also with John Dunning for his 1980s 71KNUS Radio program from Denver.

• Orson Welles spoke to Johnny Carson

Selected music featured in today’s episode was:
• The Hut on Fowl's Legs — By Modest Mussorgsky

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.