Jack benny biography mary livingstone

Anon- Thank you very much for letting people know about where to listen to these shows. For all I"ve read that no one other than Jack was very fond of Mary, and that she was only in show business thanks to their marriage, her performances always struck me as well done and her comic timing excellent. Other than the letters from her mom, most of Mary's lines are 'sneering jeers' of few words and less modulation.

She suffers mightily compared to the other female cast like Verna Felton, Dennis Day's mom and the switchboard girls Bea Benadaret and Sara Berner who are laugh riots. I met Jack in Montreal during Expo He was stepping off an elevator on top of the French Pavilion and I almost bumped into him. I said "Hey, you're Jack Benny! He stuck out his hand and I shook it and for a few seconds he spoke with me as though we were old friends.

He made me feel very good. Great and funny man! It is sad, Mary is not here to answer. I enjoyed Jack and Mary together. They were a great team on radio and in real life husband and wife! On Sundays at Seven, Joan did say that her mother was a very loyal friend and that she had a collection of friends including Nancy Reagan and Fred de Corova's wife who adore her.

Her daughter also noted that Mary could be very generous. And since Jack was one of the biggest stars of radio, that is a huge testament to his love for her. Nothing "alleged" there, Lisa. Burns flat out said that. Inshe and Jack Benny adopted a girl, whom they named Joan Benny. Developed stage fright late in her career. Frequent illnesses were used to explain her absence.

Eventually, her lines were recorded and dubbed onto the live recording later. First appeared on Jack Benny 's radio show playing the president of his fan club. If you can get your hands on a copy it'll be a hard book to put down! A nice read for the Jack Benny fan. I've enjoyed Jack Benny's comedy since I was a kid, so it's nice to find out more about the man himself.

Although the final third of the book reads like a eulogy, and indeed includes at least one actual eulogy, the rest of the book is an interesting biography. Author 1 book 23 followers. It's interesting that people are saying this is "sanitized" or "too nice" because his wife wrote it, but from what I've read elsewhere, it's accurate. I was reading The Masters Way to Beauty which my mom used to own by the Hollywood stylist George Masters and he basically says that Jack and Mary were like newlyweds because they were so affectionate and nice to each other.

He says that Jack was nice to him, too, and some husbands were not. George really told some tales in his book, so I don't think he'd hold back! It seems like this really was a love match and this "too nice" version is actually accurate. Howard Fox. Don't know how much liberty was taken with the story of Jack's life, but a wonderful and heartfelt telling nonetheless.

Jack benny biography mary livingstone

Mark Harris. Highlights include excerpts from his WWII war diary and many reminiscences of home life from his daughter Joan. Burns noted that while their circle of friends found Livingstone challenging, there was also a sense of fierce loyalty between them. Sadie took part in some of Jack's vaudeville performances but never thought of herself as a full-time performer, seeming glad to be done with it when he moved to radio in Then came the day he called her at home and asked her to come to the studio quickly.

An actress hired to play a part on the evening's show didn't show up and, instead of risking a hunt for a substitute, Benny thought his wife could handle the part: a character named Mary Livingstone scripted as Benny's biggest fan. At first, it seemed like a brief role; she played the part on that night's and the following week's show before being written out of the scenario.

But NBC received so much fan mail that the character was revived into a regular feature on the Benny show, and the reluctant Sadie Marks became a radio star in her own right. The lone known exceptions were a fantasy sequence used on both the radio and television versions of the show, as well as during an NBC musical tribute to Benny, in which Mary admitted to being "Mrs.

Livingstone's "chiss sweeze sandwich" order in a lunch counter sketch was referred to for several years afterwards episode ; October 27, Another flubbed line was "How could you possibly hit a car when it was up on the grease rack? But Jack got his comeuppance later in the show, when the show's guest, the real-life Beverly Hills police chief, was talking about the strange call the department got the night before: two skunks fighting on someone's lawn.

This was a typical example of Benny's and Livingstone's and the show's writers' ability to improvise comedy from un-scripted errors. Mary's trademark gag on the radio show, other than beleaguering Benny, was to read letters from her mother who lived in Plainfield, New Jerseyusually beginning with "My darling daughter Mary The letters often included comical stories about Mary's fictional sister Babe — similar to Sadie's real sister Babe in name only — who was so masculine she played as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers and worked in steel mills and coal mines, or their ne'er-do-well father, who always seemed to be a half-step ahead of the law.

Mother Livingstone, naturally enough, detested Benny and was forever advising her daughter to quit his employ. Never very comfortable as a performer despite her success, Livingstone's stage fright became so acute by the time the Benny show was moving toward television that she rarely appeared on the radio show in its final season, — Livingstone made few appearances on the television version — mostly in filmed episodes — and finally retired from show business after her close friend Gracie Allen did so in Her Washington Post obituary quoted Livingstone about her jack benny biography mary livingstone fright: "It ended up with every Sunday night being the most torturous day of the week," she once said.

I finally just told Jack I was going to quit or I was going to die. One of her final performances was as a mouse spoof of herself in The Mouse That Jack Builta Merrie Melodies cartoon from lampooning the radio show. When introducing her to the audience, Benny noted that it was her first time performing in fifteen years and the pre-recorded segment made references to her performance anxiety.

After writing a biography of her husband, Livingstone — whose surname is often misspelled without the 'e', as with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to radio [ 24 ] — died from heart disease at her home in Holmby Hills on June 30,five days after her 78th birthday, though several outlets reported her age as Contents move to sidebar hide.

Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. American radio comedian and actress — For other people with similar names, see Mary Livingstone disambiguation.