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The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio’s endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show’s humor. Through the character of the vain, cheap everyman, Benny created a fall guy, whose frustrated struggles with his employees addressed midcentury America’s concerns with race, gender, commercialism, and sexual identity. Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley contextualizes her analysis of Jack Benny and his entourage with thoughtful insight into the intersections of competing entertainment industries and provides plenty of evidence that transmedia stardom, branded entertainment, and virality are not new phenomena but current iterations of key aspects in American commercial cultural history.
Price: $95.00
Pages: 392
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
17 October 2017
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520295049
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
“…a deeply researched and powerfully argued analysis of Benny’s persona, productions, distribution, advertising, and sponsorship from the early 1930s through the late 1950s. …It is a must-read for scholars seeking to understand the inner workings, products, and impact of mass media and intermedia development, consumer culture, and celebrity culture during the heyday of mid-twentieth-century American commercial radio broadcasting and how to write about such issues incisively and inclusively.”
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley is Professor in the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of, among other books, At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture and the editor of Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 • Becoming Benny: Th e Development of Jack Benny’s Character-Focused Comedy for Radio
2 • “What Are You Laughing at, Mary?” Mary Livingstone’s Comic Voice
3 • Masculine Gender Identity in Jack Benny’s Humor
4 • Eddie Anderson, Rochester, and Race in 1930s Radio and Film
5 • Rochester and the Revenge of Uncle Tom in the 1940s and 1950s
6 • Th e Commercial Imperative: Jack Benny, Advertising, and Radio Sponsors
7 • Jack Benny’s Intermedia Juggling of Radio and Film
8 • Benny at War with the Radio Critics
9 • Jack Benny’s Turn Towards Television
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 • Becoming Benny: Th e Development of Jack Benny’s Character-Focused Comedy for Radio
2 • “What Are You Laughing at, Mary?” Mary Livingstone’s Comic Voice
3 • Masculine Gender Identity in Jack Benny’s Humor
4 • Eddie Anderson, Rochester, and Race in 1930s Radio and Film
5 • Rochester and the Revenge of Uncle Tom in the 1940s and 1950s
6 • Th e Commercial Imperative: Jack Benny, Advertising, and Radio Sponsors
7 • Jack Benny’s Intermedia Juggling of Radio and Film
8 • Benny at War with the Radio Critics
9 • Jack Benny’s Turn Towards Television
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index