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03/06/2006: They Keep the Money in Fair-Banks


Hi all! I came across the neatest thing today. A website at which one can be entertained and appalled in a number of different ways. The site is tobaccodocuments.org and it's fascinating!

As part of some settlements reached between states and tobacco companies, the companies were required to make documents available. They're all on this site. There are some very interesting things there if you can wade through a lot of gibberish in between the goodies. The best part is an amazing archive of old Jack Benny radio shows. Complete with lots and lots of ads for Lucky Strike cigarettes.

You can find the scripts here: Jack Benny radio scripts. Just scroll down until they appear.

What's especially cool about these, is that they are photos of the original scripts, with pencilled-in corrections, rewrites, additions and cuts. Wow.

There's even one script in which Mary has been cut and Rochester has taken her lines without any changes being make to them. Sloppy characterization? Or surprising color-blindness for the time? I'm torn.

What I find interesting, in addition to the sheer, gee-whiz time capsule aspect of these, is that there is virtually nothing to be learned about comedy here except how not to do it. I'm perplexed as to why this is the case. Here's one of the jokes. A girl at a passport office is helping Jack fill out a form:

Girl: Age?
Jack Benny: 39
Girl: Occupation?
Jack Benny: Comedian.
Girl: I thought so.

Now, I KNOW it was a running gag that Benny perpetually claimed to be 39. But still.

Also, the jokes in these scripts seem to have awfully long set ups. In one, a character enters and announces he's going on a trip to Waxahachie, Texas. Benny asks him a long series of questions about why he's going. Friends? Family? Business? No, no, no. So why, Benny belabors, if it's not friends, if it's not family, if it's not business, WHY then, is he going to Waxahachie, Texas? WHY? Punchline: The name fascinates me.

Oh dear god. This is an ostrich straining to lay a jelly bean.

So far, the joke I like best is one that got cut:

Mary: Say, Jack, in Alaska, do they really use fish for money?
Jack: Uh-huh. It works out pretty well, except they have the sloppiest juke boxes.

Once you get past the ludicrous premise that she might actually believe in the fish money, you get a pretty funny and surreal image.

Anyway, check them out if you're interested in how the currency of our business (and, apparently, the currency of Alaska) has changed!

Lunch: tomatoes, sliced paper-thin, broiled, then served on rye toast with homemade white sauce. Mmm. Family recipe.