Jack Benny
Date of Birth: 14 Feb 1894
Country: USA
Biography: Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky, February 14, 1894 - December 26, 1974) was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film. Widely recognized as one of the leading American entertainers of the 20th century, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age, and often playing the violin badly. Benny was known for his comic timing and his ability to get laughs...(Wikipedia)
Total Credits at Criticker: 50 (Actor), 1 (Director)
Biography last updated by hellboy76, and picture by Gauntlet
Find more information about Jack Benny at The Internet Movie Database
Titles you haven't rated - Actor (50) | Director (1)
The Unknown Marx Brothers (1993) - TV Movie
Leslie Nielsen hosts this retrospective of the Marx Brothers, from their early career on stage to their post-film career in television... (imdb)
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In occupied Poland during WWII, a troupe of ham stage actors (led by Joseph Tura and his wife Maria) match wits with the Nazis... (imdb)
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The dying words of a thief spark a madcap cross-country rush to find some treasure. (imdb)
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As those who are old enough to have lived through the Great Depression disappear, the era seems more and more remote; it's nearly impossible for later generations to understand just how desperate things were in the United States in the 1930s. Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? captures not only the history but also the culture of the time in a rather unusual documentary format (Amazon)
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Robert Morse convinces his best friend Walter Matthau that he should fool around with other women in order to preserve his happy marriage... (imdb)
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The Mouse That Jack Built (1959) - Short Film
In this spoof of "The Jack Benny Program", a mouse with Jack Benny's personality and poor violin playing ability lives, along with a mouse version of Benny's valet, Rochester, in a hole in a wall of Jack Benny's own home. Jack the rodent takes a mouse version of Mary Livingstone out to dinner, and the two unwittingly walk right into the disguised mouth of an orange cat! (imdb)
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Cab Waiting (1931) - Short Film
In an erudite driver's taxi, Jack Benny shares a ride with a very pretty and delightfully flirtatious young lady. (imdb)
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Falling asleep during the Paradise Coffee Program, the band's third trumpeter dreams he's Athanael, an angel deputized to blow the Last Trumpet at exactly midnight on Earth. But Osidro and Doremus, two fallen angels enjoying the physical pleasures of an earthly existence, try to steal Athanael's trumpet, enlisting the aid of suave jewel thief Archie Dexter. Athanael fumbles his first try when he saves Archie's accomplice, Fran, from suicide. (imdb)
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Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust is a documentary which examines how filmmakers reacted to German scapegoating of Jews before, during, and after the war, ranging from the boldness of Confessions of a Nazi Spy and The Mortal Storm (both of which were produced before America entered the war) to more oblique statements during the war itself, and then finally leading to an honest portrayal of the full consequences of the Holocaust beginning in the '50s. (New York Times)
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Lovely, gifted Irene Foster hopes that her childhood sweetheart-turned Broadway producer Robert Gordon will recognize her--and her talent. Gordon is too busy sparring with a dirt-dishing gossip columnist to notice, but his wisecracking, heart-of-gold secretary certainly does. She and Irene must use their wits to show him what he's missing! (imdb)
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New Yorkers Bill and Connie Fuller have to move from their apartment. Without Bill's knowledge, Connie purchases a delapidated old farmhouse in Pennsylvania, where George Washington was supposed to have actually slept during the American Revolution. Much of the humor comes from the couple's many problems they encounter while trying to fix up the place. (imdb)
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A serviceman and a starlet find love at the star-staffed serviceman's center. (TCM.com)
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A cheating husband convinces his wife his flirtations are actually spy missions. (imdb)
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On an ocean liner, an inept scoutmaster pursues a duchess while a killer pursues him. (imdb)
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The film plays out like a Broadway variety show, a romantic comedy plot at its center but with musical numbers, dancers, and a full-blown finale with Martha Raye & Louis Armstrong. (okierazorbacker@yahoo.com)
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Biopic of the political career of Jimmy Walker, flamboyant and somewhat corrupt Mayor of New York City from 1926-1932. (imdb)
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Jack Benny (as himself) tries to make good his fictitious boasts about roughing it in Nevada, in a spoof of Western cliches. (imdb)
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In 1890, two students at Oxford force their rascally friend and fellow student to pose as an aunt from Brazil--where the nuts come from. (imdb)
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The ringmaster of a flea circus inherits a fortune...if he can find which chair it's hidden in. (imdb)
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Buck Boswell and his all-girl troupe are stranded in Paris, but Buck manages to con the manager of the 'Hotel de Navarre' in furnishing accommodations for his group, but the proprietor's wife locks them out. In his search for funds, Buck meets Patricia Harper, the fourth-richest girl in the world, but he isn't aware of that and thinks she is penniless. Patricia joins his troupe as a lark, and her father, James Harper, also pretends he is broke. (imdb)
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A cream-of-the-crop gathering of 1930's radio stars, who lend themselves to a storyline about a failing radio station which needs to put on a huge ratings winner to have any chance of continued operation. An interesting mixture of the stars whose fame continued to grow, those who became bit players in show business history, and those who have been forgotten entirely, except at the Internet Movie Database of course! (imdb)
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Compassionate small-town lawyer Richard Clarke moves to New York City to seek his fortune, but is unsuccessful until he takes a friend's advice and tries to convince the world he's a ruthless heel. Suddenly he's the most popular lawyer in town -- but he could lose his fiancée. (imdb)
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Some bright young men are invited to spend the summer with a lady hotelier interested in eugenics. (imdb)
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Calvin Churchill, a confidence-man, and his sidekick/stooge, "Clip" McGurk, are being pursued by an Internal Revenue agent, Henry Potke, for their failure to file an income-tax on the advice of a shyster lawyer. They are hiding out at the Desert Springs Hotel-Resort, where Calvin is working a scam by posing as a stratosphere-flyer who is looking at making Desert Springs the base of his operations. (imdb)
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A Broadway Romeo (1931) - Short Film
Jack Benny, his finances at a low ebb, watches a newsstand for a friend and picks up a young lady customer, equally broke. (imdb)
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Taxi Tangle (1931) - Short Film
Caught in a 5th Avenue traffic jam, as they are riding in side-by-side taxicab and limousine, Jack Benny (Jack Benny) and Helen Hunt (Francetta Malloy), engage in conversation that leads to a hasty marriage. It isn't long before Benny is calling on the justice-of-peace again to sever the marriage. (imdb)
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The road-show troupe of a top Broadway show go cross-country while taking the audience along on the on-stage scenes as well as what happens and is happening back stage of the production. The spectacular dancing ensembles and colorful costumes and pulchritude on-stage offers a contrasting background to the drabness of the backstage, where joy, sorrow, tragedies, deception, and romance are intertwined. (imdb)
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The son and daughter of an abusive shopkeeper turn to a medicine show salesman for help. (imdb)
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Swing Out, Sweet Land (1970) - TV Movie
The 80-minute show is basically a thumbnail history of the United States, with Wayne tracing the development of the nation with the show's centerpiece, a single, giant set: a soundstage-size map of the continental United States. Like a mammoth jigsaw puzzle, new states are added one-by-one and, when Wayne gets to the Civil War, the whole thing splits in two with the force of a volcanic eruption.
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In the first of Paramount's "Headliner" series, narrator Ted Husing travels up and down and around Broadway and other main stem New York City locations, and views the likes of Earl Carroll picking show-girls for hie Varieties; Al Jolson and Jack Benny rehearsing their radio programs; and other celebs, such as Gary Cooper visiting The Big Apple, and Bea Lillie and Sophie Tucker and others caught by the Headliner camera. (imdb)
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The Song Writers' Revue (1930) - Short Film
This short showcases composers and lyricists of songs that are now considered standards of American popular music. For the complete list of songs performed, check the soundtrack listing. For several of these song writers, this is their only known appearance in a theatrically released film. (imdb)
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Jack Benny is preparing his New Year's Eve radio broadcast but takes time out to take his valet Rochester to meet his girlfriend Josephine arriving on a steamer. Fred Allen and his sister Barbara are also en route to the dock to meet Barbara's daughter Mary, returning from a personal appearance tour in South America. Josephine is her maid. Their cars get involved in an accident and, in a bumping contest, Fred reduces Jack's old Maxwell to junk, and is taken to jail. (imdb)
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Producer Bob Temple, who's brought an American show to London, loves his star Diana, but she won't take him seriously as a lover. To show her, he picks up stranger Lady Arlington, whose financier husband neglects her. On a weekend at the Arlington country house, Bob is used by both Lady A. and her friend to make their husbands jealous; this works all too well, and Bob is in danger from both husbands. (imdb)
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Underworld king Lee Lother has been killed aboard a ocean liner, several people could have been the murderer. There is his mistress Anya Roysen, a married woman, who was jealous of his flirtations with his old moll, night club singer Sally Marsh, who had agreed for one last night with Lother, to get her younger brother Ned out of the Lother's clutches because he has faked Lother's name on a check to pay his gambling debts. (imdb)
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The Jack Benny Show (1950) - TV Series
The comic misadventures of the skinflint comedian and his friends.
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The Slowest Gun in the West (1960) - TV Movie
The town of Primrose, Arizona is beset by outlaws, so the towns people hire Fletcher Bissell III (A.K.A. The Silver Dollar Kid) as their new sheriff. Fletcher is so cowardly the townsfolk are sure that the local outlaws will be too proud to gun him down. This proves to be the case, and the outlaws hire their own cowardly gunfighter, Chicken Farnsworth, to go up against The Silver Dollar Kid.
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This is Your Life (1952) - TV Series
Each week, an unsuspecting celebrity would be lured by some ruse to a location near the studio. The celebrity would then be surprised with the news that they are to be the featured guest. Next, the celebrity was escorted into the studio, and one by one, people who were significant in the guest's life would be brought out to offer anecdotes. At the end of the show, family members and friends would surround the guest, who would then be presented with gifts. (imdb)
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A retrospective on the life and career of actor Gary Cooper, includes memorial scenes from his best films. Narrated by Clint Eastwood. (imdb)
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Three of a Kind (1941) - Short Film
Promotional short for Archie Mayo's film "Charley's Aunt" (imdb)
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A drunkard climbs a ladder into a bedroom in the wrong house and gets romantically involved with the woman who lives there.
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Blossom Seeley climbs to Broadway success with her partner Benny Fields, then retires to become his wife.
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Bob Hope's Funniest Moments (2001) - Direct-to-Video
The incredible career of comedian Bob Hope, who died at the grand old age of 100 in July 2003, is celebrated in this hour long special.
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The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast: Lucille Ball (1975) - TV Special
Legendary comedienne Lucille Ball is roasted by Jack Benny, Milton Berle, Foster Brooks, Rich Little, and Don Rickles among others.
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The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast: Bob Hope (1974) - TV Special
Dean Martin hosts a star studded celebrity roast of Bob Hope.
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Actor Joe E. Brown narrates this compilation of film clips and behind-the-scenes footage of some of the screen's most famous comics, ranging from Ben Turpin and Fatty Arbuckle to W. C. Fields and Andy Clyde.
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Screen Snapshots: Memorial to Al Jolson (1952) - Short Film
Jack Benny narrates the Screen Snapshots that, utilizing archive footage, traces the career of Al Jolson, and rare off-stage shots of Jolson with stars such as Bob Hope, Eddie Cantor and Pat O'Brien.
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Stars in the Eye (1952) - TV Special
Various CBS stars appear in this one hour variety program about the opening of the brand new $7 million dollar CBS Television City Studios.
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