I thought it was only at work I hit the generational gap, lol. He used a violin in his scetches and would screech it big time, always had a dumb founded look, rubbing his chin, and was 39 years old-40+ TIMES.
Like, who is Patty Hurst.....
How about the Cowsill's, Michael Knight with KIT the car? My favorite martian, My Mother the car, The Munsters, Adams family, Batman and Robin....American Bandstand, Steel Pier, Dr. Kildare, Luke and Laura's wedding 25 years ago....
Di
Here is Jack Benny,
Jack Benny (February 14, 1894, Chicago, Illinois – December 26, 1974, Beverly Hills, California), born Benjamin Kubelsky, was an American comedian, vaudeville performer, and radio, television, and film actor. He was one of the biggest stars in classic American radio and was also a major television personality.
Benny may have been the first standup comedian, as the term is known, as well as one of the first to work with what became the situation comedy. He was renowned for his flawless comic timing and (especially) his ability to get laughs with either a pregnant pause or a single expression. In hand with his great "rival" Fred Allen — their long-running "feud" was one of the greatest running gags in comedy history — Benny helped establish a basic palette from which comedy since has rarely deviated, no matter how extreme or experimental it has become in their wake
Running gags
Benny teamed with Fred Allen, of course, for the best-remembered running gag in classic radio history, in terms of character dialogue. (By far, the best-remembered running gag of sound was Fibber McGee's clattering, cluttered closet.) But Benny alone sustained a classic repertoire of running gags in his own right, including his skinflint radio and television persona,
his continuing age of 39, and his (ahem) atonal violin playing. (His periodic violin teacher, Professor LeBlanc — played by the "Man of a Thousand Voices" Mel Blanc — often cried during their lessons ... when he didn't throw up his hands and threaten some variation of suicide or nervous breakdown.)
Benny even had a sound-based running gag of his own: his famous basement vault alarm, ringing off with a shattering cacophony of whistles, sirens, bells, and blasts, before ending invariably with the sound of a foghorn. The alarm rang off even when Benny opened his safe with the correct combination. The vault also featured a guard named Ed (voiced by Joseph Kearns) who had been on post down below before, apparently, the end of the Civil War, and the founding of Los Angeles. (In his first appearance in a 1945 show, which aired shortly after the end of World War II, Ed asked Benny, "Is the war over yet?" "Yes, it's over," Benny replied. "Well, who won?" asked Ed. "The North or the South?")
In one episode of the Benny radio show, Ed the Guard actually agreed when Jack invited him to take a break and come back to the surface world — only to discover that modern conveniences and transportation, which hadn't been around the last time he'd been to the surface, terrorised and confused him. (Poor Ed thought a crosstown bus was "a red and yellow dragon.") Finally, Ed decides to return down to his post by the fathoms-below vault and stay there.
The Basement vault gag was also used on a The Lucy Show episode.
In keeping with his "stingy" schtick, on one of his television specials he remarked that, to his way of looking at things, a "special" is when the price of coffee is marked down.
The explanation usually given for the "stuck on 39" running joke is that he had celebrated his birthday on-air when he turned 39, and decided to do the same the following year, because "there's nothing funny about 40". Upon his death, having celebrated his 39th birthday 41 times, some newspapers continued the joke with headlines such as "Jack Benny Dies - At 39?"