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A special salute to honor Jack Benny month. Watch for more special features through the month of February, the month of Jack Benny’s birthday.
In today’s show, I look at the first three times that Buck Benny made his appearance. The sketch would appear for months to come, and was so popular that eventually a full length movie would be made about the characters.
In the first clip, Buck begins his chase after the elusive Cactus Face. However, the bandit never quite gets caught, and Kenny Baker’s anticzs interupt the show. It’s all part of an earlier gag in the episode that mentions that this is also Kenny’s first anniversary with the show.
In the second clip, the saga continues as Buck proves that he’s the toughest man around. We begin to get a closer look at the characters. Daisy, Buck’s girlfriend, and her drunken dad played by Phil, for a couple examples. Everything that happens is nothing more than a set up for a punchline. Not to mention the sponsor’s product gets in on the comedy as well. As usual, running gags from earlier in the show carry over. In this one it has to do with Phil’s being late and his giggling stand in, played by Mel Blank appears, and a phone call for comes from Ginger Rogers.
The final clip finds Buck still on the trail of the cattle rustling
Cactus Face. Buck leaves his love interest, Daisy, to face off with the bandit in the salloon. Uh-oh, while Don pitches the sponsor, Cactus Face makes a hasty get away.
Bonus Tracks:
None today, just keeping this short.
Trivia: In Jack’s first 4 years on the air, he had 4 sponsors. He insisted on doing comedy commercials in the shows, and despite listeners writing in to say they loved the humorous ads, the sponsors all wanted their ads to be serious. Jello agreed to let Jack use humor, and the relationship between Jello and Jack was a long one, ending only during World War 2.
