Jack Benny

Audio Tape and a Long Quest Regarding a Showbusiness Legend

It started with TV specials, I guess. Jack Benny (born Benjamin Kubelsky on February 14, 1894) – a comedian whom I had seen periodically on network television started fixing himself into my consciousness during has last years on Earth. Benny did a series of “Farewell Specials” on NBC ending in early 1974, when I was nearly 12, by which point I had learned to adore his name, prompted, without a doubt, by my parents’ reaction to him which consisted of similar adoration. It was in that last year of his life that I learned I had once been in the room with him and that my parents knew him and had even entertained him. I was too young (or too asleep) to have remembered most of the encounters.