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Jack Benny was born Benjamin Kubelsky in Chicago, Illinois in 1894, but he grew up in nearby Waukegan, Illinois. He was the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, and he started playing the violin at 6 years of age. He was kicked out of school and failed at every regular business he tried, so while still a teen he started playing the violin at vaudeville houses. He had a series of straight musical acts (and changed his name and the act's name several times) and he even "played the Palace" (the greatest vaudeville theater) but he bombed out and joined the Navy. He played the violin for the sailors, and when they booed him he started telling jokes about how bad he was, and they loved it, and his act was born! He left the Navy and returned to vaudeville with a one-man violin comedy act, and in 1922 he met Sadye Marks, and and they married in 1927, and she joined his act under the name of Mary Livingstone. In 1929, MGM signed him to a contract but they didn't know what to do with him and he only made a few movies, and he went to the Earl Carroll's Vanities. In 1932, he started The Jack Benny Program on NBC radio, and it was a huge hit. He soon developed the exact same persona he later used on his TV show, with the center around his cheapness and his vanity, and he was the butt of most jokes. He had a great mock feud with Fred Allen, and his wife played his girlfriend on the radio show, and all the main people who were later on the TV show were also on the radio show, including Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, the great African American performer. The radio show had all the characters playing "themselves" and they would spend each episode in "real-life" situations. In 1950, Benny moved the show to TV, where it was equally popular, and audiences finally got to see what a master physical comedian he was, with his dead-pan facial expressions and gestures. Entire books can and have been written about how wonderful Benny's show was, and if you have never seen it, I urge you to get some and see some of the best TV comedy of all time! You'll see how Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld pretty much lifted the entire premise of their show from Benny (not that there's anything wrong with that) and Johnny Carson's entire comic delivery came largely from Jack Benny's. Of course, Jack Benny also made some movies in the 1930s and 1940s, and some were quite good. Likely the best of these was as Shakespearian actor Joseph Tura in Ernst Lubitsch's "To Be or Not to Be" ("So they call me Concentration Camp Erhard!"). Benny had so many great recurring gags (he was always 39, he was a terrible violin player, etc, etc), and his ensemble cast was a well oiled machine that never failed (and most of the biggest names in Hollywood consented to guest on his show). See at least a few of episodes of his TV show and you are likely to become hooked! Benny passed away in 1974 at the age of 80 AND Loretta Young was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1913. Those of you who remember her as the super-elegant, proper, sweet and saintly well-dressed beauty from her 1950s TV show may well be surprised to learn of her earlier life! Her parents separated when she was three, and her mother moved her and her two older sisters to Los Angeles. She had some minor film roles as a child, and then went to parochial school, but when she was 14 she returned to acting. At 15 she got a huge break, in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, where she played the creepy role of the orphan adopted as a child by circus clown Lon Chaney Sr., and when she becomes a teen Chaney decides he is in love with her and wants to marry her! Between 1928 and 1933 she appeared in an amazing 44 movies, most for First National, often in very sexy roles, in movies like They Call It Sin, Life Begins (when she played a female convict who gives birth in prison), Play-Girl, and Too Young to Marry. Audiences loved this young, sexy child-like actress with giant eyes and couldn't get enough of her! In 1933 Loretta, who had just turned 20, but had already been in 50 movies, left First National for Fox (soon to merge with Twentieth Century Pictures and become 20th Century Fox) and at first she played some similar roles to what she had played earlier (like the starring role in Born to Be Bad), but she soon was getting a variety of more substantial roles. In 1930, Loretta had married co-star Grant Withers, but the marriage was annulled less than a year later. In 1935 she co-starred in The Call of the Wild with Clark Gable, and she had a an alleged affair with Gable (she later stated that he he acquaintance raped her) that resulted in Young getting pregnant. Since Gable was married, the resulting scandal might well have ruined both their careers, so Young took a long "vacation"! She returned to Hollywood with not one, but two babies, and made the bizarre announcement that this single 22 year old was "adopting" two babies! Apparently she knew that the public would catch on if she returned with just one baby, so she found another baby to adopt, and then pretended to adopt both babies, and somehow she pulled it off (maybe the public really knew, but liked her so much they forgave her!). Only late in her life would she admit that her daughter was actually her and Gable's baby, but photos of their child made that obvious, for she looked like a perfect merge of Young and Gable! Young resumed being a leading lady and was active in movies through the rest of the 1930s, and 1940s. In 1940 she married Tom Lewis, with whom she had two more children. In 1947, Young (who was still quite beautiful, in spite of having starred in movies for 20 years) had one of her best years ever, starring in The Bishop's Wife, The Farmer's Daughter (winner of the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and The Perfect Marriage, all in the same year! In 1949 she was in Come To The Stable (nominated for the Best Actress Academy Award for this film), and in 1953 she moved to TV, starring in what is today called "The Loretta Young Show", but which was actually called "Letter to Loretta", and it had a different drama each week, all of which starred Loretta. It was one of the most popular shows of the 1950s In 1963 she retired from TV, and in 1969 she divorced Lewis, and from 1963 to 1986, she did not appear in any TV or movie role until she re-surfaced in a TV movie in 1986 and another in 1989, looking wonderful! She passed away in 2000 at the age of 87, after being married to famous designer Jean Louis from 1993 until his passing in 1997.

Important Added Info: Note that this news photo measures 7" x 9 1/4" [18 x 23 cm].

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