CBS Announces That They Will Not Release the "Jack Benny Show" on DVD

[Brian Damage]

Two dozen recently rediscovered episodes of the long-running series starring one of Johnny Carson's idols won’t be released from the vault to be put on DVDs because CBS won’t let them, the New York Post reports.

The series is the classic "Jack Benny Show." Carson made no secret about how much he admired Benny.


Laura Leff, president of The International Jack Benny Fan Club, told the paper that the fan club had offered to pay for the digital transfer and preservation of the episodes, but CBS refused, citing unspecified issues that Leff thought were costs associated with potential musical copyrights.


The episodes were discovered in 2008; the show aired from 1950-64.


The paper didn’t say what CBS’ comment was.

http://www.nypost.com/p/entertainmen...9inaGa1S9JqDxM

[TV_Fan]

Yet again CBS Paramount screws its shows fans because it doesn't want to be bothered licensing music or whatever else needs to be done to bring episodes a classic show to DVD. They still claim to "put classsic TV on a pedestal". Yeah!

[Mr. Television]

They rather remake classic shows than let people watch the true versions.

[Zoneboy]

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...CBS might not even own the copyrights on Benny's 1950-'55 TV shows anymore, because I believe they failed to properly renew them between 1978 and 1983. Let me explain:

The network bought Jack's production company, "Amusement Enterprises, Inc." in the fall of 1948, enabling him to move his radio show from NBC to CBS in January 1949 (thus shifting the balance of his listeners to their Sunday night schedule, seriously damaging NBC's ratings momentum for several years). "Amusement Enterprises" originally owned and controlled "THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM" [and several other assets]; when CBS bought him out, they became the owner of his show and the copyright on it, as well.

When he began his TV series in 1950 [a series of specials at first, gradually becoming a bi-weekly series by the fall of 1954, the last season he continued his weekly radio show], it was officially registered to "CBS Television". This included all of his "live" programs {preserved on kinescope film} and several filmed episodes between 1953 and '55, produced by his old friend George Burns' "McCadden Productions" on the General Service Studios lot (Jack initally filmed a few episodes in advance, enabling him to fulfill other engagements, or to allow him a few weeks "off" from time to time).

By the fall of 1955, Jack decided to regain control of his TV series- and its copyright- by organizing another production company, "J & M Productions, Inc.". According to his manager Irving Fein [in his book on Benny], Jack told him he was worried that, should his ratings were to ever decrease, CBS might force him to accept a pay cut, as they owned his show ["technically, he was still an employee of CBS", Fein noted]. He saw what his friend George Burns- and Lucy & Desi- were doing financially by controlling their own programs, and wanted a "guaranteed income" by again owning and producing his show, and others "in case his own show was ever in trouble", Fein recalled. Jack did produce, or co-produce, several other programs, most of them short-lived {"THE GISELE MacKENZIE SHOW", Wayne & Shuster's "HOLIDAY LODGE", "ICHABOD AND ME", etc.}, with one exeception: "CHECKMATE" (1960-'62), through his "JaMco Productions" banner.

By 1960, when he began appearing every week, Jack's representatives at MCA convinced him to begin filming more episodes (as opposed to "live" or videotaped editions), in order to make his "inventory" more valuable; he eventually filmed about half of his episodes every season, videotaping the rest at CBS Television City [and NBC, during his final season]; Jack preferred to deliver more "topical" material, which he couldn't do on film, as those episodes were designed to be "timeless", and endlessly repeated unto eternity. In 1962, MCA convinced Jack to sell "J & M Productions", and his filmed library, to them for a tidy profit (and a "block" of MCA stock). They controlled his TV series until it ended in 1965, and continued to own the copyrights on them as well. MCA's successor, NBC/Universal, still owns the 1955-'65 filmed episodes of "THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM" {they don't bother with the "live" and videotaped episodes, as they're of no value to them}.

As for Jack's 1965-'74 NBC specials, he set up "J.B. Productions" to produce them; those are still controlled by the Benny estate.


If it's a matter of "musical copyrights", that should be easily settled by dealing with Mahlon Merrick's estate. He was Jack's arranger/conductor for 30 years [even though Phil Harris, and later Bob Crosby, supposedly "led" the show's orchestra on radio and TV]; he retired when Jack's weekly series ended in 1965, and passed away in 1969. He often reused his music cues on Benny's live programs.

[bencasey]

Great info in that post. The one thing I've never been able to determine is how many of the shows were actually filmed. I know there wasn't a year when it changed as they were doing different things every season. I never heard about the videotaping of shows but it doesn't surprise me. I don't think the tapes actually still exist and I think those shows are preserved as kinescopes the same as the live ones are.

By the way, whoever started the thread doesn't know what they're talking about. This whole thing was basically some woman who runs the Benny fan club trying to get the shows out of CBS for her own collection. She wanted to "preserve" them? She's not an archivist or a museum. Almost all of the shows CBS has are in the Benny collection at UCLA anyway. She just tried running a scam to get these shows for herself, nothing less, nothing more. And not a very good scam at that.

[Zoneboy]

Originally Posted by bencasey

By the way, whoever started the thread doesn't know what they're talking about.

Don't blame Brian, He only posted the article, He didn't actually write it.

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...until 1954, Jack appeared every few weeks or so, because he was still doing his weekly radio series [that ended in 1955], and he didn't want to "burn himself out" by tackling a weekly TV show until he considered himself "ready"; he wasn't going to make the same mistake that some TV comedians made, like Red Buttons (he was good, but his material became "mediocre", and viewers drifted away from him, even though he followed "I LOVE LUCY" in 1953-'54). So Benny appeared four times during his first TV season, in 1950-'51; six times during 1951-'52; eight in 1952-'53, and thirteen during the 1953-'54 season {notice the progression?}. He began filming several episodes in late 1953, using those, as previously mentioned, to enable him to fulfill other engagements or "relax" from time to time. There were three filmed episodes in the '53-'54 season, but those were never syndicated, mostly due to residual fees [especially the amount Bing Crosby asked for when he was Jack's guest, with George Burns, in the "Goldie, Fields & Glide" episode in March 1954; that was repeated only once, in June 1956, and went "right into the vault". It was only seen again after it fell into "public domain" in the '80s].

From 1954 through 1960, Jack appeared in about 16 episodes every season, alternating with other programs {"PRIVATE SECRETARY", "BACHELOR FATHER", "THE GEORGE GOBEL SHOW"}. He filmed four episodes each season from 1954 through '58 (the rest were "live"), then about six from '58 to '60.

As I've said, when Jack finally began a weekly series in the fall of 1960, his agents at MCA insisted he film more episodes to make his filmed inventory more "financially attractive" in the future. Fortunately, Benny had a habit of repeating his best sketches and ideas from radio and his early live TV shows over the years, and those were basically the ones he committed to film {i.e., the "prison sketch" he did with Ernie Kovacs, "live", in January 1959 [that show won his writers an Emmy award], was filmed with Mickey Rooney and seen in April 1962....there was a parody of "The Killers" (in a diner, with Benny as "Charlie Gundelfinger") that Jack did with Edward G. Robinson on his radio show in November 1946; he did it again with Richard Widmark in November 1950; and on film with Dan Duryea (as "The Lunch Counter Murder") in December 1960....and how about his parody of radio's "THE WHISTLER"? His version, "The Fiddler", appeared on radio in 1946 and 1952, and again on TV in 1957 ("live") and 1964 (film)}.

So, Jack did 26 episodes in 1960-'61; at least 15 of those were on film- the rest were videotaped [that was the season Jack stopped appearing "live", as taking advantage of tape made his production schedule easier]. Between 1962 and '64, though, Jack filmed at least 20 of his 28 weekly episodes during those seasons. However, in his final weekly season on NBC (1964-'65), his schedule consisted of 28 shows, with 10 on film.

Officially, there are 104 filmed episodes of "THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM" available. But more were filmed, and some withheld for residual or legal reasons [i.e., Jack's January 1959 parody of "Gaslight", first peformed on radio in 1945, and again on TV, "live", in 1952, was the subject of a lawsuit by MGM, who claimed Jack's version was "too close" to their original film. They won, and that went into the vault as a result, as was a November 1959 episode featuring Jack Webb, where they did a parody of "Charlie Chan"- the widow of Earl Derr Biggers, who wrote the original Chan novels, sued because of "plagarism" involving the character (and she didn't particularly care for the sketch)].

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...and you're probably right about the original videotaped episodes no longer existing. Those episodes were saved on kinescope film, as you noted, so they're "safe".

[bencasey]

Great info. Where did you find this out from? I emailed that Benny fan club lady a while back and even she didn't know what the amounts were. Although that doesn't surprise me. So there are certainly more than 104 filmed episodes that exist. Any idea how many more? 104 is a rather odd amount for a syndication package so I guess we can assume that any filmed show that's not in the package was due to rights issues or residuals issues. And correct me if I'm wrong, but MCA didn't put any of the videotaped or kinescoped shows in the package. Is there anywhere that exists a list of the 104 shows that are in the syndication package?

I believe that the total number of episodes made comes out to 259 (not counting the pilot). Of that amount, all but 27 are in the Benny collection at UCLA. And of those missing shows, the vast majority (22 of the 27) are from the two year period of 1954-56. Of the 30 shows done in those 2 years, only 8 are in the collection. From the list of shows that CBS has copies of, 5 of the missing 27 reside in their vaults, leaving only 22 shows from the run unaccounted for. I've spoken with UCLA and I know they want to do something to get the shows released. At least the non-filmed episodes anyway as the filmed ones are now owned by Universal. But that should still leave well over 100 shows to choose from.

[catlover79]

Boy, that stinks. Any way you look at it, the losers are always the fans.

[Retro76]

Originally Posted by Zoneboy

Love that statement! Great job! That is very true indeed!

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...there were several sources I've gotten my information about the exact number of Benny's "live", videotaped and filmed progams:

*"Television Comedy Series", by Joel Eisner & David Krinsky (1984), which lists virtually all of the filmed episodes MCA/Universal distributed [104]; for some reason, the authors omitted several of them, including 1963's "Jack Is Kidnapped" and 1964's "The Fiddler".

*"Jack Benny: The Radio and Television Work", by the Museum of Television and Radio (1991), which provided synopses of most of the key episodes featured in their collection [the joint is known these days as "The Paley Center For Media"].

*Microfilmed copies of the NEW YORK TIMES' television pages (courtesy of my local library) documenting the original telecasts from 1950 through '65...

*epguides.com and tv.com, which lists virtually every episode telecast in the series- however, they omitted the December 18, 1955 "live" episode featuring Edgar and Frances Bergen [the main sketch, where Jack meets "Charlie McCarthy" and "Mortimer Snerd", Bergen's dummies, in the flesh, was restaged on film in March 1959]. I read the script for the 1955 version in a 1956 paperback highlighting "The Best Comedy of 1955-56".

And yes, MCA never included kinescoped or videotaped episodes in their "package" because, as I've previously mentioned, they preferred filmed episodes with virtually no topical references that would "date" them- their library of filmed series was supposed to be "timeless", designed to appear in syndication on local stations for years. Besides, most stations used kinescope film prints only for certain programs- either from a network [if they were unable to carry "live" transmissions of certain shows], or syndicated series that were "live" or videotaped, including Bob Clampett's "TIME FOR BEANY" in the '50s and "THE SOUPY SALES SHOW" in 1965-'66.

[bencasey]

Great info. The interesting thing about the Krinsky listing is that of the 104 episodes he lists, 4 are not in the syndication package while a different 4 are. I'm just wondering what the story is with that. Were there shows originally syndicated which somewhere along the way were pulled out for some reason and replaced by 4 others? One of the episodes in the listing was When Jack Found Rochester, which you would think would be an important episode. That episode's removal lends me to thinking that perhaps it was deemed to be offensive by the P.C. police and may have been removed at some point. And perhaps that may be the case with the other 4 as well.

One episode that I'm curious about that is also on film and never syndicated is the Rod Serling episode where he plays Mr. Zone. There's a 6-minute segment from the episode on the Twilight Zone box set. But the full episode is very rare.

If Universal was only interested in the filmed shows, would the ownership of all of the live and videotaped ones still be with the Benny estate?

I wonder if there was ever a larger package of filmed episodes syndicated. I saw a number of 149 in a syndication book that went back to the early 70s. Not that those books don't have their share of mistakes as well but I wonder if there even are that many filmed episodes.

Other than the Charlie Bergen episode, are there any other shows that you've found to have been done that are not on that tv.com episode guide?
What about the thing that they list as a pilot, done a year before he started doing actual shows? Do you have any info on that at all?

[TV Knowledge Fan]

...so you've read Eisner & Krisnky's book? As good as they were gathering the information on each series they documented, even they weren't infallible on almost all of them: for example, there was a "block" of episodes omitted from the final season of their list of "THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW" (I found out from Joel, when my friend and I met him at a New York "sci-fi convention" years ago, that was due to a printing error). As for their list of the filmed Benny episodes, there might have been some that were "pulled" from the syndication package in later years {including the "How Jack Found Rochester" episode (which was adapted from a 1937 "storyline" where Jack initially met Rochester [as a train porter] , eventually becoming his valet and "housekeeper") which was restaged over the years, of course, on radio and TV (the video version was first presented "live" in January 1956, on film in January 1962)- personally, I don't remember seeing that episode}. Incidentally, the Rod Serling episode [January, 1963] might have been omitted for "legal" reasons...

When the "inventory" of filmed episodes were first utilized, they were "leased" to CBS for the fall of 1964 [before Jack returned to NBC] for use on their daytime schedule. 26 of them [mostly between 1955 and '61] were seen on "SUNDAY WITH JACK BENNY", a late Sunday afternoon repeat airing at 5pm(et), with new opening and closing titles {and theme, "The Waukegan Walk", by Mahlon Merrick- some of the syndicated prints still feature those opening or closing credits from that version}. The rest were seen five afternoons a week [4:30-5pm] as "THE JACK BENNY DAYTIME SHOW" (to distinguish the repeats from the first-run episodes airing on NBC's Friday night schedule that season)- and I believe several of the videotaped episodes were also included in that "package" as well {I recall reading an issue of TV GUIDE from that period, and "The Three Musketeers" episode from December 1963 was one of them, which wasn't syndicated, and it wasn't on film}. After Jack's series left NBC in September 1965, and CBS' one year deal to repeat the earlier episodes had ended, MCA finally offered the filmed episodes in syndication.

Obviously, copies of kinescopes- and any videotapes existing- of the series were given to Benny as part of his contract [same with Jackie Gleason's variety shows of the '50s and '60s, which is why "THE HONEYMOONERS: The Lost Episodes" is seen these days, and Loretta Young received copies of her filmed 1953-'61 anthology series as well]....that's why his family donated them to UCLA. Benny saved just about everything from his broadcasting career, including leather-bound volumes of his radio scripts and transcriptions- and thank God he did, because the networks often didn't! Whenever one of the "live" (or videotaped) episodes is seen in an excerpt on documentaries and the like, the Benny estate is usually credited with furnishing them. If it's a filmed episode, then it's "Courtesy of NBC/Universal".

The "pilot" you described was actually a live special Jack participated in for the local CBS station in Los Angeles, KTTV, when it first went on the air in March 1949. It was his first TV appearance, but he decided to wait until October 1950 to make his own "official" national TV debut (in a 45 minute program).