Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Nonfiction, Entertainment, Theatre, Comedy, Humour & Comedy, Biography & Memoir, Entertainment & Performing Arts
Cover of the book Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy by Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley, University of California Press
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Author: Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley ISBN: 9780520967946
Publisher: University of California Press Publication: October 17, 2017
Imprint: University of California Press Language: English
Author: Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
ISBN: 9780520967946
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication: October 17, 2017
Imprint: University of California Press
Language: English

The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio’s endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show’s humor. Through the character of the vain, cheap everyman, Benny created a fall guy, whose frustrated struggles with his employees addressed midcentury America’s concerns with race, gender, commercialism, and sexual identity. Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley contextualizes her analysis of Jack Benny and his entourage with thoughtful insight into the intersections of competing entertainment industries and provides plenty of evidence that transmedia stardom, branded entertainment, and virality are not new phenomena but current iterations of key aspects in American commercial cultural history.

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The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio’s endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show’s humor. Through the character of the vain, cheap everyman, Benny created a fall guy, whose frustrated struggles with his employees addressed midcentury America’s concerns with race, gender, commercialism, and sexual identity. Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley contextualizes her analysis of Jack Benny and his entourage with thoughtful insight into the intersections of competing entertainment industries and provides plenty of evidence that transmedia stardom, branded entertainment, and virality are not new phenomena but current iterations of key aspects in American commercial cultural history.

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