Jack Benny, Strad and Kruetzer

[concertA]

So, all of us old enough to remember, know that Jack Benny played Kruetzer #2 ad infinitum and played a Strad, right?

What was his violin playing background? Did he take lessons as a child-hence his knowledge of the Kruetzer etudes? Where did he get his Strad? And now, where is his violin? Is it part of his estate? Did they sell it?

Just some random thoughts and questions about Jack Benny that maybe some of you might know about.

[Mark_W]

The question has come up before but my search was unsuccessful. From what I heard a good while back, the Strad is no longer in Jack Benny's family.

Jack Benny did have lessons, and was much better than the couple of seconds of the Kreutzer #2 they used to play would indicate. Stern said Benny was a very quick study, had great rhythm and could sight read very fast. The only thing holding him back was that he 'didn't have the hands' for violin, whatever that means.

[ondinaperret]

A few links with contradictory information! :

The best-known American amateur to own a Strad was the late Jack Benny, who saw tremendous gag possibilities in possessing such a valuable fiddle, given his comedic persona as a vain tightwad who fancied himself a great violinist.

Benny, who studied violin as a child, had made his scratchy playing a running joke for years. In 1955, however, he began taking lessons again at the age of 61 in order to perform in benefit concerts for symphony orchestras and other worthy causes, including the drive to save New York City's Carnegie Hall. His old friend Isaac Stern noted that Benny was a superb sight reader of music who had a good ear and an excellent sense of rhythm, albeit limited abilities at fingering and bowing. On rare occasions, he could pull off a performance that even Stern admitted was astonishing.

In the remaining 18 years of his life, Benny raised more than $5.9 million for charity by performing with symphonies all over the United States and in Canada, England and Israel. Proudly displaying his 1729 Stradivari, for which he had paid $16,000 in 1957, Benny would tell his audience, "It's a real Strad, you know. If it isn't, I'm out one hundred and ten dollars. The reason I got it so cheap is that it's one of the few Strads made in Japan." Or he'd say, "This is a genuine Stradivarius. You can always tell because it has the name of the maker inside. Here it is right here. 'Antonio Stradivari, area code 213.'"

In 1972, two years before he died at the age of 80, Benny wrote that he had been told his Strad had risen in value to $50,000. He wistfully wondered if it would ever be known as the "Benny Strad." Now it is. Bequeathed by Benny to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, it easily is worth 10 times what it was when he died--not a bad return for the penny-pincher he portrayed.

( http://www.cigaraficionado.com/Cigar/Afici...ife/fm1295.html )

"SOLD: Jack Benny's violin, a vintage-1845 model made in Paris, at Sotheby's London, to an American dealer who does not wish to be identified. Benny, who died in 1974, was a much-loved Sunday radio and TV staple whose well-honed comic persona was that of a tightwad. He would have loved Tuesday's auction. His violin went for $84,300."

( http://people.aol.com/people/daily/97back/971119.html )

Benny, born Benjamin Kubelsky, gave generously of his time and money to various charities and causes throughout his career. And a true miser wouldn't have paid $25,000 for a 1724 Stradivarius violin, as he did in 1957. In fact, Benny went on to raise significant amounts of money for orchestras nationwide using that fiddle (known as the "Benny Strad"), by donning a tux and playing the fool for audiences whose ticket money benefited symphonies and their pension funds. By 1961, when he taped a CBS Carnegie Hall event featuring such legends as Benny Goodman, soprano Roberta Peters, pianist Van Cliburn and longtime Benny pal Isaac Stern, he'd given 21 concerts and raised more than $2.4 million, according to a TV Guide feature written at the time.

The truth is Benny was better with a bow than his character performances indicated, but not as good as people who thought he was holding back believed. As much as his less-than-professional playing earned him laughs ("Am sending you as a gift all the wrong notes you dropped at our Honolulu performance in case you want to reuse them," Honolulu Symphony conductor George Barati joked in a cable after Benny played a benefit for him), the comedian worked hard late in life to be a quality musician, having stopped practicing in earnest at the age of 15. He prepared for live performances, calling in his show's musical director to put short excerpts of great works on paper and arriving at each venue a day early to go over his pieces with the other musicians. "Just so I begin and end with the orchestra is about all I aim for," he said in an interview, sitting beside Stern. "Most people think I can play better than I do. Isaac is one of the few who knows how ridiculous it is — that I play the best I can."

Perhaps that was so, but it was wife Mary Livingstone and not virtuoso friend Stern who, as Benny told the tale, "straightened me out beautifully" when he got to thinking too hard about the musical career that could have been. "I said, 'Why, oh why didn't I keep practicing all those years?'" he recalled, giving one of his famous pregnant pauses. "'It's a good thing you didn't,' Mary told me. 'If you'd tried being a concert violinist and a comedian, you wouldn't have been good enough to be a great fiddler and not bad enough to be doing what you're doing now. You'd be right in the middle — a great big nothing!'"

Certainly, Benny was far from that. A true class act whose humor was based on self-deprecation rather than cruelty and whose notoriety came from nice-guy status rather than outrageous public acting-out, he prided himself on the affection he received from the industry. ("Go see my enemies — if you can find any," he told reporters gathering info on him.) "We think Benny will be remembered mostly as the Master of the Meaningful Pause," TV Guide's editors wrote not longer after he died, calling his silent response to the would-be robber's threat the best use of "Dead Air" in the history of broadcasting. "It's sad to realize the Meaningful Pause has become permanent." ( http://www.tvguide.com/tv/televisionary/020129a.asp )

http://dede.essortment.com/biographyjackb_rkfc.htm

http://www.term-papers.us/ts/ba/bwa327.shtml

[WesRist]

What an excellent topic, and what excellent questions. Thank you for posting them and the responses too. I have wondered the same things!

Best!

Wes

A man's reach should exceed his SLEEVES, or else what are CUFFS for?

[concertA]

In reply to:

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The best-known American amateur to own a Strad...

In 1972, two years before he died at the age of 80, Benny wrote that he had been told his Strad had risen in value to $50,000

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In reply to:

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Jack Benny's violin, a vintage-1845 model made in Paris

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Was it a Strad or not?

[SteveLaBonne]

Sounds to me like he simply owned at least 2 fiddles, a Vuillaume and a Strad. Especially likely since one of the links Ondina posted says he bought the Strad as late as 1957.

[DR. S]

I saw him on T.V. play (Bach's double I think) with Stern in one of his benefits. He wasn't particularly good, but got through the work fairly well. But he was very funny and self deprecating. At one point he played a solo passage, then Stern played and he turned to the audience and said "Can hardly tell the difference can you?". The audience howled. There are so few like him now - I'd say maybe Drew Carey is of the same stuff. How cool if he really gave his fiddle to the LA Phil.

[Stephen]

I seem to remember hearing a recording of a performance where he played the Mendelssohn Concerto quite well. Don't know if this is really what happened, and if he could be counted on to do it more than occasionally.

[Elisabeth]

Didn't Shar buy Benny's other violin?

[ondinaperret]

In the many links I skimmed through, I read that Shar bought and was reselling the Vuillaume... If you type in google jack Benny Villaume, it should come out (I didn't save link at the time, but I remember reading it)

[reedman]

According to a forum reply (search for "Benny Strad"), his Strad was then in the possession of the LA Phil.

[Ann]

I think in Benny's autobiography he indicates that he entered the Navy as a violinist but found that his audiences laughed so much at his asides that he decided to switch to comedy.

[Jeffrey Holmes]

As I recall, Benny owned:

1) A Vuillaume

2) A Pressenda

3) A Strad family violin (I believe it was identified as the work of one of the sons...).

As was pointed out in this thread, we did sell the Vuillaume a couple years ago. A close-up of the bass side of the violin's top (f hole and corners) appeared on the cover of our catalog at the time, although the photo caption on the cover may not have pointed out the previous ownership.