#richard widmark and bing crosby were/are my faves

[leonardcohenofficial]

Always been curious, how did you get into the Jack Benny show as a kid? What was your first exposure?

it was through a ten disc CD set of 20 episodes of the show with celebrity guests that my father randomly bought and gave to me when i was about seven! here's a photo of the specific set included below:

when i first started listening to the show, the only celebrity i really knew of the twenty featured was bing crosby, because i loved white christmas (danny kaye is also one of the guests included in this set, but i didn't have as strong an appreciation for him at that point), so i listened to that episode on repeat a lot; i eventually was curious enough to start listening to the other nineteen episodes included, and fell in love with the show as a whole

for MANY many years, these twenty episodes were all i knew of the show; much later on i saw jack benny's movies and watched episodes of the television show, but it wasn't until at least middle school that i found that people had digitized hundreds of episodes of the show and shared them in podcast form on itunes. it was then that i truly dived into the backlog of the show and fully got to experience the phenomenon that it was (albeit many decades late). it also led me to get into the bob hope show (though not as strongly because i don't like bob hope as much LOL) and the phil harris-alice faye show (which is hilarious and i also really like)

i have many favorite episodes of the jack benny program but the ones that are ingrained into my memory are the ones that were included in this set because they were the ones that made me fall in love with the specific humor and style of the show and i am always willing to recommend specific episodes to those looking to get into the show!