jack benny's gobblers

For today's entry on our Thanksgiving Playlist, I thought I would share a couple of great Thanksgiving episodes of the Jack Benny Radio Show. Jack is very well known for his hilarious Christmas episodes- especially where Jack goes Christmas shopping and runs into the luckless salesman played by Mel Blanc. But just as funny were the many Thanksgiving shows that Jack and his cast performed. Jack's skinflint ways, vanity and wam heart under it all was a perfect foil to play against for the holidays.
For me, two of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes came back to back in the same year: 1947. This is Jack's classic cast: Mary Livingstone, Phil Harris, Don Wilson, Dennis Day, Rochester, the Sportsman Quartet and of course who can forget Mel Blanc, Frank Nelson ("Yesssssss?"), Artie Auerbach (Mr. Kitzel) and Bea Benaderet and Sara Berner (aka: Gertrude and Mabel the phone operators) in great supporting roles. Jack attempts to pull off a nice Thanksgiving for the gang- with great hilarity.

First up is the 11-24-1947 show: Jack begins the show talking about his attempt to get a studio to film his Life story, but that eventually leads Mary to telling the rest of the cast (in radio flashback mode) about her shopping trip for a Turkey for the Thanksgiving dinner for the gang:
Click here for the episode.

Next we have the very next episode where Jack recounts having to "dispatch" the turkey he bought with Mary, which leads to Jack, too much of a softie to do it himself, to assigning the grim task to Rochester. All this weighs a little on Jack's conscience, so that when he takes a nap, we great a hilarious dream sequence where Jack is on trail for executing the turkey.
Click here for the episode.

There are several other great and fun Thanksgiving OTR- check out some of friend's sites like OTR Perk and others around the web for more. And stay tuned for more entries on our Thanksgiving playlist!



There's only five real people in Hollywood. Everyone else is Mel Blanc.