Jack Benny Broke Silence On The 5 Most Two-Faced Bigots He Endured In His 40 Years In Hollywood

Jack Benny's 40 years inside the American entertainment industry as one of the most beloved Jewish-American comedians of the twentieth century gave him a documented vantage point on five Old Hollywood figures whose institutional Motion Picture Alliance memberships, House Un-American Activities Committee testimony, gossip column campaigns, and segregated musical productions concealed the private bigotry their contemporaries observed for decades. The video traces Benny from his 1929 arrival at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for The Hollywood Revue of 1929, through the 1932 to 1955 run of The Jack Benny Program on radio, across his 1950 to 1965 television series on CBS and NBC, and until his December 1974 death at age 80. Anchored by his 1937 hiring of Eddie Anderson as Rochester van Jones, his 1940 co-starring role in Buck Benny Rides Again that generated the first major Hollywood film premiere in Harlem, and his position at the Hillcrest Round Table alongside George Burns, George Jessel, Groucho Marx, and Al Jolson, the video examines Bing Crosby, Ward Bond, Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, and Adolphe Menjou through the documented public record. Sources include Jennifer Frost's 2011 New York University Press academic biography Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism, congressional records from the October 1947 HUAC hearings, and Adolphe Menjou's 1948 autobiography It Took Nine Tailors. What's covered in this video: Jack Benny's 40-year career from The Hollywood Revue of 1929, through The Jack Benny Program on radio from 1932 to 1955 and on CBS and NBC television from 1950 to 1965, his 1937 hiring of Eddie Anderson as Rochester van Jones as the first regular Black cast member on national radio, his refusal to perform at segregated venues, his 1940 Buck Benny Rides Again premiere in Harlem with an estimated 150,000 attendees, and the Schomburg Center Honor Roll for Race Relations naming both Benny and Anderson. Bing Crosby as the mellifluous baritone whose 1942 Holiday Inn White Christmas became the best-selling single of the twentieth century, his 1944 Academy Award win for Going My Way, his Road pictures with Bob Hope, and the documented pattern of his radio programs, film soundtracks, and touring musical acts featuring all-white orchestras across the years when Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald were building the Black musical tradition. Ward Bond as the John Ford Westerns character actor appearing opposite John Wayne in The Searchers, Fort Apache, and Rio Grande, his Wagon Train hosting from 1957 until his November 1960 death, his founding membership in the 1944 Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, his documented role as one of the most aggressive personal enforcers of the Hollywood blacklist, and his rumored Ku Klux Klan sympathies discussed in multiple biographies of the Wayne-Ford circle. Walter Winchell as the New York Daily Mirror columnist and Blue Network and NBC radio broadcaster who reached 50 million weekly readers, his early-career anti-fascist and anti-Nazi advocacy through the late 1930s and 1940s, his professional relationships with Josephine Baker, his 1951 Stork Club confrontation over Baker's refused service, and his late-career alliance with Joseph McCarthy that collapsed his progressive Jewish credentials. Mentioned in this video: Jack Benny, Eddie Anderson, Rochester van Jones, Mary Livingstone, George Burns, George Jessel, Groucho Marx, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ward Bond, Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper, Adolphe Menjou, Bob Hope, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, John Wayne, John Ford, Walt Disney, Cecil B. DeMille, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Ayn Rand, Robert Taylor, Louella Parsons, Stanley Kubrick, Joseph McCarthy, Adolf Hitler, Jennifer Frost, The Jack Benny Program, Buck Benny Rides Again, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, Holiday Inn, White Christmas, Going My Way, The Searchers, Fort Apache, Rio Grande, Wagon Train, The Front Page, Stage Door, A Star Is Born, Paths of Glory, It Took Nine Tailors, Hedda Hopper's Hollywood: Celebrity Gossip and American Conservatism, Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, House Un-American Activities Committee, Hillcrest Round Table, Schomburg Center Honor Roll for Race Relations, Stork Club, Hollywood blacklist, McCarthy era, CBS, NBC, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, New York Daily Mirror, Los Angeles Times, Blue Network, Margaret Herrick Library, New York University Press, Harlem, Beverly Hills, Old Hollywood Golden Age. #JackBenny #OldHollywood #HollywoodSecrets