The Seriousness of Comedy: The Benefit Concerts of Jack Benny and Danny Kaye

By Kenneth H. Marcus


At a televised benefit concert for Carnegie Hall in 1961, Jack Benny declared that he had once been called the "Van Gogh of Violinists." This name first arose during one of his concert performances, he explained, when someone in the audience stood up and cried, "my God, he's lost his ear." Benny's self-effacing humor helped make him one of the most popular comedians in American history, and his trademark was his use of the violin. Nor was he alone in combining his comic and musical talents; a fellow colleague, entertainer Danny Kaye, also enjoyed a degree of renown among audiences that few other entertainers at the time could claim. The two had more than these qualities in common, however; both came from immigrant Jewish households, both became household names mainly through their work in Hollywood, and ultimately both took part in a series of benefit concerts for symphony orchestras during the postwar era, despite having little formal training in classical or "serious" music. Why did these entertainers not only perform with orchestras over a period of several decades but also raise enormous sums for these institutions? How did they draw on their wide appeal across age and class as a basis for their work in benefit concerts?