travsd

Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

February 14 would be a good day to celebrate even if St. Valentine were not involved, for it also happens to be birthday of that show business giant Jack Benny. Seemed the right time to plug Kathryn Fuller-Seeley’s authoritative labor of love Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy. Seeley is the William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Media History in the Department of Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Her business card must be nearly book-length itself! Appropriately so, this is a scholarly tome, covering the business BEHIND the show business, a must for anyone who seeks to understand the machinations that get a popular program before a national audience. The origins of what we know started in the 1930s, with programs like Benny’s, and kept him in the limelight for four decades. A must for your vaudeville-radio-media studies book shelf! Get it here.

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.