Was it coincidence or astute scheduling that Bill Bragg's Yesterday USA internet radio station has been playing a 1948 Jack Benny show from the Fox Theater in Detroit? The great days of network radio, Detroit, General Motors, a great star and the fabulous Fox. Enough nostalgia to give an old guy a major jolt. Thanks to some investors who poured millions into its restoration, the Detroit Fox is still in business. And so is the St. Louis Fox, where Garrison Keillor recently did a show. I'm not sure how many of the original Fox movie and vaudeville palaces are still standing. Remind me to look that up.
Benny's writers came up with lots of great automotive gags. Listening to it, as sometimes happens when I hear the comedy radio shows I grew up with, I find myself thinking I had forgotten how funny they were. But I wonder if that's true. Did I forget or was I all primed and conditioned to laugh because I remembered and I knew what was coming. Wouldn't it be interesting to put an audience of persons old enough to have heard it the first time together with younger ones who had not heard a Benny radio show live on the air and measure their respective reactions.
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