JACK BENNY - DOCUMENT SIGNED 05/22/1940 - HFSID 345087

JACK BENNY
Extraordinary document! Giving approval to Paramount Pictures (without being paid) to use his name in an animated cartoon entitled The Goose Goes South, in which a group of “ Negro Mammies and Little Pickaninies” begin yelling into telephones “Hello, Mr. Benny”!
Document Signed: "Jack Benny", 1 page, 8½x11. Culver City, California, 1940 May 22. In letter form to Paramount Pictures, Inc.,


In full: "Subject to the approval of Paramount Pictures, Inc., I herby give my consent to the inclusion by you of the name "ROCHESTER" in an animated cartoon to be pro-duced by you entitled THE GOOSE GOES SOUTH in connec-tion with the following dialogue:

1st Negro mammy: "Ah hears you is havin' trouble with your children Cindy Lou."
2nd Negro mammy: "Uh uh, Ah Shua is gal, dey all wants to grow up to be Rochesters."
Cut to a group of little pickaninnies around their mammy with you telephones, and in a chorus the little kids are shouting into the telephones, "Hello, Mr. Benny" which is repeated three times  ."

Vaudeville comedian Benny hosted a popular radio show from 1933, moving The Jack Benny Program smoothly to TV (1950-1965). The Jack Benny Program was televised on CBS from October 28, 1950 to September 15, 1964, when it was cancelled. NBC, the network that had lost Benny to CBS in 1949, picked up the show and it ran for one more season, September 25, 1964 to September 10, 1965. Benny's comic image as a tone-deaf, penny-pinching bachelor contradicted the real Benny, a philanthropist, devoted husband and competent violinist. He appeared in over 25 movies, the most critically acclaimed being To Be Or Not To Be (1942). Binding holes at top edge. Staple holes at top edge. Lightly creased with multiple mailing folds. Ink smear at bottom edge (not effecting signature). Otherwise, fine condition.