Or the later Tonight show with Steve Allen
and Jose Jimenez.
Steve: I understand you are a farmer.
Jose: Si. I have chickens, cows, pigs, and crops.
Steve: What do you grow?
Jose: I grow tired.
Mel Blanc played a “Mexican” character, “Cy” who used a variation of the “S” initial words, as answering questions with “Si”, or if asked what his sister’s name was, “Sue”, or what kind of beans he was cooking, “Soy”. The two could stretch the routine out for several minutes.
Today that would be considered “insensitive” and “politically incorrect”.
You don’t know how much you have lost until it is gone.
Benny had the funniest show on radio, bar none. Jack’s timing was immaculate, and the main cast (Don Wilson, Eddie Anderson, Dennis Day, Mary Livingston, Mel Blanc and Phil Harris) was superb. So were many of the actors who played recurring roles, such as Frank Morgan (the YESSS man who specialized in sales clerks who antagonized Jack); Joseph Kearns (best know as Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace; he played the superannuated guard who had been protecting Jack’s money vault since (pick one) the founding of Los Angeles, or the year when Jack turned 38.
But the real secret to Benny’s success was not just his talent, but his contributions as a writer and producer, though he never claimed a credit in either department. He wanted the show to be funny, knew what worked and didn’t care who got the punch line. That’s why performers like Dennis Day and Eddie Rochester often got the best lines at Jack’s expense. On other shows, they would have been minor or recurring characters at best.
Benny also kept his writing staff largely intact for decades, while contemporaries (like Bob Hope) went through them like Kleenex. They also knew what worked and kept his best routines fresh. Example: every year, there was a Christmas skit based on Jack endlessly debating what he was going to buy Don Wilson for a Christmas gift. Of course, it had to be cheap (one year it was a pair of shoelaces), playing into Benny’s reputation as a skinflint. And it paired him with a hapless sales clerk (usually Mel Blanc) who had to put up with Jack debating metal versus plastic-tipped shoelaces.
You can hear episodes of the Benny radio show on XM Channel 148. Always worth a listen. Better than anything remotely described as a sitcom on TV today..