Jack Benny’s Great Showmanship, Mancini’s Music Score at SPAC

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, August 9, 1971

Jack Benny really is 39 years old.

On the vast, well-lighted stage of Saratoga Performing Arts Center last night with 6,600 attending, he looked amazingly youthful, slender and dapper and what a showman. In fact there was so much talent on that stage last night with the phenomenal Benny, Henry Mancini and the 40-piece orchestra, it was almost too much for one evening.

Backed by Mancini and the orchestra, the bespectacled Benny told jokes, played his violin, chatted with those in the audience and even got down into the audience at one point to help an usher seat some latecomers.

Real Star

He came out early in the first half, as the real stars always do, and what an ovation he got. He promptly began in his dry, straight stand-up comic way telling jokes of his golfing prowess, his health, referred occasionally to his well-publicized love of money and commented on this being a return to Saratoga.

“I played Saratoga in 1940 and was such a hit they brought me right back again 31 years later,” he quipped, adding “Fortunately, I’ve had other work in between.” And the jokes went right on from there with Mancini sitting in the orchestra enjoying the humor as much as the audience.

Return Visit

As for Mancini, he too was making a return visit to SPAC, last year having conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra in a fabulous concert.

He played many of his greatest songs, representative of something for just about everybody’s tastes, then offered medleys from the rock orchestras “Tommy” and “Jesus Christ Superstar,” as well as a particularly fine one he called “A Portrait of Simon and Garfunkel.”

As Mancini continued to play more and more of his music, it became so evident what a remarkable wealth of beautiful contemporary music he has contributed to America in everything from “Peter Gunn” and “The Pink Panther” to the exquisitely poignant “Days of Wine and Roses.”

‘Don’t Worry’

Benny asked for his violin to be brought on stage in the first half and a stagehand threw the instrument and bow, which promptly broke. Looking into the audience, he said, “Don’t worry. I have another good one I’ll use for the second half.” He was referring to Norman Carol, Philadelphia Orchestra concert master and long-time personal friend of both Benny and Mancini on a busman’s holiday from his own performing chores at SPAC to hear these two great pros at work.

For the fashion-minded, Benny wore a navy blue blazer, gray flannel pants, blue shirt, and blue striped tie and was truly handsome. Mancini wore a gray pin-striped suit with side vents in the jacket, pale yellow shirt and gold striped tie.

Tonight at 8:30 it will be the Carpenters and Mac Davis in concert.