January 21, 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Benny Hill's birth. Now, of course, when you do the math that means he was born January 21, 1924. His name at birth was Alfred Hill but he changed it when he got into show business and began going by the name of Benny Hill. It's long been reported that he chose that first name because it was associated with one of his comedy idols, Jack Benny. I've written numerous blog entries over the years about Benny Hill and my appreciation of his comedy and the television programs for which he starred in. This blog entry is a bit different because it happens to deal with the remembrance of his birth 100 years ago. Benny's half hour edited programs which first saw airing in the United States in 1979 have been running on Antenna TV for over a year now. The current schedule has them airing from 12:30am until 2am early Sunday morning. The programs had aired on Antenna TV in the past. When the episodes began airing on Antenna TV, originally, it marked the first time that those episodes had aired on American television since the early 1990s. The half hour, edited Benny Hill episodes had become a phenomenon in the United States through local syndication. The programs were syndicated by Don Taffner and by the early 1980s those fast paced half hour episodes were airing all over the country. The most common time of the day in which local television stations were airing the programs were in the late night time slots but mostly they aired at various times in the over-night time slots. As cable TV was starting to become more and more commonplace with 24/7 time slot offerings there needed to be something to place in those over-night time slots. Some local stations chose to air movies...other stations aired long form commercials or reruns of sitcoms...and a large number of the stations that didn't choose either of those options opted to air, instead, Benny Hill.
Benny Hill had been entertaining British audiences on television since the mid 1950s. He was with the BBC for over a decade prior to moving on to Thames Television in 1969. The relationship with Thames TV lasted almost 20 years... from November 1969 until April 1989. I come across an article about Benny's 100th and it's so good that I decided to share a link to it in this blog entry. You can read the remembrance/celebration when you click HERE.
It's a very good overview of his career.. and something that should never be forgotten is that Benny's fans have never, ever, stopped loving his style of comedy and entertainment even during the time in the mid 1980s when the British media didn't hide their feelings about his TV specials. The "suits", in other words the executives, turned their backs on Benny Hill in 1989 but the fans never did. The attacks by the British media and those within the alternative comedy scene, with most of their criticisms laced with innuendo and ignorance, played itself out in the newspapers and magazines of the day. Ironically the most well known and massively popular comic export from Europe, Benny Hill, had become toxic in his home country...yet the international market, especially the United States, continued airing the half hour programs even while the British media was on the attack.
Benny Hill passed away in April of 1992. He had previously starred in a TV special titled Benny Hill's World Tour: New York!. The special aired on the USA Network in 1991 but it had been recorded in 1990 at his usual studio in London. The exterior shots and some other footage of Benny in New York City were taped on location here in the United States but the sketches and songs were all recorded in London. The 'World Tour' series of TV specials was meant to be a comeback for him where Benny would focus on the culture and entertainment of select cities across the globe and satirize, celebrate, or spoof the culture of those cities but unfortunately only the first special was ever recorded and aired. Among the mail found at his house on the day his body was discovered was a contract for a series of comedy specials for Central Independent Television. This contract, it's been speculated, would certainly have been for the remaining 'World Tour' series of comedy specials that never materialized due to his death.
Hello all! I wrote a Benny Hill-themed blog entry back in early January and I'm back with a follow-up. Benny's birthdate is coming up soon...the actual date is January 21. We're a few years shy of celebrating the 100th birthdate of the late Benny Hill in 2024 and if I'm still active on-line in 2024, and why wouldn't I be, I'll be celebrating the occasion on this blog! I title this blog entry not necessarily to do any kind of in-depth dissection of Benny's famous visual comedy but more or less to highlight that how photo's can be powerful and sometimes misleading. In this screen cap we see Benny performing one of his classic routines where he does the dropping of the handkerchief bit. Typically Benny would be walking along minding his own business and he'd see, one by one, "good looking men" drop their handkerchief and some woman would stop, pick it up, and go off walking with the man. Benny, after taking note, would then drop his handkerchief in the hopes a woman passing by would hook up with him but you see how the woman reacted...she picked the handkerchief up, blew her nose on it, and handed it back to him. 😄
Benny Hill was a master of the sight-gag. He could manipulate the camera, for example, and have his image appear side-by-side-by-side. Camera tricks were also employed when the process of undercranking was used...time lapsed images often appeared on camera...a flower perfectly erect would wilt downward in seconds...he would also use the camera to speed up, edit, or dramatically slow down the pace of a sketch. The most internationally known use of the camera happened to be what's called The Benny Hill Chase. This is something that happened at the end of most episodes of the half-hour syndicated versions of Benny's show. A sketch would begin calmly but through a series of comical blunders and errors Benny would find himself being chased by practically everyone to the tune of Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax". This sketch was typically sped-up and in pantomime to mirror the silent comedy that Benny was partially influenced by. Benny performed so many non-verbal sketches...typically sped-up with bouncy music...where the humor came with the visual gags.
He would have words painted onto buildings that carried on a conversation with each other. A written statement found on the side of a brick wall, in graffiti style, might read: "I've not even begun to fight!!" and then the camera would show a sign just below that reads: "You could've fooled me!" with an image of a beaten up person laying on the ground. One of his recurring jokes happened to be the poster board where there was usually a series of 5 or 6 sentences written on a large poster board next to a door...Benny would then open the door and covering everything on the poster except the first letter in each sentence. It would usually spell out a double-entendre word. One of the ways that photos can be misleading is that they're a snapshot...and based upon the person using the photo it can either be a tool of publicity or a tool of deception.
Benny's comedy is all over the internet. If you look for it you're going to find a lot of his comedy sketches from all time periods of his career. The bulk of the sketches that appear on the internet were uploaded by fans and those who are simply curious or intrigued by Benny Hill. The material has all been issued on DVD and so there's rarely anything that shows up on-line that hasn't already appeared on a DVD somewhere. I like the fact that his comedy continues to be discovered. A photo like the one off to the left is of Benny and what were billed as the Hill's Angels. This dance group shown up in Benny's television specials in 1979. In the half-hour syndicated episodes that aired all over the world there are some installments where it's heavy with Hill's Angels dance numbers. Benny's half-hour syndicated programs, which aired all over the world starting in 1979, were edited versions of his hour long television specials from England. The Benny Hill Show that we seen on American television throughout the '80s and into the early '90s during the late-night/over-night hours were half-hour glimpses into Benny's comedy. If you have his full, hour length programs on DVD or if you've seen them on-line you'll see a lot more variety than what's on the half-hour versions. However, those half-hour versions of his show are what brought Benny Hill international fame. The photos of Benny and the Hill's Angels are used as a tool of deception. They're designed to make you think that's all Benny's show was all about...and it wasn't. If you know your Benny Hill history and are familiar with the various documentaries and taped remarks from Benny himself then you'll know how much he loved the British Music Hall tradition of entertainment. In a lot of his shows he put on large, highly choreographed song and dance presentations not unlike the kind one would find taking place in the music hall venues at the turn of the century. A big production and lots of dancing women and the comedy of it all were heavy influences on his distinctive style. Benny's use of dancing women, songs, patter, and sight gags, goes back to his years at the BBC and even prior to that on his earliest of television specials in the '50s. The Hill's Angels, however, weren't officially christened until 1979. Benny joined Thames Television in 1969.
I know why those Hill's Angels photos are used...it draws a person's eyes...and in television as well as the internet you want the viewer's/reader's eyes. Those photos are like hundreds that are all over the internet. Do I think some people watched his shows just for the Hill's Angels? Probably! Do I think that there's some people who think that's what his show was all about? I'm sure there are those who think that way and having so many publicity photos on the internet of Benny surrounded by a collection of women goes a long way at further perpetuating that image. Am I going to set people straight once and for all and admonish those who misunderstand Benny's comedy?
Let's look at this rationally. Do those four guys really look that terribly threatening or controversial? Come on...take a look. We have Henry McGee standing next to Benny Hill. In front we have Jackie Wright and Roger Finch. Bob Todd was also a familiar presence but isn't in the photo. The show's producer, the late Dennis Kirkland, had that sentiment that I'm echoing. I, too, don't feel that those four entertainers should send anyone into fits of anger, rage, and hostility. They're perfectly harmless. Jackie Wright, as you can see, became famous for the sped-up sketches where he'd get the top of his head patted on and in many cases, slapped, to the sound of rapidly strung together tapping sound effects. He was part of Benny's Thames TV specials until 1983. Health problems caused his 'retirement' from Benny's show and he passed away in 1989, ironically, the same year Thames TV canceled Benny's show following a 20 year run with the company. Anyway, after Jackie stepped away from the show in 1983, they tried a look-a-like for several television specials. Henry McGee was the straight man and the show's announcer. Henry had a flair for comedy, though, and would get a chance to play bizarre characters, too. Henry's talent was being able to have a perfect reaction to whatever Benny happened to be doing. There are numerous routines where Henry is acting as the interviewer to one of Benny's characterizations and in a decent number of those sketches Henry could get laughs by just holding a facial expression or get a laugh with a twitch or raise of an eye. Benny's television specials were much more than eye candy.
I'll be writing another blog entry spotlighting Benny Hill in the days ahead...most likely on his birthdate. I'll close this blog entry with a clip of Benny and one of those sight gags I was explaining earlier in the blog. This one is the poster board gag where a series of lines are shown on a board and the visual punchline at the conclusion...
I periodically browse the internet as mostly everybody else does and I came across a story about a biopic in the works centering around the one and only Benny Hill. I came across this story while doing an on-line news search for Benny and it's from a site called deadline.com and I offered a comment over there. Their comments section, much like mine, is monitored and so it hasn't been uploaded to their site yet. Just in case my comment, for whatever reason, doesn't get published on their site I planned ahead and copied my message and I'm pasting it here. Since I'm a fan and appreciator of Benny Hill's brand of humor and entertainment and since I've written several blog posts about him over the years I decided it made a whole lot of sense to share it on my personal blog page, too. First off here's the link to the story about the possible Benny Hill Biopic so you'll be able to better understand my comment:
Although one comment suggests there's not an audience considering the subject of the biopic died more than 25 years ago and another comment simply trashes him based on their interpretation of his comedy I, for one, have loved Benny Hill's style of entertainment ever since I came across it by accident flipping through the television channels one summer night as a teenager. I live in America and like a lot of people here I discovered Benny's comedy on late night television on those half hour syndicated programs that used to air on numerous local channels at all hours of the night.
I get a bit nervous, though, anytime I read about upcoming book releases or in this case, a biopic, centering around Benny given his enigmatic life and how only a precious few actually got to know Benny off-stage.
Unlike a quote from one of the writers of this project I never "fell out of love" with Benny's comedy...I grew to love it more and more. I've since added a lot of DVD products of his comedy...everything from his sketches from his BBC era in the mid 1960s to his more famous Thames Television sketches. But again...I hope this does Benny justice and presents him in a way that will teach people a lot of things they maybe didn't realize...the last thing I want to see, as a Benny Hill fan, is a hatchet job that celebrates or justifies the negative criticisms leveled at him during his later years from those with axes to grind.
So, then, that's the comment I wrote concerning the possible biopic of Benny Hill. You will be able to read much more detail about this when you click the link I provided. There are other on-line sites reporting on this, too, but deadline.com was the first one I came across. They published their report on May 31st so I'm just a tad bit late at finding it.
