In the mid-to-late 1920s Jack Benny was a star monologist in Vaudeville, big enough to be tapped to be the ’emcee’ of the MGM musical ‘Hollywood Revue of 1929’. But as the above short film ‘A Broadway Romeo’ (1931) will make clear, this is not the Jack Benny that we know and love. The film is a short comedy sans laughs, plot and charm. In it, Benny is an unappealing city-slicker who manages to sweet-talk a ‘dame’ into a coffee counter lunch which he then blows the check on. (Unlike the later funny Jack, he doesn’t simply not want to pay it or seek to avoid it–he literally rips somebody off in a not very clever or convincing way). It’s fascinating to see comic stars inhabiting early personas that seem to have nothing to do with the characters we came to know in subsequent incarnations. Do you find it as jarring as I do to see Lucy Ricardo all glammed up in 1940s flicks and billed as Lucille Ball? The Jack Benny who became a beloved figure was a man both annoying and lovable, fixated on cheapness and petty concerns yet too vulnerable to see through his own pretenses. The Jack Benny on view here is a smarmy wise-ass, side-mouthing bum jokes and taking advantage of anyone nearby. Did anyone ever laugh at anything in this movie? It’s hard to even imagine where the laughs are supposed to be, yet I still find the film a fascinating artifact. The year after this Benny hosted his first radio show and found the medium that, in time, would be the  laboratory for his developing character. But I’ve heard some of the early radio shows and he’s still the guy in this movie. Thankfully they didn’t pull him off the air…