Benny Rubin

Benny Rubin (February 2, 1899 – July 15, 1986) was an American comedian, actor, and vaudevillian born Benjamin Rubin in Boston, Massachusetts. Over a career spanning five decades, he accumulated more than 200 appearances across radio, film, and television. He is particularly remembered as a comic foil for Jack Benny on both the radio and television versions of The Jack Benny Program, and for his appearances in six Three Stooges short subjects filmed between 1953 and 1957.

Rubin's stage career included a Broadway appearance in 1927 in the musical Half a Widow. That same year, on March 26, he married actress Mary O'Brien; the couple had a daughter before divorcing in 1934. His vaudeville work drew on a facility for dialect and ethnic characterization, with routines such as "English That's Different" among his stage material. In 1929, he relocated to Hollywood and transitioned into film, making his screen debut in Naughty Baby. Tiffany Pictures produced two starring vehicles for him — Hot Curves and Sunny Skies, both released in 1930 — though neither advanced his career significantly, and they remain his only starring features. Throughout the 1930s he continued working in both full-length films and short comedies in supporting capacities.

On radio, Rubin's dialect abilities found frequent application. He served as a panelist on the joke-telling program Stop Me If You've Heard This One and took on the role of Professor Kropotkin on My Friend Irma, succeeding Hans Conried in the part. He was also a co-host of Only Yesterday and a cast member of The Bickersons, and he played character roles in dramatic programming on CBS Radio during the mid-1950s. His recurring appearances on The Jack Benny Program produced one of his best-known bits, in which Jack posed a series of questions that Rubin answered with a progressively more irritated "I don't know!" before delivering the punchline. According to Jack Benny's autobiography Sunday Nights at Seven, Benny once cast Rubin as a Pullman porter, but the producer objected that Rubin looked "too Jewish" for the role despite his convincing dialect work. Benny subsequently gave the part to Eddie Anderson, and that porter character developed into the celebrated "Rochester Van Jones."

Rubin's television work was extensive. He provided the voice of Joe Jitsu on the animated series The Dick Tracy Show, drawing on his longstanding reputation as a dialect specialist. His live-action television appearances included a 1961 episode of The Tab Hunter Show, a 1963 Thanksgiving episode of The Beverly Hillbillies in which he played the second Indian Chief, and an episode of The Joey Bishop Show in which he portrayed hypnotist Max Collins. On Gunsmoke, he played Dr. Herman Schultz, a physician who used mesmeric skills to steal money. In 1968, he appeared on Petticoat Junction as Gus Huffle, owner of the Pixley movie theater, in an episode titled "Wings," and returned to the series in 1969 in a bit role credited as "man patient." He also appeared in an episode of The Munsters.

His association with the Three Stooges produced six short-subject appearances between 1953 and 1957. Like the Stooges, Rubin had roots in vaudeville, though he was candid about his assessment of the trio, describing them as "journeyman comics" who required direction rather than working from innate cleverness. In later years he took on numerous small and sometimes uncredited film roles, including appearances in several Jerry Lewis features.

Rubin's name appeared in print as well. A 1949 Permabook published by Garden City Publishing collected jokes from Rubin alongside those of Lew Lehr, Cal Tinney, and Roger Bower under the title Stop Me If You've Heard This One; Rubin contributed four jokes across two pages, having been added to the project just before press time. In 1972, he published his autobiography, Come Backstage with Me. Rubin died of a heart attack at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on July 15, 1986, and is interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.