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In Memory of (July 21, 1920 - September 23, 2001) The following story was told by Jack Benny1: The largest amount of money I ever raised at one time for the benefit of music was $838,000. I was in London when Isaac Stern called me. He was in Switzerland. He said he had just had a call from someone in Hartford, Connecticut, who said that if Stern could get Jack Benny to give a concert, they believed they could raise close to a million dollars to build a new conservatory on the campus of the University of Hartford. Alfred C. Fuller, the president of the Fuller Brush Company, had agreed to put up $400,000 if the benefit would earn at least the same amount. When Stern told me this, I began laughing. "What are you laughing about?" he asked. "If you can't see anything funny in your being one of the world's greatest violinists, and they say to you, if you can get Jack Benny, who is one of the world's rottenest violinists, we'll take in a million dollars--if you don't think that's funny, then you don't know what funny is." "Don't you see, Jack," he explained, "we real important violinists can only get $5.50 a ticket--but somebody as rotten as you--for you, they can charge a hundred dollars a ticket!" Isaac Stern says, "Jack, when you walk out on that stage in your white tie and tails, holding the fiddle like an emperor, you look like the greatest violinist in the world. It's a shame you have to play." 1) From Sunday Nights at Seven by Jack Benny and his daughter, Joan, (New York:1990), pp. 229-230 Visit his page by clicking here Issac Stern REV. 01/15/2004 |
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