Mary Livingstone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mary is also the name of David Livingstone's wife

Jack Benny and Mary Livingstone.

Mary Livingstone (June 23, 1905 – June 30, 1983) was an early co-star of American radio, and the wife and collaborator of radio and comedy king Jack Benny. A gifted comedienne, she was one of the rare performers who began to experience stage fright well after her career was established (like Barbra Streisand), enough that she retired from show business completely almost three decades before her death and at the height of her husband and partner's fame.

She was born Sadye Marks in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a rabbi, but was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. She met her future husband at a Passover seder at her family home, where Benny made a wisecrack about the Little Girl.

Years later, they met again — the legend has her working as a lingerie salesgirl at the one of the May Department Stores in downtown Los Angeles — and began dating. In her biography of Jack, Livingstone says she did not inform him that she was that little girl he had needled until after they had dated a while. The couple married in 1927, and the marriage endured until Benny's death in 1974.

Using Mary Livingstone as her stage name, she became a major part of Benny's hugely popular radio shows of the 1930s and 1940s, playing his wisecracking lady friend. (By contrast, Portland Hoffa — the real-life wife of Benny's friend, fellow comedian, and longtime "feuding" rival Fred Allen — played a squeaky friend who usually hied Allen off to Allen's Alley after a brief comic exchange.)

Livingstone's brother, Hilliard Marks, also factored big in the show on radio and, later, television: he produced both. Her trademark bit on the radio show (other than haranguing Benny) was to read letters from her Mother. The letters commonly started with My darling daughter Mary... and often included comical stories about Mary's (fictional) sister Babe, who was so mannish she played as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers and worked in steel mills.

The Bennys had one adopted daughter, Joan, who soon became as important to The Jack Benny Program as her mother: Mary Livingstone developed an astonishing case of stage fright years after she was established as a comic actress. So much so, in fact, that daughter Joan acted as a stand-in for her mother while Livingstone's lines were played pre-recorded during live broadcasts. Livingstone's stage fright became so problematic that she was written out of much of the television version of the Benny show. Livingstone finally retired in 1958.

Her last name is often spelled without the "e" as was the case with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to radio at 6705 Hollywood Blvd.

After writing a biography of her husband, Mary Livingstone died from cardiovascular disease at her home in Holmby Hills, California on June 30, 1983, 7 days after her 78th birthday.

She was interred beside her husband in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Cousin of the Marx Brothers.