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Mary Livingstone (born Sadya Marcowitz, later known as Sadie Marks; June 25, 1905 – June 30, 1983) was an American radio comedienne and actress. She was the wife and radio partner of comedian Jack Benny.
Enlisted casually to perform on her husband's program, she proved a talented comedian. But she also proved one of the rare performers to experience severe stage fright years after her career was established, so much so that she retired from show business completely, after two decades in the public eye, almost three decades before her death and at the height of her husband and partner's fame.
Livingstone first met her future husband, Jack Benny, in Vancouver at a Passover seder in her family home in 1922, when Benny was playing the Orpheum Theatre. Benny accompanied his friend Zeppo Marx.
Zeppo Marx took Benny to the home of David Marks, where they enjoyed a quiet and comfortable gathering. Marks's youngest daughter, Sadie (her name was anglicized), was very impressed by this comedian who played a violin as part of his act. By her own testimony she made up her mind that she would grow up and marry Jack Benny someday."
– American National Biography
Despite the two families' acquaintance, and similar surnames, Livingstone was unrelated to the Marx Brothers.
They met again a year later, while she was said to be working as a lingerie salesgirl at a May Company department store in downtown Los AngelesThis story was retold in and the couple finally began dating. Invited on a double-date by a friend who had married Sadie's sister, Babe, Benny brought Sadie along to keep him company. This time, the couple clicked: Jack was finally smitten with Sadie and asked her on another date. She turned him down at first, as she was seeing another young man, but Benny persisted. He visited her at the May Company almost daily and was reputed to buy so much ladies' hosiery from her that he helped her set a sales record; he also called her several times a day when on the road.
Jack Benny married Mary Livingstone January 14, 1927, at the Clayton Hotel in Waukegan, Illinois, one week after proposing.
Benny and Livingstone adopted a two-week old girl in 1934, whom they named Joanie. In Sunday Nights at Seven (1990), her father's unfinished memoir that she completed with her own recollections, Joan Benny revealed she rarely felt close to her mother, and the two often argued:
She had so many good qualitiesher sense of humor, her generosity, her loyalty to her friends. She had a famous, successful, and adoring husband; she had famous, interesting, and amusing friends; she lived in luxury; she was a celebrity in her own right. In short, she had everything a woman could possibly want. When I think of her it's with sadness because I wish she could have enjoyed it all more.Lucille Ball referred to Livingstone as a "hard-hearted Hannah", and said that she exerted too much control over her husband's life. George Burns, one of Jack Benny's closest friends, was not particularly fond of Livingstone. He believed that she intimidated her husband and was running his life. He also believed that Livingstone lacked talent.
"Mary wasn't a bad person, she was just difficult, a little jealous and insecure. She didn't want to have better things than her friends had, particularly Gracie; she wanted to have the same things, but more of them. And bigger."Ostensibly Livingstone's best friend, Burns's wife Gracie Allen confided to a friend that "Mary Benny and I are supposed to be dearest of friends, but we're not. I love Jack and I can tolerate Mary, but there are some things about her I don't like". Allen went on to describe Livingstone's desire to one-up any purchase of luxury items. Burns noted that while their circle of friends found Livingstone challenging, there was also a sense of fierce loyalty between them.
At first, it seemed like a brief role; she played the part on that night's and the following week's show before being written out of the scenario. But NBC received so much fan mail that the character was revived into a regular feature on the Benny show, and the reluctant Sadie Marks became a radio star in her own right. Livingstone underwent a change, too, from fan to tart secretary-foil; the character occasionally went on dates with Benny's character but they were rarely implied to be truly romantically involved otherwise. The lone known exceptions were a fantasy sequence used on both the radio and television versions of the show, as well as during an NBC musical tribute to Benny, in which Mary admitted to being "Mrs. Benny".
Mary's trademark gag on the radio show, other than beleaguering Benny, was to read letters from her mother (who lived in Plainfield, New Jersey), usually beginning with "My darling daughter Mary...". The letters often included comical stories about Mary's (fictional) sister Babesimilar to Sadie's real sister Babe in name onlywho was so masculine she played as a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers and worked in steel mills and coal mines, or their ne'er-do-well father, who always seemed to be a half-step ahead of the law. Mother Livingstone, naturally enough, detested Benny and was forever advising her daughter to quit his employ.
One of her final performances was as a mouse spoof of herself in The Mouse That Jack Built, a Merrie Melodies cartoon from 1959 lampooning the radio show. Her final performance as Mary Livingstone came on Benny's 1970 "20th Anniversary Special". When introducing her to the audience, Benny noted that it was her first time performing in fifteen years and the pre-recorded segment made references to her performance anxiety.
Notes
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Mary Livingstone at the British Film Institute
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