The best thing about the YouTube way of watching old comedy is that pace doesn’t get in the way of our enjoyment of it. Jim Jordan (Fibber McGee), in an oral history he gave Sangamon State University in the 1980s, wasn’t bewildered by the content of modern comedy so much as the speed at which it was delivered. He was aware of the difference, and so are we–occasionally painfully so. Even the fastest comedy–Bob Hope’s radio monologues, the Marx Brothers, His Girl Friday–seem filled with dead air from our view.

But with YouTube, the jokes are nicely cropped for modern tastes–there are no overlong pauses for applause, or laughter, often no pauses at all–and they come as fast as one can click. Divorced from the alien, humorless pauses between jokes, we can better appreciate the unimaginably perfect comic timing of Jack Benny, who knew when to pause during a joke as well as anybody ever has. That kid he’s with would be relatively popular, eventually.

Here’s Benny with Groucho Marx, in a parody that would seem right at home in Mad TV if it were shrill, obvious, and not funny at all. We–I, at least–don’t often think about parody being a major form in the Distant Past, but that’s probably just because most of it has dated so severely; who’s going to understand a joke about Deal or No Deal fifty years from now? (I realize, of course, I’m being ridiculous; Howie Mandel’s biographers will surely give us a proper frame of reference.)

Finally, here’s a clip of an appearance on the Bob Hope show that didn’t quite go as scripted. Benny wasn’t known for his ad-libbing–as he once said to Fred Allen, “You wouldn’t dare insult me like that if my writers were here!” But I’d imagine that, after inhabiting a character for twenty years, thinking on its feet wasn’t such a hard issue.

The most amazing thing about this is he isn’t breaking the fourth wall like everyone’s favorite joke killer, Jimmy Fallon, who would break character delivering a eulogy. He’s breaking character as his character, the parsimonious, pompous twit he even seemed to play while being interviewed.

On an unrelated note, anybody who doubts the lasting influence of Jack Benny’s portrayal of The Jack Benny need only watch John Krasinski’s portrayal of Jim Halpert on the Office. All the eyebrow raises and confused looks and do-you-believe-this doubletakes are classic Jack Benny, and I’m pretty sure I recall Jim doing the hand-to-face thing referenced in the Johnny Carson clip at least once. If John Krasinski is aware of the connection, he is, in fact, the coolest person on earth.