CELEBRATING SADYE MARKS/MARY LIVINGSTONE

I DELIGHT IN THE HUMOROUS WRITING for The Jack Benny Show, as broadcast these days on SiriusXM “Radio Classics.” Favorite quips come from Jack’s interactions with Mary Livingstone, in real life his wife of some 47 years. Internet sources provide scads of tales, some manufactured, some garbled, and others possibly even true. 

Tidbits here are gleaned from what I believe to be reliable sources: Wikipedia’s Mary Livingstone entry (including its extensive references) and John Dunning’s On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, together with my own Internet sleuthing of references.

Mary Livingstone (born Sadya Marcowitz, later known as Sadie Marks), 1905–1983. American radio comedienne and actress. She was the wife and radio partner of Jack Benny. Image from Fandom via Wikipedia.   

It’s all good fun in cross-referencing these show-biz tidbits.

Sadye Marks Related to the Marx Brothers? Uh, no. Not according to Wikipedia: “Livingstone first met her future husband, Jack Benny, in Vancouver at a Passover sedar in her family home in 1922.” It cites American National Biography recounting, “Zeppo Marx took Benny to the home of David Marks, where they enjoyed a quiet and comfortable gathering. Marks’s youngest daughter [17 at the time], 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.”

Wikipedia notes, “Despite the two families’ acquaintance, and similar surnames, Livingstone was unrelated to the Marx Brothers.”

Jack Benny Courts Sadye/Sadie Marks at the May Co. There’s truth in this tale of her working as a lingerie salesgirl in this downtown Los Angeles department store.

Wikipedia describes, “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….” 

There’s a good Benny/Livingstone quip based on this courtship: Asking for a date, Jack boasts, “I’ve been on the radio for three months. You ought to go out with me.” Sadye responds, “Look, I’ve got a lamp that’s been on the radio for three years and I don’t go out with that either.” 

Se non è vero…. 

Benny and Marks were married on January 14, 1927, one week after his proposing.

On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, by John Dunning, Oxford University Press, 1998. 

Sadie Marks Becomes Mary Livingstone. Benny and his writer Harry Cohn created “a young Benny fan Mary Livingstone” in a radio sketch, but staff complications had Jack calling wife Sadie to fill in. “Eventually,” John Dunning writes in On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, “she would read humorous poetry and letters from her mother, and much later she would become one of the main deflators of Benny’s [script-invented] ego.” Thus, Sadie Marks became Mary Livingstone.

Mary Livingstone and Jack Benny, 1960. Image from CBS Television via English Wikipedia.

Fear of the Microphone. Both of my primary sources recount that Livingstone suffered from mic fright: Wikipedia notes, “Never very comfortable as a performer despite her success, Livingstone’s stage fright became so acute by the time the Benny show was moving toward television that she rarely appeared on the radio show in its final season, 1954–55.”

Dunning says, “The infectious laugh that squeaked out of her was the result of nerves, but it stuck and became part of her character.”

And, in fact, she had a sweet laugh.

Mary’s Fluff and a Beverly Hills Police Report. Dunning relates, “Two notorious fluffs by Mary—‘I’ll have a chiss swease sandwich’ (October 27, 1946) and ‘Run my car up on the grass reek,’ (December 3, 1950)—became running gags for weeks.” 

Wikipedia notes this “typical example of Benny’s and Livingstone’s (and the show’s writers) ability to improvise comedy from un-scripted errors”: A week after Mary’s fluff, the show featured the real-life Beverly Hills Police Chief describing “the strange call the department got the night before: two skunks fighting on someone’s lawn. And let me tell you, when they were done, did that grass reek!”

Another of My Favs. Mary and Jack are discussing listener mail when she notes, “This one is from Nobody, Montana.” Jack corrects, “That’s North Butte.” ds 

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026