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Benny Hill: Bbc America
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For nearly four decades Benny Hill reigned supreme as the king of bawdy humour and seaside postcard-style japery on British television. Undoubtedly, out of his entire body of work, it is the shows that he did for Thames television in the 1970s for which he is best remembered, with their combination of high-speed farce, risqué jokes and beautiful ladies. It is these shows that undoubtedly turned him into a global superstar – topping the ratings in America .... With his “three stooges” - Henry McGee, Bob Todd and Jack Wright – Benny Hill concentrated on producing a handful of ‘specials’ every year – shows which were critically acclaimed and always topped the ratings.
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Nostalgia aside, the current Benny Hill craze on BBC America can only mean one thing. Aunty is conducting market research to see if there is a U.S. audience for the in-production BBC biopic about Hill’s life and career. Written by Rumpole author John Mortimer, the film will focus on the doughy comedian’s problems with women. It will probably be unkind. In an interview with funny.co.uk, Mortimer characterized Hill as a miser who “died alone in this awful little flat and nobody realised he was dead until they smelt him.” These spiteful words reference Hill’s status as both a problem and a tragedy in popular narratives of British TV history. Although Hill was hardly the only comedian to objectify women or get laughs out of racial stereotypes in the 1960s, he is commonly characterized by certain types of aggrieved British folk as a man who was hounded out of television for being politically incorrect.
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From an American perspective, both Benny Hill and Monty Python were unusual in being imported directly and appearing outside the frame of network television, which then ruled the landscape. In the 1970s, British sitcoms Til Death Us Do Part and Steptoe & Son were reformatted by Norman Lear as All in the Family and Sanford and Son, both of which became huge hits. But there was no translating Benny Hill, just as there was no way to Americanize Monty Python.
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During World War II, Hill worked in working men's clubs, revues and end-of-the-pier shows all over Britain. For the stage he changed his first name to "Benny", in homage to his favourite comedian Jack Benny. Between the end of the war and the dawn of television, he worked as a radio performer. An early believer in television, his first appearance over the airwaves was in 1949 in a show called Hi There. He continued to work on and off until his career took off with The Benny Hill Show in 1955 on BBC Television.
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In the U.S., the original hour-long shows have been issued on DVD (Region 1) under the umbrella title Benny Hill - Complete & Unadulterated. The first three sets were released with the subheading The Naughty Early Years, covering the years 1969-1971 (Shows 1-11, including three B&W episodes previously unseen in America), 1972-1974 (Shows 12-21) and 1975-1977 (Shows 22-31, plus his 1970 half-hour silent film Eddie in August). The final three sets bore the subheading The Hill\'s Angels Years, and covered the years 1978-1981 (Shows 32-41), 1982-1985 (Shows 42-50) and 1986-1989 (Shows 51-58).
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As his jobs increased in stature, Benny tried briefly to be a film star, but his first movie Who Done It? (1956) turned out to be a who saw it? His popularity growing thanks to a series of antic television commercials, Hill began performing regularly on the BBC-TV network, taking time out for the occasional film part in such international productions as Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1969).
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