About Me

Update: December 16, 2010
Important News about Benny's Place!

Many fans of Benny's Place may be wondering why their e-mails have not been answerd lately and why there have been no updates to the site recently. The reason is that I have made some important changes in my life and I no longer have the time to work on Benny's Place like I used to. I have gone back to school and I am looking for a new career in Office Administration. I am also working part time now at a call center and simply do not have the time to devote to the site that I once did. But don't worry, I will keep the site up where it is indefinitely and see no need to take it down. This site will continue for as long as possible. Updates will simply be much rarer than before. I do appreciate all of your emails and support over the years and feel free to drop me a line. Not all e-mails will get a response. If you do send me some kind of e-mail or update, please keep it small as I simply don't have the time that I did before. Again, thanks for all of your support and keep an eye on the site. Once in a while something may be put up, but that will depend on whether I feel that the update is worthwhile or that I have the time to add it. Thanks!

This page includes background information on this site, including information on The Webmaster the Contributing Editor, William Brown and the Associate Editor, David Hawkins. Contributing Editor William Brown has also passed along a very interesting article about Benny and Jackie Gleason, since they were both known as The Great Ones of television in their respective countries.

The Webmaster

Name: Shawn, a.k.a. "threerandot"
Age: 39
Residence: Moncton, NB, Canada
Wife's Name: Stacey
Interests & Hobbies Music (mostly classical), hi-end audio, building websites, swimming, Classic Movies (Alfred Hitchcock ones are favorites), travelling, shopping for CD's, reading, walking and of course, Benny Hill and Hill's Angels!

How did this site get started?

Good question. When the DVD Golden Greats was released, I got it as a Christmas present from my wife. Little did I know that the DVD would contain material from the later years of the Benny Hill Show. I had never seen the material on that DVD before and was pretty upset, since it did not contain any of the classic material that I remembered watching with my brother as we grew up. I was very worried that this would be the only Benny Hill DVD released. I wanted to write a review for the DVD and started this site. I also created petitions in the hope that we would see more Benny Hill DVD releases. Little did I realize that a few years later A&E would begin to release the entire series on DVD and that TV shows on DVD would be such hot stuff. I also didn't realise just how much this site would grow.

Learning Curve

My wife Stacey actually showed me the very bare bones involved in writing web pages. From there I began to research building and designing sites from all over the internet. There were many great sites which were extremely helpful in the information they provided to webmaster newbies like myself. The most helpful being Lissa Explains It All, a site for helping kids to build web pages, but hey, this kid knew how to break explanations down so that even I could understand it. Many HTML sites are just plain complicated. Lissa uses very basic every day language to explain the workings of web design. There are also many more I could mention, but Lissa's site deserves special mention.

This site also went through several designs before I got to this one, which seems to work well in all of the major browsers. Trial and Error seems to be the key in web design. I also used to be on Yahoo! Geocities, but as my site expanded and required more bandwidth, Yahoo's free service was just no longer practical. It kept timing out. I had to find a better web space with plenty of bandwidth and space for the site. My wife Stacey actually spoke to someone named Aglrond of the Torm Guardians Hall (of which she is a member), who had extra space on his server that just wasn't being used. He opened up a domain just for me and this is where I am going to stay as long as Aglrond allows it. This has benefited everyone who visits this site because of the virtually unlimited bandwith and space I never had on Goecities. On behalf of all the Benny Hill fans who visit this site, thanks again to Aglrond!

Unexpected Help

As time went on and more people became aware of this site, I began to get emails with questions concerning Benny Hill. Many of them I could answer, but some were about obscure information. I never pretended to be a Benny Hill expert, just a big fan. I eventually got in touch with a certain William Brown of New York City. He passed along information about Benny Hill like a duck swims in water. And still does. He is literally a research expert in the area of Benny Hill and portions of this site like the Who's Who of The Benny Hill Show pages are pretty much all written by himself. He passes along those screen captures and a job like this just wouldn't be possible for one person alone. William does pretty much all of the research and I do all of the site design, as well as writing the DVD Reviews. It has become a very successful partnership.

I have also recieved help from a certain David Hawkins who lives "across the pond" as they say and he has also become an important player in passing along information that perhaps William was not able to verify. In fact, verfying information to be completely accurate is a very difficult task and much of what is posted on this site can still be considered guess work. Special Thanks to David Hawkins.

Impact

It is quite clear that this site is successful because of the Legacy of Benny Hill. He is now truly a legendary icon in the world of comedy. This site would never have grown without the enthusiasm of fans like you and people like William Brown and David Hawkins who continue to research all things Benny. Interviews with such notable Benny Hill stars like Penny Kendall, Sue Upton, Christine Pilgrim and Dee Dee Wilde have helped this site to grow in stature. Also, Devra Prywes of NewVideo, who are part of the production of the A&E DVD's have also expressed their support for this site to me by passing along a review copy of A&E set 4 for a review. A Special thanks to Devra for her support. I should also take a moment to thank Tony Frederick who had originally built the hillsangels.com website, which featured several downloads of the classic Hill's Angels routines fans know and love. He was also an influence for me to begin building this site.

Fans and Updates

I do apologize if there are times when this site is not always updated regularly. Life has it's own way of affecting your schedule. I also do not pretend to be an expert on Benny Hill and this is where William Brown and David Hawkins have been indispensible where my knowledge can be lacking. Feel free to keep on passing on your emails and we will do the best we can to answer your questions.

Acknowledgements

I could not begin to mention all of the individuals who played some part in the development and success of this site. I must mention contributing editor William Brown, without whose tireless research, this site would be sorely lacking in content and information. David Hawkins for his aid in filling in many of the names that William and I may have been unable to point out. My wife has also been patient as I built this site and has been an invaluable aid in making corrections, validating and also as an inspiration. If there are any awards that come my way, most of the credit for this site will certainly go to so many who knowingly or unknowingly contributed to this site.

No man is an island. And this couldn't apply more than to the creation of this website. It would not have been possible without the help of many people, some I have met personally, others online. Here is a list of some of those names.

William Brown, David Hawkins, Eric Larsen, Tony Frederick, Devra Prywes of NewVideo (for supplying a DVD for review), Andrew Dow, Penny Kendall, Sue Upton, Christine Pilgrim, Dee Dee Wilde, Bob Jackson, Lissa of "Lissa Explains it All", Wild West Fan, Aglrond of Torm Guardians Hall for the Free Webspace, and many online support sites that provided simple web pages with free code for developers, as well as free editing tools and software that aided in the creation of this site. Forgive me if I have forgotten to mention your name and feel free to remind me so I can add your name here!

Finally, to my wife Stacey for all of her support and all of the laughter she has given me.

And now, some background information passed on to me by Contributing Editor, William Brown...

Contributing Editor

Name: William Brown IMDB Entry
Residence: New York, NY
Interests & Hobbies (a partial list): Typesetting (Gutenberg era to computer era), TV and radio technology, pop music (in varying genres) from the late 1930's to the mid-1980's, record collecting and discographical research, Looney Tunes, Tex Avery cartoons (MGM preferred), Jackie Gleason / The Honeymooners (Classic 39 and Color), What's My Line? (the 1950-1967 CBS incarnation), SCTV, Red Green, The Carol Burnett Show (including the famous "Went With the Wind" parody), the original 1975-1980 Saturday Night Live, Airplane! . . . oh, yes, and The Lad Himself, Benny Hill!

A native of New York City (Manhattan, to be precise), William Brown has worked both in front of and behind the cameras. In the early 1990's he made appearances on some famous New York public access shows, notably Beyond Vaudeville (which ran for more than a decade before moving to MTV as the short-lived Oddville, MTV). His most famous film work has to be Lefty-Right, in which he played a man in a dead-end job who decides to convert to left-handedness after hearing a radio news report about left-handers dying earlier than right-handers. The film was featured in competition at the 2002 Slamdance Film Festival, as well as appearing in the Brazilian Belo Horizonte Short Film Festival and the French Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival, and Mr. Brown received particular notice for his performance. He has also worked as an editor, title designer and/or researcher on several independent films and other sundry projects, and in addition he has written a pop singles discography about a major record label.

Mr. Brown's research on The Benny Hill Show dates back to the late 1980's when he saw discrepancies between names of supporting actors and actresses as on the end credits of certain shows, as opposed to how they were printed in some American TV reference books; to say nothing about the lack of concrete information in relation to other famous British TV shows such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and Fawlty Towers. He vowed to connect the names to the faces of the key people who appeared on the program over its 20 years on Thames Television (and also the years before that when Mr. Hill was on the BBC and ATV), and to that end made two trips to London to expand on his quest to find out who was who, and even found some names whose credits included the show in casting directories, but were never credited on the show itself. He poured through old British casting directories, back issues of The Stage and Television Today, TVTimes and Radio Times, newspaper clippings, and other sources. Thus was he able to bring to the table (better known to you and me as Benny's Place) his encyclopaedic knowledge on who was who, who appeared when, and other aspects of the programme. His own personal knowledge in this realm continues to expand with the contributions of British-based David Hawkins. In addition, he has gathered much information over the years on TV technology, including the cameras used by TV studios over the years, which made it possible for him to deduce the studio cameras used by TBHS throughout its Thames run.

Essentially, there were two different but interlocking catalysts for Mr. Brown's eventually becoming a contributing editor to Benny's Place: (1) The August 2004 release of the first of A&E Video's Complete & Unadulterated DVD sets, which filled a great deal of gaps as to some sketch origins and who was on the show at the time, and (2) BBC America's airings, beginning in October 2004, of the half-hour syndicated episodes, which spurred a long-standing quest as to which sketches originally aired when (with as much as a ten-year difference in one episode), given the already-existing Guide to the Syndicated Series on this site.

Mr. Brown lives and works in New York City.

The Great Ones
by William Brown

© William Brown.
All Rights Reserved. Click the image of Benny and Jackie Gleason for a larger view.

This is called "The Great Ones," a fictitious scenario of Benny as Fred Scuttle, wearing a 1960's-era Smothers Brothers suit (and of course, his trademark glasses and beret), appearing with Jackie Gleason on the latter's late 1960's show. I did this (in colored pencil) because both were the "Great Ones" of television in their respective countries (Gleason's nickname was "The Great One"). Both controlled the circumstances of production in their respective shows; both had bevies of beautiful girls and loads of knockabout comedy; both played different multiple characters in the course of an hour; both had affinities for (in Dennis Kirkland's terminology) "comedy without words" (in Gleason's case, silent sketches featuring The Poor Soul); in the early-to-mid 1960's Gleason had a show, The American Scene Magazine, which had brief quickies juxtaposed with longer sketches, not unlike Hill in the Thames years, and indeed on that show Gleason had different taping days - one day for prerecorded bits, another for the live show - which seemed to predate Hill's M.O. (indeed, I wonder if Gleason's said program was an impetus for Hill to remake his show as it was structured after 1964, as in mid-1964 one of Gleason's shows was aired in Britain because it was entered into the 1964 Montreux festival); both were rather heavy (though Gleason was by far the heavier of the two, often surpassing 300 lbs.); both worked with key actors for many years (on Gleason's show, including Art Carney); both had musical guests on; both were cancelled in a sweep of "old guard" shows (Gleason in 1970, Hill in 1989); both were creatively "dried out" when they were given the respective hooks - but that's where the similarities end. There were quite a few differences.

• Gleason loved performing in front of live audiences, whereas Hill had a lifelong fear performing before live audiences. What Gleason hated was performing the same material, over and over again, night after night, which he considered monotonous.

• Gleason did not like working with children or animals - in stark contrast to Mr. Hill (with the "Little Angels").

• Gleason hated rehearsing, and steadfastly sought to avoid any; Hill's show was rehearsed to the last millisecond, and like Chaplin, often took as many as 20 (30?) takes for one routine or quickie or whatever, whereas Gleason's shows were almost always in one take.

• Whereas Hill's Angels were merged into "dancing" and "non-dancing" contingents (in some cases - Sue Upton, Louise English and Lorraine Doyle - both), Gleason had his girls divided thus: the dancing group was called The June Taylor Dancers, the non-dancing ones dubbed The Glea Girls. Pictures of whom can be found at www.sitcomsonline.com.

• Gleason's June Taylor Dancers and Glea Girls were dressed far more conservatively, comparatively speaking, than the disco-era Angels. Nor was there as much emphasis on the pulchritude in Gleason's hours as was in Hill's shows. To this day, mention Jackie Gleason and you'll normally hear "Reggie Van Gleason" or "The Poor Soul" or, of course, his most famous character, "Ralph Kramden," in contrast to saying the name Benny Hill and getting back "Hill's Angels," as opposed to "Fred Scuttle" or "Mervyn Cruddy" or "Chow Mein" (that is, until the birth and rise of Benny's Place). The Taylor dancers got 2-3 minutes tops, at the start of Gleason's show; anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes of 1980's Hill shows were devoted to the Angels.

•In a related manner, whereas many Angels names are now known, very few of the Taylor dancers' names are. Mercedes Ellington, for example, was the first (and only) African-American dancer in the troupe; but was also the granddaughter of the late jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington. Other dancers included June Taylor's sister Marilyn (who would be Gleason's third wife), Trudy Carson (future wife of American comic Soupy Sales; she was quoted at length in a Gleason bio), and (waaay back in the 1950's) Jane Manners. Ditto for the Glea Girls; of the pics in that link I could only make out not only Greta Randall/von Hagge, but also Lanita Kent (top left) and Judy Jordan (the other dark-haired girl, bottom right in the grey box). Ms. Jordan would make appearances a few years later on The Beverly Hillbillies, and contrary to the assertions of IMDb, is alive and well and married to one of Elvis' former Memphis Mafiosi.

• Gleason sought to dominate everywhere besides on his TV show; something tells me he would've treated the "more sensitive" Hill like one of his lackeys if they'd ever met. Hill's personality outside the confines of his TV show seemed to resemble Art Carney more than Gleason, especially from the quotes of people who worked on the show after 1979.

• Gleason did weekly television shows; Hill did as many as six and as little as two original shows a year.

• All of Gleason's shows were studio-bound and (after the 1960's) on videotape; Hill used a combo of tape and film.

• Gleason's shows were in real time always, never using speeding up of footage.

• Gleason was married three times and divorced twice; Hill had never married.

• Gleason moved his TV show from New York City to Miami Beach, FL in 1964 so he could play golf all year round; Hill moved his residence to Teddington in 1987 to be next to the studio where he taped his show.

• Gleason didn't have the "political incorrectness" baggage that weighed down Mr. Hill at the point their respective programs were cancelled. The Great One and Red Skelton were all cited as appealing to "older" and "more rural" audiences - but their (Gleason's and Skelton's) replacement with the likes of All in the Family did draw some parallels to what transpired on British TV after Hill was taken off. (Skelton also, by the '60's, preferred "comedy without words" with his Silent Spot and Freddie the Freeloader sketches.)

• Both men had some success in the music business, but for waaaay different reasons; while Hill made recordings of his various ditties, Gleason's music success came exclusively as a supposed "conductor" of easy-listening musical bums - er, music albums (one of his biographies maintained he always had ghost conductors who directed the orchestras in his name). And interesting factoids:

• In 1959, both men made their final "major" stage appearances: Gleason on Broadway, in Take Me Along, and Hill on the West End of London, in Fine Fettle; both their runs ended in 1960. (See above for the differences in their attitudes towards performing in front of live audiences.)

• Benny was the only one of the two to have actually done Shakespeare (the 1964 TV production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which he played Bottom); the closest Jackie ever got was doing the soliloquy from Hamlet in a bar in Boston during a trial run of Take Me Along.

• Gleason had a battery of writers whom, by certain accounts, he resented for possessing a talent he himself did not have; Hill was his own writer, except for the mid-1950's-early 1960's period when he co-wrote his shows with Dave Freeman.

• When both shows were cancelled (Gleason in 1970, Hill in 1989), they were among the most expensive hour-long shows produced at the time, and were in a terminal ratings decline.

Associate Editor

Name: David Hawkins
Age: 31
Residence: South East London
Interests & Hobbies: Walking, Art & Dancing
TV & Music: Benny Hill, Kenny Everett, Monty Python, Q, The Paul Hogen Show, Big Brother, Bad Girls, Prisoner, At Last the 1948 Show and Elvira.
Music: David Bowie, Kate Bush, Rolling Stones, The Sisters of Mercy, Elvis, plus I love Rocky Horror.
Favourite Sketches:
That Family 1975
The Lower Tidmarsh Fire Brigade 1970 & 1981
Top of the Tops 1971
Uplift 1971
Berlin Youth Choir Recital 1972
Jakie Wright's Holiday 1973
The Georgian Dancers 1981
The Kitty Everett Show 1980
plus any sketch from The Best Of Benny Hill
Angel numbers are New York New York 1980
Hate the Hot Gossip take off from 1979 as I'm a Hot Gossip fan.

I'm a native of South East London but I live just 5 minutes away from Bexleyheath where Benny Hill's Aunty Lulu lived. When I'm not at work I'm watching Big Brother. I've applyed for the show twice but with no luck, maybe next year. I have loved The Benny Hill Show since I was five or six. My favorite era of the show has to be 1969-1973. One thing I like to do is find missing BBC Benny Hill Shows. I know some of them are out there some where.

I started contributing to Benny's Place, I think, in 2004, when I knew the names of a few of the Angels. Where I can help is the fact that I live in the UK so there is more of a chance that I will see some of the Angels on other shows like re-runs of Top Of The Pops, Kenny Everett, etc. I also have a huge video collection as well and I spot a lot of the stars of the Benny Hill Show there, for example, Alison Thomas doing backing vocals for BA Robinson on The Kenny Kenny Everett Show in 1982. Most of my Identifying of stars goes to William Brown and then he will send Shawn a screen grab for his Who's Who pages. (I'm sure William Brown could write a book on Mr Hill).