Edwin Booth?
Does anyone else think Jack is parodying Edwin Booth in his performance? He styled his hair and dress in a similar fashion and Hamlet was Booth's iconic role?
Just curious.
Edwin Booth the brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth? My guess is that Jack Benny himself, born of eastern European Jewish parents in 1894, knew next to nothing about Edwin Booth, if THAT much. But who's to say the screenwriters didn't pay some sort of homage to Booth by (perhaps) basing Benny's "Hamlet" look on old Booth-as-Hamlet photographs?
On the other hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Edwin-Booth-Hamlet-1870.png
I dunno. Just saw To Be or Not to Be and I don't, myself, see Benny / "Hamlet" looking anymore like Booth-in-character than any other Hamlet actor. But maybe that's just me.
Okay folks, show's over, nothing to see here!