| Six Hundred FortySeventh in the Famous People (FP) Series - Mary Livingstone |
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Mary Livingstone (born Sadie Marks, June 23, 1905 - June 30, 1983), was an American radio comedienne and the wife and radio partner of comedy great Jack Benny.
She came from a respected show business family whose relatives included her cousins the Marx Brothers.
She met her future husband, Jack Benny, at a Passover seder at her family home when she was 14; Benny was invited by his friend and her cousin, Zeppo Marx while Benny and the Marx Brothers were in town together to perform. Sadie developed a near-instant crush on the funny, somewhat shy man eleven years her senior. But when he inadvertently insulted her by excusing himself for the night in the midst of her violin performance, she got her revenge the next night. She took three girlfriends to the theater where Benny performed, sitting in the front row and making sure not to laugh. Benny said later it drove him nuts that he couldn't get the four girls to laugh at anything.
Sadie married Jack Benny in 1927 and they remained married until Jack died in 1974.
Sadie took part in some of Jack's vaudeville performances but never thought of herself as a full-time performer, seeming glad to be done with it when he moved to radio in 1932. Then came the day he called her at home and asked her to come to the studio quickly. An actress hired to play a part on the evening's show didn't show up and, instead of risking a hunt for a substitute, Benny thought his wife could handle the part: a character named "Mary Livingstone" scripted as Benny's biggest fan.
At first, it seemed like a brief role but NBC received so much fan mail that the character was revived into a regular feature on the Benny show, and the reluctant Sadie Marks became a radio star in her own right. Mary Benny soon enough displayed her own sharp wit and pinpoint comic timing, often used to puncture Benny's on-air ego, and she became a major part of the show, enough so that, giving in when she was addressed as "Mary Livingstone" often enough when out in public, she ended up changing her name legally to Mary Livingstone. Years later, her husband admitted how strange it felt to call her Sadie even in private.
So what does Henry Hudson have to do with Mary Livingstone? Probably nothing, except that you need to visit both of them here in the Tennessee Colony Cemetery in order to find this cache. And one final postscript about the spelling before I start getting emails about the Livingston buried near the matchstick container: Mary's surname is often misspelled without the 'e', as with her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to radio.
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| Stage I |
| What was the middle initial of Henry Hudson buried here? |
| H |
N31 50.117 |
W095 49.865 |
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| R |
N31 50.107 |
W095 49.907 |
| L |
N31 50.128 |
W095 49.901 |
| A |
N31 50.139 |
W095 49.892 |
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| Final |
| So which one are you leaving with? |
| Mary |
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| Sadie |
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FP cemetery caches are always placed with regards to the location, so please be mindful of your presence here, watch where you step and be respectful of the residents interred here. Please carefully re-hide the container better to maintain the integrity of the cache.
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GPSr Accuracy 8.5' @ Final |
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Avoid the use of acronym only logs and cut 'n paste logs. You must sign the log to claim the find. No exceptions, no excuses.