Bill Murray names the greatest comedy actor of all time
Bill Murray's comedy style was likely influenced by Jack Benny, whose deadpan delivery and impeccable comic timing Murray came to love as he grew up.
(Credit: Buena Vista)
Film » Cutting Room Floor
Thu 22 May 2025 19:15, UK
If anyone in Hollywood knows a thing or two about great comedy, it’s Bill Murray. The Ghostbuster has spent 50 years making audiences spit out their popcorn with his trademark smart-aleck delivery and aloof characters who never seem to take anything too seriously. These comic skills took him from the sketch comedy institution Saturday Night Live to the top of Hollywood. He’s still beloved today, even as stories of his bad behaviour over the years have become more widely known.
While Murray’s ironic, cooler-than-you comedic style is undoubtedly original, and no one else in Hollywood does it quite like him, his origin story is the same as most other funnymen. As a child, Murray realised he liked making people laugh, and he soaked up influences from the comedians he watched on TV and in the cinema. However, one comedian’s style went slightly over his head as a kid, only to reveal itself to him as pure genius when he got older – and it’s easy to see his influence in the wry, deadpan style that would come to define Murray.
“There are people that I didn’t quite understand when I was younger, that later I got to really like,” a thoughtful Murray told Collider in 2021. “The person that jumps into my mind is Jack Benny. He was a fella who I thought was a little bit dry for a ten-year-old or a 12-year-old, but later, when I watched him, I saw that he was so deft.”
Benny, a former vaudeville performer who became one of America’s most beloved radio personalities in the 1940s and ’50s, was never quite able to transfer his talents to the silver screen. In fact, he stopped starring in feature films in 1945, which meant Murray’s young eyes wouldn’t have been watching him in the cinema. Instead, he more than likely would have caught him on The Jack Benny Program, which ran for more than 30 years on radio and TV. It has been credited with being integral in developing the format of modern sitcoms, and was always the best showcase for Benny’s deft, subtle character work.
You see, whether he worked in TV, film, or radio, Benny always adopted the same basic comedic persona. He was a miserly violinist who was too arrogant to realise that he had no talent on the instrument, which made him the straight man in any scenario, as he had no idea his co-stars were making fun of him.
Benny’s comic timing was always his secret weapon, and for years, he wrung maximum laughs out of the slightest reaction or pause for effect. The way he drew out an exasperated silence for as long as possible, before punctuating it with a low-key, “Well!” was a thing of true comedic beauty. “His timing was so precise,” Murray marvelled. “His face was such a beautiful photograph that I would turn on the TV and record him, just to go back and watch him. Jack Benny was perfect, absolutely perfect.”
Ultimately, Benny was the perfect example of a comedian whose style was so singular that he could do virtually the same thing for his entire career, yet it was never anything less than hilarious. The fact that his genius only became apparent to Murray as he aged and matured is also fascinating, as it proves comedy can be both subtle and entirely in the eye of the beholder.
After all, a joke or a scenario that a child mightn’t laugh at when they’re young can still register with them on some level. Then, when it finally clicks in their brain and they ‘get’ it, it becomes all the more meaningful – and they may even pilfer some of its essence for their own purposes, as Murray certainly did with Benny.
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Bill MurrayComedy
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