“Mr. Benson won an amateur contest as a dancer in the 1920s and, by the mid-1930s, he was touring the country telling jokes. He worked in the vaudeville theater, in which a variety of performers – singers, jugglers, dancers, magicians – appeared on a single bill. For many years, he also appeared opposite strippers and other performers in burlesque shows, vaudeville’s more disreputable cousin.”