[Pause]

"It's so good to be in Las Vegas again," said Jack Benny. "It's my sixth or seventh time, you know. The last time was about three years ago . . .

And here I am again. That may mean nothing to you. [Pause.] But Prudential is thrilled. Naturally I won't tell you just how much insurance I have. [Pause.] But when I go [pause], they go."

That was Jack Benny last week, lining out his impeccably timed and timeless monologue of self-deprecation. The scene was Las Vegas' spangly new Caesar's Palace, an overflow crowd of about 1,000 people, and the beginning of a four-week stand that promised to break house records all over town.

The Strad. There was Jack's wife Mary at one of the tables. Take a bow, Mary, said Jack. Then: "I'm glad she stood up. [Pause.] Now the dress is deductible." On he rambled. Frank Sinatra, he said, was not the only guy who had his own rat pack. "I have a gang too. Only in my gang, we have Edward Everett Horton. Spring Byington. Walter Brennan. We call our gang Ovaltine a Go-Go. We sing and play Lawrence Welk records. Sometimes we get high and speed them up a little." Then, of course, Benny played his fiddle. "It's a Stradivarius," he explained. "At least, I think it's a Strad. [Pause.] If it isn't, I'm out about a hundred and ten bucks."

To his old radio and television fans, so familiar with the Benny brand, it was something of a surprise to hear a few pale blue jokes thrown in. Speaking of topless bathing suits, Benny said: "Suppose they were popular. I could just picture 300 women lying on the beach in topless bathing suits [pause] and a little tiny baby trying to find its mother." And: "I am a very happily married man. I don't fool around. I'm not a wolf or a playboy. Oh [pause], occasionally I glance through the African section of the National Geographic. You know, whatever I need, I see there."

54-c- Coffee. When he walked off the stage 1 1/2 hours later, Benny's audience gave him a standing ovation--the kind he has been getting since he gave up his TV series and took to the road with his One Hour and Sixty Minutes with Jack Benny and his occasional benefit symphony concerts, which have raised $4,000,000 for charity. This new turn, after long years in radio and TV, enables him to keep his material fresh; his old television series made too many demands on his writers, and the shows often were duds. He still does TV specials, but complains that viewers expect too much from them. "It's just another hour show," he says. "To me [pause], a special is when coffee is marked down from 890 to 540 a pound."

Between gigs, Jack idles either at his new West Los Angeles penthouse apartment or at his Palm Springs home. That desert retreat is a special delight to his wife. It was once owned by the May Co. department-store family, who used to employ Mary behind the hosiery counter. Both Benny residences are just a short iron from golf clubs. Mary, now in her 60s, plays a little golf when her back isn't bothering her, spends most of her time buying frocks, keeping her blonde coif pouffed at George Masters', and visiting with her four grandchildren. Jack gets around the golf course nearly every day (shooting in the low 90s), and when he is not working or kibitzing with pals like George Burns and Billy Wilder, he watches television, works on his autobiography, writes checks ("We spend a bloody fortune--but I don't know what else you should do with money"), and practices on that $110 Strad. He does try to go to bed early every night. After all, having been 39 for all those years, Jack is now 72.

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