Radio: Grape-Nuts to Benny?

Comedian Jack Benny, to whom Comedian Bob Hope presented a special Oscar for being “sweater girl of the year” (in Charley’s Aunt), got another present last week-not to be opened until autumn. Next season, Sponsor General Foods confessed, Benny will plug some other General Foods product, not the Jell-O with which he shares his present fame. Reason: JellO, being 60% sugar, may not be made nor sold in sufficient quantities to warrant the expensive exertions of Funnyman Benny, whose new two-year contract calls for a salary of $22,000 a week for 35 weeks-highest pay in radio. General Foods last week meditated giving Jell-O to Kate Smith, shunting Grape-Nuts Products to Benny. Benny was elaborately unconcerned. In an unprecedented deal last year he persuaded NBC to give him, not General Foods, a personal ten-year option on the choicest half-hour in radio (Sun. 7 p.m. E.W.T.). He can take Grape-Nuts Products or leave them alone.