# The Horn Blows at Midnight on Omnibus

In 1945, Jack Benny starred in his last major motion picture, "The Horn Blows at Midnight," as a band member who dreams he's an angel sent to destroy the Earth. The film did respectable business but wasn't an overwhelming success (doubtlessly due to the timing, coming at the end of WW2) and Benny soon began joking about what a dismal failure the film was... which quickly became a running gag on his TV and radio shows, leading people to believe the movie actually was an epic bomb. In 1949, the film was adapted as an episode of the "Ford Theater" radio show; the story was altered, the bookend dream-sequence portions were eliminated along with the film's antagonists, and it was steeped in anti-war sentimentality. Benny played the role of Athanael one final time for this episode of "Omnibus" which was broadcast live on November 29, 1953 and preserved on kinescope. This version was adapted from the radio show, but with the passage of time, the anti-war aspect was significantly toned down and even more of the film's gags were removed. There are several then-timely jokes about Athanael irresponsibly causing a freak smog which enveloped The Big Apple - in November 1953, mysterious smog in New York City was blamed for the deaths of 260 people, including renowned poet Dylan Thomas. For fans of classic television there are tons of familiar faces, including a young Harry Shearer ("This is Spinal Tap," "The Simpsons") in one of his earliest roles as a shoeshine boy. Like many of the…

- Kind: Commercial
- Year: 1953
- Genres: Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/TheHornBlowsAtMidnightOnOmnibus)
- Licence or status: [Public Domain Mark 1.0](http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

Not offered: its uploader marks it public domain, and the US Copyright Office's records do not settle that it is (a record that may be another film's, a film first published abroad, a year when renewal was automatic, or a country they do not name). Unclear is not offered.