{"id":171,"date":"2013-07-01T05:06:35","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T05:06:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/?page_id=171"},"modified":"2013-10-25T06:12:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-25T06:12:50","slug":"regis-philbin-at-club-bene","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/sample-page\/morgans-people-places\/people\/regis-philbin-at-club-bene\/","title":{"rendered":"Regis Philbin at Club Bene!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Morgan Memories \u2013 Regis Philbin at Club Bene!<\/h3>\n
\"Regis<\/a>

Regis Philbin with Mrs. Mary Beninato at Club Bene Enjoying a Delicious Meatball Dinner She Cooked Just for Him. Photo Courtesy of Donna and Tommy Andrejewski.<\/p><\/div>\n

Regis Philbin currently holds the Guiness Book of World Records record for having the greatest number of hours in front of a television camera on a commercial network.\u00a0 The previous record of 15,188 hours was held by Hugh Downs.\u00a0 That\u2019s just a day and a half shy of 380 forty hour work weeks (7.3 years) or, alternatively, 632.83333 consecutive days! Regis surpassed Hugh on 20 August 2004 and he is still going strong though he is now \u201cretired.\u201d<\/p>\n

My first recollection of Regis was when he was sidekick to Joey Bishop on \u201cThe Joey Bishop Show\u201d between 1967 and 1969.\u00a0 Joey\u2019s show was a 90-minute late-night talk show (11:30pm \u2013 1am) which was broadcast on ABC (channel 7 in NJ) five nights a week opposite \u201cThe Tonight Show with Johnny Carson\u201d.\u00a0 My strongest memory of this show was one summer when we rented a small bungalow at MidwayBeach near SeasideHeights for a week.\u00a0 It was probably the summer of 1969 \u2013 the same summer that Apollo 11 landed on the moon (or maybe it was 1968).\u00a0 The show was funny even to a young stallion. What I most recall of \u201cThe Joey Bishop Show\u201d \u2013 in fact pretty much all I recall \u2013 was the way that Joey would pronounce Regis\u2019 last name.\u00a0 \u201cRegis Phil-a-bib!\u201d<\/p>\n

I guess I started to get Regis Fever when Regis appeared in the famous episode of Seinfeld when Kramer appeared on \u201cRegis and Kathy Lee\u201d with his coffee table book which, in turn, was also a coffee table.\u00a0 This was Seinfeld Series episode 86, the 22nd<\/sup> and final episode of season 5 which aired on 19 May 1994.\u00a0 What a brilliant premise and a funny episode.\u00a0 A few years later, my wife, young son, mother and I went to Walt Disney World for Christmas were we saw Regis in person preparing for a Christmas special in front of the castle.\u00a0 My mom yelled out to Regis and he very kindly waved back to her.<\/p>\n

Regis Fever got serious when he hosted the show which everyone could just NOT get enough of, \u201cWho Wants to be a Millionaire.\u201d\u00a0 It was around that time that I picked up a copy of Regis\u2019 1995 autobiography \u201cI\u2019m Only One Man\u201d.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t expected and I got very excited when I read what he wrote about his very happy experiences everytime he performed at Club Bene in Morgan, NJ!\u00a0 Club Bene, which will be featured in a hopefully soon future posting, was right down the street from where I lived when I lived in Morgan.\u00a0 This little club in its heyday attracted some of the world\u2019s greatest and most well known talent.\u00a0 More about this in a moment.<\/p>\n

Anyone that watches \u201cThe Late Show with David Letterman\u201d will frequently see Regis make seemingly unplanned cameo appearances usually designed to try to throw off Dave.\u00a0 The smoothest one was a few years ago during the final credit roll when Regis and Dave were sitting on top of the marquee of the Ed Sullivan Theatre reminiscing about show biz and smoking stogies.<\/p>\n

On one of my visits to Morgan a few years ago, I was able to get to get together with some of my Sayreville War Memorial High School buddies.\u00a0 The greatest stories told that evening IMHO were by Bruce who must have one of the world\u2019s greatest jobs.\u00a0 He gets to work with Regis!\u00a0 Regis sounds like he is off camera just as nice and funny as he is on camera.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to a few weeks before the original posting of this page when I received correspondence and the photo shown on this page. The photo is of Regis with Mrs. Mary Beninato and was received from her daughter Donna and grandson Tommy.\u00a0 Mrs. Beninato was the wife of Club Bene founder and owner Joseph Beninato.\u00a0 Not only would Mrs. Beninato often make dinner for the world famous entertainers who would perform at Club Bene, but she would also get her photo taken with them.\u00a0 How cool is that!\u00a0 It is so cool that her grandson posted this and a number of other photos of his grandmother with celebrities who performed at Club Bene on his Facebook page! Awesome.<\/p>\n

The thing that touched me most about Donna\u2019s letter to me was the justifiable pride she had about her parents.\u00a0 What also touched me was when Donna wrote, \u201cWhen we had Regis he would arrive hours early before show time to enjoy an Italian meal my mother would cook for him which he always looked forward to.\u201d\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that something?\u00a0 Here it is a number of decades later and that special event still stands out greatly to the Beninato family!<\/p>\n

I asked if Mr. Philbin would be so kind as to write something that I can post just for this web site.\u00a0 True to the awesome person I thought he would be, he very kindly wrote the following just for us.\u00a0 For that kind act, I can\u2019t be more grateful to him and the people that helped me make contact with him.<\/p>\n

Sure I remember the Club Bene. It was a great place to break in an act, improve it and most important, learn it.\u00a0 The crowd was always friendly if not a little on the rowdy side.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say they were enthusiastic.\u00a0 I thought it was a great place to learn another side of show business \u2026 being up there onstage entertaining the people in person and not through the camera.\u00a0 I loved the Beninato family.\u00a0\u00a0 All of them were great characters and Mrs. Beninato was a terrific cook.\u00a0 After rehearsing with the band she always served a great dinner.\u00a0 Great meatballs, and pasta just like my Italian mother made.\u00a0 It was always exciting to appear at Club Bene.\u00a0 I loved that place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So should Mr. Philbin ever come to LA, if could have his people talk to my people, I would be delighted to \u201cdo\u201d lunch!<\/p>\n

Originally Posted on January 27, 2010.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Morgan Memories \u2013 Regis Philbin at Club Bene! Regis Philbin currently holds the Guiness Book of World Records record for having the greatest number of hours in front of a television camera on a commercial network.\u00a0 The previous record of 15,188 hours was held by Hugh Downs.\u00a0 That\u2019s just a day and a half shy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":975,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"page-templates\/full-width.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-171","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":640,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171\/revisions\/640"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morgan-nj.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}