Benjamin Goodman II is the would-be sole heir of the massive fortune that was to be left for him by his well-known, and wildly popular, late father Benny Goodman, the famous jazz clarinetist from the swing era of the late 1920s to the 1950s.
Regrettably, the Goodman family fortune was lost when Turkey invaded Switzerland in 1934,
devastating their economy. The invasion resulted in a severe depletion of the vast majority of the Goodman fortune that was contained in an esteemed Swiss bank. Benjamin II never received a cent of the massive fortune supposedly left for him by his late father.
Benjamin II spent most of his childhood in the Calgarian Jewish quarter, shining shoes for nickels and taking
taking care of his mother. Benjamin would often spend whatever free time he could manage writing screenplays and scripts in his two story condominium, where he lived with his mother, as well as his beloved muskrat, Freckles.
As he entered adulthood, Benjamin II came to the bitter realization that no
one wore shiny shoes anymore, so he began to struggle to meet the family's bills. Benjamin was forced to very
reluctantly resign from his studies at his Christian school and look for full time work to support the family. Benjamin worked long, hard, brutal, and physically demanding days as a consultant for Maclean's magazine, where he met and became
good friends with two work
associates, Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin.
The three shared a passion for Black domestic comedy. Together, they experimented writing and filming various low budget sitcoms and short films. In 1974, Benjamin caught a break when CBS picked up the pilot for his sitcom, Good Times, which he had co-written with his close friends Bud and Norman. The show was an immediate hit, and the production team enjoyed unmitigated success in the late 1970s. Although Good Times went
off the air in 1979, its
popularity remained strong through the 1980s.
Unfortunately, as the popularity of Good Times wound down in the 1990s, Benjamin found his royalty checks gradually decreasing each month. He began to regret squandering so much of his wealth by betting on illegal horse wrestling and achieving an unrivaled stock majority in Enron.
