Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.
His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian
Jack BennyJack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning (in
On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio) wrote that Allen was radio's most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master ad libber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles), while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including
Groucho MarxJulius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
,
Stan FrebergStanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
,
Henry MorganHenry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
and
Johnny CarsonJohn William "Johnny" Carson was an American television host and comedian, known as host of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for 30 years . Carson received six Emmy Awards including the Governor Award and a 1985 Peabody Award; he was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1987...
, but his fans also included President
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
, and novelists
William FaulknerWilliam Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
,
John SteinbeckJohn Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. was an American writer. He is widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden and the novella Of Mice and Men...
and
Herman WoukHerman Wouk is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author of novels including The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War, and War and Remembrance.-Biography:...
(who began his career writing for Allen).
Fred Allen was honored with a star on the
Hollywood Walk of FameThe Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
for contributions to television.
Childhood
Born as John Florence Sullivan in
Cambridge, MassachusettsCambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, to
Irish CatholicIrish Catholic is a term used to describe people who are both Roman Catholic and Irish .Note: the term is not used to describe a variant of Catholicism. More particularly, it is not a separate creed or sect in the sense that "Anglo-Catholic", "Old Catholic", "Eastern Orthodox Catholic" might be...
parents, Allen barely knew his mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, who died of
pneumoniaPneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
when he was not quite three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, and his infant brother, Robert, were taken in by one of his mother's sisters, "my Aunt Lizzie", around whom he focused the first chapter of his second memoir,
Much Ado About Me. The father was so shattered by the mother's death that, according to his son, he drank more heavily. His aunt suffered as well: her husband Michael was partially paralyzed by lead poisoning shortly after they married, leaving him mostly unable to work, something Allen remembered as causing contention among Lizzie's sisters. Eventually, Allen's father remarried and offered his sons the choice between coming with him and his new wife or staying with Aunt Lizzie. Allen's younger brother chose to go with their father, but Allen decided to stay with his aunt. "I never regretted it," he wrote.
Vaudeville
Allen took piano lessons as a boy, his father having brought an Emerson upright along when they moved in with his aunt. He learned exactly two songs – "Hiawatha" and "Pitter, Patter, Little Raindrops" – and would be asked to play "half or all my repertoire" when visitors came to the house. He also worked at the
Boston Public LibraryThe Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It was the first publicly supported municipal library in the United States, the first large library open to the public in the United States, and the first public library to allow people to...
, where he discovered a book about the origin and development of comedy. Enduring various upheavals at home (other aunts came and went, prompting several moves), Allen also took up juggling while learning as much as possible about comedy.
Some library co-workers planned to put on a show and asked him to do a bit of juggling and some of his comedy. When a girl in the crowd told him, "You're crazy to keep working here at the library; you ought to go on stage," Allen decided his career path was set.
He took a later job in 1914 at the age of 20 with a local piano company, added to his library work, and appeared at a number of amateur night competitions, soon taking the stage name Fred St. James and booking with the local vaudeville circuit at $30 a week, enough at that time to allow him to quit his jobs with the library and the piano company. Often billing himself as the world's worst juggler, Allen refined and advanced the mix of his clumsy juggling and the comic routines such as standard jokes and one- liners with humor directed at his own poor juggling abilities. He toured the world in a decade worth of vaudeville work during which a billing mixup provided the stage name change that stayed with him the rest of his life. His agent was named Edgar Allen, from whom he eventually borrowed the last name to become Fred Allen.
While performing in vaudeville, Allen commissioned comic-strip artist
Martin BrannerMartin Michael Branner , known to his friends as Mike Branner, was a cartoonist who created the popular comic strip Winnie Winkle...
to cover a theatre curtain with an elaborate mural painting depicting a cemetery with a punchline on each gravestone. This was the cemetery where old jokes go to die. In Allen's act, the audiences would see the curtain (and have at least a minute to read its punchlines) before Allen made his entrance. Audiences often would be laughing at the curtain before Allen even appeared. Robert Taylor's biography of Allen includes an impressive full-length photo of Branner's curtain painting, and many of the punchlines are clearly legible in the photo.
Allen's wit was at times not intended for the vaudeville audience but rather for other professionals in show business. After one of his appearances failed one day, Allen made the best of it by circulating an obituary of his act on black-bordered funeral stationery.
In 1921 Fred Allen and
Nora BayesNora Bayes was a popular American singer, comedienne and actress of the early 20th century.-Early life and career:...
toured with the company of
Lew FieldsLew Fields , born as Moses Schoenfeld, was an American actor, comedian, vaudeville star, theatre manager and producer....
. Their musical director was a nineteen-year-old
Richard RodgersRichard Charles Rodgers was an American composer of music for more than 900 songs and for 43 Broadway musicals. He also composed music for films and television. He is best known for his songwriting partnerships with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II...
. Many years later, when he and
Oscar Hammerstein IIOscar Greeley Clendenning Hammerstein II was an American librettist, theatrical producer, and theatre director of musicals for almost forty years. Hammerstein won eight Tony Awards and was twice awarded an Academy Award for "Best Original Song". Many of his songs are standard repertoire for...
appeared as mystery guests on
What's My Line?What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
, Rodgers recalled Allen's act, sitting on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling down, playing a banjo while telling jokes.
Broadway
Allen gave vaudeville itself a timeline of 1875–1925 in
Much Ado About Me, but he actually left vaudeville a few years earlier, moving to work in such Shubert Brothers stage productions as
The Passing Show in 1922. The show played well in its runup to Broadway but lasted only ten weeks at the
Winter Garden TheatreThe Winter Garden Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 1634 Broadway in midtown Manhattan.-History:The structure was built by William Kissam Vanderbilt in 1896 to be the American Horse Exchange....
. Allen did, however, take something far more lasting from the show: one of the show's chorus girls,
Portland HoffaPortland Hoffa was an American comedienne, actor, and dancer...
, who became his wife in 1927.
He also took good notices for his comic work in several of the productions, particularly
Vogues and
Greenwich Village Follies, and continued to develop his comic writing, even writing a column for
VarietyVariety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
called "Near Fun." A salary dispute ended the column: Allen wanted only $60 a week to give up his theater work to become a full-time columnist, but his editor tried a sleight-of-hand based on the paper's ad rates to deny him. He spent his summer in Boston, honed his comic and writing skills even further, worked in a respectfully received duo that billed themselves as Fink and Smith, and played a few of the dying vaudeville houses.
He returned to New York to the pleasant surprise that Portland Hoffa was taking instruction to convert to Roman Catholicism. After the couple married, Allen began writing material for them to use together ("With a vaudeville act, Portland and I could be together, even if we couldn't find any work"), and the couple divided their time between the show business circuit, Allen's New England family home and Old Orchard Beach, Maine, in summers.
Radio
Fred Allen's first taste of radio came while he and Portland Hoffa waited for a promised slot in a new
Arthur HammersteinArthur Hammerstein , was the son of Oscar Hammerstein I and uncle of Oscar Hammerstein II, was an opera producer and one of the writers of the song "Because of You," a major hit for Tony Bennett in 1951. Hammerstein wrote the song in 1940. It was used in the film I Was an American Spy...
musical. In the interim, they appeared on a
Chicago stationWLS is a Chicago clear-channel AM station on 890 kHz. It uses C-QUAM AM stereo and transmits with 50,000 watts from transmitter and towers on the south edge of Tinley Park, Illinois....
's program,
WLS Showboat, into which, Allen recalled, "Portland and I were presented... to inject a little class into it." Their success in these appearances helped their theater reception; live audiences in the Midwest liked to see their radio favorites in person, even if Allen and Hoffa would be replaced by
Bob HopeBob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS was a British-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel...
when the radio show moved to New York several months afterward.
The couple eventually got their Hammerstein show,
Polly, which opened in Delaware and made the usual tour before hitting Broadway. Also in that cast was a young Englishman named Archie Leach, who received as many good notices for his romantic appeal as Allen got for his comic work. Hammerstein retooled the show before bringing it to New York, replacing everyone but two women and Allen. Leach decided to buy an old car and drive to Hollywood. "What Archie Leach didn't tell me," Allen remembered, "was that he was going to change his name to
Cary GrantArchibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
."
Polly never succeeded in spite of several retoolings, but Allen did go on to successful shows like
The Little Show (1929–30) and
Three's a Crowd (1930–31), which eventually led to his full-time entry to radio in 1932.
Town Hall Tonight
Allen first hosted
The Linit Bath Club Revue on
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, moving the show to
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
and becoming
The Salad Bowl Revue (in a nod to new sponsor Hellmann's Mayonnaise, which was marketed by the parent company of Linit) later in the year. The show became
The Sal Hepatica Revue (1933–34),
The Hour of Smiles (1934–35), and finally
Town Hall Tonight (1935–39) [in 1939–40, however, sponsor Bristol-Myers, which advertised
IpanaIpana was a very popular toothpaste in the 20th century with its famous Disney-created mascot named Bucky Beaver joining the Ipana marketing efforts in the 1950s....
toothpaste as well as Sal Hepatica during the program, altered the title to
The Fred Allen Show, over his objections]. Allen's perfectionism (odd to some, considering his deft ad-libs) caused him to leap from sponsor to sponsor until
Town Hall Tonight allowed him to set his chosen small-town milieu and establish himself as a bona fide radio star.
The hour-long show featured segments that would influence radio and, much later, television; news satires such as
Rowan and Martin's Laugh-Ins "Laugh-In Looks at the News" and Saturday Night LiveSaturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
's
"Weekend Update" were influenced by Town Hall Tonight's
"The News Reel", later renamed "Town Hall News" (and in 1939–40, as a sop to his sponsor, "Ipana News"). The Tonight Show Starring Johnny CarsonThe Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under the Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night....
's
"Mighty Carson Art Players" routines referenced Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players, in name and sometimes in routines. Allen and company also satirized popular musical comedies and films of the day, including and especially Oklahoma!
. Allen also did semi-satirical interpretations of well-known lives – including his own.
The show that became Town Hall Tonight
was the longest-running hour-long comedy-based show in classic radio history. In 1940, Allen moved back to CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
with a new sponsor and show name, Texaco Star TheaterTexaco Star Theater is an American comedy-variety show, broadcast on radio from 1938 to 1949 and telecast from 1948 to 1956. It was one of the first successful examples of American television broadcasting, remembered as the show that gave Milton Berle the nickname "Mr...
(every Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. EST on CBS, then Sundays at 9:00 p.m. in the fall of 1941). By 1942, he shortened the show to half an hour, at 9:30 p.m. EST – under network and sponsor edict, not his own. He also chafed under being forced to give up a Town Hall Tonight signature, using barely known and amateur guests effectively, in favor of booking more recognizable guests, though he liked many of those. Guests included singers from Kingston, New York, the original woman behind the "Aunt Jamima" on syrup bottles, and more guests up the road - from Saugerties, like the singer, Donald Gardner.
Back to NBC
He took over a year off due to hypertension and returned in 1945 with The Fred Allen Show
on NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, Sunday nights at 8:30 p.m. EST. Standard BrandsStandard Brands was formed in 1929 by J.P. Morgan with the merger of:*Fleischmann Company*Royal Baking Powder Company*E. W. Gillett*Widlar Food Products Company*Chase & Sanborn Coffee Company...
' Blue Bonnet Margarine & Tenderleaf Tea, and later, Ford Motor Company, were the sponsors for the rest of the show's life. (Texaco revived Texaco Star Theater in 1948 on radio, and more successfully on
televisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
, making an American icon out of star
Milton BerleMilton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...
).
Allen again made a few changes, including the singing DeMarco Sisters, to whom he'd been tipped by arranger-composer
Gordon JenkinsGordon Hill Jenkins was an American arranger, composer and pianist who was an influential figure in popular music in the 1940s and 1950s, renowned for his lush string arrangements...
. "We did four years with Mr. Allen and got one thousand dollars a week," Gloria DeMarco remembered. "Sunday night was the best night on radio." Sunday night with Fred Allen seemed incomplete on any night listeners didn't hear the DeMarco Sisters – whose breezy, harmonious style became as familiar as their cheerfully sung "Mr. Al-len, Mr. Alll-llennnn" in the show's opening theme. During the theme's brief pause, Allen would say something like, "It isn't the mayor of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga, kiddies." That device became a signature for three of the four years.
Allen's Alley
The other change, born in the Texaco days and evolving from his earlier news spoofs, proved his most enduring, premiering December 6, 1942. The inspiration for the mythical Main Street of "Allen's Alley" came from the small-town heartland folks who were often profiled in the newspaper columns written by
O. O. McIntyreOscar Odd McIntyre was a famed New York newspaper columnist of the 1920s and 1930s who cleverly combined a small town point of view with urban sophistication...
(1884–1938), one of the most popular columnists of the 1930s with some seven million readers.
"Allen's Alley" followed a brief Allen monologue and comic segment with Portland Hoffa ("Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!"), usually involving gags about her family which she instigated. Then a brief music interlude would symbolize the two making their way to the fictitious Alley.
The segment was always launched by a quick exchange that began with Hoffa asking Allen what he would ask the Alley denizens that week. After she implored him, "Shall we go?" Allen would reply with cracks like, "As the two drumsticks said when they spotted the tympani, 'let's beat it!'"; or "As one strapless gown said to the other strapless gown, 'What's holding us up?'"
A small host of stereotypical characters greeted Allen and Hoffa down the Alley, discussing Allen's question of the week, usually drawing on news items or popular happenings around town, whether gas rationing, traffic congestion, the Pulitzer Prizes, postwar holiday travel, or the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus visit.
The Alley went through a few changes in the first installments. Early denizens included sarcastic
John DoeThe name "John Doe" is used as a placeholder name in a legal action, case or discussion for a male party, whose true identity is unknown or must be withheld for legal reasons. The name is also used to refer to a male corpse or hospital patient whose identity is unknown...
(John Brown), self-possessed Senator Bloat and town drunk Sampson Souse (Jack Smart), dimwitted Socrates Mulligan (Charlie Cantor), pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (
Alan ReedAlan Reed was an American actor and voice actor, best known as the original voice of Fred Flintstone on The Flintstones and various spinoff series...
), and wry Jewish housewife Pansy Nussbaum (
Minerva PiousMinerva Pious was an American radio, television and film actress. She was best-known as the malaprop-prone Pansy Nussbaum in Fred Allen's famous "Allen's Alley" current-events skits....
). By 1945, Pious and Reed were joined by two new Alley denizens:
Parker FennellyParker Fennelly was an American actor who appeared in ten films, numerous television episodes and hundreds of radio programs.-Allen's Alley:...
as stoic New England farmer Titus Moody, and
Kenny DelmarKenneth Howard "Kenny" Delmar was an American actor active in radio, films, and animation.-Radio:...
, the new show's announcer, as bellowing Southern senator
Beauregard ClaghornSenator Beauregard Claghorn of Charleston, South Carolina, was a popular radio character on the "Allen's Alley" segment of The Fred Allen Show beginning in 1945...
. Pious is credited with tipping Allen to Delmar, who based the character on a real-life person he had encountered while hitchhiking in 1928. Within weeks, Claghorn became one of the leading comedy characters of radio as listeners across the country began quoting his catchphrases: "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked"; "I'm from the South, Suh"; "That's a joke, son"; and "Pay attention, boy!" Claghorn served as the model for the
Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, who first appeared the following August in the Oscar-nominated
Walky Talky HawkyWalky Talky Hawky is a Henery Hawk/Foghorn Leghorn animated short film from Warner Bros. released in 1946 and directed by Robert McKimson. All voice characterizations are performed by Mel Blanc.-Plot:...
.
Other characters had catchphrases that were almost as famous as Claghorn's, such as Titus Moody's "Howdy, Bub", and Falstaff Openshaw's "That is precisely why I am here." Mrs. Nussbaum always greeted Allen by saying, "You were expecting maybe...", and then she would mispronounce the name of a glamorous film star. The Alley sketches made only one further cast change, when
Peter DonaldPeter Donald was a British-born actor who worked in American radio and television.-Radio:He was famed as the character of Ajax Cassidy on Fred Allen's radio show, the Irishman who continually complained that he was "not long for this world."In addition to his long run on "Allen's Alley," Donald...
's chipper Irishman Ajax Cassidy succeeded Reed's Falstaff.
Despite the ethnic diversity, the Alley characters seemed less citified and more akin with O. O. McIntyre's small-town America. Allen's topical humor is sometimes thought an acquired taste for audiences curious about his generation of radio stars; Dunning has written that when he "went into topical humour, he may have forfeited his only opportunity to be the Mark Twain of his century. He had flashes of undeniable brilliance. But the main body of his work deals with the day-to-day fodder of another time, and sons have seldom been amused by the embarrassments or tragedies of their fathers."
But others find many parallels to today's world and its absurdities. The "Allen's Alley" stereotypes make some cringe, as Allen biographer Robert Taylor noted (in Fred Allen: His Life and Wit
), but others find them lancing more than lauding stereotypes, letting listeners make up their own minds about how foolish they could be. "Interestingly enough," wrote Frank Buxton and Bill Owen in The Big Broadcast 1920-1950, "[Claghorn, Nussbaum, Moody, and Cassidy] were never criticized as being anti-Southern, anti-Semitic, anti-New England or anti-Irish. The warmth and good humor with which they were presented made them acceptable even to the most sensitive listeners."
Allen employed a writing staff but they served as his sounding boards and early draft consultants as much as actual writers; it was Allen who had the final edit and rewrite of each week's script, working as long as twelve hours a day in his own right on ideas or sketches. His ad-libbing ability caused many a show to fade away behind the ending network identification, because Allen often ate up air time. It was not as unusual for him as for others to sign off with "We're a little late, so good night, folks." Buxton and Owen believed the Allen show needed it more than anyone else of his era.
Allen also "died" more eloquently than other radio comics, particularly in the later years. When a joke was greeted with an awkward silence, Allen would comment on the lack of response, with his ad-libbed "explanation" almost always funnier than the original joke.
Closing the Alley
Allen's Alley was radio's top-rated show of the 1946-47 season. Allen was able to negotiate a lucrative new contract as a result not only of the show's success, but thanks in large measure to
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to
CBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
. The CBS talent raids broke up
NBCThe National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's hit Sunday night, and Benny also convinced
George BurnsGeorge Burns , born Nathan Birnbaum, was an American comedian, actor, and writer.He was one of the few entertainers whose career successfully spanned vaudeville, film, radio, television and movies, with and without his wife, Gracie Allen. His arched eyebrow and cigar smoke punctuation became...
and
Gracie AllenGrace Ethel Cecile Rosalie Allen , known as Gracie Allen, was an American comedian who became internationally famous as the zany partner and comic foil of husband George Burns...
and
Bing CrosbyHarry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
to join his move.
But a year later, he was knocked off his perch, not by a talent raid but by a show on a third rival network,
ABCThe American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
(the former NBC Blue network). The quiz show, Stop the Music
, hosted by Bert ParksBert Parks, born Bertram Jacobson , was an American actor, singer, and radio and television announcer, best known for hosting the annual Miss America telecast from 1955 to 1979....
, required listeners to participate live, by telephone. The show became a big enough hit to break into Allen's grip on that Sunday night time slot. At first, Allen fought fire with his own kind of fire: he offered $5,000 to any listener getting a call from Stop the Music
or any similar game show while listening to The Fred Allen Show
. He never had to pay up, nor was he shy about lampooning the game show phenomenon (especially a riotous parody of another quiz show Parks hosted, lancing Break the Bank in a routine called "Break the Contestant" in which players didn't receive a thing but were compelled to give up possessions when they blew a question.)
Unfortunately, Allen fell to number 38 in the ratings, as television began its rise as well. By this time, he had changed the show again somewhat, changing the famed "Allen's Alley" skits to take place on "Main Street," and rotating a new character or two in and out of the lineup. He stepped down from radio again in 1949, at the end of his show's regular season, as much under his doctor's orders as because of his slipping ratings. He decided to take a year off, but it did more for his health (he suffered from
hypertensionHypertension or high blood pressure is a cardiac chronic medical condition in which the systemic arterial blood pressure is elevated. What that means is that the heart is having to work harder than it should to pump the blood around the body. Blood pressure involves two measurements, systolic and...
) than his career; after the June 26, 1949 show, on which
Henry MorganHenry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
and
Jack BennyJack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
guested, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full time again.
The Feud
Good friends in real life, Fred Allen and
Jack BennyJack Benny was an American comedian, vaudevillian, and actor for radio, television, and film...
inadvertently hatched a running gag in 1937, when a child prodigy, violinist Stuart Canin, gave a very credible performance on the Allen show, inspiring an Allen wisecrack about "a certain alleged violinist," who should hide in shame over his poor playing. Allen often mentioned his show-business friends on the air ("Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" was Allen's way of saying hello to his pal
Jack HaleyJohn Joseph "Jack" Haley was an American stage, radio, and film actor best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man and Kansas farmworker Hickory in The Wizard of Oz.-Career:...
), and on the Canin broadcast Allen knew Benny would be listening. Benny, according to Allen biographer Taylor, burst out laughing, then responded in kind on his own program. And they were off and running, going at it for over a decade and doing it well enough to convince some if not many fans of both shows that the two comedians really were blood enemies.
The Allen-Benny feud was the longest-playing, best-remembered dialogic running gag in classic radio history. The gag even pushed toward a boxing match between the two comedians and the promised event was a sellout. It also never happened, really. The pair even appeared together in films, including
Love Thy NeighborLove Thy Neighbour was a 1970s British situation comedy.Love Thy Neighbor or Love Thy Neighbour may also refer to:* the Biblical phrase from Leviticus and the New Testament about the Ethic of reciprocity...
(1940) and It's in the Bag!It's in the Bag! is a 1945 comedy film featuring Fred Allen in his only starring film role. The film was released by United Artists at a time when Allen was at the peak of his fame as one of the most popular radio comedians.-Characters and story:...
(1945), Allen's only starring vehicle, also featuring
William BendixWilliam Bendix was an American film, radio, and television actor, best remembered in movies for the title role in the movie The Babe Ruth Story and for portraying clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in radio and television's The Life of Riley...
,
Robert BenchleyRobert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
, and Jerry Colonna. He also starred with Oscar Levant in O'Henry's Full House, starring in the story "The Ransom of Red Chief."
Some of the feud's highlights involved Al Boasberg, who is credited with helping Benny refine his character into (arguably) America's first stand-up comedian. Boasberg was well known behind the scenes as a top comedy writer, but he seldom received recognition in public. He worked, uncredited, on many films (including the Marx Brothers' hit
A Night at the OperaA Night at the Opera is a 1935 American comedy film starring Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx, and featuring Kitty Carlisle, Allan Jones, Margaret Dumont, Sig Ruman, and Walter Woolf King. It was the first film the Marx Brothers made for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer after their departure from...
). Steaming mad because of his long battles for recognition, Boasberg was said to have delivered a tirade that ended up (in slightly altered form) in an Allen-Benny feud routine:
Allen: Why you fugitive from a Ripley cartoon ... I'll knock you flatter than the first eight minutes of this program.
Benny: You ought to do well in pictures, Mr. Allen, now that
Boris KarloffWilliam Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
is back in England.
Allen: Why, if I was a horse, a pony even, and found out that any part of my tail was used in your violin bow, I'd hang my head in my oatbag from then on.
Benny's side of the feud included a tart interpretation of Allen's Town Hall Tonight show, which Benny and company called "Clown Hall Tonight." A signature element of the feud was that, whenever one guested on the other's shows, the host was liable to hand the guest the best lines of the night. (Both Benny and Allen revealed later that each man's writers consulted with each other on routines involving the feud.)
They toned the gag down after 1941, though they kept it going often enough as the years continued, climaxing on Allen's May 26, 1946 show, in which a sketch called "King for a Day," satirizing big-money game shows, featured Benny pretending to be a contestant named Myron Proudfoot on Allen's new quiz show.
Allen: Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to
Orange, New JerseyThe City of Orange is a city and township in Essex County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 30,134...
, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest.
Benny (rapturously): I'm KING for a Day!
[Allen proceeds to have Benny's clothes pressed:]
Allen: And that's not all!
Benny: There's more?
Allen: Yes! On our stage we have a Hoffman pressing machine.
Benny: Now wait a minute! Wait a minute!
Allen: An expert operating the Hoffman pressing machine will press your trousers in seconds.
Benny: NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!!
(total audience hysteria laughter, as Benny's pants are literally removed).
Allen: Quiet, King!
Benny: Come on, Allan, give me my pants!
Allen: Keep your shirt on, King.
Benny: You bet I'll keep my shirt on!
Allen: We're a little late, folks! Tune in next week---
Benny: Allen, this is a frame--- (starts laughing himself) Where are my pants!
Allen: Benny, for 15 years I've been waiting to catch you like this!
Benny: Allen, you haven't seen the end of me!
Allen: It won't be long now!
Benny: I want my pants!
Allen and Benny couldn't resist one more play on the feud on Allen's final show. Benny appeared as a skinflint bank manager and mortgage company owner bedeviling Henry MorganHenry Morgan was an American humorist. He is remembered best in two modern media: radio, on which he first became familiar as a barbed but often self-deprecating satirist, and on television, where he was a regular and cantankerous panelist for the game show I've Got a Secret...
. Typically, Allen handed Benny the show's best crack: "Listen, I was never this
cheap on my own
program!"
Benny even used the feud on his TV show, which depicted Benny and Allen as rivals for the sponsor's favors. When the sponsor pointed out that Benny was also a musician, Allen countered with a passage on his clarinet.
As Benny said in his co-memoir, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story
(1990; his daughter, Joan, added her own recollections and published the book after her father's death), [T]he sky was the limit. Or rather, the mud was the limit."
Censorship
Allen may have battled censors more than most of his radio contemporaries. "Fred Allen's fourteen-year battle with radio censorship," wrote the
New York Herald-Tribune critic John Crosby, "was made particularly difficult for him by the fact that the man assigned to reviewing his scripts had little sense of humor and frankly admitted he didn't understand Allen's peculiar brand of humor at all." Among the blue pencils, according to Crosby, were:
- Allen was barred from saying "Brenda never looked lovelier", at the time of socialite Brenda Frazier
Not to be confused with actor Brendan FraserBrenda Diana Duff Frazier was an American debutante popular during the Depression era...
's wedding, unless he could get direct permission from the Frazier family itself.
- Allen was ordered to change the Cockney accent he assigned the character of a first mate aboard the Queen Mary — on the grounds that the ship's first mate could only be a cultured man who might not like a Cockney accent.
- Allen actually had to fight to keep Mrs. Nussbaum in the Allen's Alley routines – because NBC feared Jewish-dialect humour "might offend all Jews", never mind that Jewish dialect humour had been a vaudeville and burlesque staple for years.
- Allen was ordered not to even mention the fictitious town of North Wrinkle until or unless it could be proven that no such town actually did exist. (It didn't.)
"Allen not only couldn't poke fun at individuals", Crosby wrote, "he also had to be careful not to step on their professions, their beliefs, and sometimes even their hobbies and amusements. Portland Hoffa was once given a line about wasting an afternoon at the rodeo. NBC objected to the implication that an afternoon at the rodeo was wasted and the line had to be changed. Another time, Allen gagged that a girl could have found a better husband in a cemetery. (The censor) thought this might hurt the feelings of people who own and operate cemeteries. Allen got the line cleared only after pointing out that cemeteries have been topics for comedy since the time of
AristophanesAristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...
."
Life after the Alley
After his own show ended, Allen became a regular attraction on NBC's
The Big Show (1950–1952), hosted by
Tallulah BankheadTallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
. He appeared on 24 of the show's 57 installments, including the landmark premiere, and showed he had not lost his trademark ad-lib skill or his rapier wit. (The show's head writer,
Goodman AceGoodman Ace , born Goodman Aiskowitz, was an American humourist, working as a radio writer and comedian, a television writer, and a magazine columnist....
, later told radio host Richard Lamparski that Allen's lucrative NBC contract was a large factor in getting him on the show, though Allen also wrote the segments on which he appeared and consulted with the respected Ace and staff on other portions of the show.)
In some ways,
The Big Show was an offspring of the old Allen show: his one-time
Texaco Star Theater announcer, Jimmy Wallington, was one of
The Big Show's announcers, and Portland Hoffa made several appearances with him as well. On the show's premiere, in fact, Allen – with a little prodding from head writer
Goodman AceGoodman Ace , born Goodman Aiskowitz, was an American humourist, working as a radio writer and comedian, a television writer, and a magazine columnist....
– could not resist one more play on the old Allen-Benny "feud," a riotous parody of Benny's show called "The Pinch Penny Program."
Television
It was also on
The Big Show's premiere that Allen delivered perhaps his best-remembered crack about television: "You know, television is called a new medium, and I have discovered why they call it a Medium – because it is neither Rare nor Well Done." That did not stop the
Museum of Broadcast CommunicationsThe Museum of Broadcast Communications is an American museum that currently exists exclusively on the Internet and not in any physical capacity. Its stated mission is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain...
from considering Allen "the intellectual conscience of television." Aside from his famous crack about not liking furniture that talked, Allen observed that television allowed "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."
Allen tried three short-lived television projects of his own, including a bid to bring "Allen's Alley" to television in a visual setting similar to
Our Town. NBC apparently rejected the idea out of hand. "Television is a triumph of equipment over people," Allen observed after that, "and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have enough room beside them for the heart of a network vice president." His other two TV tries were quiz shows.
Judge for YourselfJudge for Yourself, at first subtitled The Fred Allen Show, is an unconventional Mark Goodson and Bill Todman quiz and audience participation television program, with comedian Fred Allen as the emcee. It aired on NBC from August 18, 1953, to May 11, 1954...
(subtitled
"The Fred Allen Show) was a game show incorporating musical acts. The idea was to allow Allen to ad-lib with guests à la
Groucho MarxJulius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
, but the complicated format had to be revamped in the middle of the run. (The star was "lost in the confusion of a half hour filled with too many people and too much activity," wrote Alan Havig.)
A comedy series,
Fred Allen's Sketchbook, did not catch on.
Allen finally held down a two-year stint as a panelist on the CBS quiz show
What's My Line?What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
from 1954 until his death in 1956 (March 17, 1956). Allen actually appeared as a Mystery Guest on
What's My Line?What's My Line? is a panel game show which originally ran in the United States on the CBS Television Network from 1950 to 1967, with several international versions and subsequent U.S. revivals. The game tasked celebrity panelists with questioning contestants in order to determine their occupations....
on July 17, 1955, when he was taking a week off from the show to have an emergency appendectomy. Afterwards he joked about the operation: "It was an emergency. The doctor needed some money hurriedly."
Allen also spent his final years as a newspaper columnist/humorist and as a memoirist, renting a small New York office to work six hours a day without distractions. He wrote
Treadmill to Oblivion (1954, reviewing his radio and television years) and
Much Ado About Me (1956, covering his childhood and his vaudeville and Broadway years, and detailing especially vaudeville at its height with surprising objectivity); the former – which included many of his vintage radio scripts – was the best-selling book on radio's classic period for many years.
Death
Taking one of his regular late night strolls up New York's West 57th Street Saturday night March 17, 1956 he suffered a
heart attackMyocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
and died at the age of 61. A popular myth repeated for many years, first published in the
New York TimesThe New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
story which appeared the next day reporting on his death, was that he had died while walking his dog. However, his biographer Robert Taylor later revealed that Allen had never owned a dog. Allen died before he could complete the final chapter of his memoirs, and as a result the book was published as he had left it. A tireless letter writer, his letters were edited by his wife into the publication of
Fred Allen's Letters in 1965.
During the following night's regular Sunday broadcast of
What's My Line? at 10:30PM, barely 24-hours following Allen's death, host
John DalyJohn Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly (generally known as John Charles Daly or simply John Daly (February 20, 1914 – February 24, 1991) was an American journalist, game show host and radio personality, probably best known for hosting...
preceded the program with a special message to the viewing audience. He stated that earlier in the day the producers had considered replacing the regular game play with a special memorial episode, but Allen's wife Portland Hoffa stated that she preferred the show be conducted as it always had been, indicating that this is what Allen would have wanted. The program then proceeded as normal, but with a noticeably subdued tone.
Steve AllenSteve Allen may refer to:*Steve Allen , American musician, comedian, and writer*Steve Allen , presenter on the London-based talk radio station LBC 97.3...
took Fred's chair on the panel. During the final ninety seconds of the program he, along with
Arlene FrancisArlene Francis was an American actress, radio talk show host, and game show panelist...
and
Bennett CerfBennett Alfred Cerf was a publisher and co-founder of Random House. Cerf was also known for his own compilations of jokes and puns, for regular personal appearances lecturing across the United States, and for his television appearances in the panel game show What's My Line?.-Biography:Bennett Cerf...
(whose eyes began to water) gave brief but heartfelt tributes to Fred. A somber
Dorothy KilgallenDorothy Mae Kilgallen was an American journalist and television game show panelist. She started her career early as a reporter for the Hearst Corporation's New York Evening Journal after spending only two semesters at The College of New Rochelle in New Rochelle, New York...
thanked Steve Allen for stepping in and helping them to carry on at a difficult moment. He is buried at
Gate of Heaven CemeteryThe Gate of Heaven Cemetery, approximately 25 miles north of New York City, was established in 1917 at 10 West Stevens Ave. in Hawthorne, Westchester County, New York, United States, as a Roman Catholic burial site...
in
Hawthorne, New YorkHawthorne is an unincorporated hamlet and census-designated place located in the town of Mount Pleasant in Westchester County, New York. The population was 4,586 at the 2010 census.-History:...
. Both his real and stage name are engraved on the headstone.
Allen has two stars on the
Hollywood Walk of FameThe Hollywood Walk of Fame consists of more than 2,400 five-pointed terrazzo and brass stars embedded in the sidewalks along fifteen blocks of Hollywood Boulevard and three blocks of Vine Street in Hollywood, California...
: a radio star at 6709½ Hollywood Blvd. and a TV star at 7021 Hollywood Blvd. His widow, Portland Hoffa, married bandleader Joe Rimes in 1959 and celebrated a second silver wedding anniversary well before her own death of natural causes in
Los AngelesLos Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
on Christmas Day 1990. Fred Allen was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. A pedestrian passageway in Boston's Theatre District, designated "Allen's Alley", also honors his memory.
Cultural legacy
Allen was an influence on the writing and comedic timing of satirist
Stan FrebergStanley Victor "Stan" Freberg is an American author, recording artist, animation voice actor, comedian, radio personality, puppeteer, and advertising creative director whose career began in 1944...
.
Tex AveryFrederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an American animator, cartoonist, voice actor and director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation. He did his most significant work for the Warner Bros...
's cartoon
Thugs with Dirty MugsThugs with Dirty Mugs is a 1939 Warner Bros. cartoon in the Merrie Melodies series.-Synopsis:Its subject matter is a parody of Warner's famous cycle of crime films starring such actors as James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and Edward G. Robinson...
features the main character addressing the audience and showing them his Fred Allen impersonation in one scene.
The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos features a Fred Allen fox screaming about being misinformed, hinting about his heated feuds with censors who were often at the last minute forcing script changes on his show because of its content. Warner Brothers spoofed Allen's radio show with their 1936 cartoon
Toy Town Hall.
Sources
- Jack Benny and Joan Benny, Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story. (New York: Warner Books, 1990).
- Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, The Big Broadcast: 1920-1950 (New York: Flare Books/Avon, 1972).
- John Crosby, Out of the Blue: A Book About Radio and Television (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).
- Alan Havig, Fred Allen's Radio Comedy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
- Ben Schwartz, "The Man Who Invented Jack Benny" ('Written By', Writer's Guild of America, 2002)
- Robert Taylor, Fred Allen: His Life and Wit (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989).
- John Dunning, On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
- Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922-1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
External links
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