Steve Allen (comedian)
Encyclopedia
Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television personality, musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

, composer, actor, comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

, and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts is an American radio and television variety show which ran on CBS from 1946 until 1958...

. He graduated to become the first host of The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

, where he was instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

. Thereafter, he hosted numerous game and variety shows, including The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show is an American variety show hosted by Steve Allen from June 1956 to June 1960 on NBC, from September 1961 to December 1961 on ABC, and in first-run syndication from 1962 to 1964....

, I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...

, The New Steve Allen Show, and was a regular panel member on CBS' What's My Line?
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....



Allen was a "creditable" pianist, and a prolific composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, having penned over 14,000 songs, one of which was recorded by Perry Como
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...

 and Margaret Whiting
Margaret Whiting
Margaret Whiting was a singer of American popular music and country music who first made her reputation during the 1940s and 1950s.-Youth:...

, others by Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence is an American singer and actor, perhaps best known as a member of a duo with his wife Eydie Gormé, billed as "Steve and Eydie"...

 and Eydie Gorme
Eydie Gormé
Eydie Gormé is an American singer, specializing, with her husband, Steve Lawrence, in traditional pop music, in the form of ballads and breezy swing. She has earned numerous awards, including the Grammy and the Emmy...

, Les Brown
Les Brown
Les Brown may refer to:*Les Brown , U.S. Big Band leader, or his son, Les Brown Jr., leader since 2001*Les Brown , American author-See also:*Leslie Brown...

, and Gloria Lynne
Gloria Lynne
Gloria Lynne is an American jazz vocalist with a recording career spanning from 1958 to 2007. Born Gloria Alleyne, Gloria Lynne grew up in Harlem; her mother was a gospel singer.-Career:...

. Allen won a Grammy award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 in 1963 for best jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 composition, with his song The Gravy Waltz. His vast number of songs have never been equaled, however; singer/songwriter Julian Barry is said to have written over 5000 compositions. Allen wrote more than 50 books, has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The 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...

 and a Hollywood theater named in his honor The Steve Allen Theater
The Steve Allen Theater
The Steve Allen Theater at the Center for Inquiry Los Angeles is a multidisciplinary resident fringe theater and theater of the absurd in Hollywood developed and helmed by Founding Artistic Director, Amit Itelman....

.

Early life

Allen was born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, the son of Billy and Isabelle Allen (née
Married and maiden names
A married name is the family name adopted by a person upon marriage. When a person assumes the family name of her spouse, the new name replaces the maiden name....

 Donohue), a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 comedienne. Allen was raised on the south side of Chicago by his mother's Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish 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...

 family. Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton 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...

 once called Allen's mother "the funniest woman in vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

."

Allen's first radio job was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...

, after he left Arizona State Teachers College (now Arizona State University
Arizona State University
Arizona State University is a public research university located in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area of the State of Arizona...

) in Tempe
Tempe, Arizona
Tempe is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, USA, with the Census Bureau reporting a 2010 population of 161,719. The city is named after the Vale of Tempe in Greece. Tempe is located in the East Valley section of metropolitan Phoenix; it is bordered by Phoenix and Guadalupe on the west, Scottsdale...

, while still a sophomore. He enlisted in the U.S. Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

 during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and was trained as an infantry
Infantry
Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

man. He spent his service time at Camp Roberts
Camp Roberts, California
Camp Roberts is a California National Guard post in central California, located on both sides of the Salinas River in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties, now run by the California Army National Guard. It is named after Harold W. Roberts, a World War I Medal of Honor recipient...

, near Monterey, California
Monterey, California
The City of Monterey in Monterey County is located on Monterey Bay along the Pacific coast in Central California. Monterey lies at an elevation of 26 feet above sea level. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 27,810. Monterey is of historical importance because it was the capital of...

 and did not serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California.

Career

Allen became an announcer for KFAC in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los 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...

 and then moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System
Mutual Broadcasting System
The Mutual Broadcasting System was an American radio network, in operation from 1934 to 1999. In the golden age of U.S. radio drama, MBS was best known as the original network home of The Lone Ranger and The Adventures of Superman and as the long-time radio residence of The Shadow...

 in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-nights-a-week comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 show, Smile Time, co-starring Wendell Noble. After Allen moved to CBS Radio's KNX
KNX (AM)
KNX is an all-news radio station in Los Angeles, California, USA. The station operates on a clear channel and is owned by CBS Radio. KNX broadcasts from facilities shared with sister stations KFWB, KCBS-FM, KTWV, and KAMP on Los Angeles' Miracle Mile...

 in Los Angeles, his music-and-talk half-hour format gradually changed to include more talk on a full-hour, late-night show, boosting his popularity and creating standing-room-only studio audiences. During one episode of the show reserved primarily for an interview with Doris Day
Doris Day
Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

, his guest star failed to appear, so Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to ad lib
Ad libitum
Ad libitum is Latin for "at one's pleasure"; it is often shortened to "ad lib" or "ad-lib"...

 for the first time. His radio show attracted a huge local following, and in 1950 it replaced Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks
Our Miss Brooks is an American situation comedy starring Eve Arden as a sardonic high school English teacher. It began as a radio show broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1957. When the show was adapted to television , it became one of the medium's earliest hits...

, exposing Allen to a national audience for the first time.

Allen's first television experience had come in 1949 when he answered an ad for a TV announcer for professional wrestling. He knew nothing about wrestling, so he watched some shows and discovered that the announcers did not have well-defined names for the holds. When he got the job, he created names for many of the holds, some of which are still used today. The gig lasted several months before ABC decided to replace the matches with old movies.

After CBS radio gave Allen a weekly prime time show, CBS television believed it could groom him for national small-screen stardom and gave Allen his first network television show. The Steve Allen Show premiered at 11 am on Christmas Day, 1950, and was later moved into a thirty-minute, early evening slot. This new show required him to uproot his family and move from LA to New York, since at that time a coast to coast program could not originate from LA. The show was only a modest ratings success, and was canceled in 1952, after which CBS tried several shows to showcase Allen's talent.

Allen achieved national attention when he was pressed into service at the last minute to host Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts is an American radio and television variety show which ran on CBS from 1946 until 1958...

because Godfrey
Arthur Godfrey
Arthur Morton Godfrey was an American radio and television broadcaster and entertainer who was sometimes introduced by his nickname, The Old Redhead...

 was unable to appear. Allen turned one of Godfrey's live Lipton
Lipton
Lipton is a brand of tea currently owned by Unilever.-History of Lipton Tea:Lipton was created at the end of the 19th century by a grocer, Sir Thomas Lipton, in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1893, he established the Thomas J. Lipton Co., a tea packing company with its headquarters and factory in Hobo ken,...

 commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera and then pouring both into Godfrey's ukulele. With the audience (including Godfrey, watching from Miami) uproariously and thoroughly entertained, Allen gained major recognition as a comedian and host.

He was a regular on the popular panel game show What's My Line?
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....

(where he coined the popular phrase, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?") from 1953 to 1954 and returned frequently as a panelist after Fred Allen
Fred Allen
Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show 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 Benny, but it...

 died in March 1956, until the series ended in 1967.

The Tonight Show

Leaving CBS, he created a late-night New York talk-variety TV program in 1953 for what is now WNBC-TV. The following year, on September 27, 1954, the show went on the full NBC
NBC
The 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...

 network as The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

, with fellow radio personality Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn
Gene Rayburn was an American radio and television personality. He is best known as the host of various editions of the popular American television game show Match Game for over two decades....

 (who later went on to host hit game shows such as Match Game
Match Game
Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...

, 1962–1982) as the original announcer. The show ran from 11:15 pm to 1:00 am on the East Coast.

While Today developer Sylvester "Pat" Weaver is often credited as the Tonight creator, Allen often pointed out that he had previously created it as a local New York show. Allen told his nationwide audience that first evening: "This is Tonight, and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: this program is going to go on forever... you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around!"

It was as host of The Tonight Show that Allen pioneered the "man on the street" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become commonplace on late-night TV.

The Steve Allen Show

In 1956, NBC offered Allen a new, prime-time, Sunday night variety hour, The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show is an American variety show hosted by Steve Allen from June 1956 to June 1960 on NBC, from September 1961 to December 1961 on ABC, and in first-run syndication from 1962 to 1964....

, aimed at dethroning CBS's top-rated Ed Sullivan Show. The show included a typical run of star performers, including early TV appearances by Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 and Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis
Jerry Lee Lewis is an American rock and roll and country music singer-songwriter and pianist. An early pioneer of rock and roll music, Lewis's career faltered after he married his young cousin, and he afterwards made a career extension to country and western music. He is known by the nickname 'The...

. Many popular film and television stars were guest stars: Bob Hope
Bob Hope
Bob 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...

, Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...

, Errol Flynn
Errol Flynn
Errol Leslie Flynn was an Australian-born actor. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles in Hollywood films, being a legend and his flamboyant lifestyle.-Early life:...

, Abbott and Costello
Abbott and Costello
William "Bud" Abbott and Lou Costello performed together as Abbott and Costello, an American comedy duo whose work on stage, radio, film and television made them the most popular comedy team during the 1940s and 1950s...

, Esther Williams
Esther Williams
Esther Jane Williams is a retired American competitive swimmer and MGM movie star.Williams set multiple national and regional swimming records in her late teens as part of the Los Angeles Athletic Club swim team...

, Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis
Jerry Lewis is an American comedian, actor, singer, film producer, screenwriter and film director. He is best known for his slapstick humor in film, television, stage and radio. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the famed comedy team of Martin and Lewis...

, Martha Raye
Martha Raye
Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television....

, The Three Stooges, and a host of others.

The show's regulars were Tom Poston
Tom Poston
Thomas Gordon "Tom" Poston was an American television and film actor. He starred on television in a career that began in 1950...

, Louis Nye
Louis Nye
Louis Nye was an American comedy actor.-Early years:He was born Louis Neistat in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Joseph Neistat and Jennie Sherman . His sister was Rose Neistat...

, Bill Dana, Don Knotts
Don Knotts
Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...

, Pat Harrington, Jr.
Pat Harrington, Jr.
Pat Harrington, Jr., is an American voice, stage, and television actor most popularly known for his role as building superintendent "Schneider" on the CBS sitcom One Day At A Time. He is the son of Pat Harrington, Sr.- Biography :...

, Dayton Allen
Dayton Allen
Dayton Allen was a comedian and voice actor. He was one of the "men in the street" on the '"The Steve Allen Show."' His catchphrase was "Why not, Bubbe?"...

, and Gabriel Dell
Gabriel Dell
Gabriel Dell was an American actor and one of the members of what came to be known as the Dead End Kids/East Side Kids/The Bowery Boys.-Early life:...

. All except film veteran Dell were relatively obscure performers prior to their stints with Allen, and all went on to stardom. The comedians in Allen's gang were often seen in "The Man in the Street," featuring interviews about some topical subject. Poston would appear as a dullard who could not remember his own name; Nye was "Gordon Hathaway," fey Madison Avenue executive; Dana played amiable Latino "Jose Jimenez"; Knotts was an exceedingly jittery man who, when asked if he was nervous, invariably replied with an alarmed "No!"; Harrington was Italian immigrant "Guido Panzini"; Dayton Allen played wild-eyed zanies answering any given question with "Why not?". Gabe Dell usually played straight men in sketches (policemen, newsmen, dramatic actors, etc.).

Other recurring routines included "Crazy Shots" (also known as "Wild Pictures"), a series of sight gags accompanied by Allen on piano; Allen inviting audience members to select three musical notes at random, and then composing a song based on the three notes; a satire on radio's long-running The Answer Man
The Answer Man
The Answer Man was a United States 15-minute radio program that aired from 1937 to 1956 on the Mutual Broadcasting System and also in syndication. It was broadcast late Sunday evening on some stations. During the 1940s, the program was sponsored by Trommer's White Label Beer. The Answer Man was...

and a precursor to Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John 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...

's Carnac the Magnificent (Sample answer: "Et tu, Brute."/Allen's reply: "How many pizzas did you eat, Caesar?")

The live Sunday night show aired opposite The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....

on CBS and Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...

on ABC. One of Allen's guests was comedian Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson
John 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...

, a future successor to Allen as host of The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

. Among Carson's material during that appearance was a portrayal of how a poker game between Allen, Sullivan, and Maverick star James Garner
James Garner
James Garner is an American film and television actor, one of the first Hollywood actors to excel in both media. He has starred in several television series spanning a career of more than five decades...

 (all impersonated by Carson) would transpire. Allen's programs also featured a good deal of music; he helped the careers of singers Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence
Steve Lawrence is an American singer and actor, perhaps best known as a member of a duo with his wife Eydie Gormé, billed as "Steve and Eydie"...

 and Eydie Gorme
Eydie Gormé
Eydie Gormé is an American singer, specializing, with her husband, Steve Lawrence, in traditional pop music, in the form of ballads and breezy swing. She has earned numerous awards, including the Grammy and the Emmy...

, who were regulars on his early Tonight Show, and Sammy Davis, Jr.
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr. was an American entertainer and was also known for his impersonations of actors and other celebrities....



Allen's show also had one of the longest unscripted "crack-ups" on live TV when Allen began laughing hysterically during "Big Bill Allen's Sports Roundup." He laughed uncontrollably for over a minute, with the audience laughing along, because, as he later explained, he caught sight of his unkempt hair on an off-camera monitor. He kept brushing his hair and changing hats to hide the messy hair, and the more he tried to correct his appearance the funnier it got.

Allen helped the recently invented Polaroid camera become popular by demonstrating its use in live commercials and amassed a huge windfall for his work because he had opted to be paid in Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation
Polaroid Corporation is an American-based international consumer electronics and eyewear company, originally founded in 1937 by Edwin H. Land. It is most famous for its instant film cameras, which reached the market in 1948, and continued to be the company's flagship product line until the February...

 stock.
Allen remained host of "Tonight" for three nights a week (Monday and Tuesday nights were taken up by Ernie Kovacs
Ernie Kovacs
Ernie Kovacs was a Hungarian American comedian and actor.Kovacs' uninhibited, often ad-libbed, and visually experimental comedic style came to influence numerous television comedy programs for years after his death in an automobile accident...

) until early 1957, when he left the "Tonight" show to devote his attention to the Sunday night program. It was his (and NBC's) hope that the Steve Allen show could defeat Ed Sullivan in the ratings. Nevertheless the TV Western Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...

 often bested both The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show is an American TV variety show that originally ran on CBS from Sunday June 20, 1948 to Sunday June 6, 1971, and was hosted by New York entertainment columnist Ed Sullivan....

and The Steve Allen Show
Steve Allen (comedian)
Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen was an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent...

in audience size. In September 1959, Allen relocated to Los Angeles and left Sunday night television (the 1959-'60 season originated from NBC Color City
NBC Studios
The NBC Studios in New York, New York is located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Manhattan, the historic GE Building houses the headquarters of the NBC television network, its parent General Electric, and NBC's flagship station WNBC , as well as cable news channel MSNBC.When NBC Universal relocated,...

 in Burbank
Burbank, California
Burbank is a city in Los Angeles County in Southern California, United States, north of downtown Los Angeles. The estimated population in 2010 was 103,340....

 as The Steve Allen Plymouth Show, on Monday nights). Back in Los Angeles, he continued to write songs, hosted other variety shows, and wrote books and articles about comedy.

Later TV projects

From 1962 to 1964, Allen re-created The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show
The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

on a new late-night The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show
The Steve Allen Show is an American variety show hosted by Steve Allen from June 1956 to June 1960 on NBC, from September 1961 to December 1961 on ABC, and in first-run syndication from 1962 to 1964....

, which was syndicated by Westinghouse TV. The five-nights-a-week taped show was broadcast from an old vaudeville theater renamed The Steve Allen Playhouse
The Steve Allen Playhouse
The Steve Allen Playhouse is an old vaudeville theater in Hollywood, United States. Situated at 1228 N. Vine St on the corner with La Mirada, it was originally named the La Mirada Theatre and later the Filmarte Theatre....

on 1228 N. Vine St. in Hollywood. (Several sources have erroneously identified Allen's show using the name of his theater.)

The show was marked by the same wild and unpredictable stunts and comedy skits that often extended down the street to a supermarket known as the Hollywood Ranch Market. He also presented Southern California eccentrics, including health food advocate Gypsy Boots
Gypsy Boots
Gypsy Boots , born Robert Bootzin , was an American fitness pioneer, actor, and writer. He is credited with laying the foundation for the acceptance by mainstream America of "alternative" lifestyles such as yoga and health food...

, quirky physics professor Dr. Julius Sumner Miller
Julius Sumner Miller
Julius Sumner Miller was an American physicist and television personality. He is best known for his work on children's television programs in North America and Australia.-Off-screen:...

, wacko comic Prof. Irwin Corey, and an early musical performance by Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...

.

During one episode, Allen placed a telephone call to the home of Johnny Carson, posing as a ratings company interviewer, asking Carson if the Television was on, and what program he was watching. Carson didn't immediately realize the caller was Allen, and the exchange is classic humor from both, beginning to end. A rarity is the exchange between Allen and Carson about Carson's guests, permitting him to plug his own show on a competing network.

One notable program, which Westinghouse refused to distribute, featured Lenny Bruce
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider , better known by the stage name Lenny Bruce, was a Jewish-American comedian, social critic and satirist...

 during the time the comic was repeatedly being arrested on obscenity charges; footage from this program was first telecast in 1998 in a Bruce documentary aired on HBO. Regis Philbin
Regis Philbin
Regis Francis Xavier Philbin is an American media personality, actor and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. Philbin is often called "the hardest working man in show business" and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera...

 took over hosting the Westinghouse show in 1964, but only briefly.

The show also featured plenty of jazz played by Allen and members of the show's band, the Donn Trenner
Donn Trenner
Donald "Donn" Trenner is an American jazz pianist and arranger born in New Haven, Connecticut.He began his career playing with Ted Fio Rito from 1943-45, and followed this with a slot in Buddy Morrow's orchestra in 1947...

 Orchestra, which included such virtuoso musicians as guitarist Herb Ellis
Herb Ellis
Mitchell Herbert "Herb" Ellis was an American jazz guitarist. Perhaps best known for his 1950s membership in the trio of pianist Oscar Peterson, Ellis was also a staple of west-coast studio recording sessions, and was described by critic Scott Yanow as "an excellent bop-based guitarist with a...

 and flamboyantly comedic hipster trombonist Frank Rosolino
Frank Rosolino
Frank Rosolino was an American jazz trombonist.- Biography :Born in Detroit, Michigan, Frank Rosolino studied the guitar with his father from the age of 9. He took up the trombone at age 14 while he was enrolled at Miller High School where he played with Milt Jackson in the school's stage band and...

 (whom Allen credited with originating the "Hiyo!" chant later popularized by Ed McMahon
Ed McMahon
Edward Peter "Ed" McMahon, Jr. was an American comedian, game show host and announcer. He is most famous for his work on television as Johnny Carson's sidekick and announcer on The Tonight Show from 1962 to 1992. He also hosted the original version of the talent show Star Search from 1983 to 1995...

). While the show was not an overwhelming success in its day, David Letterman
David Letterman
David Michael Letterman is an American television host and comedian. He hosts the late night television talk show, Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast on CBS. Letterman has been a fixture on late night television since the 1982 debut of Late Night with David Letterman on NBC...

, Steve Martin
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

, Harry Shearer
Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer is an American actor, comedian, writer, voice artist, musician, author, radio host and director. He is known for his long-running role on The Simpsons, his work on Saturday Night Live, the comedy band Spinal Tap and his radio program Le Show...

, Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...

, and a number of other prominent comedians have cited Allen's "Westinghouse show," which they watched as teenagers, as being highly influential on their own comedic visions.

Allen later produced a second half-hour show for Westinghouse, titled Jazz Scene, which featured West Coast jazz musicians such as Rosolino, Stan Kenton
Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb "Stan" Kenton was a pianist, composer, and arranger who led a highly innovative, influential, and often controversial American jazz orchestra. In later years he was widely active as an educator....

, and Teddy Edwards
Teddy Edwards
Theodore Marcus "Teddy" Edwards was an American jazz tenor saxophonist based on the West Coast of the US. Some consider him to be one of the most influential jazz saxophonists.-Biography:...

. The short-lived show was hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr.

Allen hosted a number of television programs up until the 1980s, including The New Steve Allen Show in 1961 and the game show I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret
I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...

(replacing original host Garry Moore
Garry Moore
Garry Moore was an American entertainer, game show host and comedian best known for his work in television...

) in 1964. In the summer of 1967, he brought most of the regulars from over the years back with The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, featuring the debuts of Rob Reiner
Rob Reiner
Robert "Rob" Reiner is an American actor, director, producer, writer, and political activist.As an actor, Reiner first came to national prominence as Archie and Edith Bunker's son-in-law, Michael "Meathead" Stivic, on All in the Family. That role earned him two Emmy Awards during the 1970s...

, Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor best known for starring in a number of film, television, and theater roles since the late 1960s, including the films American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Goodbye Girl, Whose Life Is It Anyway?, Stakeout, Always, What About...

, and John Byner
John Byner
John Byner is an American actor, comedian, and impressionist who has had a lengthy television and movie career. His voice work includes the cartoon series The Ant and the Aardvark, in which the title characters are voiced by Byner's impressions of Dean Martin and Jackie Mason,...

 and featuring Ruth Buzzi
Ruth Buzzi
Ruth Ann Buzzi is an American comedienne and actress of theatre, film, and television. She is especially known for her performances on the comedy-variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from 1968 to 1973.-Early life:...

, who would become famous soon after on "Laugh-In." In 1968–71, he returned to syndicated nightly variety-talk with the same wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman in later years, including becoming a human hood ornament
Hood ornament
A hood/bonnet ornament, or radiator cap, or car mascot is a specially crafted model of something which symbolizes a car company like a badge, located on the front center portion of the hood...

; jumping into vats of oatmeal
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is ground oat groats , or a porridge made from oats . Oatmeal can also be ground oat, steel-cut oats, crushed oats, or rolled oats....

 and cottage cheese
Cottage cheese
Cottage cheese is a cheese curd product with a mild flavor. It is drained, but not pressed, so some whey remains and the individual curds remain loose. The curd is usually washed to remove acidity, giving sweet curd cheese. It is not aged or colored. Different styles of cottage cheese are made from...

; and being slathered with dog food
Dog food
Dog food refers to food specifically intended for consumption by dogs. Though technically omnivorous, dogs exhibit a natural carnivorous bias, have sharp, pointy teeth, and have short gastrointestinal tracts better suited for the consumption of meat...

, allowing dogs backstage to feast on the free food. During the run of this series, Allen also introduced Albert Brooks
Albert Brooks
Albert Lawrence Brooks is an American actor, voice actor, writer, comedian and director. He received an Academy Award nomination in 1987 for his role in Broadcast News...

 and Steve Martin
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....

 to a national audience for the first time.

A syndicated version of I've Got A Secret hosted by Allen and featuring panelists Pat Carroll
Pat Carroll (actress)
Patricia Ann “Pat” Carroll is an American actress. She performed in numerous stage productions, and portrayed the roles of "Bunny Halper" on CBS's The Danny Thomas Show, Shirley Feeney's mother on ABC's Laverne and Shirley, and is the voice of the villainous Ursula in The Little Mermaid film...

 and Richard Dawson was taped in Hollywood and aired during the 1972-73 season. In 1977, he produced Steve Allen's Laugh-Back, a syndicated series combining vintage Allen film clips with new talk-show material reuniting his 1950s TV gang. From 1986 through 1988, Allen hosted a daily three-hour comedy show heard nationally on the NBC
NBC
The 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...

 Radio Network that featured sketches and America's best-known comedians as regular guests. His cohost was radio personality Mark Simone
Mark Simone
Mark Simone is an American radio personality. Currently heard on WABC in New York, he also fills-in for ABC Radio hosts such as Don Imus, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity.Simone occasionally appears on CNN, MSNBC and PBS....

, and they were joined frequently by comedy writers Larry Gelbart
Larry Gelbart
Larry Simon Gelbart was an American television writer, playwright, screenwriter and author.-Early life:...

, Herb Sargent
Herb Sargent
Herbert Sargent was an American television writer, a producer for such comedy shows as The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live, and a screenwriter...

, and Bob Einstein
Bob Einstein
Stewart Robert "Bob" Einstein is an American actor and comedy writer best known for his portrayal of the fictional stuntman Super Dave Osborne.-Life and career:...

.

Composer, actor, and author

Allen was an accomplished composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 who wrote over 10,000 songs. He began his recording career in 1953 by signing with Decca Records
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....

's Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...

 sublabel. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 Frankie Laine
Frankie Laine
Frankie Laine, born Francesco Paolo LoVecchio , was a successful American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spanned 75 years, from his first concerts in 1930 with a marathon dance company to his final performance of "That's My Desire" in 2005...

 that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs, Let's Go to Church Next Sunday, was recorded by both Perry Como
Perry Como
Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with them in 1943. "Mr...

 and Margaret Whiting
Margaret Whiting
Margaret Whiting was a singer of American popular music and country music who first made her reputation during the 1940s and 1950s.-Youth:...

. Allen's best-known songs are "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and "The Gravy Waltz," the latter having won a Grammy award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

 in 1963 for Best Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 Composition. He also wrote lyrics for the standards "Picnic" and "South Rampart Street Parade." Allen composed the score to the Paul Mantee
Paul Mantee
Paul Mantee is an American film and television actor.Mantee was born Paul Marianetti in San Francisco, California...

 imitation James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

 film A Man Called Dagger
A Man Called Dagger
A Man Called Dagger is a low-budget spy film that was the first collaboration between director Richard Rush, cinematographer László Kovács and stuntman Gary Warner Kent ....

(1967), with the score orchestrated by Ronald Stein
Ronald Stein
Ronald Stein was an American film composer.-Biography:Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Stein wrote scores for numerous low budget horror and exploitation films during the 1950s and 1960s, many of which were released by American International Pictures...

.

Allen was also an actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

. He wrote and starred in his first film, the Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the "King of Comedy"...

 comedy compilation Down Memory Lane, in 1949. His most famous film appearance is in 1955's The Benny Goodman Story
The Benny Goodman Story
The Benny Goodman Story is a biographical film starring Steve Allen and Donna Reed, directed by Valentine Davies and released by Universal Studios in 1956. The film is based on the life of famed clarinetist Benny Goodman, who recorded most of the clarinet solos used in the film...

, in the title role. The film, while an average biopic of its day, was heralded for its music, featuring many alumni of the Goodman band. Allen later recalled his one contribution to the film's music, used in the film's early scenes: the accomplished Benny Goodman could no longer produce the sound of a clarinet beginner, and that was the only sound Allen could make on a clarinet! In 1960, he appeared as the character "Dr. Ellison" in the episode "Play Acting" of CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson
The DuPont Show with June Allyson
The DuPont Show with June Allyson is an American anthology drama series which aired on CBS from September 21, 1959 to April 3, 1961 with rebroadcasts continuing until June 12, 1961...

though his The Steve Allen Show had been in competition with the June Allyson
June Allyson
June Allyson was an American film and television actress, popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was a major MGM contract star. Allyson won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss . From 1959–1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own CBS anthology...

 program the preceding season.

Allen could play a trumpet—sort of. He wrote and recorded a tune called "Impossible," in which he tries to play it straight, but continues to burst out laughing. (The recording has been played on the Dr. Demento
Dr. Demento
Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....

 radio show.)

From 1977 to 1981, Allen was the producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...

 of the award-winning PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 series, Meeting of Minds
Meeting of Minds
Meeting of Minds is a television series, created by Steve Allen, which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981.The show featured guests who played significant roles in world history...

, a "talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....

" with actors playing the parts of notable historical figures and Steve Allen as the host. This series pitted the likes of Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

, Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette ; 2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was an Archduchess of Austria and the Queen of France and of Navarre. She was the fifteenth and penultimate child of Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I....

, Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
Thomas "Tom" Paine was an English author, pamphleteer, radical, inventor, intellectual, revolutionary, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States...

, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun
Attila the Hun
Attila , more frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his reign he was one of the most feared...

, Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...

, Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

, and Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...

 in dialogue and argument. This was the show Allen wanted to be remembered for, because he believed that the issues and characters were timeless and would survive long after his passing. This may be more an indictment of popular tastes—which Allen himself wrote about in his last book, "Vulgarians at the Gates"—than of any obtuseness on the show's part.

Allen was a comedy writer and author of more than 50 books, including Dumbth, a commentary on the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 educational system, and Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality. Twenty of his books were concerned with his views about religion. He also wrote book-length commentaries on show business personalities ("Funny People"; "More Funny People"). Perhaps influenced by his son's involvement with a religious cult, he became an outspoken critic of organized religion and an active member of such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group that debunked pseudoscientific claims.

Allen and rock music

Allen was notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music, although he was showman enough to scoop Ed Sullivan
Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 , which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S...

 by being one of the first to present Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 on network television (after Presley had appeared on the Tommy
Tommy Dorsey
Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey...

 and Jimmy Dorsey
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...

 Stage Show
Stage Show
Stage Show was a popular music variety series on American television originally hosted on alternate weeks by big band leaders and brothers Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. Produced by Jackie Gleason, the CBS-TV show included the first national television appearances by Elvis Presley.The series began as a...

and Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton 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...

 shows). "Allen found a way... to satisfy the Puritans. He assured viewers that he would not allow Presley 'to do anything that will offend anyone.' NBC announced that a 'revamped, purified and somewhat abridged Presley' had agreed to sing while standing reasonably still, dressed in black tie." In fact, on this occasion, Allen had Elvis wear a top hat and the white tie and tails of a "high class" musician while singing "Hound Dog
Hound Dog (song)
"Hound Dog" is a twelve-bar blues written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and originally recorded by Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton in 1952. Other early versions illustrate the differences among blues, country, and rock and roll in the mid-1950s. The 1956 remake by Elvis Presley is the best-known...

" to an actual hound
Hound
A hound is a type of dog that assists hunters by tracking or chasing the animal being hunted. It can be contrasted with the gun dog, which assists hunters by identifying the location of prey, and with the retriever, which recovers shot quarry...

, who was similarly attired. According to Jake Austen, "the way Steve Allen treated Elvis Presley was his federal crime. Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd, and so he decided to goof on him. Allen set things up so that Presley would show his contrition by appearing in a tuxedo and singing his new song 'Hound Dog' to an elderly basset hound..." Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy
Elaine Dundy was an American novelist, biographer, journalist, actress and playwright.-Early life:Born Elaine Rita Brimberg in New York City, of Latvian maternal descent, her Polish father was an office furniture manufacturer and a violent bully...

 says that Allen smirkingly presented Elvis "with a roll that looks exactly like a large roll of toilet paper with, says Allen, the 'signatures of eighteen thousand fans.' " Presley looked "at Steve as if to say, 'It's all right. I've been made a worse fool in my life,' and after he patted the basset hound he is about to sing Hound Dog to, he wiped his hands on his trousers as if to wipe away Steve Allen, the dog, and the whole show." Guitarist Scotty Moore
Scotty Moore
Winfield Scott "Scotty" Moore III is an American guitarist. He is best known for his backing of Elvis Presley in the first part of his career, between 1954 and the beginning of Elvis' Hollywood years...

 later said that Elvis and the members of his band were "all angry about their treatment the previous night." "The next day, as Elvis entered the RCA studios to record 'Hound Dog,' fans greeted him with signs that declared, 'We Want the Real Elvis' and 'We Want the Gyrating Elvis.' In the press, critics were no kinder with the singer than they had ever been, this time pronouncing him a 'cowed kid' who had demonstrated, once again, that he 'couldn't sing or act a lick.' " In a column in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...

, John Lardner wrote, "Like Huckleberry Finn, when the widow put him in a store suit and told him not to gap or scratch, [Elvis] had been 'fouled' by NBC's attempt to 'civilize him... for the good of mankind.'" Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.

The singer "was later featured in a mediocre cowboy sketch with Allen, Andy Griffith
Andy Griffith
Andy Samuel Griffith is an American actor, director, producer, Grammy Award-winning Southern-gospel singer, and writer. He gained prominence in the starring role in director Elia Kazan's epic film A Face in the Crowd before he became better known for his television roles, playing the lead...

, and Imogene Coca
Imogene Coca
Imogene Fernandez de Coca was an American comic actress best known for her role opposite Sid Caesar on Your Show of Shows....

. As 'Tumbleweed Presley,' his big joke was, 'I'm warning you galoots, don't step on my blue suede boots.' " That apparent mockery was consistent with other situations in which Allen had singers in such comic scenarios on his show, in contrast to the simple "singing in front of a curtain" style of the Sullivan show. The house singers on the early Tonight show were subjected to many such stunts. In addition, Allen's skit with Presley actually was less a put-down of Presley and mainly a satire of country music stage shows like the Grand Ole Opry
Grand Ole Opry
The Grand Ole Opry is a weekly country music stage concert in Nashville, Tennessee, that has presented the biggest stars of that genre since 1925. It is also among the longest-running broadcasts in history since its beginnings as a one-hour radio "barn dance" on WSM-AM...

 and the Louisiana Hayride
Louisiana Hayride
Louisiana Hayride was a radio and later television country music show broadcast from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana, that during its heyday from 1948 to 1960 helped to launch the careers of some of the greatest names in American music...

, the Shreveport-based country music radio show (over KWKH
KWKH
KWKH is a classic country music radio station serving Shreveport, Louisiana. The 50-kilowatt station broadcasts at 1130 kHz. Formerly owned by Clear Channel Communications and Gap Central Broadcasting, it is now owned by Townsquare Media....

) Presley performed on in 1954 and 1955. It's highly debatable, given Presley's spirited performance, whether unlike the top hat and tails performance, there was any put-down motivation on Allen's part with this particular skit, since he could have easily done it in any of his other programs.

In a 1996 interview Allen was asked about the show. Asked if NBC executives expressed any concerns about Elvis's planned appearance, Allen replied that he'd "read more nonsense about " it, and "a lot of wrong reports have gotten into the public -". "If there ever was, I never heard about it. And since it was my show, I think it would have brought to my attention. " Regarding Elvis's movements he stated "No! I took no objection to the movements I'd seen him make on the Dorsey Brothers show. I didn't see a problem. Of course, I had read about some of the controversy, much of it generated by Ed Sullivan, who was opposite of our show on CBS. It didn't matter to me. I was using good production sense in booking him."

In his book "Hi-Ho Steverino!" Allen wrote the following: "When I booked Elvis, I naturally had no interest in just presenting him vaudeville-style and letting him do his spot as he might in concert. Instead we worked him into the comedy fabric of our program."
"We certainly didn't inhibit Elvis' then-notorious pelvic gyrations, but I think the fact that he had on formal evening attire made him, purely on his own, slightly alter his presentation."

Allen also appeared on the shows of entertainers, even the rock and roll program The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom
The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom
The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom is a half-hour variety show that aired on ABC from October 3, 1957 to June 23, 1960, starring the young singer Pat Boone and a host of top-name guest stars. The program was of course sponsored by Chevrolet...

 on ABC.

Later career

In the late 1970s early 80s, Steve Allen recorded a solo piano Pianocorder album for the Pianocorder Contemporary Artists Series, joining other illustrious artists-pianists of the day such as Liberace, Floyd Cramer, Teddy Wilson, Roger Williams, and Johnny Guarnieri to name a few. His solo album was very popular. Pianocorder was founded by Joseph Tushinsky. The Pianocorder was the first modern mechanical player piano made for the public that used solenoids to power the keys. Later, it was bought out by Yamaha-Disklavier and discontinued and is known today as the Yamaha Disklavier. During the late 80s, Allen and his second wife Jayne Meadows
Jayne Meadows
-Early life:Jayne Meadows was born as Jayne Cotter in Wu-ch'ang, in Heilongjiang, China, to Episcopal missionary parents, the Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the former Ida Miller Taylor, who had married in 1915. Meadows is the older sister of the late actress Audrey Meadows. She...

 made numerous appearances on the drama St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere
St. Elsewhere is an American medical drama television series that originally ran on NBC from October 26, 1982 to May 25, 1988. The series is set at fictional St. Eligius, a decaying urban teaching hospital in Boston's South End neighborhood...

, playing Victor Erlich's estranged parents.

The 1985 documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 
Kerouac, the Movie starts and ends with footage of Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

 reading from
On the Road
On the Road
On the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...

as Allen accompanies on soft jazz piano from The Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1959. "Are you nervous?" Allen asks him; Kerouac answers nervously, "Noo," a take-off on the character usually played by Don Knotts
Don Knotts
Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...

.

Allen appeared in a PSA advocating for New Eyes for the Needy
New Eyes for the Needy
New Eyes for the Needy is a non-profit organization started in 1932 and based in Short Hills, New Jersey, which provides people in the United States with eyeglasses and sends recycled eyeglasses to needy people overseas....

 in the 1990s.

Personal life

Steve Allen was married to Dorothy Goodman in 1943 and they had three children, Steve Jr., Brian, and David. That marriage ended in divorce in 1952. Allen's second wife was actress Jayne Meadows
Jayne Meadows
-Early life:Jayne Meadows was born as Jayne Cotter in Wu-ch'ang, in Heilongjiang, China, to Episcopal missionary parents, the Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the former Ida Miller Taylor, who had married in 1915. Meadows is the older sister of the late actress Audrey Meadows. She...

, sister to actress Audrey Meadows
Audrey Meadows
Audrey Meadows was an American actress best known for her role as the deadpan housewife Alice Kramden on the 1950s American television comedy The Honeymooners.-Early life:...

. The marriage of Allen and Meadows produced one son, Bill Allen. They were married from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Allen received a traditional Irish Catholic
Irish Catholic
Irish 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...

 upbringing. He later became a secular humanist and Humanist Laureate for the Academy of Humanism, a member of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism
Council for Secular Humanism
The Council for Secular Humanism is a secular humanist organization headquartered in Amherst, New York. In 1980 CODESH issued A Secular Humanist Declaration, an argument for and statement of belief in Democratic Secular Humanism...

. He received the Rose Elizabeth Bird Commitment to Justice Award from Death Penalty Focus
Death Penalty Focus
Founded in 1988, Death Penalty Focus is a non-profit organization dedicated to the abolition of capital punishment through grassroots organizing, research, and the dissemination of information about the death penalty and its alternatives....

 in 1998. He was a student and supporter of general semantics
General Semantics
General semantics is a program begun in the 1920's that seeks to regulate the evaluative operations performed in the human brain. After partial program launches under the trial names "human engineering" and "humanology," Polish-American originator Alfred Korzybski fully launched the program as...

, recommending it in Dumbth and giving the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture
The distinguished Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture series was begun in 1952. It is an annual event sponsored by the Institute of General Semantics in honor of Alfred Korzybski. Each year the Institute invites some prominent scholar or otherwise notable individual to give the lecture. Lecturers...

 in 1992. In spite of his liberal
Liberalism in the United States
Liberalism in the United States is a broad political philosophy centered on the unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion for all belief systems, and the separation of church and state, right to due process...

 position on free speech
Freedom of speech
Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

, his later concerns about the lewdness he saw on radio and television, particularly the programs of Howard Stern
Howard Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...

, caused him to make proposals restricting the content of programs, allying himself with the Parents Television Council
Parents Television Council
The Parents Television Council is a U.S. based advocacy group founded by conservative activist L. Brent Bozell III in 1995 using the National Legion of Decency as a model...

. His full-page ad on the subject appeared in newspapers a day or two before his unexpected death. Allen's views evolved in the last dozen years of his life, as he called himself an "involved Presbyterian". He had been married for decades to Jayne Meadows, who was the daughter of a Christian missonary.

Allen made a last appearance on The Tonight Show on September 27, 1994, for the show's 40th anniversary broadcast. Jay Leno
Jay Leno
James Douglas Muir "Jay" Leno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ,...

 was effusive in praise and actually knelt down and kissed his ring.

Death

On October 30, 2000, Allen was driving to his son's home in Encino, California, when his car was struck by another vehicle backing out of a driveway. Neither Allen nor the other driver believed he was injured and damage to both vehicles was minimal, so the two exchanged insurance information and Allen continued on.

Shortly after arriving at his son's home (after carving pumpkins with his grandchildren and taping a radio tribute to an old friend, satirist Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...

), Allen did not feel right and decided to take a nap. While napping, he suffered a massive heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial 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 was pronounced dead shortly after 8 p.m. Autopsy results concluded that the traffic accident earlier in the day had caused a blood vessel in his chest to rupture, causing blood to leak into the sac surrounding the heart (known as haemopericardium
Pericardial effusion
Pericardial effusion is an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the pericardial cavity. Because of the limited amount of space in the pericardial cavity, fluid accumulation will lead to an increased intrapericardial pressure and this can negatively affect heart function...

.) In addition, he suffered four broken ribs as a result of the accident.

Allen was two months shy of his 79th birthday at the time of his death. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park-Hollywood Hills
Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills)
Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery is part of the Forest Lawn chain of Southern California cemeteries. It is at 6300 Forest Lawn Drive in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, on the lower north slope at the far east end of the Santa Monica...

 in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...

.

Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
Hollywood Walk of Fame
The 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 television star at 1720 Vine St.
Vine Street
Vine is a street in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California that runs north-south from Melrose Avenue up past Hollywood Boulevard. The intersection of Hollywood and Vine was once a symbol of Hollywood itself...

 and a radio star at 1537 Vine St.

Shows

  • Songs for Sale (1950–1952)
  • What's My Line?
    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....

    (regular panelist, 1953–1954; frequent guest panelist 1954-1967)
  • Jukebox Jury
    Jukebox Jury
    Jukebox Jury was an hour-long television series hosted by disc jockey Peter Potter which aired in the 1953-54 season on the American Broadcasting Company. It was thereafter syndicated in 1959....

    (1953)
  • Talent Patrol (1953–1955)
  • The Steve Allen Show
    The Steve Allen Show
    The Steve Allen Show is an American variety show hosted by Steve Allen from June 1956 to June 1960 on NBC, from September 1961 to December 1961 on ABC, and in first-run syndication from 1962 to 1964....

    (1956–61)
  • The Tonight Show
    The Tonight Show
    The Tonight Show is an American late-night talk show that has aired on NBC since 1954. It is the longest currently running regularly scheduled entertainment program in the United States, and the third longest-running show on NBC, after Meet the Press and Today.The Tonight Show has been hosted by...

    (1954–1957, NBC
    NBC
    The 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...

    )
  • The Steve Allen Westinghouse Show (1962–1968)
  • I've Got a Secret
    I've Got a Secret
    I've Got a Secret is a panel game show produced by Mark Goodson and Bill Todman for CBS television. Created by comedy writers Allan Sherman and Howard Merrill, it was a derivative of Goodson-Todman's own panel show What's My Line?...

    (1964–1967, 1972–1973)
  • The Steve Allen Show (Filmways production, 1968–1969)
  • Match Game
    Match Game
    Match Game is an American television game show in which contestants attempted to match celebrities' answers to fill-in-the-blank questions...

    (panelist, 1974)
  • Meeting of Minds
    Meeting of Minds
    Meeting of Minds is a television series, created by Steve Allen, which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981.The show featured guests who played significant roles in world history...

    (1977–1981, PBS
    Public Broadcasting Service
    The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

    )
  • Steve Allen Comedy Hour (1980–1981)
  • The Start of Something Big (1985–1986)
  • Space Ghost Coast to Coast
    Space Ghost Coast to Coast
    Space Ghost Coast to Coast is an American animated parody talk show hosted by the 60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon character Space Ghost. The show premiered on April 15, 1994 on Cartoon Network...

    (1997, one episode, Guest)
  • Homicide: Life On The Street (1998): Steve and Jayne appeared as guests (January 16, 1998).

Songs

  • "Theme from Picnic
    Theme from Picnic
    "Theme from Picnic" is a popular song, originated in the 1955 movie Picnic. It is often referred to simply as "Picnic".The music was written by George Duning, and the lyrics were written by Steve Allen...

    "
  • "This Could Be the Start of Something Big"
  • "Pretend You Don't See Her, My Heart"
  • "The Gravy Waltz"
  • "The Saturday Evening Post
    The Saturday Evening Post
    The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

    "
  • "Impossible"
  • "Cool Yule"

Comedic Discography

  • "Man in the Street" (1963) (Signature 1004)
  • "Funny Fone Calls" (1963) (Dot 3472, re-issued as Casablanca 811-366-1-ML)
  • "More Funny Fone Calls" (1963) (Dot 3517, re-issued as Casablanca 811-367-1-ML)

Musical Discography

  • Soulful Brass
    Soulful Brass
    Soulful Brass is an album by American jazz composer/arranger Oliver Nelson and pianist/entertainer Steve Allen featuring performances recorded in 1968 for the Impulse! label.-Reception:...

    with Oliver Nelson
    Oliver Nelson
    Oliver Edward Nelson was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger and composer.-Early life and career:...

     (Impulse!, 1968)
  • Soulful Brass #2 with Oliver Nelson (Flying Dutchman, 1969)

Books

YearTitleNotesIdentifiers
1955 Steve Allen's Bop Fables illustrated by George Price 
1955 Fourteen for Tonight short stories
1956 The Funny Men
1956 Wry on the Rocks poems
1958 The Girls on the 10th Floor and Other Stories short stories ; ISBN 0-8369-3608-6 (1970 printing)
1959 The Question Man... photographs by Gene Lester 
1960 Mark It and Strike It: An Autobiography
1962 Not All of Your Laughter, Not All of Your Tears Steve's first novel
1964 Dialogues in Americanism transcript of three debates: Allen vs. William F. Buckley, Jr.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
William Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American conservative author and commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing was noted for...

; Robert M. Hutchins vs. L. Brent Bozell, and James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns
James MacGregor Burns is an historian and political scientist, presidential biographer, and authority on leadership studies. He is the Woodrow Wilson Professor of Government Emeritus at Williams College and Distinguished Leadership Scholar at the of the School of Public Policy at the University...

 vs. Willmoore Kendall
Willmoore Kendall
Willmoore Kendall was an American conservative writer and Professor of political philosophy.-Biography:Kendall was born in 1909 to a blind minister in Oklahoma. He learned to read at age two, graduated from high school at 13, from the University of Oklahoma at 18, and published his first book at 20...

 
1965 Letter to a Conservative
1966 The Ground is Our Table photographs by Arthur Dubinsky 
1967 Bigger than a Breadbox with commentary by Leonard Feather
Leonard Feather
Leonard Geoffrey Feather was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.-Biography:...

; illustrations by Rowland B. Wilson
Rowland B. Wilson
Rowland Bragg Wilson is an American animation production artist and gag cartoonist who did watercolor illustrations for leading magazines, notably Playboy and TV Guide. His work was usually signed Rowland B...

 
1969 A Flash of Swallows: New Poems poems ISBN 0837567343;
1972 The Wake ISBN 0-385-07608-8
1973 Princess Snip-Snip and the Puppy-Kittens illustrated by David Gantz 
1973 Curses! or... How Never to Be Foiled Again illustrated by Marvin Rubin  ISBN 0-87477-008-4
1974 What To Say When It Rains ISBN 0-8431-0357-4
1975 Schmock-Schmock! ISBN 0-385-09664-X
1978 Meeting of Minds
Meeting of Minds
Meeting of Minds is a television series, created by Steve Allen, which aired on PBS from 1977 to 1981.The show featured guests who played significant roles in world history...

ISBN 0-517-53383-9; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-550-4
1978 Chopped-Up Chinese
1979 Ripoff: A Look at Corruption in America with Roslyn Bernstein and Donald H. Dunn  ISBN 0-8184-0249-0
1979 Meeting of Minds, Second Series ISBN 0-517-53894-6; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-565-2
1980 Explaining China ISBN 0-517-54062-2
1981 Funny People ISBN 0-8128-2764-3
1982 Beloved Son: A Story of the Jesus Cults ISBN 0-672-52678-6
1982 More Funny People ISBN 0-8128-2884-4
1986 How to Make a Speech ISBN 0-07-001164-8
1987 How to Be Funny: Discovering the Comic You with Jane Wollman  ISBN 0-07-001199-0; 1992 printing: ISBN 0-87975-792-2; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-206-4
1989 The Passionate Nonsmoker's Bill of Rights: The First Guide to Enacting Nonsmoking Legislation with Bill Adler, Jr.  ISBN 0-688-06295-4
1989 "Dumbth": And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter ISBN 0-87975-539-3; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-237-4
1989 Meeting of Minds, Vol. III ISBN 0-87975-566-0
1989 Meeting of Minds, Vol. IV ISBN 0-87975-567-9
1990 The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories ISBN 0-942637-22-4
1990 Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality ISBN 0-87975-638-1
1992 Hi-Ho, Steverino: The Story of My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of Television ISBN 0-942637-55-0; large-print edition: ISBN 1-56054-521-6
1993 More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality ISBN 0-87975-736-1
1993 Make 'em Laugh ISBN 0-87975-837-6
1994 Reflections ISBN 0-87975-904-6
1995 The Man Who Turned Back the Clock, and Other Short Stories ISBN 1-57392-002-9
1995 The Bug and the Slug in the Rug ISBN 1-880851-17-2
1996 But Seriously...: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind ISBN 1-57392-090-8
1999 Steve Allen's Songs: 100 Lyrics with Commentary ISBN 0-7864-0736-0
2000 Steve Allen's Private Joke File ISBN 0-609-80672-6
2001 Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio—Raising the Standards of Popular Culture ISBN 1-57392-874-7


Allen's series of mystery novels "starring" himself and wife Jayne Meadows
Jayne Meadows
-Early life:Jayne Meadows was born as Jayne Cotter in Wu-ch'ang, in Heilongjiang, China, to Episcopal missionary parents, the Rev. Francis James Meadows Cotter and his wife, the former Ida Miller Taylor, who had married in 1915. Meadows is the older sister of the late actress Audrey Meadows. She...

 were in part ghostwritten
Ghostwriter
A ghostwriter is a professional writer who is paid to write books, articles, stories, reports, or other texts that are officially credited to another person. Celebrities, executives, and political leaders often hire ghostwriters to draft or edit autobiographies, magazine articles, or other written...

 by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook.

  • The Talk Show Murders (1982), ISBN 0-440-08471-7
  • Murder on the Glitter Box (1989), ISBN 0-8217-2752-4
  • Murder in Manhattan (1990), ISBN 0-8217-3033-9
  • Murder in Vegas (1991), ISBN 0-8217-3462-8
  • The Murder Game (1993), ISBN 0-8217-4115-2
  • Murder on the Atlantic (1995), ISBN 0-8217-4647-2
  • Wake Up to Murder (1996), ISBN 1-57566-090-3
  • Die Laughing (1998), ISBN 1-57566-241-8
  • Murder in Hawaii (1999), ISBN 1-57566-375-9


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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