Don't Talk About Toscanini

The most baffling censorship demands were forced on Fred Allen. He related once how he was banned from using a certain phoney name on the air unless he could prove someone with that name didn’t exist.

NBC also told him not to refer on the air to Arturo Toscanini, who led the network’s symphony orchestra starting in 1937. Why? Perhaps the Maestro didn’t have a sense of humour about himself. Nevertheless, Allen was told Toscanini jokes were out. I’m sure you can guess Fred’s reaction.

Well, you don’t have to. Here’s a Chicago Tribune column from November 20, 1938 explaining what happened before an Allen broadcast.

FUNNY TO HEAR, ALLEN SHOW IS FUNNIER TO SEE
Jester Saves Best Stuff for Studio Crowd.
BY LARRY WOLTERS.
When television comes the Fred Allen show ought to be even more fun for listeners. A goods show aurally, it is still better visually. It is funny from the moment you enter the big 1,200 sent studio until Fred has finished off with the last autograph seeker.
Before the show goes on early arrivers get laughs out of watching the page boys struggling to keep the reserved seats unoccupied. A little section is kept open for Fred and Portland's relatives and friends and for a few others favored by NBC.
New Yorkers put up a strong fight to get into those seats. But NBC attendants, sturdy fellows, fight back. They don't manage to save all the seats they intended to. But they do succeed in keeping a row for Portland's mother and sister, Lastone. Papa Hoffa, you remember, named his daughters for the cities in which they born, and the final one he called Last One. She changed it to Lastone. The family pronounces it "lastun."
Portland Gives Attention.
Portland, sitting on the stage before Fred makes his appearance, definitely maintains the attitude of the most interested spectator. And throughout the performance she hangs on every word Fred utters. And the laughter appears to be the spontaneous.
A minute or two before air time Harry Von Zell warms up the audience with a few jokes. Then he spies Fred sitting below in the audience, invited him to come up and address the audience.
Fred saves his wittiest cracks for the studio audience. Perhaps he has to. Many of them NBC's blue pencil department might otherwise scratch.
The network bosses do not like jokes about Toscanini. So Allen puts the maestro at the head of his list for joke material.
"You will notice," he explained the night we saw his show, "that all the page boys are in stocking feet tonight. Toscanini opens here next Saturday and all the boys with a squeak in their shoes higher than E flat have had to turn them in to have them tuned."
Says What He Pleases.
The sharpest blue pencil in Radio City cannot eliminate all of Allen's salty cracks because he doesn't set them down on paper. Given a continuity labeled "last revision" will not go on the air as it is written. When Fred gets to the microphone he will say what pops into his head at the moment. Or perhaps it is what he intended to say all the time.
That must have been the case the other evening when he interviewed an NBC studio guide. He asked the chap what the various colored uniforms the page boys wear signify. One type of braid indicates television guides, another the lads who conduct tours, and so on, the youth explained.
"And the vice-presidents, I suppose, wear mess jackets," Fred interrupted, "to indicate the state their minds are in!"
When Fred presents his weekly guests whom he calls "people you never expected to meet" they also meet a person they never expected to meet—Fred Allen. For Fred at the microphone is a different fellow than he was in rehersal [sic]. During rehersal he is meek enough but on the air he can't resist being a bad boy. His kidding invariably gets him a long way from the text.
Relies on Uncle Jim.
And that is where Uncle Jim Harkins, Allen's assistant of many years, comes in. As Allen ad libs and the guest flounders hopelessly through the pages of the script wondering how they will get back into it, Uncle Jim stands beside them giving help and counsel. He puts his finger on the script at the point he deems best to reenter it. And if the guest becomes flustered Allen ad libs further to ease the situation.
Fred has his uncomfortable moments, too. An inveterate tobacco chewer, his pained expressions are believed to be due to the fact that NBC will permit him no receptacle to get relief from his cud. When there is a break in the program for music Fred sometimes sneaks out back behind a screen. And he looks happier when he comes back.
In every broadcast there are bound to be dull moments for the studio audience. Fred does his best to brighten these.
For instance, when Von Zell interrupts the program so that station announcements may be made across the country, Alien steps to the front of the platform and informs the studio audience, "This is the point where we ask Hitler whether we can go on with the program."
A Hard Worker.
Fred probably works harder on his show than any other of radio's major comedians. With the exception of Friday, which is his day off, and on Sunday morning when he and Portland go to church, he spends almost the entire week working on Town Hall scripts, his associates say. The Allens seldom go out or entertain. They live in a two room apartment in a modest hotel near Radio City.

Fred Allen's Hollywood Dictionary

Fred Allen didn’t have a high opinion of an awful lot of things and anyone familiar with him knows that Hollywood wasn’t one of them. It seems every interview he gave while making a movie is filled with a litany of quotable put-downs; probably it was a refreshing change for entertainment reporters used to the same time of PR job they got while talking to the stars about their latest screen endeavour.

Here’s Fred in the Chicago Tribune of October 13, 1940. Nothing about sincerity and a flea’s navel, or oranges, in this one. But he listed some of these same definitions to other reporters in other interviews.

FRED ALLEN PENS ACID GLOSSARY OF HOLLYWOOD
Reactions to Sights, Stars Are Recorded.
Things actually change in radio. Eddie Cantor is back on the air after an absence of a year-broadcasting on NBC in Fred Allen's old period on Wednesday nights. And Fred Allen, who has been making a picture in Hollywood with his perennial "enemy" Jack Benny, is broadcasting at his same old hour—but on CBS.
After weeks and weeks in the movie capital Allen has set down some of his reactions to Hollywood, including its sights, jargon, and exotic inhabitants. This is what he has to say:
For several weeks I sat around the Paramount lot watching Jack Benny make a picture with me. [If it is ever released it will be called Love Thy Neighbor.]
To clarify Hollywood sightseeing, I submit a glossary of terms peculiar to this bizarre borough. If I help but one tourist to fathom Hollywood, its weird people, its grotesque industries and its synthetic sights, my work has not been in vain. To wit:
Hollywood—Bagdad in technicolor. Shangri-La with neon.
Main Street In Slacks.
Drive-In—A jallopy cafeteria. A pedestrian found lurking around a drive-in is either the waiter or the man who owns it.
Hollywood boulevard—Main street in slacks.
Hollywood bowl—Carnegie hall on the half shell.
Brown Derby—A popular eatery where from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Movie Star's Home—The ultimate in stucco. An edifice erected on a beautiful lawn to keep strangers from getting a direct view of the star's swimming pool from the street.
Swimming pool—A demitasse pond that draws files and guests.
Defines a Barbecue.
Barbecue—A Hollywood function at which food is cooked and served in the backyard. A barbecue enables the hostess to get guests and mice out of the house simultaneously.
Director—The man who sits in a sprung canvas chair under the camera while a picture is being made. At intervals of two hours h yells, "This is a take."
Assistant Director—The man who shouts "Quiet!" before the director yells "This is a take."
Movie Star—Any actor who is working.
Double Feature Definition.
Fan—An urchin or fat woman in calico wrapper armed with a pencil and a dirty piece of autograph paper.
Double Feature—Twin mistakes made by the same—or two different—picture companies.
Free Lance—An actor who is always "between pictures," but never actually working in one.
Commissary—A ptomaine grotto on the lot where an actor portraying a millionaire in a picture retires at noon to bolt a hamburger.
Makeup Man—The only person who knows what the glamour girl really looks like. FRED ALLEN.

Fred Allen on the Ills of Radio

You might wonder if Fred Allen hated radio so much, hated its commercialism (for that matter, he disliked the non-commercial BBC), hated its management, even hated the very people who came to see him in the studio, why he bothered to stay in the business. Someone asked him that question and got an answer.

One could cynically suggest it was the hefty salary that Allen received, but material things never seemed to mean much to Allen. He lived quite modestly and regularly gave handouts to total strangers on the street. No, Allen gives the same answer I’ve heard from veteran radio people even today.

The Chicago Tribune syndicated this feature story on November 7, 1948. Allen was into his final radio season and the story focuses on Allen’s peeves about the radio industry, sans any of his bile aimed at game shows (though he refers to the ratings, where he was getting kicked by “Stop the Music”). So don’t expect any withering commentary on Hollywood in this go around.

The drawing accompanied the article.

FIFTEEN YEARS A RADIO FUN-MASTER
By LARRY WOLTERS

BREAKFAST Is just a little bit more trying to Portland Hoffa than to the average housewife. Fred Allen, her husband, instead of reading one paper while grappling with the grapefruit, tussles with nine. Moreover, he flourishes a razor blade attached to a long handle at frequent intervals. These slashings, with luck, may later yield an idea for a question.
Meanwhile, Allen's writers—he maintains from three to five—are snipping papers elsewhere around Manhattan, In due time they meet Allen and everyone fishes these scraps of paper out of his pockets. Shortly, the place looks like a confetti factory. Sometimes these sessions, long arduous, may result on a subsequent Sunday in a bit of topical satire or some wry comment on the manners and morals of the times.
If so, Allen will have to do a lot of work before the finished product reaches the air. The best his writers do is to spark-plug him. He writes volumniously between lines of any copy turned out by his writers.
After sweating out his script, Allen regularly throws much of it away during rehearsal, as he thinks up better lines or substitutes comment still more acrid when he gets on the air.
* * *
He has been on the air fifteen years now (he took one year off) and he's still at the top. John Steinbeck proclaimed him "the best humorist of our time."
Edgar Bergen, no minor comic himself, says "Allen is the greatest living comedian." Whatever else he may be, he's the best ad libber of our time.
In his asides Allen maintains that the outlook for radio, particularly for a radio comedian (and for that matter the whole human race) is dark. If Allen derives any comfort or cheer from leading the radio parade he gives no glimmer of it in private conversation.
"Why do you continue in radio?" I asked him when we last met.
"Because I'm 63 years old and don't know what else to do," he replied. "I couldn't stand traipsing around the country any more, sleeping in bad hotels. I can earn a living in radio, so I stick with it."
Reminiscing about his days in vaudeville And on the legitimate stage, Allen got around to a credible explanation of why he avoids capital letters on his typewriter. Fred doesn't like suggestions that he copied from e. e. cummings.
"It happened in Chicago back in 1927," Fred recalled. "A bellhop dropped my Corona—and thereafter it worked only in lower case. I never bothered to have it fixed."
* * *
Progress in radio?
"I've survived three presidents and countless sets of vice presidents," says Allen, "and the only improvement I've noticed around Radio City is that the lights have been dimmed in the elevators so that the operators can't read Racing Form while working." And even that might not have been necessary."
"A good many of them already had astigmatism," Allen explained.
"The greatest trouble with entertainment as it exists today," says Allen, "is the fact that no one involved in it is really interested in the creative side of it. The network wants to sell the time, the advertising agency wants to keep the client pacified, and the client wants to sell the soap. So, in and around the unholy three the writers and the actors run in bewildered circles. Their fates are hinged on the Hooper, a mythical decimal record that comes out once a month (God knows where)."
Allen can be optimistic about American radio only when he thinks of the BBC.
"If you heard some of the English radio programs you'd be very happy to take our programs as they are. . . . They start off in the morning when a taxidermist goes on telling you how to stuff a field mouse or something, for three hours. That goes on, more or less, all during the day."
* * *
Allen's acidosis has been considerably aggravated by censorship, which in his view frequently has been tied up with vice presidents and to a lesser degree with sponsors and their agencies.
"A vice president," according to a considered Allen definition, "is a man who doesn't know precisely what his job is and by the time he finds out he no longer is with the organization."
Allen was cut off the air at the instance of a vice president who didn't like something the comedian said about the V. P. in charge of programs. That vice president subsequently did find himself out of a job after various comedians had rallied to the defense of Allen and made the network look pretty silly. "The performer and the agency producing a show should be the arbiters of taste," Allen holds. "In the long run it simply doesn't pay a comedian to offend the public. I wouldn't offend a single person, I don't think, If let alone and yet I've been pictured as a sort of ogre—the Dean of Bad Taste."
* * *
Allen asserts that radio dominated by business men instead of by people who know the show and entertainment business. This is a matter of exceeding regret to him.
"I think if I went in to Mr. Charles Luckman," Allen said recently (he's not Allen's sponsor), "and showed him how to make soap, he'd resent it. He knows what goes on in the vat there, I don't knew anything about that. By that same token I don't think he should come and tell me how to write jokes."
Allen's estimate of the advertising agency account man is not high either, when it comes to his function with reference to radio.
"An account executive," he once explained, "is a man with a crew cut who lives in Connecticut. He gets to the office at 10 a. m. and finds a mole hill on his desk. He has until 4 p.m. to make, a mountain out of it."
One of the greatest obstacles confronting a radio comedian, says Allen, is that "negative flotsam," the studio audience.
"Where they come from; where they go, nobody-knows," Allen lamented. "You can work in front of a studio audience and learn precisely nothing. The same people show up week after week, year after year, nobody cares."
On another occasion Allen observed: "The radio program should be, written to appeal to people in their homes. You go into a studio, you have two or three hundred people in your audience, and their reaction decides how your program is being received. A great many people at home say: 'How was the program? Well, the studio audience didn't laugh.' They enjoy it by remote control or something. It's the old Greek drama—a fellow runs in and tells you something exciting has happened in the street, and all you see is a winded man.
"The radio, as an instrument, is in your home the same as a phonograf. And, consequently, I think your entertainment should come out of it, geared to the size of your room, not with three or four hundred people whistling and hollering and yelling and throwing pies at each other."
* * *
On the question of an editorial policy for broadcasters Allen is on record; 'Mr. Niles Trammell, the president of NBC, made a speech before the Federal Communications commission (on the Mayflower decision banning radio editorials) and he was so impressed by what he heard as he was speaking, he published his talk in a little brochure, which I read, and it's very interesting. Mr. Trammell feels that stations should have the right to an editorial policy. Personally, I don't agree with him on this issue, among other things.
"Radio City is to me a big phone booth. You go in there and you pay and you say what you have to say and you hang up and come out. And I think that thru the various discussions and round tables that both sides of almost every question are heard by the people who are interested in hearing them."
On the matter of platter chatter, now flooding the air, Allen has been mercifully brief: "All you need to be a disk jockey is to be able to stay awake, have a needle and a record."
And with the whole broadcasting industry whooping it up for video, Allen cautions: "There are millions of people in New York who don't even know what television is. They are not old enough to go into saloons.
"Today television is just like when radio started with crystal sets. People used to stay up all night and brag that they heard Pittsburgh, and look what's happened to radio. Or don't look what's happened to radio!"
* * *
Such is Allen's attitude toward the medium he works in. He is amiable enough personally. His friends are ordinary folks, mostly, in lowly walks of life. He's the easiest touch in Manhattan. He used to answer all letters personally. Nowadays he gets hundreds, but he still pecks out replies to many every week. He's had to have an unlisted phone number for years, so he can get some work done.
When last in New York I called his old phone, but found that it had been changed. (The guy who had been assigned his former number wanted to talk about all the experiences he had had with people trying to call Allen.) Allen's associates wouldn't give out his new number. I wired him and asked whether we could meet for a brief chat.
He phoned several times, I learned on returning to my hotel, but wouldn't leave a number. Finally came one more call: "Where have you been?" he growled. "I've been sitting in this phone booth all afternoon calling you every five minutes."
Well, he came over and we talked for a half hour. Then he suggested going out for a bite. We sought out what we thought would be a secluded place. No sooner were we seated when a hefty chap rushed up and grabbed Allen's hand: "Why, Fred, I haven't seen you since the Chicago fair." Allen, thinking the fellow was perhaps an acquaintance of mine, listened to his story of the 14 intervening years. Finally the fellow finished.
After he had gone Fred scanned the menu, ordered the vegetable plate and said: 'I wasn't at the Chicago fair!"

The Fred Allen Robot

Had the Jack Benny-Fred Allen “feud” been going on radio in 1934, the idea of a robotic Fred Allen would have been good for some gags. Additionally, the 1944 version of the real Allen would no doubt find a way to liken it to sponsors or NBC vice-presidents.

But there actually was a robot Fred Allen. It was on display at the 1934 World’s Fair. It’s fate today is unknown. Here’s a story from the Dobbs Ferry Register, June 15, 1934. The photo accompanied the story.

Wise-Cracking Robot With Human Expression Goes To World’s Fair
New York—(Special) — Simulating human mannerisms, facial expressions and gestures, a mechanical man, the first in which these human traits have been attempted, is on its way to Chicago where it will have a prominent place at the new World’s Fair.
The 1934 model mechanical man bears no resemblance to the stiff, machine-like robots of earlier vintages.
His speech has been vastly improved and he has been madę to look like a human being. He talks, moves his head, smiles, shows his teeth, raises his eyebrows, rolls his eyes, and chuckles.
In endeavoring to build a mechanical man resembling a human being, the inventors obtained permission from Fred Allen, the radio comedian, to attempt to reproduce his head, facial expressions, and voice.
A corps of sculptors and electrical engineers worked nearly three months to complete the mechanical Fred Allen which was built by the Ivel Corporation of New York. The mechanical “brain” was supplied by K. D. Andrews, said to be the only robot builder in this country. The face which is madę of a patented flexible rubber was designed by William Herrschaft, a sculptor.
The mechanical Fred Allen is the first comedian among robots for he wise-cracks and makes facial grimaces very much like the real Fred Allen. At the World’s Fair he will perform continuously as a guest of the Bristol-Myers Company in their Ipana exhibit in the General Exhibits Building where he will be known as “The Ipanaman.”

A Night With Fred Allen

A while ago, we posted an article from PM from a reporter who attended a broadcast of the Jack Benny radio show. Today, we do the same thing, only the subject is Benny’s mock adversary, Fred Allen.

This appeared in PM on April 28, 1948. Leo the Lip had guested on the second half of Allen’s show on April 25th.

Man Has Fun at Allen Broadcast
By John McNulty
Excuse me for crowding, Seymour Peck, radio editor, but Al Durante, over at the J. Walter Thompson ad agency, sent me a couple of tickets to see and hear the Fred Allen broadcast last Sunday night, the night Leo Durocher from Brooklyn was on, and it was great fun I'd like to tell about.
Since Mr. Sullivan from Boston (Fred Allen, that is) was trouping along the vaudeville trail, I've been hammering my way into theaters to see him. At the Colonial, in Lawrence, Mass., for example, or the Keith-Albee, in Columbus, O. (Burns O'Sullivan, mgr.) and along with Ed Wynn and James Durante, he is one of the three top funny-men of the world. Sunday night, I learned that the 15 minutes he does in the studio, before the show goes on the air, are at least 50 per cent more comical than the half hour that goes out to a jillion listeners from 8:30 to 9 o'clock.
And the half-hour that goes out is plenty good, plenty funny. Yet in the prior 15 minutes, Allen is not cramped, tethered, hog-tied, and straitjacketed by the needs, real or imaginary, of radio. The comedy of the 15 minutes in the studio is seven furlongs higher in intelligence, fantasy, sleekness, and niftiness than the stuff that goes out on the air.
"Vice-presidents of radio," Allen said during Sunday's 15-minute prologue to the ether (this was before he went under the ether, as the saying goes) "are men who do not know what their jobs are. By the time they learn what their jobs are, they are no longer with the organization.
(Gor! I'm garbling this thing up, but when the great Fred Allen is out there doing his stuff, no man of sense is wasting his time by trying to take notes. To heck with the notes!)
"The word 'heck'," said Allen, "was invented by the National Broadcasting Company. The National Broadcasting Company denies the existence of hell and the Columbia Broadcasting System—although not necessarily in that order."
(That remark, also, was only for us privileged handful in the studio. Too amusing for the general public.)
Allen began talking about the way thousands troop through, and wander aimlessly through, the RCA building, including hundreds of people from New Jersey. "Lately," he said, "these wanderers have taken to dropping into offices in the building and giving orders to vice-presidents. Still more lately, however, this situation has been equalized a little, because now, at stated intervals during the day, the vice-presidents are allowed to go out on the street and give orders to people who happen to be passing by. It's doing the vice-presidents the world of good, getting them out in the open air. Brings the bloom of health to their faces. One vice-president, I noticed, has only one rosy cheek. He hasn't been outside quite enough to take care of both cheeks, but all in good time, all in good time."
Maybe these samples don't stand up so well in print, but they're vastly funnier than what goes out on the air, and, I repeat, what goes out on the air from a Fred Allen show is still the funniest stuff in radio.
Mr. Durocher, or Labial Leo, was an amazingly calm and deft mike performer, too. He'd just lost a ball game, but you'd never know it watching him do his stuff Sunday night.
The Dodger manager seemed as much at home before the microphone as was Minerva Pious, that wonderful Mrs. Nussbaum. Only complaint I have against him is that he went sartorially a trifle into the territory of Harry Balogh, the Madison Square Garden fight-announcer. For years, as Daniel Fosdick Parker (Balogh's creator) has stated, Balogh has been the city's best handkerchief-display man. That is, he has been able to show more, and whiter, handkerchiefs from the breast-pocket of his jacket than anybody else in town. Also, he is noted as the only man who can make a handkerchief display five distinct points, as it sticks out from the pocket. It's some trick of folding the thing, a trick only Balogh knows. Well, sir, Durocher out-did Balogh for the broadcast. The amount of handkerchief sticking out of the Durocher breast-pocket would have covered third base, and that might not be a bad idea. I thought it ever-so-slightly flamboyant. That's quibbling, I fear, but I've got to put the knock on something, the whole rest of the column is praise, always an unpopular thing with readers.

The Champagne Lady on the Cider Gentleman

Some people are famous for being famous. I suppose Elsa Maxwell falls in that category. About all she was known for was throwing champagne parties and then writing about them in the New York Post (she was syndicated by Press Alliance).

One person who I cannot picture at an Elsa Maxwell party is Fred Allen. He and his wife Portland led a very quiet existence. Allen was so busy writing or re-writing his radio show, he didn’t have time for much else. But Maxwell wrote a nice tribute to Fred Allen in prose that was about as elegant as she ever got.

I haven’t checked to see how accurate her claims are about Minerva Pious and Charlie Cantor. It seems to me both were still on the show in the 1943-44 season and that Cantor was playing Mr. Nussbaum; Alan Reed (Falstaff Openshaw) and Jack Smart (Senator Bloat) were other players who made regular appearances in Allen’s Alley along with Elsie Mae Gordon (Mrs. Prawn) and Pat C. Flick (Digby Rappaport).

This appeared in the Post on March 9, 1944.

Elsa Maxwell's Party Line
Off Up for Allen's Alley
Although I have made guest appearances with him more than once, I don't think I had ever appreciated the real value, beauty, and extraordinary fantasy in the mind of this greatest of all radio stars—this Columbia Attic philosopher, this radio Erasmus, with his cadenced drawl and whimsical tones that might be measured by a metronome—who has charmed me every Sunday night this last month during my illness as a cobra charms a cornered rat.
Fred Allen has added a quality to radio without parallel . . . for there is only one Fred Allen, as there is only one Portland, and as there was only one Minerva Pious, who though stolen for a brief time by Jack Benny will shortly, I feel, return to the fold—the one and only Allen s Alley. Also missing—and I hope soon to join the glittering Allen Family circle—will be Charlie Cantor, the greatest character man of radio.
I don't know which special facet of the Fred Allen diamond makes him so irresistible. Perhaps it is the sheer sweetness, humanity and kindliness of the man. Or perhaps it is the hominess, and simplicity of Fred's humor, which is always founded on realism and life, and never taken from the well-known, and rather shop-worn-wits of the last decade: i. e., Joe Cook to "Dottie" Parker. In fact, Fred's caviar still remains just fish eggs, and his champagne still remains apple cider.
There is also the amazing suggestion of spontaneity in Fred's program that makes you believe he extemporizes when everyone familiar with radio realizes that few, except Fred, dare to tamper with the delicate art of improvisation when the relentless clock ticks away the minutes which divide sponsored radio shows. It has been said that unlike most comedians who try to make material sound spontaneous Fred's problem is to make his extemporing seem part of the show.
The first time I saw Fred Allen was when he was an actor. It was way back in the 1920's, when he appeared in "The Little Show," which starred. Clifton Webb and Libby Holman. No one could have possibly imagined that this rather small bit-player could become master of the air.
I once asked Fred "Why did you leave the stage?"
"Oh," he answered, "I didn't leave the stage. The stage left me. Radio came along, and I thought I'd fiddle with that."
"So you fiddled while the stage burned? Was that it?" I inquired.
"No—vice versa," said Fred.
But it's hard to realize the intensive work Fred puts into every show . . . Not only does he write most of the material himself, but, he spends his time "ungagging" the sometimes too goofy gags of his gag writers. Then there are three rehearsals to an Allen show. If you are a guest on it, you will be called for the first reading—say on Tuesday.
Then the script undergoes revision and even amputation. On Saturday there is another "going-through," and on Sunday a dress rehearsal before the evening show. And this is all under the psychological baton of the Maestro, who deeply respects his metier.
On "Information Please," Fred did not even attempt to match wits with John Kieran or F. P. A. when it came to knowledge of the classics. But neither Kieran nor F. P. A. is an Allen when it comes to wit. Fred ad-libbed constantly in a low tone, and rarely missed the bull's-eye, though you could barely hear him.
* * *
One of the questions Clifton Fadiman asked was, "What would Jack Benny, Midas, and Silas Marner be talking about if you met them on a street corner?" The answer, of course, was "money." When Fadiman pointed out that Midas was the king who could turn everything to gold, Allen murmured, "I don't think a fellow like that would have spoken to Benny."
* * *
Some have called Fred and Portland, who have been happily married for fourteen years, the Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne of the radio. It is very aptly put, for they are never apart and every anniversary they face each other over a glass of whatever is their favorite beverage and solemnly congratulate each other. If the art of humor lies in surprise, then Fred's voice is certainly his greatest asset. His incredible drawl as it gives utterance to his incredible wit and fun amazes as well as delights you.
But even at the most convulsive moments of Fred's buffooning one is always impressed, even through tears of laughter, by the innate dignity and decency of Mr. Allen—who, unlike many of his colleagues, never descends to the vice of either vulgarity of cheapness in the endeavor to catch a laugh. No higher compliment can I pay a man.

Fixing Radio the Fred Allen Way

Two things about Fred Allen—he read a number of newspapers every day, and he constantly complained about the state of radio programming and executives.

He managed to combine the two in 1937.

Allen wrote a guest column for the Long Island Daily Press, which had a radio critic simply named “The Radio Reporter.” He ticks off some annoyances from his own listening and gets in a shot at Jack Benny as this column was published not too many weeks after the climax of the Benny-Allen “Fight of the Century.” Fred was occasionally hypocritical with these “bad practices” lists as he indulged in some of the things he was criticising. As for comedians laughing at their own jokes, Allen would break himself up, especially at the beginning of the show when he did some schtick with Portland Hoffa.

He nicely fits in some credit for his supporting cast. An odd situation on some radio comedy shows existed where supporting players never got on-air credit for their work, even if they appeared weekly. That’s even though newspaper radio listings might mention that, say, Elvia Allman was appearing on a show, and might even list her role in the highlights section. In Allen’s case, he didn’t give his regulars on-air credit for years. I suspect you could count on one hand the number of times the name “Charlie Cantor” was spoken on the Allen show.

This story was in the edition of March 28, 1937.

I HAVE always envied the Radio Reporter.
I have a mental picture of him sitting back in his dimly lighted corner of the bustling newspaper office, his radio going full blast, wallowing in Power. What a swell way to spend the time.
Just the same, you must admit that sponsors spend untold—maybe they are told, only not to me—sums of money hording their talent to the microphones. Although they do it for the expressed purpose of pleasing some 20,000,000 people, you can't convince me that every soprano who splits the stratosphere and every comedian that releases a bewhiskered joke to totter around the studio and slink under a chair, ashamed of its age, isn't thinking of the Reporter, who is busy stalking material for his column.
Yep, the radio artists quake in their boots—or, if you surprise them later in the day at dinner, in their stocking feet—at the thought of what the newspaper man is going to write as he crouches in his rodent-infested nook.
CREDIT PLACING—There are four and one-half people on my program who deserve an awful lot of credit, I'm afraid. Although I call them things like "The backwash of the American theater" and "Those hunks of driftwood on the sands of time" the Mighty Allen Art Players, who are really Minerva Pious, Charles Cantor, Eileen Douglas and Walter Tetley, are unusually capable. John Brown is the person who always interrupts my sessions with Portland Hoffa; Walter Tetley is the fourteen-year-old actor who accompanies him. Cantor does all those fine dialects.
Which brings us rather neatly to the matter of burlesques on the air; since the Art Players have a great deal to do with those on Town Hall Tonight. The burlesque, whether it be of a current movie or of a book or of another radio program, is one of the most important phases of radio humor, it seems. At least, the Mighty Allen Art Players are about the important single spot on my show.
It's an important little business—and by that I mean the true burlesque and not the strip-teasing they are selling under that name these days. I want to take this opportunity to take my hat off to it, too.
Getting back to the Radio Reporter for a minute, I do envy his power. And since I am him for today, I think I will haul out my Aladdin's Lamp, rub it vigorously, and hope that the following things will happen in radio, immediately:
All Lone Cowboys to be forced to bring a friend to the mike with them. This would necessarily stop cowboys from being lonesome and with an acquaintance in the studio he would be assured of one listener.
All bridge experts who explain plays over the air to be made dummy for the duration of the program.
All hill-billies to be forced to stop singing through their nostrils. I know a hill-billy 60 years old whose throat is practically as good as new.
Jack Benny to be on the air every evening from 9 until 12.
All studio audiences to be equipped with woolen mittens. Their applause would then be seen and not heard and those who listen at home would not be disturbed.
All known jokes to be printed on slips of paper bearing 10 little squares. As each comedian uses a gag, he punches one of the 10 squares with a little hand punch I would supply gratis. After the 10 squares had been cancelled, the joke would then be retired to pasture.
All cooking experts who skip over a line of the recipe in their scripts to be forced to go from house to house and collect the burnt offerings that repose in housewives' ovens.
All band leaders who feature their brass sections to have their heads thrust into the French horn as far as the Adam's apple while their horn players render "Christopher Columbus" al a swingo.
All comedians to be prohibited by law from laughing at their own jokes, thus insuring a 100 percent lull.
All guest stars to have their right legs broken above the ankle on their way to the studios. If that is too cruel, let the traffic delay them.
All news commentators to be immersed in a pan of faulty-diction eradicator. Half the time, you can't tell whether the League of Nations is at odds with a dictator or whether you are listening to the finals of a pie-eating contest.
All announcers who spell out one-syllable words over the air, like This is the Eureka Cat Nip program—spelled C-A-T," to have their tongues tied to the top buttons of their vests.
All this to happen—-if I had Aladdin's Lamp.
However, I haven't, so it won't.
The reporter might do something about it though by massaging typewriters heavily and at length.
PONDERING—The question most often asked of me by reporters is: What will be the next trend in air humor?
The way I most often answer it is: "I wish I knew."
Radio humor has so far followed a rather well marked path. From the crude vaudeville sketches of the early days, it progressed into a crude situation comedy of its own. From there it went on to more sophisticated situations until it has at last reached the plane of brilliant satire, in many cases, brilliant burleque in others.
The ultimate will be a type of humor as exclusively radio's as the humor of Josh Billings and Mark Twain was America's. I hope I get there among the first.

Unfortunately, some of the things Fred Allen complained about were later saddled on him, and not willingly. He griped in his book Treadmill to Oblivion that one of his sponsors in the 1940s wanted a Jack Benny-type show with guest stars. So Allen was stuck using them and, in the process, unable to come up with a “type of humor as exclusively radio’s.” In many cases, he used his guests well. Allen’s “early morning radio” spoof with Tallulah Bankhead is brilliant and the “Queen For a Day” satire with Benny is beloved by fans who can (thanks to the studio audience’s laughter) picture what’s happening on stage.

One thing about the “Mighty Allen Art Players” listed in the story. Fans of old radio are probably familiar with all of them save Eileen Douglas. There’s a pretty good reason. She died before Allen’s biggest fame on radio in the “Allen’s Alley” days of the mid-to-late 1940s. Her real name was Alina McMahon. Her father was John R. McMahon, an author and magazine writer. She was on the stage on by the 1920s and appearing on Broadway (it seems she used both her real name and her alias while performing, like Teddy Bergmann also used the name “Alan Reed”). By September 1929, she was singing on a half-hour programme on WMCA New York and the following year, she appeared two mornings a week on CBS. She co-starred in “Eileen and Bill,” a 15-minuter in the afternoon on NBC Blue in 1932. She joined Allen earlier in his run. Douglas died on October 16, 1939 in New York. She was only 35. I have yet to find a news report which stated how she died.

How Hodge White Helped Fred Allen (and Vice Versa)

Anyone familiar with Allen’s Alley of the mid to late 1940s might not recognise Fred Allen’s earlier radio programmes. By the time Allen gave up his radio show in 1949, he had been locked into a formula—a chat with dumb-bell Portland, the man-on-the-street interview (the Alley) and a routine with a guest star.

Some ten years earlier, Allen had an hour-long programme filled with non-professionals (either performing in a contest or giving an opinion on a topic of the day) set around a “town hall” motif. After a brief opening of a parade of characters, Allen joked it up in the form of community announcements. For a while, one of the weekly announcements involved Hodge White. While Allen went to great pains to invent names and avoid lawsuits, White was a real person, born on November 16, 1880. He ran a general store ten minutes from Boston and was lame due to a spinal injury.

Some enterprising reporters discovered there really was a Hodge White and there were several stories about him. We’ll pick one from the Syracuse American of March 21, 1937.

DEALING WITH DOYLE
By J. L. (Dinty) Doyle
BOSTON, March 20.—Radio listeners from coast to coast every Wednesday night hear Fred Allen talk about one Hodge White, grocer.
Hodge White is no myth, ladies and gentlemen.
He's in business at 891 Dorchester ave., in Dorchester, about ten minutes out of Boston.
He has been there for 25 years and knows everybody in the neighborhood and everybody knows him and calls him "Hodge."
A new neon sign is going up on the front of the store.
Hodge is going to capitalize on the fame Allen has given him.
And how he loves to talk about Allen.
He knew the top radio comedian as "Johnny Sullivan," when Johnny was a kid playing around Grafton street and the Strandway Pack. Fred Allen was born Sullivan and christened John Florence.
Hodge White recalls that Allen was born in Somerville, went to grammar school in Alston, got his diploma at Boston's High School of Commerce and then went on the stage.

Hodge insists that he helped Allen along in his theatrical career. You see Allen was a juggler and he practiced with White's vegetables and eggs.
White has a little establishment, maybe 22 feet wide, flanked on one side by an empty store which was formerly occupied by a chain grocery and the other by an establishment which boasts "Flats Fixed, 35 cents."
There are a funeral parlor and a barber shop directly opposite, and a liquor store on the corner.
But it seems that the boys who hang around Hodge White's store dont drink. They are what is known as good, clean young fellers and they all remember Allen as one of that type, "a good boy," those neighbors say.
Incidentally that empty store next to White's is eloquent tribute to the loyalty of the neighborhood to the White institution. His trade doubled when the chain store opened. They haven't anything against the chains, but they like Hodge.
Sure, He Charges
It is one of those old-fashioned places, with an ancient stove around which the boys sit these cool evenings. The customers help themselves, if Hodge or his assistant, "Mame" Carr, are busy, and Hodge marks the purchases down on the "slip." Sure, he charges.
Half a dozen pictures of Allen and Portland Hoffa are on the walls. There is one of which Hodge is particularly proud. It shows Primo Camera holding up Allen, and the inscription reads: "To Hodge—See What I Did to Primo—Fred." He has another which he is having done in oils.
Mr. Allen refers in his broadcasts to "Mame." She's an institution, too, and has been tending store for White these 16 years.
Allen now and then speaks of Bill McDonough and Eddie Sheehan over the radio. In other days he used to play with those fellows. McDonough, incidentally, is extremely proud of three store teeth, right out in front.
When Allen was Johnny Sullivan he was a pretty fair pitcher. McDonough forgot to duck a fast one and the ball caught him flush on the mouth, knocking out three teeth.
Mr. Allen paid the dentist. McDonough recalls with pride that the bill was $85, "and Allen never complained."
Sheehan is now a fireman, and he's another of those neighbors who swears by Allen.
They All Love Allen
It really is heart-warming to hear them speak of the nationally-famous comedian who regales with his merry quips every Wednesday night.
Let's call White as a witness again:
"Why Allen always saw the funny side of life—if things weren't merry, he'd start something. He was always putting on a show in his yard. He'd get the kids together, and he'd make the announcements, and the high point of the show always was his own juggling act."
"Why I can see him light now placing three tomatoes in McDonough's hands, turning him around three times and yelling, 'Bet you can't hit me,' and McDonough would let fly—the tomatoes would land everywhere except on Allen.
"And you ought to see this place when Fred comes up here to visit his aunts around the corner—he always did go for their cooking. Why, the kids just hang around, and Fred sits in here with them and autographs all day.
"Of course, he's famous now, and he can't do the things he wants to. I'll bet if he had his way he wouldn't go to Maine for a vacation. He'd come right here and go swimming with his old gang. But he can't do that any more. The traffic cops would object to the crowds he'd draw.
"But he'll never change. He'll still be the same regular guy he always was—yes, sir—Johnny Sullivan was a GOOD boy!"
New Sign Up Soon
This Hodge White is a moonfaced, affable fellow, always grinning, who believes in being nice to people. They'll tell you around that Dorchester comer that in depression times Hodge saw to it that all his old customers got their groceries regularly whether they could pay or not.
"They'll pay." said Hodge.
They did.
For Hodge is in one of those old-time "solid" neighborhoods. where all the houses and flats are let and people don't move often. "Why, there are families who have lived in this neighborhood for 60 years," says Hodge. "All fine people, too."
Hodge has never seen an Allen broadcast, but he never missed one by ear, and he virtually shuts up shop from 9 to 10 of a Wednesday night. People just wait for their milk or cigars or eggs—and Hodge is particularly proud of those eggs.
They are strictly fresh, right from the farm—and they're from the same place he got the eggs Fred Allen used to juggle.
About that new Neon sign Hodge is planning. For a long time he ducked newsmen, never talked about his friendship for Allen, believed that he might embarrass Fred by capitalizing upon the fame his old pal has given him.
Allen was in Dorchester last Summer and told Hodge to climb on the prosperity van and get some value out of the radio advertising. So if you're driving along Dorchester ave. in another week you'll see the big sign: "Hodge White, Delicatessen."

Charles Hodge White was still alive when World War Two broke out but, by then, Allen’s show had changed and references to him had vanished. Whether Hodge himself vanished is unclear. We’ve been unable to discover when he passed away.

A Portrait of Fred Allen

When Fred Allen died on March 17, 1956, there was a great outpouring of respect for his work—and a few attempts to tell the story of the “real” Fred Allen.

Allen didn’t have the reputation as a warm man. He wasn’t someone audiences could really identify with like Jack Benny, or, rather, the character on radio Benny played. People tuned in to Allen to hear him turn a phrase or stick it to deserving targets, like politicians and radio management.

Radio columnist John Crosby was a great admirer of Allen’s, perhaps they both hated the triteness, phoniness and incompetence of the radio industry, both on and off the air. Both were based in New York. Crosby interviewed Allen a number of times and got to know him pretty well. Here’s his tribute to Fred Allen, the person, in his column of March 21, 1956.

Tribute Paid To Kindness of Fred Allen
By JOHN CROSBY
NEW YORK, March 21-- Under a dour exterior, Fred Allen was the kindliest man imaginable. Swarms of out-of-work actors descended on him regularly for handouts which were never refused. There was one actor who put the bite on him every Sunday after church. One Sunday the guy didn't show up and Fred got so worried he went looking for him.
The radio feud between Jack Benny and Fred Allen was legendary, but actually the two men were close friends and their admiration for each other was boundless. But this didn't prevent them from heckling each other unmercifully on stage. Once Benny was appearing on the Paramount stage and Allen sat in the front row and hurled one witty insult after Another at his old friend. After one quip, Benny, non-plussed, waved a $20 bill at the audience and offered it to anyone who could top Allen's last gag. Instantly Allen was on his feet, topped his own gag with a better one, and walked up and claimed the $20.
Fred was a wit's wit. There is not a humorist alive who did not admire him extravagantly, but none imitated him because they couldn't. His was a wonderfully original and well-stocked mind and he had the gift of bringing two frightfully irrelevant things into the same sentence. It was the humor of the ludicrous and a very penetrating wit it was but it does not reproduce well.
His humor was very much of the moment. I remember having lunch with Fred once just after the first atom bomb had gone off at Bikini and had proved to be a bit of a dud. I asked him if he'd heard the broadcast and he said, "Yes, nothing disappeared but the OPA." Well, the OPA had gone out of existence that weekend and it was a very funny remark then, but it doesn't make much sense today. I bring it up only as an example of the way Fred could take two totally unrelated subjects and combine them into one fast quip.
Even his prose style defied imitation. He had a horror of cliche and every sentence that came from his lips hid a newly minted freshness that was unique, even among very literate men. To him, even "hello" or any other ordinary salutation was a cliche and he avoided any form of routine greeting. He'd greet you, on say, a hot day with: "It's so hot out I could take my skin off and sit around in my bones."
In his early days he billed himself as the world's worst juggler and he just about was. He'd keep dropping the Indian clubs and to cover his confusion he'd make wisecracks that would convulse the audience. Actually, Fred was the last of three great American humorists who started the same way. The other two were W. C. Fields, who was a little better juggler than Fred but still no world beater, and Will Rogers, whose rope act was pretty fair, but not much better than that. All used wisecracks to cover their inadequacies with the props and grew into national institutions.
Fred's death came as a particularly terrible shock to me because he took such very good care of his health. He didn't drink or smoke and his diet was of such austerity that rabbit would find it dull. In fact I always thought he'd live to be 103. He had high blood pressure and he had consulted so many doctors and read so many books on the subject he knew more about it than they did.
Any sort of new medical fad would receive his most earnest attention. Once in Florida he stumbled on a cult that believed in fasting as a cure-all for everything. People subsisted on nothing but distilled water for weeks. Fred was fascinated by the project and its effect on the patients.
He was a very simple liver. For decades, although he was a millionaire, he lived in a little apartment on West 38th St. He used to eat lunch every day at the corner drugstore. He never owned a car and never learned to drive. It wasn't parsimony; it simply that luxury didn't mean anything to him. He never got away from the common people and he had a wide acquaintanceship in his little neighborhood with delicatessen store proprietors and local cops.
His kindliness was fabulous. Once a delicatessen store proprietor, a friend of his, lost his liquor license because gamblers had been hanging out there. Fred bought the place, got a liquor license in his own name and turned it over to his friend to run. At the time of his death he was working on his autobiography and he kept looking up old friends of his vaudeville days for material. Every time he found one of these old chums, most of them down on their luck, it cost him the price of a new suit. He loathed sham of any sort and he considered the broadcasting industry, which made him famous, full of it. He always regarded network executives as overgrown office-boys and he was incessantly battling them.
"If the United States can get along with one vice-president, I don't know why NBC needs 26," he once said. Among his other pet dislikes were Hollywood and Southern California. "It's a nice climate," he remarked of California, "if you're on orange."
He also took a dim view of agents and he once remarked of his agent: "he gets 10 per cent of everything I get except my blinding headaches." Years ago Fred was a pretty good drinker, averaging a bottle a day. The day prohibition was repealed he stopped drinking entirely, claiming that he'd drunk so much poison that the good stuff would probably kill him.
The end was sudden. As John Huston remarked after the death of his death: "He was too good a man to be sick. When the time came, he just died."

NBC took a bit of time for their own tribute to Allen. It came on the hour-long sustaining programme “Biography in Sound.” It was first broadcast on May 29th then rebroadcast on December 18th. You can hear the later broadcast by clicking on the arrow. It was written by Earl Hamner, who later created “The Waltons.” I believe the staff announcer giving the ID at the end is Mel Brandt.

Cantor on Allen

Fred Allen didn’t have a real feud with Jack Benny or any other radio comedian. But he didn’t hold back about the ones whose acts he didn’t like and why. Milton Berle was a target, and so were others on television whom he saw as presenting warmed-over vaudeville acts (despite the fact Allen was nostalgic for vaudeville). And he didn’t have much good to say about a few of them on radio, like Eddie Cantor. Here’s what he wrote in “Treadmill to Oblivion” about Cantor’s show:

The big comedians felt that if they entertained the studio audiences their radio success was assured. Eddie Cantor wore funny costumes, pummeled his announcer with his fist and frequently kicked his guest star to obtain results. A Cantor show would open with the announcer shouting “And here comes Eddie! Eddie’s wearing fifty balloons tied to his coat! Ha! ha! Eddie hopes he’ll get a break tonight. Ha! ha!”

Allen’s point was the audience at home was confused by the studio’s audience’s reaction to something visual the comedian was doing to get a huge yuck. The listener at home couldn’t see what was happening. Allen hated pandering to the studio audience. But he did it himself, most notably in the “King For a Day” sketch (May 26, 1946) where the studio audience goes out of control with laughter because it can see what the listener can’t—Jack Benny’s clothes being taken off.

It appears Cantor didn’t appreciate Allen’s point. Cantor had a newspaper column handled by the Bell Syndicate and here’s what he wrote that appeared in papers of January 14, 1955.

Through Eddie Cantor's Eyes
Fred Allen Gets Too Analytical
By EDDIE CANTOR
I'm wondering what my teacher at Public School 1, Catherine Luddy, would think if she know I read two books in two days. Even though she predicted a very black future for me, I was crazy about Miss Luddy. I would have married her except for the difference in our ages. I was older than my teacher. Teacher? I was older than the principal. To get back to the books: One of them was “Treadmill to Oblivion” by Fred Allen. In it you get a lot of “Allen’s Alley” and “Allen’s allergy.” He simply cannot stand the human race—particularly those comedians who are too busy being successful in the various mediums of show business to stop and analyze them. As a contemporary of Fred, I've often noticed that he gets analytical when he should be just comical.
I’ve been an Allen fan for 25 years. I still laugh out loud every time I think of his description of an American in Paris. Here is a sample: “The American arrives in Paris with a few French phrases he has culled from a conversational guide, or picked up from a friend who owns a beret.
“He speaks the sort of French that is readily understood by another American who, also, has just arrived in Paris. The minute, however, the American attempts to make linguistic contact with a native, verbal bedlam ensues. The Frenchman talks as though his nouns and verbs are red hot and he has to get the words out of his mouth before they blister his tongue.
“As the American gains confidence, he will occasionally risk a cluster of French consonants in public. This often proves embarrasing. One American who had planned to buy a set of andirons found, when he left the antique shop, that he had bought two old ladies, one of whom was in poor condition.
“Another tourist, speaking import French, rattled off something to a waiter at Maxim’s. When translated, he found that he had said, 'Who is playing the trombone under my potato salad?' As the American 'ouis' and 'mercis' his way in and out of shops and cafes, he finds that to get what he wants, he invariably has to point. The ‘American in Pans’ finally learns that to speak French, he doesn't require a tongue—all he needs is a finger.” This is good Fred Allen.
In his book, “Treadmill to Oblivion,” Fred would like to believe that all comedians merely pass through on the way to the “big nowhere.” It may be true, but let’s face it—while on that treadmill, the comics, including Fred Allen, not only pick up a million or more dollars, but experience and soul-satisfrying [sic] knowledge that millions of people who enjoy their particular brand of humor have been made happier.

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t quite get Cantor’s point. He never really explains why Allen shouldn’t be analytical. In fact, a good portion of his column is taken up by a piece of Allen’s analytical humour. His final line, after admitting Allen may be right, doesn’t deal with analysis by Allen at all. I suspect Cantor’s wagging a disapproving finger at Allen for something that’s not stated in the column at all—he’s annoyed about Allen publicly criticising his on-stage antics during a radio career which, by the time the review was written, was over.

Whither Dialects

The opinion that Stereotypes = Racism is debated today, but it’s a discussion that’s certainly not something new. And it’s not something which will ever result in a universal consensus, I’m afraid. Some people think Rochester on the Jack Benny show was portrayed as an equal with the rest of the cast and superior to the man in charge. Others think he was “servile.” There’s no reconciling the two.

100 years ago, America was a land full of new immigrants of various ethnic and religious stripes. They gently kidded each other about themselves as they all tried to make a better life in a new homeland. That was reflected on the vaudeville stage, in radio and even in television. Unfortunately, there were others who weren’t kidding. And then there was some guy over in Germany spouting nonsense about a master race and hate against a long list of people just because of who they were—and forcibly demonstrated it with murder. So ethnic humour became something other than a laughing matter to some, no matter what the motivation was behind it.

Groucho Marx jumped into the debate back in the days when network radio was at its peak in the mid-1940s. I can’t find the exact quote now, but he expressed his displeasure to Fred Allen with the broad Jewishness of New York housewife Pansy Nussbaum, Minvera Pious’ contribution to Allen’s Alley. Allen, who either wrote or edited Mrs. Nussbaum’s dialogue, reacted as you might expect.

Broadway gossip columnist Earl Wilson focused his attention on the matter of dialect humour in the August 21, 1946 edition of the New York Post. Both sides state their case. I post it without comment.

Fred Allen, Parkyakarkus Discuss Radio’s Forthcoming Season
By Earl Wilson
NEW YORK—Very soon, radio will be belting us with its big autumn push.
You do listen in, occasionally?
You really should, you know, because with most programs what can you lose but your mind, or, in a few especially nauseous cases, your supper? Radio is acutely nervous about the fall. Several shows flopped sadly last spring. Some were fired. Now all the geniuses are worried about 1946-47, and about television. Eager to toss another banana skin on the icy sidewalk, I recently reported how Groucho Marx was slugging at the radio dialecticians, charging them with hurting the minorities. Groucho’s grouch stirred up a storm.
• • •
Fred Allen, employer of “Mrs. Nussbaum,” Queen of the Dialecticians, has just emerged from Old Orchard Beach, Me.—from which Orchard he didn’t say—with a reply that tells Grouch to sheddep.
“In my not too humble opinion,” Allen has written to me, “comedians should confine their remarks to the stage and leave the soap box to those who feel that their postulations need airing.
“I do not believe,” he goes on, “that the general public is inclined to take seriously any comment a comedian may make on world affairs.
“A plumber may air his views on the Koran. To the public he is still a plumber. And so it is with the comedian. In some cases, he, too, is still a plumber.
“It might be well if people in show business let the Western Union worry about messages . . .”
• • •
I wrote not long ago a sentimental column that brought in a shower of complimentary letters and telegrams. Being all ham, I was tickled. Then came one letter from an intelligent woman saying this very same column stank. Please God, she said, never smell up the paper with that garbage again.
“You can’t please everybody,” in short.
I fear “Mrs. Nussbaum” of the Allen program, Rochester of the Jack Benny program, and Harry Hirshfield, Joe Laurie Jr. and Peter Donald of “Can You Top This?” are aware now that though their dialect jokes please millions, the same dialect jokes make a lot of others sore as hell.
So who is right? If you own even a second hand radio, you've got a right to sound off at the sponsors and tell them how to run their business, so let’s go.
Parkyakarkus, who does the Greek dialect, tells me that Greeks love his dialect and made him a member of their best societies.
In a letter signed, “Your Pall, Parky,” he says, “I have heard any number of radio programs that are downright offensive and should be off the air . . . And there’s not a trace of any kind of dialect used in them. Why? Simply because they are presented in bad taste. So you see, it’s not the dialect that’s the rub. It’s WHAT is said . . . "
Parky feels he handles the dialect judiciously. Joe Laurie would admit he handles Jewish inoffensively.
Up steps Harry Ruby, the song writer with a raucous “Hey, wait!”
Once, he says, vaudeville had Irish, German, English, Jewish and Negro comedians, "but only the Negro and Jew remain to be shown in a ridiculous light . . .”
Negroes and Jews have statesmen and scientists, but they are never portrayed, he says. “Your comic can incite laughter only by projecting ludicrous images. The impression that unthinking people get from these portrayals is responsible for some of the prejudice against them . . .”
Sometimes when I think of the headaches radio is going to have with television and the increasing sensitivity of the public, I’m glad I’m not on the air. P.S. I am not so worried about it that a sponsor couldn’t fix it up.

The Original Allen's Alley

The best-remembered feature of Fred Allen’s radio show was “Allen’s Alley,” where Allen would ask a question-of-the-day of four people which would veer off into some type of comic story. And if you did your own little survey of radio fans about which character in the Alley they think of first, it would likely be the blustery Southern-loving Senator Claghorn.

But the Senator was a relatively late addition to the Alley. He arrived in fall 1945. The Alley first appeared on the air on December 6, 1942 with only one of the four characters whom most fans associate with radio’s most famous lane. It was popular from the start and prompted a newspaper feature story that appeared in the Niagara Falls Gazette on January 30, 1943. The story isn’t bylined, so I can only presume it originated from Allen’s ad agency (or perhaps the network, which warrants one mention). Supporting players weren’t credited on Allen’s show for many years, so the story was one of the rare occasions radio listeners got to learn who played the first characters in the Alley and a little about them.

Allen's Art Players May Sound "Wacky" on the Air, But They're the Best
Two Russians, one Englishman, a Yank and a star who impersonates Chinese detectives. That's radio's own United Nations, waging a weekly war on gloom—and it happens to be Fred Allen and his famed "Art Players."
Allen needs little introduction to Columbia network audiences, but his acknowledged versatile cast of "stooges" or supporting comedians, is more or less cloaked in anonymity.
This is due not to a matter of lesser billing in the program but their command of characterizations prevents a listening audience from spotting them.
Take Charlie Cantor
Take Charlie Cantor, for instance. Charlie was born in Russia on September 4, 1898. He was such a tiny tot when his parents brought him to America that he never knew the name of his birthplace. His parents never mentioned it to him. Fred Allen fans currently know Cantor's voice as either Socrates Mulligan or Rensaleer Nussbaum, two residents of that mythical slum section called Allen's Alley. Charlie doesn't even have to clear his throat to change to a high-voiced dope, rasp-throated taxi driver or a mincing vice-president.
When he appears with Ed Gardner in the "Duffy's" program he is Finnegan, a half-witted habitué who never is quite taken in by the sharpest of sharp practitioners in the story plot.
His voice agility makes him quite a favorite with directors of many programs . . . which should provide listeners with a lot of fun trying to see if they can identify him on as many as three shows in one night.
Cantor, whose radio career began about 20 years ago, is five feet five inches tall, weighs 158 pounds, has brown eyes and is the constant butt of Allen gags about bald heads. He attended P. S. 134, De Witt Clinton high school, CCNY and N.Y.U., all in New York.
His first job was shoe salesman. While attending school he took vacation jobs in vaudeville. Then he decided he wasn't going to be an actor and starve to death. Charlie was going to be a businessman.
Twelve years ago, business, as far Cantor was concerned, was a fine place to starve to death. Today acting is feeding him well despite the fact that few directors in radio know he is an excellent musician.
Here's John Brown
A native of Hull, England, is John Brown, educated in England, Australia and New York.
John was born April 4, 1904, and came to America when his father traveled from Australia to New York for a phonograph recording company.
To Allen fans, Brown is John Doe, of Allen's Alley. The character is one of Fred's favorite tongue-in-cheek representations of a man who knows all the answers of the popularity poll conductors, before they even ask them When Brown isn't being John Doe, he may be a race track tout, a haughty vice president, a pompous college professor, the typical Dodger fan, a sleazy-voiced gold brick salesman or just a wise guy.
Like Cantor, Brown is in much demand on other programs and listeners can find him by listening for strident lawyers, sniveling gangsters or kind fathers giving their children homely advice.
That again, is a limited description of the versatility of the Allen Art Players' vocal skill.
Brown, too, started in a non-professional job, that of jewelry salesman. In 1934, David Freedman and Harry Tugend first used him in Eddie Cantor and Fred Allen programs after an uneventful career of amateur dramatics, little theater work and stock company appearances in Haverstraw and Rockville Center, New York.
He is five feet nine inches tall, has blue eyes, blond hair, is married and has two children.
Meet Alan Reed
The next character wizard is Alan Reed, native New Yorker, who was born on August 20, 1907, attended P.S. 52, George Washington high school and Columbia university without ever suspecting that he one day would rise to "anonymous fame" as Falstaff Openshaw.
Even after a career which started when he took a job in the American Legion state headquarters as office boy, took him through a theatrical stock company in Oklahoma and finally landed him in radio in 1926.
Reed still cannot understand why straight, poetic reading in a cultured voice, makes him a comedian.
A great deal of this is planted in Fred Allen's early introductions of Falstaff as the rhyming tramp who composed roadside sign poems. The public never has forgotten this and delights in the misanthropic conception of culture and squalor embodied in Falstaff.
Reed, in addition to his excellent Ghetto characterizations, often is heard as an over-stuffed vice president, an English butler, a lisping lackey of some guest star from Hollywood . . . and adds to his laurels by stellar performances in other programs. Among these, perhaps his finest is the portrayal of Poppa Levy in "Abie's Irish Rose." Broadway, in two consecutive seasons has seen him win honors as featured player in "Hope For A Harvest" and The Pirate."
He is married, has three sons, stands five feet 11 inches tall, and weighs 225 pounds (practically no waistline, but shoulders like a weight lifter). His eyes are blue and his hair is brown.
Enter Minerva Pious
Last, but far from least is the veteran of the Mighty Allen Art Players—a tiny, gracious good sport who has been with Fred Allen for nearly all of his ten years in radio. She is Minerva Pious, native of Odessa, Russia, and graduate of Bridgeport, Conn., high school.
Min, as she is known to everyone in radio, played a week in stock while attending high school: two weeks with the Theater Guild at West port. Conn., and once worked as secretary to a Connecticut judge.
Harry Tugend, Allen's earliest radio director discovered her unparalleled gift of voice characterization and she since has delighted millions with her portrayals.
Miss Pious is the only feminine member of the Sunday evening Texaco Star Theater cast, with the exception of Portland Hoffa.
To the 5-foot, 108-pound voice mimic comes every type of characterization in the feminine category.
She plays dumb stenos, dowagers, debutantes, gangster molls, secretaries, housewives, burlesque queens, gum-chewing dames . . . and at present is known to the listeners as Mrs. Pansy Rensaleer Nussbaum or Mrs. Socrates Mulligan of Allen’s Alley.
She has appeared many times in Columbia Workshop, Philip Morris Playhouse, Duffy's Tavern and dozens of other programs.
Miss Pious and Charlie Cantor will be remembered as Min and Charlie two plain citizens who were a feature of Kate Smith’s Hour several seasons back.
This same team often appears in Allen’s programs as Mr. and Mrs. Average Listener, the couple who interrupt the broadcast and want radio changed around to suit them.
It is an interesting fact that all four of Fred Allen’s Art Players—separately or ensemble— are acknowledged to have no equal in radio. The nation's editors have voiced their praise time and again.
The listening audience follows their antics on the air with the same enthusiasm as they trace the doings of their daily comic strip characters.
Without question, in the profession, they are actors without equal. Yet not one of them ever attended a dramatic school.
And when you ask them their favorite movie stars or stage stars, they range all the way from Helen Hayes to Dinah Shore.
But ask them their favorite radio star.
These players, who have worked with them all, unanimously pick Fred Allen.

A Helpful Hollywood Dictionary

The phoniness of the movie business gave Fred Allen plenty of material for his sardonic sense of humour. Many quotes survive on the internet. Some seem to have been gathered together in one place for the first time in an Associated Press column of 1940. Allen was never one to waste a good line or routine and while I don’t know how many of them found their way into his radio scripts, he repeated a few of these in a Liberty magazine article two years later.

If you’re wondering about the restaurants he’s referring to, the former is the Brown Derby and the latter is Ciro’s.

Fred Allen Has His Own Words For ‘Em
By TED GILL
HOLLYWOOD, Aug. 27—(AP)—Comedian Fred Allen wriggled irritably in a camp chair on a motion picture sound set and bemoaned the plight of the goggle-eyed tourist who comes to gawk at movie stars—and goes away disappointed.
Comedian Allen practically is a tourist himself. His current visit here, to make the aptly-titled film, “Love Thy Neighbor,” is his third in five years. In it he co-stars with Jack Benny, his favorite enemy.
“Thousands of Hollywood visitors,” proclaimed Allen, “each year quit the cinema capital disappointed. And I’ll tell you why; to the average movie magazine addict, Hollywood, from afar, must be a tinseled utopia—a ‘must’ metropolis.
Tourists who have succumbed to the columnists’ syndicated enthusiasm arrive in Hollywood expecting to find Dorothy Lamour slinking around the bus station in a sarong and the Aldrich family parked in a battered station-wagon waiting to welcome them.
“None of this happens. The tourist wanders around focusing a poached stare on the local scene and exuding the aroma of nostalgia that can be picked up by a pug nose at 20 paces.
“The tourists’ plight has bothered me—when Benny isn’t—and I have compiled a compendium of terms peculiar to this bizarre borough.”
He reached into his pocket and drew forth his own unique dictionary or glossary on terms heard about movieland. Here ‘tis:
Hollywood — Bagdad in Technicolor; Shangri-la in neon.
Hollywood Boulevard — Main street in slacks.
Hollywood Bowl — Carnegie Hall on the half-shell.
A certain popular eatery — A café where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.
Another equally popular restaurant — The other place, with a white tie, where movie stars mistake each other for movie stars.
Movie star’s home — the ultimate in stucco. An edifice erected on a beautiful lawn to keep strangers from getting direct view of the star’s swimming pool from the street.
Native — A New York actor whose option wasn’t taken up in ‘26.
Picture studio — A covey of buildings surrounded by receivers.
Producer — A dynamic ulcer in charge of making pictures.
Associate producer-—The man who gets fired when the producer makes a bad picture.
Director—The man who sits in a sprung canvas chair under the camera and at two-hour intervals says “This is a take!”
Assistant — Shouts “Quiet!” before a director says “Take!”
Movie star — Any actor who is working.
Freelance — An actor, always “between pictures.”
Child star — A precocious moppet paying dues to Screen Actors’ Guild.
Cowboy star — A man who can’t act and has to sit on a horse to prove it.
Commissary — Place where people playing millionaires in pictures gulp hambergers.
Extra — A silent star who can be lured from behind the eight ball at so much per day.
Publicity man — A neurotic chap who will speak well of anything for a fee.
Love scene — Big moment in pictures when male star, who is wearing toupee, false teeth and a rented tuxedo, embraces glamour girl in wig, artificial eyelashes, false fingernails and bustle, and says “Darling, we must come to ourselves.”

It's in the Bag

Was there ever an interview where Fred Allen was happy?

We’ve posted the handiwork of a number of newspaper columnists here who—rather easily, it seems—got Fred to gripe about any one of a number of the same old things. And I’m reminded how Fred told readers in Treadmill to Oblivion how annoyed he was when his radio show was expanded to an hour, then annoyed when it was contracted back to a half-hour several seasons later. He bent ears of columnists about network radio in general but then griped that shooting movies sucked compared to the fun of radio.

In the column below published October 17, 1944 in papers subscribing to the National Enterprise Association service, Fred grumbles about the method of making movies. As usual, he expresses amazement that absurdities of a given situation are accepted and allowed to flourish. The movie in question was “It’s in the Bag.” Its satiric concept (expressed only basically in this column) is very funny on paper. The film itself isn’t as funny. The one time I saw it, I got the impression it was a movie that was trying to be funny while relying heavily on the familiarity of radio characterisations to get laughs. I kept wondering when a scene would end and the plot would lurch onward.

The column, by the way, seems incomplete. It doesn’t come to a conclusion, it just ends. But that’s the way I’ve found it in five different papers, so I guess that was the columnist’s intention.

BY ERSKINE JOHNSON
NEA Staff Correspondent
Working in the movies annoys him, Fred Allen groaned. If it wasn’t for those green hermans, he would rush right back.to New York and make with the jokes on the radio. That’s fun, he says. Working in the movies isn’t.
So today we give you Fred Allen’s primer of minor Hollywood annoyances titled, “What the Heck Am I Doing in the Movies?”
There is, for example, Hollywood’s quaint little habit of saying everything is great. That annoys Allen.
“They shoot a scene,” Fred said, “and the cameraman says ‘Great!’ The sound man says ‘Great!’ The director says ‘Great!’ The assistant director says ‘Great!’
“And then what happens? They put the picture together and it stinks.”
Fred was talking into n telephone the other day for a scone in his new flicker “It’s in the Bag.” It was a very intimate scene.
“So I looked up for a second and I’m looking right into the face of a sailor who is visiting the set. We both get a shock and I forget all my dialog.
“You can’t move around in front of the camera,” Fred moaned. “You have to stay in focus and you can’t spoil the lighting. The perfect actor in Hollywood is one with rigor mortis in his body and a neon head.”
QUIET PLEASE
An airplane flew over the sound stage. The soundman yelled, “Airplane!” and director Richard Wallace stopped Allen in the middle of the scene.
That annoyed him. “The roof of this sound stage is so thin, he said, “that we have to stop shooting every time a sparrow walks across it.”
Rushes annoy Allen. “There’s no use seeing them,” he said. “Everybody says ‘Great.’ I like to wait until the picture is finished and get the full impact all at once." Getting up at 6 o’clock in the morning annoys Allen.
“Today I got up at 6 o’clock to crawl through a window. They shot the scene of me crawling through the window at 2 p. m. I lost eight hours sleep. And will the scene be in the picture? No. They’ll cut it out after the first preview because my fanny is out of focus.”
Matching up scenes shot several weeks apart annoy Allen. “Two weeks ago,” he said, “we filed a scene outside an opera house. I was mad about something. Next week we’re going to film the rest of the scene—where I rush into the joint—and I’ll have to remember how mad I was three weeks ago so it will match.”
Fred plays the owner of a flea circus who thinks he is about to inherit 12 million dollars from his favorite uncle. Instead, he is willed five antique chairs and a phonograph record. He sells the chairs, then plays the record. His dead uncle speaks to him from the record, saying he was murdered and revealing that $300,000 is hidden in one of the chairs.
MEATY PLOT—WITH RIBS
Allen’s problems in retrieving the chairs from their new owners is the film’s plot. Gangster Bill Bendix has purchased one of the chairs. Jack Benny has another one. The Benny sequence has promise of being the year’s funniest film scene.
Allen poses as the president of a Jack Benny fan club, saying he wants the chair as a memento for their club house. Although flattered, Benny refuses to sell the chair but finally agrees, for a handsome fee.
There are plenty of ribs. When Allen asks for a cigaret, Benny points to a 15-cent cigaret machine in his living room. When Allen has to use the telephone, Benny asks him if he has a nickel and leads him to a telephone booth in the hall.

The Quintessence of Nothing

Was there a radio star more quoted than Fred Allen?

It’s hard to pin down Allen as a cynic, pessimist or a realist. Perhaps he was a bit of all three, judging by what he had to say about the entertainment industry of his day and California, a particular topic of dislike. Many of his observations have been preserved and requoted, but some are buried in old newspaper columns that we have endeavoured to pull from dusty archives and bring to you.

Buried amongst Fred’s disappointments and annoyances are some cute one-liners that he would have used on his radio show—if he had a radio show. At the time of this column, December 19, 1951, he barely had a TV show. He, Jerry Lester and Bob Hope were appearing on a rotational basis as the hosts of “Sound Off Time,” a live Sunday night variety show that petered out in early 1952. At least one TV failure awaited him before he found a modest level of comfort (and he decidely looks uncomfortable on certain broadcasts) as a panelist on “What’s My Line.”

Fred Allen Raps Favorite Targets
BY BOB THOMAS 
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 19.— (AP)—Sour-faced comedian Fred Allen, here for a movie stint, paused long enough to level a blast at his favorite target—vice presidents. Allen has long been a critic of the executive mind, particularly in the air networks and advertising agencies. He blames such bigwigs for television’s failings, including his own.
“My shows have been pretty bad,” he admitted openly, “except the last one. The reason is that until now I had been doing what everybody else said I was supposed to do. But on the last one, I disregarded their advice and did the kind of show I wanted. The sponsor was dropping the series anyway, so what, did I have to lose?
Many Screwy Notions.
“These executives have a lot of screwy, notions about TV. They say everything has to have movement. Even if you’re standing still and doing a monologue, there has to be two guys running around behind you.
“After all, entertainment is entertainment, whether you’re running a race or standing still. But you can't convince executives of that. I’ve always thought that the meeting of executive minds produced the quintessence of nothing.”
The Boston comic has had many a run-in with executives. It started back with his first air show. The wife of one of the sponsors liked organ music.
“We were trying to put on a snappy show,” recalled Allen, “but we had to stop in the middle of it to switch to the New York Paramount for two minutes of organ music.”
Influence Rapped.
He believes that the advertiser’s influence in TV produced a bad effect, “just as it did in radio.”
“The TV performer has the same importance as the label on a can,” he argued. “The show itself is not important; it’s whether the show can sell the product. “I think it’s bad in any medium when the entertainment quality is not the important thing. A discriminating audience has certainly helped the movie business. Pictures had to get better, because people found out they could eat popcorn right out in the open; they didn’t have to go in darkened theaters to do it.”
Allen is here to play a TV performer in a sequence of “We’re Not Married.” I asked him if he planned any more pictures.
“No,” he replied. “I was never any good in pictures, and I never really had pictures written for me. I did my first one because they couldn’t get Ned Sparks. I did another because they liked the first one. Then, I did one with Jack Benny because we were supposed to be fighting on the radio.
“Besides, I’m tied down to an exclusive deal with NBC. They won’t let me work for any other network. Even when I’m not working, I’m not working for NBC.”
I remarked that he was looking amazingly well for Allen. Even the bags under his eyes were small valises.
“I’ve been on a diet for two years because of my high blood pressure,” he explained. “I can’t eat anything with salt. In fact, I can’t even return to New York by way of Salt Lake City when I go back; that's how strict it is.
“I had to give up drinking and smoking, too. At my age (57), I’m not allowed any pleasures. Why do I work? Just for the convenience of the treasury department.”