FYI Times 3

A few things to let you get to know me a little better. The above is #1 in a series of my heroes. Not in any particular order.


Secondly, the title of this blog is an homage of sorts to an old time radio comedy show. Here are the details from Wikipedia:
Fred Allen's first taste of radio came while he and Portland Hoffa waited for a promised slot in a new Arthur Hammerstein musical. In the interim, they appeared on a Chicago station's program, WLS Showboat, into which, Allen recalled, "Portland and I were presented... to inject a little class into it." Their success in these appearances helped their theater reception; live audiences in the Midwest liked to see their radio favorites in person, even if Allen and Hoffa would be replaced by Bob Hope when the radio show moved to New York several months afterward.

The couple eventually got their Hammerstein show, Polly, which opened in Delaware and made the usual tour before hitting Broadway. Also in that cast was a young Englishman named Archie Leach, who received as many good notices for his romantic appeal as Allen got for his comic work. Hammerstein retooled the show before bringing it to New York, replacing everyone but two women and Allen. Leach decided to buy an old car and drive to Hollywood. "What Archie Leach didn't tell me," Allen remembered, "was that he was going to change his name to Cary Grant."

Polly never succeeded in spite of several retoolings, but Allen did go on to successful shows like The Little Show (1929-30) and Three's a Crowd (1930-31), which eventually led to his full-time entry to radio in 1932.


[edit] "It's Town Hall Tonight!"
Allen first hosted The Linit Bath Club Revue on CBS, moving the show to NBC and becoming The Salad Bowl Revue (in a nod to new sponsor Hellmann's Mayonnaise) later in the year. The show became The Sal Hepatica Revue (1933-34), The Hour of Smiles (1934–35), and finally Town Hall Tonight (1935–40). Allen's perfectionism (odd to some, considering his deft ad-libs) caused him to leap from sponsor to sponsor until Town Hall Tonight allowed him to set his chosen milieu (either an urbane small town or a small neighborhood in the big city, depending on your interpretation) and finally established Allen as a bona fide radio star.

The hour-long show featured segments that would influence radio and, much later, television. Such news satires as Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In's "Laugh-In Looks at the News" and Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" owed their genesis to Town Hall Tonight's "The News Reel," later renamed "Town Hall News".

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson's Mighty Carson Art Players routines owed much, including its name, to Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players. Allen and company also satirized popular musical comedies and films of the day, including and especially Oklahoma!. Allen also did semi-satirical interpretations of well-known lives — including his own.


[edit] From Town Hall to Allen's Alley
The show that became Town Hall Tonight was the longest-running hour-long comedy-based show in classic radio history. In 1940, Allen moved back to CBS with a new sponsor and show name, Texaco Star Theater. By 1942, he shortened the show to half an hour — under network and sponsor edict, not his own. He also chafed under being forced to give up a Town Hall Tonight signature, using barely-known and amateur guests effectively, in favor of booking more recognizable guests, though he liked many of those.

He took over a year off due to hypertension and returned in 1944 with The Fred Allen Show on NBC. Blue Bonnet Margarine, Tenderleaf Tea and Ford Motor Company were the sponsors for the rest of the show's life. Texaco revived Texaco Star Theater in 1948 on radio, and more successfully on television, making an American icon out of star Milton Berle).

Allen again made a few changes. One was adding the singing DeMarco Sisters, to whom he'd been tipped by arranger-composer Gordon Jenkins. "We did four years with Mr. Allen and got one thousand dollars a week," Gloria DeMarco remembered. "Sunday night was the best night on radio." Sunday night with Fred Allen seemed incomplete on any night listeners didn't hear the DeMarco Sisters — whose breezy, harmonious style became as familiar as their cheerfully sung "Mr. Al-len, Mr. Alll-llennnn" in the show's opening theme. During the theme's brief pause, Allen would say something like, "It isn't the mayor of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga, kiddies." That device became a signature for three of the four years.

The other change, born in the Texaco days and evolved from his earlier news spoofs, proved his most enduring, premiering December 13, 1942. "Allen's Alley" followed a brief Allen monologue and comic segment with Portland Hoffa ("Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!"), usually involving gags about her family which she instigated. Then, a brief music interlude would symbolize the two making their way to the fictitious alley, always launched by a quick exchange that began with Hoffa asking Allen what he would ask the Alley denizens that week. After she implored him "Shall we go?", Allen would reply with cracks like "As the two drumsticks said when they spotted the tympani, 'let's beat it!'"; or, "As one strapless gown said to the other strapless gown, 'What's holding us up?'"

A small host of stereotypical characters greeted Allen and Hoffa down the Alley, discussing Allen's question of the week, usually drawing on news items or popular happenings around town, whether gas rationing, traffic congestion, the Pulitzer Prizes, postwar holiday travel, or the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus visit.

The Alley went through a few changes in the first installments. Early denizens included sarcastic John Doe (John Brown), self-possessed Senator Bloat (Jack Smart), dimwit Socrates Mulligan (Charlie Cantor), and pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (Alan Reed). But soon the Alley's four best-remembered regulars moved in and rarely disappeared: announcer Kenny Delmar as bellowing ("Some— Ah say, somebody's knockin' at mah doah!") Senator Beauregard Claghorn (the model for cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn), Parker Fennelly as stoic New England farmer, Titus Moody, Minerva Pious as the Jewish housewife, Pansy Nussbaum, and Peter Donald as fast-talking Irishman, Ajax Cassidy.


[edit] Swing of the rapier

"He has eyes like Venetian blinds and a tongue like an adder" — radio/TV critic John Crosby on Fred Allen, portrayed here by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.Highly literate and often absurdist, Allen's topical humor is thought an acquired taste for audiences curious about his generation of radio stars. But others find many parallels to today's world and absurdities. The "Allen's Alley" stereotypes make some cringe, but others find them lancing more than lauding stereotypes, letting listeners make up their own minds about how foolish they could be. "Interestingly enough," wrote Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, in The Big Broadcast 1920-1950, "[Claghorn, Nussbaum, Moody, and Cassidy] were never criticized as being anti-Southern, anti-Semitic, anti-New England or anti-Irish. The warmth and good humor with which they were presented made them acceptable even to the most sensitive listeners."

Allen was probably his own best writer; he employed a staff (including the future author of The Caine Mutiny, Herman Wouk), but they served as his sounding boards and early draft consultants as much as actual writers. Allen himself worked as long as 12 hours a day on ideas and sketches. And his ad-libbing was so skilled that many a surviving show fades away behind the ending network identification, because Allen often ate up air time. It was not as unusual for him as for others to sign off with, "We're a little late, so good night, folks." Buxton and Owen believed the Allen show needed it more than anyone else of their era.


[edit] Closing the Alley
Then, in 1948, Fred Allen's radio fortunes changed almost overnight. In 1946-47, he had the top-ranked radio show. Thanks in large part to NBC's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to CBS (the CBS talent raids broke up NBC's hit Sunday night, and Benny also convinced George Burns and Gracie Allen and Bing Crosby to join his move), Allen also had a lucrative new contract, as did singing husband-and-wife situation comedy team Phil Harris and Alice Faye.

Allen was knocked off his NBC perch a year later, not by a CBS talent raid but by a show on a third rival network, ABC (the former NBC Blue network). Their quiz show, Stop the Music, hosted by Bert Parks, became a big enough hit to break into Allen's grip on that Sunday night time slot. At first, Allen fought fire with his own kind of fire: he offered $5,000 to any listener getting a call from Stop the Music or any similar game show while listening to The Fred Allen Show. He never had to pay up, nor was he shy about lampooning the game show phenomenon (especially a riotous parody of another quiz Parks hosted, lancing Break the Bank in a routine called "Break the Contestant", in which players didn't receive a thing but were compelled to give up possessions when they blew a question.)

Unfortunately, Allen fell to number 38 in the ratings, as television began its rise as well. By this time, he had changed the show again somewhat, changing the famed "Allen's Alley" skits to take place on "Main Street," and rotating a new character or two in and out of the lineup. He stepped down from radio again in 1949, at the end of his show's regular season. When NBC declined his contract renewal, his doctor again advised him to take a break for his health, and he decided to take a year off. But this time the year layoff did everything for his health and almost nothing for his radio career. After the 26 June 1949 show, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full-time again.


Fially, I've just started a MySpace page. It is for sure a work in progress right now, but I should have it where I want it in a couple of weeks. Visit and join if you like. The URL is MySpace.com/alan0825