FRED ALLEN (Fred St. James, Fred James, Freddie James). Born John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachussetts, U.S., 31 May 1894. Married Portland Hoffa, 1928. Served in Army, World War I. Began performing on stage as an amateur teenage juggler, eventually adding patter and turning pro with the billing of the "World's Worst Juggler"; for ten years as humorist toured the vaudeville circuit, including 14 months in Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and Honolulu, 1914-15; dropped juggling, settled on the professional name of "Fred Allen," and moved up from vaudeville to Broadway revues, early 1920s; worked on radio, notably Allen's Alley and Texaco Star Theatre, from 1932; a panel regular on the television quiz show What's My Line?, 1955-56. Died in New York City, 17 March 1956.

TELEVISION SERIES

1953 Fred Allen's Sketchbook
1953-54 Judge For Yourself
1955-56 What's My Line?

FILMS
Some film shorts, 1920s; Thanks a Million, 1935; Sally, Irene and Mary, 1938; Love Thy Neighbor, 1940; It's in the Bag, 1945; We're Not Married, 1952; Full House, 1953.

RADIO
The Linit Bath Club Review, 1932; Allen's Alley, 1932-49; The Salad Bowl Revue, 1933; Town Hall Tonight, 1934; Texaco Star Theatre, 1940-41.

PUBLICATIONS
Treadmill to Oblivion. Boston: Little Brown, 1954.
Much Ado about Me. Boston: Little Brown, 1956.
Fred Allen's Letters. McCarthy, Joe, editor. Garden City,
New York: Doubleday, 1965.

Fred Allen hated television. Allen was a radio comedian for nearly two decades who, as early as 1936, had a weekly radio audience of about 20 million. When he visited The Jack Benny Show to continue their long running comedy feud, they had the largest audience in the history of radio, only to be later outdone by President Franklin Roosevelt during a Fireside Chat. The writer Herman Wouk said that Allen was the best comic writer in radio. His humor was literate, urbane, intelligent, and contemporary. Allen came to radio from vaudeville where he performed as a juggler. He was primarily self-educated and was extraordinarily well read.

Allen began his network radio career in 1932 after working vaudeville and Broadway with such comedy icons as Al Jolson, Ed Wynn, George Jessel, and Jack Benny. This was a time when the United States was in a deep economic depression, and radio in its infancy. In his autobiography Treadmill To Oblivion, Allen wrote that he thought radio should provide complete stories, series of episodes, and comedy situations instead of monotonous unrelated jokes then popular on vaudeville. With this idea in hand, he began his first radio program on NBC called The Linit Bath Club Review (named after the sponsor).

Allen's world of radio was highly competitive and commercial, just as TV would be many years later. He wrote most of the material for his weekly shows himself, usually working 12 hour days, 6 days a week. Most comedians, like Bob Hope, had an office filled with writers, but Allen used only a few assistants in writing his comedy. And some of these assistants went on to have successful careers in literature and comedy, such as Herman Wouk author of The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War, and Nat Hiken who created Phil Silver's The Phil Silvers Show for TV. Allen's program was imbued with literate, verbal slapstick. He had ethnic comedy routines in Allen's Alley, appearances by celebrities such as Alfred Hitchcock, musical numbers with talent from the likes of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, and social commentaries on every conceivable subject, especially criticisms of the advertising and radio industry. His radio producer, Sylvester "Pat" Weaver (later to become head of NBC TV programming), observed that Allen's humor was so popular that three out of four homes in the country were listening to Allen at the zenith of his popularity. In writing his comedy scripts, Allen compiled a personal library of over 4,000 books of humor, and read 9 newspapers (plus magazines) daily. According to the scholar Alan Havig, Allen's style of comedy had more in common with literary giants like Robert Benchley and James Thurber than with media comedians like Jack Benny and Bob Hope.

In 1946-47 Allen was ranked the number one show on network radio. World War II was over, Americans were beginning a new era of consumerism. And a very few consumers had recently purchased a new entertainment device called television. When Fred Allen was asked what he thought of television, he said he didn't like furniture that talked. He also said television was called a medium because "nothing on it is ever well done." Allen dismissed TV as permitting "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything." But, after nearly two decades on radio, he fell in the ratings from number 1 to number 38 in just a few months. Such a sudden loss of audience was due to a new ABC radio give-away show called Name That Tune, starring Bert Parks, as well as a general decline in listeners for all of radio. Listeners of radio were rapidly becoming viewers of TV. And where the audience went, so went the advertisers. In a few short years the bottom fell out of radio. Fred Allen quickly, but not quietly, left radio in 1949.

Allen was first to leave radio, but Bob Hope, Jack Benny, George Burns and Gracie Allen soon followed. They all went to star in their own TV shows. All but Fred Allen. He made a few attempts at TV, but nothing more. He first appeared on the Colgate Comedy Theater, where he attempted to bring to TV his Allen's Alley from radio. For example, the characters of the Alley were performed with puppets. Such attempts seldom successfully made the transition to the new medium. On the quiz show Judge for Yourself (1953-54), he was supposed to carry on witty ad libbed conversations with guests. But as Havig states, Allen's "ad libbing was lost in the confusion of a half hour filled with too many people and too much activity". In short, Allen's humor needed more time and more language than TV allowed. He then was on a short lived Fred Allen's Sketchbook (1954), and finally a became a panelist on What's My Line in 1955 until his death in 1956.

Fred Allen's contributions to TV has taken two forms. First, he became one of the true critics of TV. He has remained, many decades after his death, the intellectual conscience of TV. His barbs at network TV censorship still hit at the heart of contemporary media (e.g., Allen: "Heck...is a place invented by [NBC]. NBC does not recognize hell or [CBS]"). Second, his comedy style has become part of the institution of TV comedy. His Allen's Alley created the character Titus Moody who turned up on TV as the Pepperidge Farm cookie man. His Senator Claghorn, also of the Alley, was transfigured into Warner Brothers TV cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn the rooster. And later, the "Senator" appeared on the Kentucky Fried Chicken TV commercial. A variety of TV comedians have done direct take-offs of Allen's performances. For example, Red Skelton's "Gussler's Gin" routine and Johnny Carson's "Mighty Carson Art Players" can be traced back to Fred Allen. And Allen's "People You Didn't Expect to Meet" is an idea that has worked for David Letterman. And of course, radio's Garrison Keeler's "Lake Wobegan" is a throw back to Allen's style of comedy.

Allen wrote in Treadmill to Oblivion "Ability, merit and talent were not requirements of writers and actors working in the industry. Audiences had to be attracted, for advertising purposes, at any cost and by any artifice. Standards were gradually lowered. A medium that demands entertainment eighteen hours a day, seven days every week, has to exhaust the conscientious craftsman and performer." He was talking about radio, but his remarks could apply just as well to television many decades later.

- Clayland H. Waite