Fred Allen

 

 

Fred Allen (May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956) was an American comedian whose radio show (1934–1949) made him one of the most popular acts of the so-called Classical Era of American radio. He became famous for his sketches with actor Jack Benny. His performances influenced comedians such as Stan Freberg.

 

His real name was John Florence Sullivan, and he was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to an Irish Catholic family. His mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, died of pneumonia when he was three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, struggled with alcohol after the death of his wife, so Allen was cared for by a maternal aunt, with whom he decided to remain after his father remarried.

 

Early in his career, while working at a bookstore and a piano company, Allen began performing in amateur nightclubs, taking the stage name Fred St. James. Later, he was able to quit his jobs and pursue a career in vaudeville, performing comedy routines and juggling. He began touring and eventually decided to change his stage name to Fred Allen.

However, Allen's wit wasn't well-suited to vaudeville audiences, and after one unsuccessful performance, he quit the show.

Allen left vaudeville and went on to work in Shubert Brothers' theatrical productions such as The Passing Show in 1922. The show ran for ten weeks at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre. In that show, he met one of the chorus girls, Portland Hoffa, whom he married.

He earned critical acclaim for his comedic work in several of the productions in which he appeared, particularly Vogues and Greenwich Village Follies. He also wrote a humor column for Variety called "Near Fun."

Fred Allen's first exposure to radio came when he and his wife performed on the Chicago radio show WLS Showboat. Later, the couple landed a spot on Arthur Hammerstein's musical show, Polly. The show also featured a young Cary Grant. Other programs he appeared on included The Little Show (1929-30) and Three's a Crowd (1930-31), and from that point on, he began to dedicate himself to radio full-time.

 

Allen hosted The Linit Bath Club Revue on CBS, later taking the program to NBC, under the name The Salad Bowl Revue. 

 

The most lasting change premiered on December 6, 1942, and was the formation of "Allen's Alley," inspired by the newspaper columns written by O. O. McIntyre (1884-1938), one of the most popular columnists of the 1930s.

Good friends in real life, Fred Allen and Jack Benny unintentionally created a gag in 1937, in which each disputed with the other from his own program. The back-and-forth between them became so successful that both continued with it for a decade.

After their show ended, Allen became a regular guest on NBC's The Big Show (1950-1952), hosted by Tallulah Bankhead. He appeared on 24 of the show's 57 installments, including the inaugural, proving that he had not lost his trademark wit. In some respects, The Big Show was inspired by Allen's old show: former Texaco Star Theater host Jimmy Wallington was one of The Big Show's hosts, and Portland Hoffa also made several appearances.

Allen attempted three television projects that were short-lived, including an adaptation of "Allen's Alley" to the new medium. The other two were game shows. One of them, Judge For Yourself (subtitled "The Fred Allen Show") was a game show that incorporated musical numbers.

Allen also worked in his later years as a newspaper columnist and humorist. He wrote Treadmill to Oblivion (in 1954, recalling his years in radio and television) and Much Ado About Me (in 1956, about his childhood and his years in vaudeville and Broadway). The first of the books was one of the best sellers about the classic radio era. But before finishing the last chapter of the second, Allen suffered an acute myocardial infarction that caused his death at the age of 61. His death occurred in New York City. Allen is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne.

Fred Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for his radio work at 6709 Hollywood Boulevard. And another for his television work at 7021 Hollywood Boulevard. 

 

Fred Allen was also inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.

Fred Allen

 

 

John Florence Sullivan was born on May 31, 1894, known as Fred Allen, was an American comedian. His absurdist topically-pointed radio program The Fred Allen Show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and best humorists in the Golden Age of American radio.

 

Fred Allen worked his way to radio fame from a New England upbringing that seemed to predestine his eloquent wit. 

 

His father was a amusing storyteller who worked at the craft of bookbinding. Intelligent sharp witted humor seemed to run in the family. Fred wanted to be on the stage from an early age. Getting started as a juggler, by the early 1920's Fred was on the road, and began performing in New York City.

 

His big break came when he appeared on Broadway in The Passing Show in 1922. In this show, he met the lovely Miss Portland Hoffa, who he asked to become his wife and radio partner (ala Burns and Allen). Together they developed a wonderful give and take rapport, with Portland serving up the bubbly straight lines for Fred's witty rejoinders. They got on the radio in 1932 with a show called, improbably, "The Lintit Bath Club Revue." Other shows followed quickly, including The Salad Bowl Revue (1933), The Sal Hepatica Revue (1933-34) and The Hour of Smiles (1934-35). One of the featured segments in the early years was a segment where amateurs came up to do their bit, harkening back to the days of regional vaudeville itself when Amateur Night was a staple of the local theatre.

 

Allen's comedy was almost always topical and satiric, and throughout his career he was famed for being as sharp with the quip as any live radio comedian. He wrote most of his own stuff, loved to comment on the daily foibles of the day, his sponsors, and the world of entertainment. In the New England spirit, he saw his show as something of a town hall gathering, and hit upon the name "Town Hall Tonight" as the show from 1934-39.

 

In 1939, Texaco sponsorship began, and the show was renamed in truly modern fashion, "The Fred Allen Show - Texaco Star Theater." One of his funniest and most popular regular segments, Allen's Alley, premiered on Sunday, December 6th, 1942. Allen strolled along in an imaginary neighborhood, knocking on the "doors" of various neighbors, including average-American John Doe (played by John Brown), Mrs. Nussbaum (Minerva Pious) pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (Allan Reed), Parker Fennelly as Titus Moody("Howdy, bub"), and boisterous southern senator Beuregard Claghorn (announcer Kenny Delmar.)

 

Allen's widow, Portland Hoffa, married bandleader Joe Rines in 1959 and celebrated a second silver wedding anniversary well before her own death of natural causes in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1990. Allen and Hoffa are buried alongside each other in section 47 at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Barbara Jo Allen

Barbara Jo Allen was born on September 2, 1906 and she was an American film, television, and voice/radio actress.

Born in New York, she was known by the name Vera Vague, the spinster she created and played on radio and screen in the 1940s and 1950s, and for whom she was inspired by a person she met in real life, a woman who was giving a lecture on literature and who spoke in a confusing manner. As Vague, she popularized the catchphrase "You dear boy!"

Allen's acting talent already emerged in the plays performed at school. After graduating from high school, she went to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. Concentrating on the study of languages, she became fluent in French, Spanish, German, and Italian. After her parents died, she moved to Los Angeles, where she lived with her uncle.

In 1937, she made her radio debut, playing Beth Holly on NBC's One Man's Family, and later appearing on Death Valley Days, I Love a Mystery, and other radio series. After appearing as Vera in 1939 on NBC's Matinee, she appeared regularly alongside Bob Hope beginning in 1941.

Allen acted in at least 60 films and television series between 1938 and 1963, often under the stage name Vera Vague instead of her own. The character she created became so popular that she eventually adopted her name as her professional moniker. From 1943 to 1952, as Vera, she made more than a dozen comedy shorts for Columbia Pictures.

In 1948, she did not work as hard as an actress, instead setting up an orchid business while serving as Honorary Mayor of Woodland Hills, California. In 1953, as Vera, she hosted her own television series, Follow the Leader, a CBS audience participation show. In 1958, she was Mabel in the rerun version of the Jeannie Carson sitcom Hey, Jeannie!, which aired for only six episodes.

Allen was also a voice actress in animated films, most notably as Fauna in Sleeping Beauty (1959) and the scullery maid in The Sword in the Stone (1963).

Allen's first marriage was to actor Barton Yarborough, with whom she had one son. In 1946, the couple starred in the short comedy Hiss and Yell, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short. From 1931 to 1932, Allen was married to Charles H. Crosby, and in 1943 she married Bob Hope's producer, Norman Morrell. They had one son and were married until her death on September 14,1974 in Santa Barbara, California. Her remains were cremated and her ashes given to her loved ones.

William Spier

William Spier was editor, producer, director. A lifelong radio man, he had broken in during the primitive days of 1929 and earned his stripes serving on such pioneering shows as The March of Time. Spier assembled the writing team of Bob Tallman and Ann Lorraine and began putting Spade together. He was impressed by the deep, cynical, tough qualities in Howard Duff's voice. Spier was also an American writer, producer, and director for television and radio. He is best known for his radio work, notably Suspense and The Adventures of Sam Spade. He was born in New York City to a Jewish father and a Presbyterian mother. Spier graduated from Evander Childs High School.

He eventually became the chief critic for the magazine Musical America at age 19.

In 1929, Spier was hired at the advertising agency Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn. At the agency, he produced and directed radio shows, such as The Atwater Kent Hour, an hour-long Sunday night presentation of Metropolitan Opera singers; General Motors' Family Party; and Ethyl Tune-Up Time. In 1936, he directed and co-wrote The March of Time program, hiring Orson Welles for his first job in radio. In 1940, Spier became chief of the writers' department and director of program development at the Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS). At the same time, he was co-director, co-producer and some-time writer of Suspense, an anthology program of mysteries and thrillers, and Duffy's Tavern.

In 1941 Spier traveled to Los Angeles, which gave him access to a larger and better known talent pool. Guest stars for Suspense episodes included Lucille Ball, Cary Grant, Kirk Douglas, Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Joan Fontaine, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Richard Widmark and William Holden. Suspense had become increasingly popular; for the 1949–50 season, the program ranked number eight of the top 10 programs. The best known episode of the series was “Sorry Wrong Number,” starring Agnes Moorehead, in which a bed-ridden woman who by a chance incorrect phone connection overhears two men planning to murder a woman at 11:15 p.m. The episode was so popular that it was repeated eight times during the run of the series. The episode was even recorded on two 12-inch discs on Decca Records in 1943, becoming the number three most popular recording. The episode was eventually expanded for a successful film production, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.

In 1946, Spier directed, produced and sometimes wrote the radio series The Adventures of Sam Spade, based upon the detective created by Dashiell Hammett. Howard Duff starred as Sam Spade with Lurene Tuttle portraying his loyal secretary Effie. He also produced two anthology series: The Clock (radio) and The James and Pamela Mason Show. A 1949 magazine article said Spier "is generally rated radio's top-notch creator of suspense-type dramas.

In 1952, Spier introduced TV's first 90-minute show, Omnibus, for CBS. He produced Medallion Theatre on NBC in 1953–54. He created (with Louis Pelletier), produced, directed, and wrote for the 1954–1955 CBS situation comedy Willy, starring June Havoc. In some respects, the show was ahead of its time in that Havoc's character, Willa “Willy” Dodger, was an unmarried lawyer with her own legal practice in a small New England town. The show was a Desilu production, and like I Love Lucy, Willy was filmed before a live studio audience. Willy was broadcast at 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays opposite the popular NBC series, Your Hit Parade. Midway through the season, an attempt was made to increase ratings by having Havoc's character relocate to New York to represent show business clients; however, the show only lasted one season. In 1956, Spier produced three episodes of Man Against Crime. He subsequently limited his career in television to writing scripts for such television series as The Lineup, Peter Gunn and The Untouchables.

In 1954, Spier co-directed, with Roy Kellino, the film Lady Possessed, starring James Mason and Havoc, with a screenplay written by Mason and his wife, Pamela Mason, based upon her novel Del Palma.

Spier was married to Mary Scanlan from 1929 to 1939 and had three children with her: Peter, Greta, and Margaret. Spier died, aged 66, at the home he shared with Havoc in Weston, Connecticut.

The Adventures of Sam Spade

The Adventures of Sam Spade was first heard on ABC July 12, 1946, as a Friday-night summer series. The show clicked at once, and went into a regular fall lineup on CBS September 29, 1946. From then until 1949, Sam Spade was a Sunday-night thriller for Wildroot Cream Oil, starring Howard Duff in the title role. With Duff's departure, NBC took the series, leaving it on Sunday for Wildroot and starring Stephen Dunne as Spade. This version lasted until 1951, the last year running as a Friday sustainer.

Spade's appearance on the air marked an almost literal transition from Dashiell Hammett's 1930 crime classic, The Maltese Falcon, where he first appeared. Spade was a San Francisco detective, one of the most distinctive of the hardboiled school. His jump to radio was wrought by William Spier, who had already carved out a reputation as a master of mystery in his direction of another highly rated CBS thriller, Suspense.

Sam Spade shot him to national fame. The character, as Spier saw it, would Have many easily identifiable traits. The first thing Spade usually wanted to know was, "How much money you got on you?" "Two hundred? Okay, I'll take that and you can pay me the rest later." But Spade wasn't a spendthrift -- he never threw silver-dollar tips a la Johnny Dollar, even if he could have put it on his expense account. Spade favorite way to travel was by streetcar; it took him almost anywhere for a dime. He disliked cabs and liked cheap booze. You didn't need more than an occasional, subtle reminder: those glasses clinking every week as Sam opened his desk drawer and began dictation were enough. We knew Sam and Effie weren't toasting each other with Sal Hepatica. Sam was a man who worked out of his desk, and the thing closest at hand in that top drawer just might be a half-empty bottle of Old Granddad.

His clients got bumped off with startling regularity. Then Sam sent his report (and presumably his bill) to the widows. He dictated his cases to his faithful secretary, Effie Perrine, a babbling, man-hungry female who might have been the adult Corliss Archer. Each case came out as a report, dated, signed, and delivered. Spade license number - 137596 - was always included in the report. The cases unfolded in chronological order, the scenes shifting between Sam and Effie and the dramatization of Sam's dictation. Effie, who always seemed on the verge of tears whenever Sam became involved (as he did weekly) with a curvy client, was beautifully played by Lurene Tuttle, Jerry Hausner played Sam's lawyer, Sid Weiss. Lud Gluskin directed the music and Dick Joy announced. Soon after the series began, Ann Lorraine dropped her writing duties, and Gil Doud became Bob Tallman's writing partner.

The show ran in its original format through the episode of September 17, 1950. Then Howard Duff quit for a fling at movies, and Sam Spade languished for two months. On November 17, 1950, it returned on NBC. Duff's absence was handled in usual network form: by importing a new voice. NBC ran the show as though nothing had happened, using Steve Dunne as a boyish-sounding Spade. Spier and Miss Tuttle followed the series over, and for a time so did Wildroot. Wildroot and the listeners all got wise around the same time. Dunne was a good radio man, but he sounded like Sam in knee pants.

Duff once said that Hammett had done such a great job in The Maltese Falcon that any actor could have played Sam and become a radio hero. He saw that theory proved wrong.

Dashiell Hammett's name was removed from the series in the late 1940s because he was being investigated for involvement with the Communist Party. Later, when Howard Duff's name appeared in the Red Channels book, he was not invited to play the role when the series made the switch to NBC in 1950.

Ben Alexander

Ben Alexander was an Emmy-nominated American motion picture actor, who started out as a child actor in 1916. 

He was born in Goldfield, Nevada on June 27, 1911, and raised in California. Alexander made his screen debut at age of five in Every Pearl a Tear. He went on to portray Lillian Gish’s young brother in D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World. After a number of silent era films, he retired from screen work but came back for the World War I classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, in which Alexander made his first positive impression as an adult actor in the role of Kemmerick, the tragic amputation victim.

When Alexander’s acting career slowed down in the mid-1930s, he found a new career as a successful radio announcer in the late 1940’s, including for The Martin and Lewis Show, and in 1952, Jack Webb chose him to replace Barton Yarborough, who had suddenly and unexpectedly died and had played Friday’s original partner, Ben Romero. A few actors filled in as Friday’s partners until Alexander was hired as a permanent replacement in the newly created role of Officer Frank Smith, first, in the radio series, and then, in the TV series Dragnet.

On July 5, 1969, Alexander died because of a massive heart attack in his Los Angeles home when his wife and children returned from a camping trip.

Ben Alexander was awarded three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for television, radio, and movies.

CLASSIC OLD TIME RADIO is back!

The new CLASSIC OLD TIME RADIO is back with new great old time radio shows! Enjoy the most remembered old time radio shows from 1930 to 1960. Mystery, adventure, suspense, drama, comedy, scifi... a great variety of shows broadcasted 24/7! Info and links on the right column of this blog.

 

And every Friday, keep enjoying the life and career of old time radio actors and actresses as well as the history of different old time radio shows.