Fred Allen (born John Florence Sullivan May 31, 1894 - March 17, 1956) was an American comedian whose absurdist, pointed radio show (1934–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.

His best-remembered gag may be his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny. Allen has been considered one of the more accomplished, daring and relevant humorists of his time. A master adlibber, he constantly battled censorship and developed routines the style and substance of which influenced future comic talents, notably Stan Freberg. Perhaps more than anyone else of his generation, Fred Allen wielded influence that outlived both his contemporaries and the medium that made him famous. For contributions to the radio industry, Fred Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Radio

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.

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.

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 (every Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. EST on CBS). 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.

On NBC

He took over a year off due to hypertension and returned in 1945 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.

Allen's Alley

The other change, born in the Texaco days and evolving from his earlier news spoofs, proved his most enduring, premiering December 6th, 1942. The inspiration for the mythical Main Street of "Allen's Alley" came from the small-town heartland folks who were often profiled in the newspaper columns written by O. O. McIntyre (1884-1938), one of the most popular columnists of the 1930s with some seven million readers.

"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.

The segment was 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 and town drunk Sampson Souse (Jack Smart), dimwitted Socrates Mulligan (Charlie Cantor), and pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (Alan Reed). By 1945, three members of the Alley's best-remembered quartet solidified and rarely disappeared: 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. Pious told Allen about Kenny Delmar, who joined the cast October 5, 1945, as both the show's announcer and the bellowing Southerner Senator Beauregard Claghorn. Delmar based the character on a real-life person he had encountered while hitchhiking in 1928. Within weeks, Claghorn became one of the leading comedy characters of radio as listeners across the country began quoting his catch phrases: "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked"; "That's a joke, son"; and "Pay attention, boy!" Claghorn served as the model for the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, who first appeared the following August in the Oscar-nominated Walky Talky Hawky.

Despite the ethnic diversity, the Alley characters seemed less citified and more akin with O. O. McIntyre's small-town America. Highly literate and often absurdist, Allen's topical humor is sometimes thought an acquired taste for audiences curious about his generation of radio stars. But others find many parallels to today's world and its absurdities. The "Allen's Alley" stereotypes make some cringe, as Allen biographer Robert Taylor noted (in Fred Allen: His Life and Wit), 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 adlibbing 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 his era.

Allen also "died" more eloquently than other radio comics, particularly in the later years. When a joke was greeted with an awkward silence, Allen would comment on the lack of response, with his ad-libbed "explanation" almost always funnier than the original joke.

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, Allen got a lucrative new contract.

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). The quiz show, Stop the Music, hosted by Bert Parks, required listeners to participate live, by telephone. The show 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 show 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 June 26, 1949, show, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full time again.

The feud

Good friends in real life, Fred Allen and Jack Benny inadvertently hatched a running gag in 1937. It all started when child violinist Stewart Canin's very credible performance on the Allen show inspired Allen to deliver a wisecrack about "a certain alleged violinist," who should hide in shame over his poor playing. Allen often mentioned his show-business friends on the air ("Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" was Allen's way of saying hello to his pal Jack Haley), and on the Canin broadcast Allen knew his friend Jack Benny would be listening. When Benny responded in kind on his own program, Allen fired back, and they were off and running. The back-and-forth got good enough notice that the two went with it for over a decade, doing it so well that many fans of both shows believed the two really were blood enemies.

The Allen-Benny feud was the longest-playing, best-remembered dialogue running gag in classic radio history. The gag even pushed toward a boxing match between the two comedians and the promised event was a sellout. It also never happened, really. The pair even appeared together in films, including Love Thy Neighbor (1940) and It's in the Bag! (1945), Allen's only starring vehicle, also featuring William Bendix, Robert Benchley, and Jerry Colonna.

Some of the feud's highlights involved Al Boasberg, who is credited with helping Benny refine his character into (arguably) America's first stand-up comedian. Boasberg was well known behind the scenes as a top comedy writer, but he seldom received recognition in public. He worked, uncredited, on many films (including the Marx Brothers' hit A Night at the Opera). Steaming mad because of his long battles for recognition, Boasberg was said to have delivered a tirade that ended up (in slightly altered form) in an Allen-Benny feud routine:

Allen: Why you fugitive from a Ripley cartoon ... I'll knock you flatter than the first eight minutes of this program.

Benny: You ought to do well in pictures, Mr. Allen, now that Boris Karloff is back in England.

Allen: Why, if I was a horse, a pony even, and found out that any part of my tail was used in your violin bow, I'd hang my head in my oatbag from then on.

Benny's side of the feud included a tart interpretation of Allen's Town Hall Tonight show, which Benny and company called "Clown Hall Tonight." What those enraptured by the feud often missed: Whenever they guested on each other's shows, the host was liable to hand the feuding guest the best lines of the night.

They toned the gag down after 1941, though they kept it going often enough as the years continued. The biggest climactic event of the feud was broadcast on Allen's show May 26, 1946. In a sketch called "King for a Day," satirizing big-money game shows, Benny pretended to be a contestant named Myron Proudfoot on Allen's new quiz show.

Allen: Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest.

Benny (rapturously): I'm KING for a Day!

[Allen proceeds to have Benny's clothes pressed:]

Allen: Upon our stage we have a Hoffman pressing machine.

Benny: Now wait a minute! Wait a minute!

Allen: An expert, operating the Hoffman pressing machine, will press your trousers.

Benny: NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!! (total audience hysteria laughter, as Benny's pants are literally removed).

Allen: Quiet, King!

Benny: Allen, this is a frame--- (starts laughing himself) Where are my pants?

Allen: Keep your shirt on, King.

Benny: You BET I'll keep my shirt on!

Allen: We're a little late, folks! Tune in next week---

Benny: Come on, Allen, where are my pants!

Allen: Benny, for 15 years I've been waiting to see you here like this!

Benny: Allen, you haven't seen the END of me!

Allen: It won't be long NOW!

Benny: I WANT MY PANTS!

Allen and Benny couldn't resist one more play on the feud on Allen's final show. Benny appeared as a skinflint bank manager and mortgage company owner bedeviling Henry Morgan. Typically, Allen handed Benny the show's best crack: "Listen, I was never this cheap on my own program!"

Benny even used the feud on his TV show, which depicted Benny and Allen as rivals for the sponsor's favors. When the sponsor pointed out that Benny was also a musician, Allen countered with a passage on his clarinet.

In Benny's co-memoir Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story (1990) -- his daughter Joan Benny added her own recollections and published it after his death -- he revealed that the feud began spontaneously, following the Stewart Canin incident. However, it went over big enough with listeners "that we decided to hold a summit meeting with my two writers and Allen's five writers and plan the strategy of our feud. It was all cold and calculated and the sky was the limit. Or rather, the mud was the limit."

Censorship

Allen may have battled censors more than most of his radio contemporaries. "Fred Allen's fourteen-year battle with radio censorship," wrote the New York Herald-Tribune critic John Crosby, "was made particularly difficult for him by the fact that the man assigned to reviewing his scripts had little sense of humor and frankly admitted he didn't understand Allen's peculiar brand of humor at all." Among the blue pencils, according to Crosby, were:

• Allen was barred from saying "Brenda never looked lovelier", at the time of socialite Brenda Frazier's wedding, unless he could get direct permission from the Frazier family itself.

• Allen was ordered to change the Cockney accent he assigned the character of a first mate aboard the Queen Mary — on the grounds that the ship's first mate could only be a cultured man who might not like a Cockney accent.

• Allen actually had to fight to keep Mrs. Nussbaum in the Allen's Alley routines — because NBC feared Jewish-dialect humour "might offend all Jews", never mind that Jewish dialect humour had been a vaudeville and burlesque staple for years.

• Allen was ordered not to even mention the fictitious town of North Wrinkle until or unless it could be proven that no such town actually did exist. (It didn't.)

"Allen not only couldn't poke fun at individuals", Crosby wrote, "he also had to be careful not to step on their professions, their beliefs, and sometimes even their hobbies and amusements. Portland Hoffa was once given a line about wasting an afternoon at the rodeo. NBC objected to the implication that an afternoon at the rodeo was wasted and the line had to be changed. Another time, Allen gagged that a girl could have found a better husband in a cemetery. (The censor) thought this might hurt the feelings of people who own and operate cemeteries. Allen got the line cleared only after pointing out that cemeteries have been topics for comedy since the time of Aristophanes."

After his own show ended, Allen became a regular attraction on NBC's The Big Show (1950–1952), hosted by Tallulah Bankhead. He appeared on 24 of the show's 57 installments, including the landmark premiere, and showed he had not lost his trademark ad-lib skill or his rapier wit. In some ways, The Big Show was an offspring of the old Allen show: his one-time Texaco Star Theater announcer, Jimmy Wallington, was one of The Big Show's announcers, and Portland Hoffa made several appearances with him as well. On the show's premiere, in fact, Allen — with a little prodding from head writer Goodman Ace — could not resist one more play on the old Allen-Benny "feud," a riotous parody of Benny's show called "The Pinch Penny Program."