Alan Reed

When you think of Allen’s Alley, Senator Claghorn may come to mind. Or maybe Mrs. Nussbaum. You probably don’t think of the actor the Alley was built around, even though he’s known to some who have never heard of Fred Allen.

Allen featured ham poet Falstaff Openshaw on the Texaco Star Theatre, and when he created the Alley, Falstaff anchored the segment. Openshaw appeared in character as a guest on other radio shows and later had his own 5-minuter on ABC radio.

Openshaw was played by a man better known to people today as the voice of Fred Flintstone, Alan Reed.

We’ve talked about Reed’s Hanna-Barbera career over on the Yowp blog. He had a rather extensive career on radio before that and, as this story in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of Nov. 23, 1941 indicates, he had a pile of other careers.

Alan Reed, He’s on vacation and That Makes Him Pretty Happy
But Again in Theater Guild's New Play He's Badly Dressed
We offer Alan Reed as an alarming example of what can happen if you let your son go-to journalism school.
Mr. Reed is the gentleman who is presently to burst upon Broadway as the bombastic Italian farmer in "Hope for a Harvest," the Theater Guild comedy by Sophie Treadwell, which opens at the Guild Theater Wednesday evening, and which presents, in addition to the redoubtable Reed, Mr. and Mrs. Frederic March.
The journalism school where Reed's whacky history starts is Columbia. How he escaped from it nobody knows. But one day he turned up in Oklahoma City, befriended by a candy manufacturer named Ralph Rose. This chocolate bar king dabbled in theatricals. He dabbled a bit too much, however. With a stock company, that included Reed as leading man, he lost his shirt.
And so Mr. Rose, his 12-year-old son and his great and good friend, Mr. Reed, came to New York. They had $600 when they arrived. A bit of dice manipulation (at which Mr. Rose Jr. was said to be proficient) ran it up to $28,000. Whereupon Mr. Reed and the Messrs. Rose started a candy business. Pecan pralines were the staple and the business prospered until hot weather, when the pralines turned what Reed describes as an "interesting gray color, like second-hand oatmeal."
That was about 1923. Two years later found our Mr. Reed acting in the Glencairn cycle of Eugene O'Neill at the Provincetown Theater. He doesn't remember why. Nor why he became, somewhere along the way from there to here, intercollegiate wrestler (that was at Columbia, but we forgot to mention it at the time), shipping clerk, real estate salesman, gym instructor and newsreel commentator. He also became manager of the Luxor Health Club, which, considering his fondness for sleeping late and Lindy's pastries, doesn't seem to fit.
At any rate, like some other misguided people, he eventually wandered into radio, where he became the No. 1 assistant comic. Cantor, Jolson, Jessel, Burns and Allen, and now Fred Allen—all have had his services. (On Fred A's current program he is Falstaff Openshaw, the Bowery Bard, as well as Clancy the Cop on "Duffy's Tavern.")
But where he really shines—ethereally speaking—is crime. He sat down one night and. having nothing better to do, totaled his radio-crime career for 1940. During the year, he estimated, he stole slightly more than $12,000,000, killed 37 people, participated in five kidnapings, perpetrated three felonious assaults and made one attempt to pull the badger game. In all of these cases he was convicted, killed by the police in a dark alley, driven to suicide when trapped by his own brutal actions or dispensed with in some satisfying way. Satisfying, at least, to the code of radio morality.
But if he is radio's baddest boy, he is also its busiest. Averaging a total of 25 to 30 radio shows weekly, it is an expensive luxury for Alan Reed to enter a Broadway play, for he has to give up his very lucrative crime-and-comic chores on radio.
But with "Hope for a Harvest," the gentleman is quite willing to forego radio profits in favor of the theater, and for a couple of excellent if unartistic reasons.
"With this job," Mr. Reed confides gravely, "I am working myself out a nice little vacation, a very nice little vacation. And why? Because here at last is a part I can throw my stomach into." He patted his facade. Did we mention that there is a good deal of Mr. Reed? Two hundred and thirty pounds at last counting. "Also I can let my hair grow. This it not like the last time. This is not Saroyan."
He was referring to his last Broadway stint, in the Mad Armenian's play, "Love's Old Sweet Song," which the Guild produced two seasons ago. In that epic Mr. Reed was the philosophical Greek wrestler, Stylanos Americanos. His hair was cropped to a fuzz and he had to train down to 210.
"Was I healthy? I have never been so healthy. I hope I am never so healthy again. Gym all the time, No Lindy's. No Lindy's pastries. But now—!”
Now Mr. Reed is playing Joe de Lucchi, a middle-aged Italian with plenty of girth and a nice shock of hair. Mr. R. is barely in his thirties and worries because his nice middle-aged makeup never seems to register on photographs. "I look young," he moans in despair. "I look, you might almost say, juvenile! Always before I have been athletic. For business reasons. Now I can be athletic or I can skip it. So if I feel like it I'll be athletic. Otherwise—no."
Up to now it seems to be no. Except for handball, which Mr. Reed plays with furious enthusiasm, he is taking himself "a nice little vacation." Of course, he is working a little in "Hope for Harvest," but he gets such a kick out of the part he doesn't regard it as work. His only complaint about the part is the clothes he has to wear. They are not, says Mr. Reed, very snappy.
"Now here is the situation," he explained morosely, "I like clothes. You know what I mean? I am fond of them. I have one of the best tailors in New York. I have beautiful suits. I wear them like Esquire. So what happens? One the radio nobody sees me. I get a job on the stage in 'Love's Old Sweet Song'—and I wear a pair of trunks and the hair on my chest I was born with. So I think—Never mind, next time we'll wear clothes. So what happens? I get into ‘Hope for a Harvest,' and I wear overalls! Can you win? But outside of that I got no complaints. It's a swell show. I got a swell part. I'm happy."
So "Hope for a Harvest" has made Mr. Reed happy. He has made the author and the Theater Guild happy. All that remains is for the audience to be happy. Mr. Reed nods knowingly, and says they will be.

“Hope For a Harvest” was a flop. It ran for a month at the August Wilson Theatre. Radio Mirror reported Reed took the role to attract movie scouts, but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and he was afraid to move his family to the West Coast.

But Reed found more stage work. This Eagle story is from Dec. 13, 1942.

Alan Reed, the Real Pirate, Is Also Broadway's Busiest Man
By ROBERT FRANCIS
This department claims to have found Broadway's busiest actor. Eight times a week he is the paunchy ex-pirate from whom Alfred Lunt steals Lynn Fontanne up at the Martin Beck and on Sundays he Broad a's his way through the Fred Allen program with the poetic quips and cranks of Falstaff Openshaw.
"But Saturday is Alan Reed's high spot. In the morning he motors leisurely from the Reed mansion in Riverdale (when he has the gas), to arrive at Radio City for 11:30 rehearsal of "Abie's Irish Rose." Alan is Papa Solomon Levy in this one. The rehearsal lasts until 1:30, which leaves just time to get over to the Martin Beck and make up for the matinee. At 5:30 he is back at the studio for more rehearsal and the following broadcast, which is over at 8:30.
Then down a waiting elevator and into a waiting cab pops Mr. Reed. Slithering across Broadway he sticks on his drooping mustache and goatee-and when the curtain goes up at 8:40 at the Martin Beck, Miss Fontanne is serenely fanning a hammock-sleeping "Pirate" on the stage.
It almost seems that it must be done with mirrors, but Alan is an inventive cuss. He doesn't remove his makeup when he finishes the matinee. He has had a double breasted suit turned to zoot proportions so that it goes over and off the pirate costume. This and a titanic dickey turn him into Mr. Levey.
Of course, after the theater his time is practically his own. He just has to taxi back to the studio for the repeat broadcast.
"It isn't mirrors," he grinned the other night, "but it does take stamina—and stamina is something I got a lot of. Did you know I used to be intercollegiate wrestling champion at Columbia?"
Strangler Reed rears up in his dressing room shorts and exhibits a mighty torso.
"Of course," he apologizes, "I'm softened up now. But you get the idea."
Your correspondent does. He would not care to tangle with Mr. Reed.
Incidentally, you may remember Alan as the hookah-smoking Greek grappler of Saroyan's "Love's Old Sweet Song" a season or so back.
"I enjoyed that one," he says. "It was such fun spilling Walter Huston."
Alan hasn't been on Broadway half as much as he should during recent years. Radio has kept him too busy. He broke into show business back in 1927 at the old Provincetown Playhouse, but except for an occasional play, most of his dialect comedy has been devoted to the air waves and comic commentating for Pathe News. In between times he managed to run his own gymnasium.
"Had to give that up, though, a while ago," he grins. "I work out once in a while up at Reilly's—but no more wrestling.
"What do I want to do now? Man, I'm satisfied. Two radio shows and this play. And I think I'm going to do a movie this Summer. The war's got 'em so they finally need guys like me out there."
If the movie doesn't come through, we'll bet Mr. Reed figures out something else to fill in the time. He's not a guy to sit still.

Reed appeared off and on in movies—we’ll spare you a list of them; you can find that elsewhere—returning to work with Fred Allen during fallow periods.

And, yes, we could mention Life With Luigi, Baby Snooks and other radio shows but we will point out that Reed started out in radio using his real name, Teddy Bergman. He gave a short biography to one of the syndication serves and the story to your right appeared in newspapers in mid-1932. Bergman also appeared in television at that time, meeting actress Finette Walker on W2XAB. They enjoyed a long and happy marriage.

For a time, Reed was also on the Board of Directors of AFRA, the radio actors union, with fellow Allen’s Alley denizens Minerva Pious and John Brown, and Verna Felton, who played his mother-in-law on The Flintstones.

The ad you see above is for a company Reed set up after network radio wound down and he hunted around for television work. He ended up handing operation of it to his son after Bill Thompson was unable to do the voice of a caveman, and Hanna-Barbera had to find someone else to play Fred Flintstone. That gave him a steady pay cheque (especially from commercials as Flintstone) for the rest of his life.