Fred Allen’s Cure For Radio

In the 1940s, Fred Allen aimed his wit at the witless things in radio—network executives, ad agency executives, banal musical guessing games, commercials, even studio audiences. He did it on the air and off the air. He seemed to become more jaded about broadcasting as time wore on.

We have two Allen stories below. The first comes from the Chicago Tribune of June 30, 1935. Allen explains the problems with the industry and some ideas to improve it, in a rather measured and practical tone.

FRED ALLEN, SET FOR REST, TELLS OF RADIO'S WOES
Start at Scratch Every Week, Says Jester.
BY LARRY WOLTERS.
Fred Allen has got the last more than 160 full hour broadcasts behind him and is ready for a vacation. He and Portland (Tallyho) Hoffa, his wife, have their bags packed for a trip to Hollywood, where Fred is ready to take more punishment in the shape of making his bow in pictures in a film titled "Sing, Governor, Sing,” which will also headline Phil Baker and several other persons well known to the airways.
On the eve of his departure for the west he sat down on his luggage and took time out to say a word or two about the broadcasting business, to which he has been enslaved ever since he left the stage on which he used to appear with Libby Holman and Clifton Webb.
Allen got his start as John Sullivan of the Boston Sullivans doing a juggling act at an amateur show. But that doesn't mean that he particularly likes amateur hours even though he is master of ceremonies of one of the more popular ones.
Fate of Amateur Hours Foreseen.
“Amateurs,” he said, “seem to be accomplishing what long hours of study and planning fail to do. But amateur shows, I imagine will run their course. The impression Major Bowes gives that he is providing an opportunity for forgotten performers clicks with the American people. They like to see some one getting a break. Then, too, it's an adventure with an informality that is a welcome relief from the cut and dried program routine."
Radio ought to begin thinking about protecting talent as well as discovering more, Allen holds. He asserts that sponsors aren't interested in developing new talent or ideas. They want some one who already has a reputation, some one who can attract an audience immediately. As soon as his gloss fades a bit they want to try another name. Thus radio has already used everybody in the theater.
Suggests Closed Season.
Allen has a suggestion to get away from this. He thinks there might well be a closed season, for example, on comedians for six months of the year. Let sponsors run to humor for half the year and then turn to symphonic music or something else for the remaining six months. That would give jesters and others who must provide original material for each broadcast a chance to rest up and sparkle anew.
“If radio was a single performance, of course, it would be less of a headache, but when it is a week to week show it must be different each time," continued the comedian.
“It takes seven days every week to prepare the program. Radio in this respect cannot be compared with the stage. In the theater most of the worries are confined to the days prior to the premiere.
“There are so many things that enter radio that the theater is lucky to miss. If a druggist in Texas complains that the program is not popular in his region, the whole show may be altered. The theater never has such a worry. In radio people who know nothing about the show business frequently cause the entire broadcast to be shifted.
Fuzzless Peaches Not New.
“Public reaction quickly makes itself felt. A comedian may think he has a new fangled idea, but soon learns is far behind the times. We talked about fuzzless peaches as a new idea, in fact a comic one, but would you believe that a man in the state of Washington wrote that he had really perfected such a peach? He sent me a sample, but the mail clerk ate it.
“On various occasions I mentioned that we should have electric mousetrap, names grown on apples, and dripless ice cream cones. When the mail came in it revealed all these inventions had been perfected. They were not the mere dreams of a comedian, but the real thing.
The Hunt for Material.
“The biggest problem is in finding subject matter," continued Mr. Allen. "We have heard that the mental age at the radio audience is quite low, but I don't think so. For example, Jack Benny has one of the best programs, and it is highly sophisticated. He was one of the first to adapt his style to radio, while other old stagers thought it wise to follow the wornout vaudeville formula of throwing jokes by straight comedy. They fell by the side of the wave lengths; the out and out question and answer comedians were passe ten years ago.
“Radio is a medium of expression, and as such requires special writing; theater technique alone is not enough. The performer who succeeds on the air must start at scratch every week. It’s a concentrated thing, this radio.

One place where Allen could take shots at the ridiculousness he saw around the radio industry was in the radio studio itself. Not while he was on the air, but during the audience warm-up (one of his on-air attacks against an imaginary NBC executive got his show faded off the air; the episode, unfortunately, isn’t publicly available). Here’s the Chicago Tribune again, November 20, 1938. The Allen show was still an hour long but had dropped amateur portion, which took up a good half-hour without the need for a lot of writing on Allen’s part. 1938 is before the days of Allen’s Alley and regular guest stars. The Mighty Allen Art Players did a sketch and, besides music, a good portion was still taken up with segments involving non-professionals (one mentioned below was scripted and the readings could get painful).

FUNNY TO HEAR, ALLEN SHOW IS FUNNIER TO SEE
Jester Saves Best Stuff for Studio Crowd
BY LARRY WOLTERS.
When television comes the Fred Allen show ought to be even more fun for listeners. A good show aurally, it is still better visually. It is funny from the moment you enter the big 1,200 seat studio until Fred has finished off with the last autograph seeker.
Before the show qoes on early arrivers get laughs out of watching the page boys struggling to keep the reserved seats unoccupied. A little section is kept open tor Fred and Portland's relatives and friends and for a few others favored by NBC.
New Yorkers put up a strong fight to get into those seats. But NBC attendants, sturdy fellows, fight back. They don't manage to save all the seats they intended to. But they do succeed in keeping clear a few for Portland's mother and sister. Papa Hoffa, you remember, named his daughters tor the cities which they were born, and the final one he called Last One. She changed it to Lastone, The family pronounces it "lastun."
Portland Gives Attention.
Portland, sitting on the stage before Fred makes his appearance, definitely maintains the attitude of the most interested spectator. And throughout the performance she hangs on every word Fred utters. And her laughter appears to be the most spontaneous.
A minute or two before air time Harry Von Zell warms up the audience with a few jokes. Then he spies Fred silting below in the audience, invites him to come up and address the audience.
Fred saves his wittiest cracks tor the studio audience. Perhaps he has to. Many of them NBC's blue pencil department might otherwise scratch.
The network bosses do not like jokes about Toscanini. So Allen puts the maestro at the head of his list for joke material. “You will notice," he explained the night we saw his show, “that all the page boys are in stocking feet tonight. Toscanini opens here next Saturday and all the boys with a squeak in their shoes higher than E flat have had to turn them in to have them in to have them tuned.”
Says What He Pleases.
The sharpest blue pencil in Radio City cannot eliminate all of Allen's salty cracks because he doesn't set them down on paper. Even a continuity labeled "last revision" will not go on the air as it is written. When Fred gets to the microphone he will say what pops into his head at the moment. Or perhaps it is what he intended to say all the time.
That must have been the case the other evening when he interviewed an NBC studio guide. He asked the chap what the various colored uniforms the page boys wear signify. One type of braid indicates television guides, another the lads who conduct studio tours, and so on, the youth explained.
"And the vice presidents, I suppose, wear mess jackets,” Fred interrupted, “to indicate the state their minds are in!”
When Fred presents his weekly guests whom he calls “people you never expected to meet” they also meet a person they never expected to meet—Fred Allen. For Fred at the microphone is a different fellow than he was in rehersal. During rehersal [sic] he is meek enough but on the air he can resist being a bad boy. His kidding invariably gets him a long way from the text.
Relies on Uncle Jim.
And that is where Uncle Jim Harkins, Allen's assistant of many years, comes in. As Allen ad libs and the guest flounders hopelessly through the pages of the script wondering how they will get back into it, Uncle Jim stands beside them giving help and counsel. He puts his finger on the script at the point he deems best to reënter it. And if the guest becomes flustered Allen ad libs further to ease the situation.
Fred has his uncomfortable moments, too. An inveterate tobacco chewer, his pained expressions are believed to be due to the fact that NBC will permit him no receptacle to get relief from his cud. When there is a break in the program tor music Fred sometimes sneaks out back behind a screen. And he looks happier when he comes back.
In every broadcast there are bound to be dull moments for the studio audience. Fred does his best to brighten these.
For instance, when Von Zell interrupts the program so that station announcements may be made across the country, Allen steps to the front of the platform and informs the studio audience, "This is the point where we ask Hitler whether we can go on with the program."
A Hard Worker.
Fred probably works harder on his show than any other of radio's major comedians. With the exception of Friday, which is his day off, and on Sunday morning when he and Portland go to church, he spends the entire week working on Town Hall scripts, his associates say. The Allens seldom go out or entertain. They live in a two room apartment in a modest hotel near Radio City.

Just as columnist Wolters mentioned, television came. Fred Allen was there. He never seemed comfortable on it, even on What’s My Line? where some fans feel he did his best TV work. This was a man who had came up with clever and well-polished, satirical sketches reduced to an occasional quip as an equal amongst three other panellists. Perhaps death snatched him too early in network television’s lifetime for him to make a real mark. We’ll never know. Still, we can still enjoy some of his work on those radio shows circulating in public. The treadmill hasn’t reached oblivion yet for Fred Allen.