Fred Allen is Not a Turnip

Nostalgia exists for the Golden Age of Radio, in many cases (such as mine) from people who weren’t alive when it was happening.

But there were people who lived through the time without ever listening to radio.

One such individual was Lee Evans, a correspondent based in New York for the Cincinnati Enquirer. What he did in his spare time is unclear, but we do know he attended at least one live radio show. The paper assigned him to do a story about Fred Allen.

It wouldn’t have been difficult for him to get to Allen’s studio at NBC. Evans’ office was at 50 Rockefeller Plaza.

Evans profile of Allen is interesting in that some parts seem accurate, and others are debateable. It does strike me as an honest appraisal. If you’ve read Treadmill to Oblivion, it’s easy to get the impression Allen didn’t really like radio, believing it was an awful lot of continual work, interrupted and countermanded by orders from sponsors or networks, for little permanent reward. He complained about his audience, without which his show would be full of dead silence (Henry Morgan tied a variety show without one. The experiment lasted once).

Here is what Evans had to say after personally viewing an Allen broadcast. This was published March 21, 1948.

Fred Allen Lives Up To Billing As Comedian As Evans Covers Assignment For Enquirer
BY LEE EVANS.
(STAFF CORRESPONDENT)
New York, March 20—(Special)—Not being a radio fan I had never listened to a Fred Allen broadcast. I had a vague but not very definite idea of what he was—a funny man on the radio. In the course of time the radio editor thought maybe a story on his studio broadcast might make a story. Here it is.
I had gained the impression from his publicity that he was a dour, sour, acid sort of individual. If so he was out of character Sunday night. He broadcasts over NBC at 8:30 o'clock every Sunday. He is quite a fine-looking Irishman. He was born near Boston as John Florence Sullivan. It was years later when he went into radio that he became Fred Allen. He is not what one would call a pretty man, but he has a strong open countenance with an Irish twinkle in his eyes and a sardonic twist to his lips.
But that he is sour, dour, or acid, except from a professional assumption I do not believe. His wife Portland, who helps him in the broadcast, is too happy a looking person to be married to a turnip. Allen has a keen sense of the impostor, the ridiculous poseur, the blatherskite and other not too genuine personalities. And he takes keen relish in saying something cutting about them. But there is not much bitterness in him. He merely scorns his victims.
He is said to work hard on his scripts. He is personally responsible to himself for the final form of the broadcast. He has several writers working for him, but he usually or always edits their stuff, giving a final Allen twinge to the comedy. I do not know how many laughs a minute he sets forth to get, but he gets plenty of them during the half-hour session. His humor is varied. It runs the gamut of the whole range of wisecracks, jokes, and smart sayings. Of course, the quality is far from uniform. Sometimes the end results do not comport to the "quality of mercy" standards.
His publicity gave me the impression that he hates his broadcasts. I do not believe it; He seems to enjoy them intensely. He often laughs at his own witticisms. He will break out into hearty laughter then confide to the studio audience—that he is thinking of something that he has not yet said. It is an unfair advantage to take of his hearers in a way, but it destroys any implication that he does not enjoy his work.
He revolves his humor about personalities and topics of the times. That's where Allen's Alley comes into the show. He has four recurring characters in the Alley—Senator Claghorn who has become a national figure; Titus Moody who is a hard-bitten farmer; Mrs. Nussbaum, who musses up the English language and Ajax Cassidy who represents the Irish with an opinion on anything that comes up.
Allen gives his studio hearers a bonus for attending. He comes out about 10 minutes before going on the air and invites anyone who got into the wrong pew to leave while he may. Of course nobody does. The Allen broadcasts are popular both with the studio gathering and the vast audience on the air. The show is helped out by an orchestra, and on Sunday night by a quintet of songstresses and a guest performer, Doc Rockwell. The doc is a stage personality. I last saw him in Billy Rose's "Seven Lively Arts" three years ago. He was MC. The show didn't last long.
The regular cast, Kenny Delmar, Parker Fennelly, Minerva Pious and Peter Donald have become popular and fixed with the radio audiences. Allen at one time was as he called himself the "World's Worst Juggler" in the vaudeville circuits. He has given up the juggling of dimensional things. He now only juggles words. We spare the use of any adjective.
I seldom listen to a radio show. I am inclined to sleep when I do. I stayed awake during the Allen show Sunday night. I was wide awake instead of being all in. I know that in terrible, but it is as good as some of those he puts on the air.
He is said to get $20,000 a week for his show. Of course he has large company to pay out of this. The show is sponsored by the Ford Dealers of America.

Allen’s show, as Evans says, blows hot and cold to me. There are a number of things over the years that I never found entertaining. But you don’t need to read a dissertation of many opinions about this, but I will say I do enjoy listening to Allen a lot of the time. Anything featuring Tallaluh Bankhead making fun of an insipid wake-up radio show that ends in murder can’t be all bad.