Join the Bath Club

Before walking on stage and making people laugh, Fred Allen was an employee of the Boston Public Library. That’s where his scrapbooks were willed after his death.

Time has not been too kind to them. Glue stains adorn the newspaper clippings. Some are torn. The print is faded. Some appear to be missing parts of stories. On top of that, Allen (or whoever) labelled almost none of them.

At one time, a library was the most accessible way of doing research. However, the internet has made discoveries almost miraculous.

Kathy Fuller-Seeley took the time to photograph Allen’s scrapbooks. There were two versions of one article, unsourced. Being scrapbooks, there is a gutter between pages and cannot be folded out flat, so copy is in the shadows. It would be almost impossible to transcribe, and that would be typing word-by-word.

However, we have the internet today. A web search of some of the text of the article revealed nothing. But a search of the author’s name revealed a story penned for a specific radio magazine with the same format as the Allen feature. There’s a wonderful site called worldradiohistory.com which has scans of old radio magazines. A search of Allen’s name through the particular publication resulted in finding a full copy of the story, sans glue, with accompanying photos.

With that lengthy preface, we bring you an article on Fred Allen’s show published in Radio Stars of February 1933. This is a look at Allen’s first shot at radio, The Linit Bath Club Revue, which aired on CBS from Oct. 23, 1932 to Apr. 16, 1933. This was a good ten years before Allen’s best-known work, Allen’s Alley with Senator Claghorn, Mrs. Nussbaum and so on.

The episode mentioned below is not available on the internet that I can find. Allen reused concepts, and this one re-appeared on the Sal Hepatica Revue in 1934.

BACKSTAGE AT BROADCAST
By OGDEN MAYER
WANT to join the Bath Club? Want to mingle with the mystic Inner Circle of Fred Allen's festive fraternity ? Would a laugh do you good? Then walk right in, ladeez and gents. There is no charge, no price of admission. Just three things do we ask. You must not talk, you must not smoke, and you must not leave the studio until the program is over.
The Linit Bath Club is easy to join. Just take a bath the Linit way and you're in. Have I? Sh-h-h-h! I haven't, but that won't keep us out. Come on!
We're in the CBS building on Manhattan's amazing Madison Avenue. The big reception room on the top floor is chock-ablock with visitors. Ladies in orchids and ermine, men in their most formal dds. It is just 8:45 p.m. E. S. T., Sunday. "Hey, page! Where's the Linit Bath Room?"
He leads us up a flght [sic] of stairs. A massive door swings open and a wave of sound rolls out. The orchestra is still rehearsing, actors are spieling their lines. This is the studio, jammed with chairs and music racks and mikes. Other people are coming in, chattering, surrendering their precious tickets to the boy in blue.
Two girls, sub-deb age, pop their great big, round eyes through the door.
"I'll die if I don't see Rudy Vallee."
"Sit-h-h, you scrunch. He works for the other network."
An imaginary line splits this biggest of CBS studios down the center. A grand piano sits squarely astride it. The musicians are ranked beyond. On this side is the crowd. To our left, in a corner cozily close to a picket fence of mikes, are a dozen chairs. Our chairs.
"These are for the press and special guests," a thin chap explains. "The others are for the hoi polloi." A PAGE looks at him and says, "Anybody who gets into this broadcast isn't any hoi polloi, mister. He's darn lucky." Grab a seat and cling to it. The other pews across the aisle are filling rapidly. Look! See the stocky man with the black mustache. That's Jack Smart, radio actor. We'll see him in action.
The clock says 9:50 p. m. Ten minutes to go. Who's the stout chap on the box leading the orchestra ? Name of Louis Katzman. Actually, the Louis Katzman. Can I help it if he looks like he's been in a wrestling match with Strangler Lewis? That's one of Louis' failings. You can dress him fresh from shirt to sox and press his pants ten times a day. Five minutes after he puts them on, they wilt. And look like a Heywood Broun suit. Katzman's a great guy, though.
"I'll never be the same," he shouts for no apparent reason. Fred Allen slides through, the door, sober-faced, looking a little like Cousin Ezra come to town for the Hog Fair. He carries a sheaf of papers.



The door of the control room opens and a half-dozen persons stride through. They all carry papers, too. Sit straight, you. They're the Inner Circle of this Bath Club. They put on the show.
The tall, slim chap with the pointed moustache is the director. Fred Allen collars him as he passes us. He says. "But what's the harm in those four words?"
We don't get the answer, but here is a hint. That plaintive query from Broadway's Mister Allen is a tip-off to the situation that is almost every radio performer's pain-in-the-neck. I mean air censorship. It's a harmless sort of restriction imposed by the broadcasters themselves but when some gagster sees his favorite pun blue-penciled, he usually burns. Just now, Allen isn't burning, but he isn't pleased either, I'll bet.
Time is sliding by. Performers are getting into their front row seats beyond the mikes. The loudspeaker brings din of music into the studio. It is the preceding program. Suddenly it stops. The director faces the control room and sings out, "Quiet, please.” The voice of the radio says a polite, "This is the Columbia Broadcasting System."
The director's arm is now held straight over his head as he watches the engineer through the control room window. Louis Katzman, whose back is to the window, watches the director. Seconds tick past. No one breathes. The director's arm cuts air. Katzman strokes violently. Music leaps from two dozen instruments.
A MAN at a mike begins to talk. Dark, saturnine Kenneth Roberts, the announcer . . . "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We welcome you to the Linit Bath Club. . . ." He fades back.
A swarm of violinists and clarinetists gather about a mike just below Katzman. He leads them into a lively tempo. But look yonder. The musician coming tip from the last orchestra row wears a battered, brown fedora on the end of his trumpet. He places it near a microphone and blows amazing, sugary notes.
At the end of the song, another tall dark chap steps forward. (Why are all these tall and dark fellows?) Fred Allen is the shortest of the lot—and he's not a small man by any means—except for Katzman. This is Master of Ceremonies Webster. [sic] Van Vorhees or Hugh Conrad. He plays the radio theatres under both names and you've probably heard him plenty. He's introducing Fred Allen, setting the scene for tonight's celebration to the water gods and the appointments of the bath.
Charles Carlile steps up and sings a solo. He is no crooner. You can hear his words clear to the back of the room. A skit. Then, more music until the clock hands stand at 9:12.
Katzman has earphones over his ears, red-rubber padded. The orchestra is quiet. The big room grows tense. Katzman's hands wave vaguely, indicating a tempo. His musicians watch but no one plays. Minutes pass. Through the closed, thick studio door, we hear faintest of faint organ strains from the loudspeaker in the reception room. Katzman suddenly gives a signal. The orchestra swings into a phrase, stops, starts anew and slows to Katzman's imperative signal. Do you get it ? This is Ann Leaf's selection. She is playing in the Paramount Building miles across town. Here, the orchestra is chiming in with incidental music, directed by Katzman's waving hands. He hears Ann through those earphones. Down there, she is wearing earphones, too, and she hears his orchestra as it swings in-to her song. In that wise though separated by half a city they are able to play together.
THE number is over and we have another introduction. We learn that Fred Allen is a warden in charge of a prison. We learn in an amazing fashion that his prison is the most popular in the country. Visitors come from all the world seeking admittance. One is an Englishman. There he is . . . see, there! The British yoke—the broad a, the pip-pip, toodle-oo accent.
But who is it ? The guy is that same Webster Van Vorhees or Hugh Conrad that acted as an honest American a moment ago. Now he makes arrangements for murdering his mater-in-law so he can secure the best room in the popular prison. As he leaves, he remembers that he hasn't a gun. So Warden Allen loans him his.
Notice how that dry, hay-in-his-hair voice of Allen's lends an added punch to everything he utters? Makes his lines doubly funny? But get this . . . look at those girls. They're actresses hired by Mr. Linit to represent club-women who are intent on investigating the horrors of the third degree.
"We don't maltreat our prisoners," Allen assures them. "We kill them with kindness."
To prove it, he brings in a prisoner who testifies. He is a dapper, brown-suited little fellow, the sort of chap you'd find in a Park Avenue salon. Bostonish looking with a Harvard accent, I'll bet. But he gives his answers in purest Bowery stumble-bum language. Tough talk, believe you me. Well, you've got to learn never to be surprised in this radio business.
Next, Warden Allen demonstrates his third degree. He orders in an extra hard-berled prisoner for the test. And the prisoner is roly-poly Jack Smart. He is forced to eat and eat and eat, things like chocolate sundaes and apple pies. That is Allen's kill-'em-with-kind-ness third degree. In imagination, Smart is stuffed until he is ready to burst.
"Tell where you hid them poils" demands Warden Allen. "No," says Smart. "Feed him another sundae," is the order.
Smart howls and protests. He stuffs his fingers into his mouth, the first three of his right hand. His talk flows around them into the mike. Try it on your own digits some time. It sounds exactly as if you're talking with your mouth full. But still he won't tell where he hid them poils.
"Then we'll give him the works," says Allen. The hardened trusty shudders. "You mean . . . tickle him?"
SO the trusty starts to tickle Jack Smart. And this is where Jack begins to act. Hold your chair if you're nervous. Jack is twisting, giggling, screaming, making funny faces, going through all the antics of a touchy fellow in the throes of his favorite torture. Yet, not a finger is touching him.
"Stop, he-he-he. I can't stand it, he-he-he. Stop . . . whoops!"
The whole studio is holding its sides. Everyone is gurgling and gushing, wiping tears front eyes. In a veritable paroxysm of tickling, Jack breaks.
"I'll tell, tee-hee, I'll confess every-thing if you'll stop. Hee, hee . . . hee-bee wheeee !"
So he tells all about them poils.
As he fades back from the mike, still laughing, still writhing from imaginary tickling, he staggers to an unused bench near us. Sweat bathes his face. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket, wipes it, and heaves a Golly-I’m-glad-that's-over sigh.



Music again. A quartet and Charles Carlile. As they sing, a man runs out of the control room, puts his hand over the shoulders of two of the quartet and shoves Carlile ten inches closer to the mike. Glancing hastily through the window at the engineer, he reaches for Carlile again and drags him back four inches. After that, his work well done evidently, he saunters off to a corner and chews his lips.
The hour is almost over. Funny, this sense of something impending. Everyone seems to be increasingly nervous. They look at watches and embrace like long lost brothers for the mere purpose of whispering to each other without the sound filtering to a nearby mike.
Fred takes his manuscript, looks at it, and reads, "Good night."
Ken Roberts leans his tall form over a black tube and states, "Your announcer, Kenneth Roberts." Charles Carlile comes on the run from his corner. Legs apart, hands in pockets, he steadies himself and sings. The Bath Club theme song is on the air.
Look at that minute marker on the studio clock. It is nearly at the half-hour mark. There! It passes. Katzman drops his hands. The program director waves to the crowd. A discordant blast blurts from every instrument in the orchestra. It grates, like a fingernail drawn along a tile. That's a trick those musicians have. At the end of every broadcast, when the "off the air" signal hits them, they blow the first note they can think off. It sounds like a lunatic's band. Seconds later, they are packing their instruments and going home.
And that's our next stop, too. So, good-night, all. You're now members of Fred Allen's Linit Bath Club. Don't forget next Sunday night.

The Sazzling Sounds of Radio

There was one person essential to every comedy/variety show on network radio. It wasn’t the star; both Jack Benny and Jimmy Durante were forced to take time off during the season because of illness.

It would have been unfathomable for Benny’s show, or Durante’s, or anyone else’s, to go on the air without a sound effects man.

One of the most famous of radio’s sounds—Fibber McGee’s closet emptying with a huge crash to the floor—was honoured in a song written by the show’s musical director, Billy Mills, called “(I’m in Love) With the Sound Effects Man,” later recorded by Spike Jones.

Rarely did sound men get credit on the air. The radio column in the Pittsburgh Press of Nov. 11, 1942 claimed the first time had been the previous Sunday when Arch Oboler’s announcer, Frank Martin, said “Sound, Harry Saz.”

Harry himself appeared on the air at least twice. Once was on December 8, 1937 on the “People You Didn’t Expect To Meet” segment of Fred Allen’s show. An unbylined story in the Greenville News, Mar. 1, 1936:

Fred Allen has a great respect for Harry Saz, his NBC sound effect man.
Sound effects often make a sketch, says Fred. He has turned out many Town Hall Tonight scripts that look quite lifeless on paper, yet the instant they go into rehearsal with gun shots, broken windows, sow mooings and train whistles, they pick up pace and become entertaining.
The most difficult effect Harry has recently achieved for Fred was the sound of a horse being thrown through a window.
Harry had to smash a chair through plate lass, whinny, and scream at the same time.

From the Pittsburgh Press, March 7, 1937.

NEW YORK, March 6.—One of Fred Allen’s most enthusiastic fans is the big noise on the “Town Hall Tonight” broadcast over the NBC-Red Network at 9 p. m., EST. He is Harry Saz, veteran NBC sound effects expert who has served with the lanky comedian for four years.
Although Harry works through two rehearsals and practically has the script memorized, he gets so interested in Allen’s antics that he has difficulty attending to the serious business of producing the many and varied noises required for the show.
Fred has become so accustomed to Harry and has such confidence in his ingenuity, he insists that he be assigned to all his shows.

Where did radio sound effects people come from? It wasn’t like the profession existed before broadcasting. The Press story of Nov. 11, 1942 gave a bit of Saz’s background, and columnist Si Steinhauser repeated a story he related several times over the years.

When Harry was a page boy at NBC he was an eager kid who went around with his eyes wide open, but he never spoke unless asked a question. He had a quick smile. Came an opportunity to study sound engineering and Harry got the call. He moved up to top broadcasts and when the old Showboat of Thursday nights was at its peak Harry was the sound engineer.
One anniversary night Molasses and January repeated the first story they ever told on the air as was their annual custom involving a "holdup" to convince their landlady that they had been robbed and couldn't pay their rent.
Molasses tossed his hat on the floor and January was to put a bullet through it. Harry Saz pulled a prop gun at the right moment but it jammed. In a split second he yanked the trigger of a second gun and nothing happened. That didn't stop this alert graduated page boy for he swung around and sent his fist crashing through a sound effects door. Molasses was quick to help as he jibbed "Man that was no resolver, that was a cannon."
When radio "went Hollywood" and the call went out for the best sound engineers the industry had. Harry Saz headed the parade to movieland.

Steinhauser added this story in his column of Oct. 14, 1934:

Studio attaches were not surprised that Harry Saz had been so alert. They recalled that shortly before he was supposed to cause a telephone to ring and the gadget failed him. A battery had gone dead, a wire came lo[o]se—something had happened so the "phone" wouldn't work. Millions of persons from coast to coast were listening. Harry stepped quickly to the mike and remarked to the astounded radio star on the program, "Your phone in ringing in the other room." Then followed the simulated phone conversation. And that's why giant corporations, owned by the biggest bankers in America, say "We want Harry Saz to handle the sound effects on our programs."

Sound effects always made interesting copy for radio columns in newspapers, whether it was how they were made or screw-ups. This is a piece of flackery written by General Foods’ P.R. department and appeared in newspapers starting in April 1934:

When you hear the swish of the paddle wheels on Captain Henry's Show Boat, the sharp, quick ring which warns of the rising curtain, and other such familiar Thursday night radio sounds, you are listening to the handiwork of Harry Saz. He is one of a staff of eight sound effects men without whom a great many programs could not go on. Harry works on fourteen major programs a week and that means he must attend all rehearsals as well as all performances.
So many stars have come to depend upon him that, not infrequently, they hold up their own rehearsals while waiting for Harry to get through on another program. The clatter of horses' hoofs, the slamming of doors, the firing of pistol shots, the thump of marching feet—all of these effects are the work of Harry's nimble hands and expert sense of timing. He works with a script, just as actors and singers do, waits for his cues, and produces the proper sound at the exact moment in order to get the right effect.
Once it happened that Harry turned two pages, missed a cue and heard an actor saying, "Listen to the ringing bells," although no bells were ringing. Her rushed over to bell contraption and worked the works, "better late than never," he says. On another occasion, Harry missed ringing a telephone which was the que for an actor to say, "Here's a telegram, sir." Whereupon, Harry stepped up to the microphone and saved the day by saying the telegram line himself.
When Harry has a spare moment, he experiments with new effects. He invented the show boat curtain.

Saz even made Ed Sullivan’s show biz column (Sullivan was a newspaperman before he was a wooden TV host). This is from December 1, 1938.

Harry Saz has a job in Hollywood which few envy. . . . He is head of the sound effects department of N. B. C. out here. . . . He gets all sorts of curious requests for sound effects and must produce them for broadcasts. . . . Most unusual, he says, was Boris Karloff’s request for the sound of a human heartbeat on the Bergen-McCarthy program.
Saz finally solved it by baring his chest and putting a very sensitive microphone next to it. . . . The heartbeat then was relayed to an echo chamber and the volume amplified. . . . On a recent Bob Hope program Saz had to supply the sound effects of a bowling alley.
On a Walter O’Keefe program sound effects had to supply the sounds of a man milking a cow to the rhythm of “Blue Danube.” Saz is a product of New York’s Stuyvesant High school.

On the Allen broadcast, which came from NBC Hollywood (still on Melrose Avenue), he joked that when he worked on Jack Benny’s show, Benny got caught in his prop door so he couldn’t close it. When he moved to California, he worked with Benny again. James Harper’s column in the Los Angeles Daily News story of Jan. 31, 1938, said he was one of five soundmen needed to put together the noises for Benny’s spoof of the movie The Hurricane. The San Fernando Valley Times of Sept. 19, 1941 reported Saz “spent so many hours in a soundproof studio putting together” Benny’s Maxwell. Mel Blanc didn’t supply vocal efforts for the car until after World War Two.

A familiar sound on radio in the late ‘30s was a knock on a door, accompanied by Al Pearce as Elmer Blurt saying “I hope nobody’s home, I hope, I hope, I hope.” Pearce did the knocking, but Saz and assistant Ed Ludes built a special door that looked like a pulpit, with a four-inch circle indicating where the star should put his fist for the best sound (Dayton Herald, Nov. 30, 1938).

Back to Benny for a second. Saz likely was not responsible for this as he was still in New York, but a syndicated story in the Lincoln Journal and Star of April 4, 1937 related:

On the Jack Benny program some time ago, there was a short episode in the script that involved the mixing of an ice-cream soda. The sound effects man, on short notice, rigged up a regular syphon bottle. This sounds like a gag, but at the actual broadcast the technician continued to read his cues as he reached for the syphon—and poured the seltzer water all over Jack and Mary. The studio audience, you may remember, roared, but the air audience couldn’t understand.

And a network/agency blurb reported in the Washington Evening Star of May 11, 1935 could have been Saz at work, though Jack was on the West Coast in April.

The sound effect of hitting a golf ball, which radio listeners heard on a recent Jack Benny program, during the imaginary match between Frank Parker and Benny, was accomplished by three of the N. B. C. sound-effects staff.
One man swept a willow switch through the air; one hit a block with a hammer and another blew a thin [tin] whistle.
The sound effect where Jack lost his ball in the bushes was made by actually bringing real bushes into the studio and breaking them by hand in front of the microphone.

There was not much for sound effects men to do when network radio died in the 1950s. Saz got out before then. Not long after Pearl Harbor, he trained women to take over from men. In 1943, he moved into the production department at NBC, with Ludes promoted to his job. A year later, Saz was the assistant producer on RKO’s Hollywood Star Time on the Blue Network, employed by the show’s agency, Foote, Cone & Belding. By 1947 he was a producer in the Hollywood office of Ted Bates & Co., and on the executive of the Hollywood Ad Club. The agency transferred him to New York City in February 1954, and he remained until April 1973 when he became director of station relations for a programme producing company called Quadrant. Saz was president of the Kiwanis Club and the P.T.A. in Ardsley, N.Y., and the Democratic Party Club in East Hampton before deciding life was easier in California and moved to Spring Valley in May 1979.

Saz was born in New York on December 27, 1910 and died in San Diego on June 7, 1994.

Here is the Allen broadcast on which Saz appeared.

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.

A Busy Brown

Some of the top radio actors on the West Coast found uncredited regular employment on the Jack Benny show. Two that come to mind are Herb Vigran and Elvia Allman. And a couple of the top radio actors on the East Coast did the same.

When Fred Allen went off the air for health reasons at the end of the 1942-43 season, Jack “borrowed” two actors who appeared regularly in Allen’s Alley—John Brown and Minerva Pious. It is still odd to my ears hearing the Pansy Nussbaum voice given to other characters on Benny’s show (the Grape Nuts era is not my favourite period) but Brown fits in quite well. Two roles that come to mind are an enthusiastic NBC usher who sings about Grape Nuts Flakes to the Rinso White jingle, and as a clueless Vancouverite who hasn’t heard of the city’s tourist attractions.

Brown, whose Alley character was New Yorker John Doe, returned during Allen’s last season in a promotional appearance for The Life of Riley as Digger O’Dell, the Friendly Undertaker, perhaps his best-known radio role (he used the Doe and O’Dell voices in the Tex Avery cartoon Symphony in Slang).

Here’s a profile of Brown from the New York Herald Tribune of Dec. 7, 1941. Brown talks about television, which was already filling the air with civil defence programming. That would dominate the tube in New York during shortened broadcast days while the war was on.

Protean Artist Of Radio Finds Doormen Cold
John Brown, Who Performs in 7 Shows Weekly, Still Is a Stranger at Studios
By Elizabeth S. Colelough
John Brown, one of radio’s funniest straight men, is a man of parts—and that is not intended as a joke. At present, he is playing in seven regular radio shows and has a list of successes behind him as long as the evils of mankind. His schedule taken from Sunday to Sunday runs something like this:
As Shrievy, the cab driver for Dr. Watson, he maintains the comedy interest in “The Shadow,” chiller-thriller heard on WOR at 5:30 p. m. every Sunday. In “Lorenzo Jones” he enacts the role or Jim Baker at 4:30 p. m., on WEAF from Monday to Friday.
On Tuesday he contributes his services to the “Treasury Hour” over WJZ at 8 p. m. Every Wednesday, the high point of his week, he is Mr. Average Wise Guy and other comic-relief characters in the Mighty Allen Art Players on Fred Allen’s programme. He has been with Allen’s show since it sprang, like a low—comedy Minerva, from the Allen cranium in 1934.
Figured in “Feud”
Brown unwittingly has become an innocent figure in one of the chapters of the Fred Allen-Jack Benny “feud.” Benny once presented an autographed photograph to Brown on which was inscribed “How long are you going to be with Allen?” Allen constantly accuses Benny of trying to steal Brown from him. Whenever he brings his show to New York or Brown goes to the coast Benny finds a part for him. When asked why he wouldn’t take Benny’s offer he said: “I like New York. I have a house in Croton—and, besides, I don’t want to leave Fred.” That, you feel, is the real reason.
Thursdays he plays the high school principal in the “Aldrich Family” on WEAF at 5:30 p. m.
Brown ends his week with two Saturday morning shows, “Lincoln Highway” and “Vaudeville Theater,” both on WEAF.
One of the busiest and most sought-after actors in radio, he find[s] it hard to get time off for a vacation. He had his first, two weeks, last summer, and that took plenty of finagling and adjusting. He had to be written out of eight shows. One script writer forgot and put him in. That almost ended the vacation before it began.
Brown has worked as straight man or stooge for virtually every top comic on the air. Among them are Fred Allen, Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Eddie Cantor, Jack Haley, Ed Gardner, Al Jolson, Ken Murray, Robert Benchley, Jerry Lester, Rudy Vallee, Fanny Brice and many others. On Oct. 30 he was Lord Beaverbrook’s voice on the ‘March of Time.”
Though many times a featured player, Brown has never been starred in a radio show. He is almost too versatile. He is like the department-store saleswoman who was so good in her job and brought so much money to the store that she never was promoted. However, he likes his life. In appearance he is unassuming. He says he looks less like an actor than any one he knows. Sandy-haired and quiet-mannered, he looks like hundreds of Americans you see every day in the subway and on the street. His sense of humor is keen. His blue eyes shine as he tells a joke on himself. Eddie Cantor, he said, once told him, “You look like a grocer, but you’re the best actor in radio.” Even though he has been in radio for eight years and has ridden miles in N. B. C. elevators, the page boys still ask him for tickets of admission. They won’t believe he works there.
Born In England
Brown was born in Hull, England, on April 4, 1904, began his education in London, continued it in Melbourne, Australia, and finished it in New York public schools. He now is an American citizen.
His first job was that of secretary to Frank Campbell, of the Funeral Church. He had several secretarial jobs after that, but was graduated in due course to office manager with a music-publishing firm. From there he went to real estate selling, and later became a counselor at boys’ camps. It is impossible to follow Brown’s career step by step. Before going into stock and the Broadway theater, he worked in summer resorts and various little-theater enterprises.
His personal life is happy. He is married to June White, former stage actress, and has two children—a girl, 1 1/2 years old, and a boy, 5. They live in a rambling old house overlooking the Hudson at Croton, N. Y. While he was courting the present Mrs. Brown, he sent her a telegram when she opened in the Broadway play, “Achilles Had a Heel.” It read in part, “And so has June.” She married him anyway.
Foresees Television
He feels that stage experience is valuable in radio work, but not essential. He cited the case of Ann Thomas, Goodman Ace’s pert secretary, who tried out for a part in a Broadway show lost season. She “fell into the part so easily at the first reading that the director and producer were amazed. Radio actors have to fit into parts on short notice—no six weeks’ rehearsal to smooth off the corners. He also believes they have the edge on their stage brethren because they are not typed so rigidly.
“What do you think about the average radio actor when television hits its stride?” the interviewer asked. “Any actor who doesn’t investigate or isn’t ready for it is crazy,” he said. “The change will be as revolutionary as the evolution of the silent movies into sound.
“Radio brass hats will have another problem also,” he continued. “They will have to figure out some way for the housewife to watch the shows while she cooks and cleans. The daytime show will be the biggest problem. I don’t know how they will solve it but I know television will bring an entirely new technique into the radio field.”

There is another connection with Jack Benny. Brown appeared, uncredited, in Benny’s self-trashed film The Horn Blows At Midnight in 1945. The same year, he was in Allen’s It’s in the Bag. He had a connection with Jack once-removed; he had a regular role on Dennis Day’s radio show. A list of his credits would be impossible, but I’ll mention one other. He was the lazy boyfriend Al on My Friend Irma; creator Cy Howard told a fan magazine how Brown would get miffed for pulling him away from poker games with Lud Gluskin’s musicians during rehearsals (Howard semi-joked Brown likely made more money than he did).

When television “hit its stride,” Brown was there, playing Harry Morton on the Burns and Allen show in 1951. Then, he wasn’t playing Harry Morton. Brown got caught in the blacklist. He had been named in Red Channels the previous June. Historian Liz McLeod relates:

Brown's "Red Channels" dossier, found on page 30, consists of precisely two items: he participated in three events sponsored by the Progressive Citizens of America in 1947, and he signed an Amicus Curiae brief seeking a review of the convictions of two members of the Hollywood Ten.

He appeared before a House Un-American Activities Subcommittee in November 1953. He plead the Fifth Amendment. At the time, he was appearing as Thorny on the radio version of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. His union, AFTRA, caved in to the witch-hunters. The following February, despite denials he was a Communist Party member, and taking the union’s loyalty oath, he was told he would be suspended if he didn’t testify before the Committee in 90 days. His career was over.

You’d never know any of this reading his obituaries in Variety or the Associated Press or United Press, or Ozzie Nelson’s autbiography. There is no mention of it. Several obits pointed out his time on the Benny and Allen shows. He died of a heart attack in 1957 at the age of 53.

Molehills and Jersey

Fred Allen’s feud with Jack Benny began with an Allen ad-lib in late 1936 and carried on even after Allen’s radio show came to an end in 1949.

Radio fans know (I hope) it was all fake. But his real feud was with network and sponsor ridiculousness, climaxing, perhaps, with Allen’s show being cut off the air for almost a half-minute in 1947 when he started to make fun of an imaginary NBC executive. The public, rightfully, sided with humorous Allen over the humourless network.

There was one place where NBC couldn’t fade him out—well, other than newspaper interviews where he continued to drip venom on radio and television—and that was during his audience warm-ups. One can only imagine the reaction in the sponsor’s booth while he did this.

That fine publication, Radio Life, published a series on audience warm-ups; unfortunately not all of them are available. The first one was about Allen’s show, published on July 25, 1948.

Acid-Tongued Fred Allen Takes Advantage of His Warm-up Time to Enlarge on the Subject That Once Got Him Faded From the Network!
NEW YORKERS will tell you that one of the best shows to see in town is one that isn't advertised and not listed in those “where-to-go" guidebooks. Natives and visitors to the city both try to accomplish the difficult feat of getting in to see it. Money can't get you in, since the show costs nothing to produce or to see. Only three hundred people can be admitted to the theater where it plays.
This entertainment rarity is Fred Allen's fifteen-minute audience-warm-up period before each of his Sunday broadcasts. The small studio at NBC in New York holds the three hundred lucky devotees who've managed to wangle tickets to the broadcast.
Veepees vs. Allen
Fred, famous for his acid views on certain phases of radio, gained extra fame a season back by suffering a rather severe reprimand for poking sarcastic fun at the network vice-presidents. He was cut off the air. He takes advantage of the warm-up period, naturally, to express himself more fully on the vice-president subject.
“Radio's vice-presidents are men who do not know what their jobs are," Allen explains to the audience, "and by the time they find out, they are no longer with the organization.
“In the early days of radio, the vice-presidents used to work hard.
When they arrived in their offices ... in the morning, they used to find a molehill on their desks. Their job was to build that molehill into a mountain by 5:00 p.m.
“ . . . all vice-presidents were haunted by the fear of going to 'heck.' 'Heck' is a word invented by the National Broadcasting Company, which denies the existence of hell and the Columbia Broadcasting System, though not necessarily in that order." According to Fred, these are the sins that speeded a vice-president to “heck"; “tearing a clean memo, sprinkling water at the water cooler or springing the buzzer in a fit of executive pique. On the other hand . . . if they did their jobs well, they were assured of going to the Rainbow Room, where the cover charge was to be eternally removed."
Now, however, times have changed for vice-presidents. “They function by means of conference —a conference is a group of people who singularly can do nothing and collectively agree that nothing can be done." Fred does admit that when they are rushing around the corridors they make a colorful picture — “so colorful that the travelogue people come every spring to take pictures of the vice-presidents going up-carpet to spawn."
Other Gag Targets
Second favorite Allen target is radio itself. He begins his warm-up by explaining that he has a cold. For this ailment he claims to have followed the prescription of a guest expert (“an interne in a pet hospital") on radio's outstanding medical program, “Young Doctor Malone." “I swallowed a remedy which claimed to fight colds four ways," he continues. “The tablet worked one way four times and, as yet, the other three ways have not been heard from." Concerning warm-ups, Allen warns the audience about “one of the more animated comedians in Hollywood who overdid his warm-up and cremated three hundred and fifty people in his audience." [Note: an Earl Wilson column revealed Allen was talking about Red Skelton].
Another great favorite among Allen's comedy topics is people from New Jersey. This is evidently a local joke in New York, in much the same spirit as Hollywood's Anaheim routine. Allen tells a poignant story of how a group of New Jersey dance-lovers made an expedition to the Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. Becoming confused, as people from New Jersey are apt to do when they emerge from their natural habitat, they wandered into the RCA Building and were borne into the Allen show. To console this group for the temporary loss of the Rockettes, Fred lifts a trouser leg delicately to display the Allen calf.
At one time the comedian used to create a new warm-up for each show, but he found that they were too well appreciated. Other comedians were showing a touching regard for his material. Now he sticks to pretty much the same routine and it's still greeted with the same hilarity — particularly by network vice-presidents and people from New Jersey!

We mentioned the Benny-Allen feud. If you’re wondering whether Allen varied his warm-up when Benny showed up on his show, here’s a portion of a column from the Des Moines Register of July 8, 1979.

Silence wasn't golden in radio's golden age
By ED KINTZER
A big event each year on radio was when Jack Benny brought his cast from the West Coast to New York so he and Fred Allen could exchange guest shots — usually for their last shows of the season.
This was the scene at NBC's Radio City studios on Sunday, June 27, 1948.
Fifteen minutes before the 7 o'clock air time, announcer Don Wilson walked onto the large, uncurtained stage of Studio 8-H, welcomed the audience and introduced Phil Harris, who led the band in a number with wild and exaggerated musical directions.
Then Wilson introduced the rest of the cast as they took their places on stage: Sportsmen Quartet, Dennis Day, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Artie Auerbach (who played "Mr. 'pickel in the middle, mustard on top' Kitzel”) and Mary Livingstone. Benny sauntered out from behind the 8-H control room throwing kisses, and while he was joking briefly with the audience, a nasal-twanged voice came from the rear of the studio: "I wouldn't throw a fish a line like that." Fred Allen came down the middle aisle and joined Benny on stage to trade Insults until air time.
Later that night down in Studio 6-A, Fred Allen's warm-up consisted of Fred Allen. Unannounced, he stepped before the curtain and welcomed the audience, and then proceeded to throw barbs at his sponsor, the Ford Motor Co. Less than a minute before the 8:30 air time, the curtain opened. Announcer Kenny Delmar, script in hand, and orchestra leader Al Goodman, baton raised, watching the control room for the go-ahead signal.
No introduction was made of the cast seated in front the orchestra: Parker Fennelly, who played “Titus Moody”; Minerva Pious, "Mrs. Nussbaum”; Peter Donald, "Ajax Cassidy”; Portland Hoffa; Jack Benny, and the five singing DeMarco Sisters. Announcer Delmar also played the popular Senator Claghorn.

You’d think Allen would have brought Benny up on stage, as the audience would no doubt have loved it, but Allen doesn’t appear to have wanted to waste any off-air time he could spend attacking things he couldn’t slice and dice on the air.

As a side note, the article mentions that Bert Parks announced the Vaughn Monroe Show on CBS, but the warm-up act was someone who never appeared on the programme—Frank Fontaine. Before long, Jack brought him on the Benny show to do variations of his John L.C. Sivoney night-club act (and impressions), and the exposure gave a huge boost to his career.

It’s also interesting to read that Jack was given cavernous Studio 8-H at Rockefeller Centre. It was designed for Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony radio broadcasts but people today know it as the home of Saturday Night Live. You, perhaps, are familiar with Allen’s small Studio 6-A. A gentleman used to broadcast a late-night show from there. His name is David Letterman.

More of the Wit of Fred Allen, Would-Be TV Star

Fred Allen wasn’t finished with radio in 1949 when his show for Ford went off the air. In 1950, there were guest appearances on other NBC shows—and even Jack Benny’s over on CBS. He stayed out of radio “to get a taste of oblivion. I shall be the only radio comic with a preview of oblivion when television really takes over,” he was quoted in a Louisville newspaper that January.

Allen still exercised his wit and opinions in the popular press that year. Here’s a column from UP from Feb. 18th.

Fred Allen Doesn’t Like Radio, Video or Anything Else
By ALINE MOSBY
(United Press Hollywood Correspondent)
Fred Allen yesterday said he’s very happy to be temporarily retired because: Radio’s dying, television isn’t grown up yet and the movies never have made a funny man out of him.
The sourpuss comedian quit radio last year because of illness. He says he has little intention of working again, either.
“Television won’t kill radio. Radio’s doing a pretty good job of killing itself,” cracked Allen. “It’s half dead, but rigor mortis hasn’t set in.
“And I’m not sure I’ll want to get into television even when it’s perfected. People tire of you more quickly when they see you every week.
“Besides, it’s anti-social. It won’t ruin sex but it’s ruining small talk. It’s getting smaller and smaller. Instead of talking you sit and watch some second-rate television show that you wouldn’t go out of your home to see.” “Besides,” he groused, “it doesn’t pay him to work, anyway.
“With taxes what they are, there’s no incentive to do anything. The only thing that keeps a lot of performers going is their ego. Well, my ego is under control.
“Therefore I see only futility in any temporary adulation I would get on TV by the portion of the unwashed public that hasn’t seen me before.”
Allen trekked to California, “which is founded on one objective, sunny,” to star in the radio version of his latest movie, “It’s In the Bag,” on NBC’s Screen Directors’ Playhouse, last night.
“I’ve made five movies, the latest in 1945, all of them bad. Every few years somebody comes around and says nobody knows how to handle me in pictures so he wants to try. So I make a movie with him—and it’s bad.
“In Hollywood acting ability or talent doesn’t count. You have to be photogenic.”
Allen furthermore th1nk he’s doing the public a favor by staying jobless for a while.| ‘An actor is like a cinder in the public eye,” he went on. “People need relief from him. The public should be very grateful to me. Everybody else is boring the hell out of them in pictures and radio. The tax boys are getting a rest, too. They don’t have to bother counting all my money.
“Next year I’ll write a book. The year after that I’ll read it and the next year I’ll tear it up. That’ll take up three years.
“Meantime I’m out here getting movie stars to donate their swimming pool to New York to help the water shortage.”

He began his television career that fall as one of the hosts appearing on a rotational basis on The Colgate Comedy Hour (he was gone by December to Florida for health reasons). He also wrote two books, though he died before completing the one about his vaudeville/stage life before radio. As for taxes, he beat the state of Massachusetts over a $90 tax bill, proving before a judge he no longer lived in Boston.

Allen used some of the same lines when he returned to New York and spoke with Earl Wilson. The column showed up March 3rd or 10th, depending on the paper.

Fred Allen Busy Doing ‘Nothing’
It’s Tougher Than Working, ‘Retired’ Comedian Finds
By EARL WILSON
NEW YORK—"In California," said Fred Allen, who's just back from there, "people don't know the meaning of the word ‘happen’ because nothing ever does.
"It's so crowded that all the oranges are on the ground because people are living in all the trees.
"They say Los Angeles is booming—just because the streets are full of people all the time.
"But those people in the streets are people moving from one house to another house. Naturally, when anybody moves into one of those California houses, he moves out of it and into another one right away."
Fred, you can see, had a good time in California. I met him at the Plaza Oak Room where his agent was trying to persuade him to go back to work.
Fred isn't very eager, however.
"You used to save your money for a rainy day. With taxes the way they are now, you save your money and when it rains all you've got to hold over your head is an income tax receipt."
I suggested that anybody with his talent must also be ambitious to have a vast audience every week.
"Nowadays," Fred replied, "You keep your nose to the grindstone and you wind up with your nostrils full of emery dust."
"So you have no plans?"
"I've got no more plans than a dead architect."
"Don't you like to be busy?"
"Why, I'm busier doing nothing than I was when I was working. In Hollywood I was on the Bob Hope show and on the way from the dressing room to the microphone, I did two benefits.
"Everybody in Los Angeles was trying to invent something. One guy was making his own Sanka. He put sleeping pills in his coffee.
"I saw trailers with television aerials on them. Guys that hadn't got homes yet had TV sets out in their yards. It got so cold while I was there, they put smudge pots under people.
"California is a state made famous by an adjective. Without that adjective ‘sunny,’ California would be another Nebraska.
"I like San Francisco. I don't know why they should build all those bridges. The people are so nice, no one would ever want to leave there."
"Don't you miss being on the air?" I asked.
"Those other guys are treadmill comedians, quantity comedians. They think they have to be on all day, and after they are, you can't remember a thing they say."
"Now that you've commented about California, what have you to say about New York?" I said.
"New York! The hotels have no water. The clerk gives you a bath towel and a divining rod."
Fred got up to go. "I have to see my dentist," he said. "Want to come along and have a tooth pulled on me?"

Wilson was one of few critics who liked Allen’s TV debut. Most the rest of the reviews I’ve seen, with the exception of Sid Shalit’s rave in the New York Daily News, rated it, as they say in baseball, “swing and a miss.” Wilson’s column of September 27, 1950 opened with:

NEW YORK—Fred Allen’s first TV show was for intelligent people—but I liked it anyway.
It had “class.” Fred discussed big NBC executives. He said one was so big he had a wastebasket to throw people in. He also said, “There is more to television than meets the nose.”
Backstage, Fred and guest Star Monte Wooley [sic] talked about the unbelievable amount of work that goes into a show. They had rehearsed for more than a wek. “Do you think you’ll do much television,” I asked Wooley.
Tossing his heard in the air, he snorted, “I shouldn’t think so.”

The Herald Tribune’s John Crosby pointed out Allen “seemed ill at ease in front of all those cameras.” I don’t think Allen lost that. Even on What’s My Line? he never really appeared comfortable. He once said he liked the panel show because it left him plenty of time to write. As he showed again and again, the place where he was most at ease was a place with words.

Knock, Knock. Who Are You?

Allen’s Alley made a huge impression on radio listeners, even though it was only part of Fred Allen’s show for a small percentage of the time he was on the air (1932 to 1949, with a couple of years off for health reasons). And only one version of the Alley made a huge impression—the one that developed in the 1945-46 season when Kenny Delmar’s Senator Claghorn and Parker Fennelly’s Titus Moody were added to Minerva Pious’ Mrs. Nussbaum (Peter Donald’s Ajax Cassidy arrived the following season).

The original Alley in 1942 was anchored around Alan Reed as Falstaff Openshaw, who was the only character Allen had developed at that point. Besides Mrs. Nussbaum, there were veteran Allen cast members Charlie Cantor as Socrates Mulligan and John Brown as John Doe, both of whom employed voices they had used periodically on the show over the years.

For anyone who likes Allen’s work, it’s fascinating hearing other characters in the Alley. Some didn’t last very long. There have been times where I’ve listened and wondered “Who’s that?”

One instance is on the December 19, 1943 broadcast, the second one of the season. Two voices were completely unfamiliar. Fortunately, the Orlando Sentinel gave a preview on that date and revealed the identity of the actors:

Orson Welles, who of recent days has established quite a reputation for throwing ad libs into his radio appearances, walks right into the one place where he is bound to meet some rough weather . . . Fred Allen’s “Star Theatre,” tonight at 9:30 over WDBO. Welles will tangle with the acknowledged quick-quip-like-a-whip, and he won’t get any help from Portland Hoffa, Al Goodman’s Orchestra, Alan (Falstaff Openshaw) Reed, Jack Smart, Everett Sloane, Betty Walker and Jimmy Wallington.

Yes, for several weeks, Everett Sloane was part of Allen’s Alley. Allen’s show came from New York. Both John Brown and Min Pious were in Hollywood and slumming on the Jack Benny show. Replacements had to be found. Sloane was in New York starring on CBS’ Crime Doctor, which signed off 35 minutes before Allen’s show started on the same network. He was a 15-year radio veteran and had been one of the members of Welles’ Mercury Players, so he seems to have been an unusual choice for a comedy programme, though he shot two movies in the 1960s with Jerry Lewis. On the December 19th broadcast, he opened the Alley routine as a new character—Mr. Hollister. Perhaps Allen sensed Sloane’s angry character bombed. “Well, Mr. Hollister won’t be with us long, I don’t imagine,” Allen said after the door slam. (An Earl Wilson column around this time said the character was to be named Runford Rant, an Allen-esque name if ever there was one).

Next he introduced Mrs. Nussbaum. Instead, a woman with a higher-pitched Jewish dialect answered the door. She didn’t even have a name. This was apparently Betty Walker. Her identity is a bit of a mystery, but she is likely an actress championed by Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen’s column of Aug. 12, 1943 reported she was an 18-year-old secretary at United Artists signed to a Paramount contract. The following March 29 she had not appeared in any Paramount films. April 3 has Kilgallen reporting that Xavier Cugat wanted to marry Walker. She vanishes from the columns after that.

Jack Smart played drunk Samson Souse and Reed anchored the sketch as Falstaff.

Allen must have figured some changes were needed. The December 26 broadcast isn’t available on-line and papers don’t say who was in the Alley that night, but the following week Elsie Mae Gordon shows up for the first time as Edna May Oliver-soundalike Mrs. Prawn. Scott debuts his Senator Bloat character and Cantor returns as Socrates Mulligan, to the audience’s applause, but a week later begins a short run as Mr. Nussbaum. Starting in April, Cantor is gone, with Pat C. Flick as Digby Rappaport (Allen loved the name “Rappaport”; it show up continually on his show). Pious returned on April 30 to handle the Jewish shtick, so Flick turned to a Greek dialect on May 7 and played restaurateur Pablo Itthepeaches (Flick also had his own half-hour show on Sunday afternoon on WMCA). They lasted out the season, then Allen was off the air for over a year, returning with the aforementioned revised Alley with Kenny Delmar.

One other unusual thing about the December 19, 1943 show: Orson Welles did not appear as advertised. He came down with the flu. Allen was forced to make a very last-minute substitution and brought in singer Jimmy Melton. I was quite stunned that Allen could come up with a completely-new script so fast until I realised he simply reused a show from November 22, 1942, with almost the same dialogue with Melton—and even the same song. Unfortunately, the version available has bad skipping (a quarter on the tone arm might have fixed that, though it’s not recommended) so a comparison isn’t easy.

By all accounts, Welles guested the following Sunday. In between, Allen appeared on a special programme for the Bakers of America.

I don’t like side-tracking posts, but I’m going to do it here. We mentioned Charlie Cantor, whose Socrates Mulligan became Clifton Finnegan on Duffy’s Tavern and whose voice was borrowed by Sid Raymond for cartoondom’s Baby Huey.

Here’s a story about Cantor from the Miami Daily News of June 13, 1943.

EQUATIC STOOGE FOR FRED ALLEN BAFFLES CRITIC
Rave Notice Given To Charlie Cantor For Unique Comedy
Take a slug of exploding bubble-gum plus a pinch of etaoin-shrdlu, throw it on a hot griddle and you have:
“Duh!-yea-a-ah!”
It's hydra-voiced Charlie Cantor, nine comedians in one, of CBS-WQAM's Fred Allen show Sundays at 9:30 to 10:00 p.m., who wins a multi-paged rave-critique from Author Jerome Beatty. Beatty attended the Allen show, saw Cantor (no relation to Edward) and came away with jigsaws in his thinkbox:
"The first time I ever saw Charlie in action I was as dumbfounded as if Herbert Hoover had risen at a banquet, manuscript in hand, cleared his throat, and begun talking in the outlandish jargon of Donald Duck. "It was at a Fred Allen show at a Columbia Broadcasting System radio theater on Sunday night in New York. Allen is one of my favorite comedians and I wanted to see him in action, but I also wanted to see ‘Socrates Mulligan,’ who is my favorite stooge."
Dignified Character
Beatty relates that when he saw the crowd of actors come on the radio stage before the show, he looked for Socrates Mulligan (Cantor) but couldn't decide which was he. "One of them was an immaculatelv tailored, middle-aged gentleman who was particularly conspicuous because he was the only man on the stage who was gravely sublime in a white stiff collar, plain dark tie, and a white shirt. I guessed that he was the chairman of the board of the sponsoring company.
Beatty had expected a character who would look the part of Socrates Mulligan, "the dumb, gabby, opinionated resident of Allen's Alley," but to his surprise, the man in the immaculate garb was Cantor.
"Charlie Cantor's comedy makes millions of radio listeners laugh every week. He's the Great Mr Anonymous of radio, the champion utility man who can play any part in any dialect except Swedish, and imitate lions, chickens, birds, dogs babies, railroad trains, police whistles, three kinds of good airplanes—one with engine trouble."
Per-Taters a la Mode
Cantor practiced for an hour and was able to play Yankee Doodle with his nose. For the Allen's Alley one Sunday evening he gave the public a brand new food delicacy. Author Beatty tells about it:
“Allen began asking about food, and called on Socrates Mulligan. Suddenly the dignified gentleman (Cantor) relaxed, screwed up his face and as I gasped at the transformation, out came water-front dialect saying, 'I'm nuts about per-taters. I eat 'em all day. I invented per-tater a la mode.’
“‘What,’ asked Allen, 'is potato a la mode?’”
'Dat's a baked per-tater,’ explaned Socrates Mulligan, ‘wid a cold per-tater on top.’”
Cantor has used one or more his voices on more shows than he can remember. On CBS he is a regular on the Allen show, and does parts for Kate Smith, Easy Aces. He prefers anonymity, so the fact that his name is seldom mentioned on the shows doesn't irk him.
Cantor, former shoe merchant, went broke in 1929, made use of his natural multi-voice talent to crash radio.

We mentioned the arrival of Claghorn and Moody when Allen returned to radio in 1945. There were two other newcomers in the Alley—songwriters McGee and McGee. Allen loved parody songs and jingles, and brought in the McGees to replace the rhyming poetry of Falstaff Openshaw. One was played by veteran novelty singer Irving Kaufman. Why he left is unknown, but the McGees were replaced by Falstaff at the start of 1946. The Alley itself was replaced for the 1948-49 season with the same concept called “Main Street.” Allen came up with a few new characters, perhaps feeling the old ones were getting worn out, but they never caught on.

No one remembers “Main Street” today. But old radio fans still know about Allen’s Alley.

The Senator, I Say, The Senator

Fred Allen returned to the airwaves on October 7, 1945 after a year away for health reasons. He changed networks (NBC from CBS), sponsors (Standard Brands from the Texas Co.), and supporting players. Newspaper stories and ads (like the one to the right) mentioned a change in Allen’s Alley, but omitted the most significant change of all.

Listeners were told Parker Fennelly (Titus Moody) and Irving Kaufman (one half of the songwriting team of McGee and McGee) would be replacing Alan Reed (Falstaff Openshaw) and Charlie Cantor (who had left the show before it went off the air and was replaced by Greek dialectician Pat C. Flick as Pablo Itthepitches). There was no mention of the character that would outshine all of them.

Scott Smart had been at the first door in the Alley as Senator Bloat. Smart left the show when it signed off in June 1944. Allen found another politician, one he could hang a “Southern superiority” routine on. That was actor Kenny Delmar, whose Senator Claghorn became an instant hit. Delmar doubled as the show’s announcer and tripled for a while as one of the other singing/songwriting McGees. The pair didn’t last long and Reed returned at the start of 1945.

Claghorn wasn’t altogether an Allen or Delmar invention. He had a different name, and without the Dixie gimmick, on The Alan Young Show. The sponsor, in an incredible display of stupidity, ordered Delmar’s Councillor Cartenbranch taken off the show.

Here are a couple of stories giving some background. This is an unbylined feature piece from the Port Clinton Herald and Republican, Jan. 4, 1946.

The Senator Is Really Announcer Ken Delmar on Fred Allen Program
NEW YORK, N.Y.— Our loudest, most articulate legislator, “Senator Claghorn”, is otherwise known as Ken Delmar, announcer on the Fred Allen show, and although he sounds mighty southern he was born in the land of the bean and the cod.
“That’s Massachusetts, son, that’s Massachusetts."
The "Senator”, called by admiring columnists "that pro-Confederate windbag”, is fast becoming a national figure. His manner of interrupt himself constantly to ejaculate “I say," and then repeating what he said before to drive home his gags, is being copied the country over.

It was Fred Allen who named him "Senator Claghorn" after he heard him talk like that.
Born in Boston, Kenneth Delmar was brought to New York City with his family as an infant. He toured the country as a child-prodigy, vaudeville performer, and did blackface, drama, comedy, anything.
During the depression he abandoned the stage and went into the importing business mostly olives and other foodstuffs, with his step father for a number of years.
But Ken was always the "life of the party” and liked to make people laugh. He broke away from the olive business by opening a dancing school where he met his wife who was the ballet teacher.
Finally a radio audition at a local New York station netted him a $20 a week job. Soon after that he was asked to make a network audition for a commercial show and was so nervous that he couldn’t read the script.
So Ken told jokes in dialect. He even imitated W. C. Fields whom he’d seen in a movie the night before — and that was exactly what the director wanted. Ken got the job and held it for seven years.
Curley-haired, spectacled 33-year-old Ken was first called to Fred Allen’s attention by Minerva Pious (Mrs. Nussbaum) who thought he was so clever that Allen ought to know him. Allen, who knows a good thing when he hears it, caught right on.
He doesn’t even care when "Senator Claghorn” yells at him, "that was a joke son, that was a joke. Don’t let them get by you, son.”

Delmar explains Claghorn’s origin in Marvel Ings’ radio column of The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, March 24, 1946.

A PICTURE STORY of Allen’s Alley appears in the April issue of Pic magazine. It features the newest Alley resident, Senator Claghorn, portrayed by Ken Delmar. There are also sketches of

Minerva Pious, Parker Fennelly, Alan Reed, Fred Allen and Portland Hoffa. The picture story includes interesting quotes from all the characters on, NBC-WIBA’s Fred Allen show.
The bombastic Senator Claghorn may sound more southern than shortnin’ bread, but he was born in Boston 34 years ago. His family came to New York City when he was an infant, and he picked up that repetitious talk from a Texas farmer.
The Texan gave Ken Delmar a lift in his rickety car once when the then undiscovered senator hitch-hiked to California. Hour after hour, the rancher spouted about his ranch: “I’ve got 500 acres, 500 that is, of the best grazing land in the country. I say, son, the best in the country, you understand." Ken never forgot it.
He entered radio in 1936 on a local New York station, the same year that he married Alice Cochran, with whom he opened and closed a dancing school. Prior to that he worked for a short time with his step-father in the importing business. As a child, he played in the D. W. Griffith motion picture, “Orphans of the Storm."
Versatile is a word applied to Delmar, who, in addition to being Claghorn and announcer on the Fred Allen show, is also protagonist for jazz as emcee of the RCA Victor show also heard Sundays over WIBA. He’s also announcer on at least four other important network programs.
The Delmars live in Manhattan and have a son, Kenneth, Jr., age four, who likes to imitate his father.

Delmar was a fine actor, appearing on The Cavalcade of America, The Columbia Workshop and other dramatic shows, but Claghorn was his best-known role. It vaulted him into a starring role (as the Senator) in Eagle-Lion’s “It’s a Joke, Son,” and resulted in Mel Blanc modifying his voice for Foghorn Leghorn (it originally was based on a sheriff that appeared on Blue Monday Jamboree and other West Coast-based radio programmes of the early ‘30s).

Allen apparently felt Claghorn had run his course and gave Delmar a Russian character to make fun of Soviet braggadocio and lack of freedoms. Sergei Stroganoff never caught on with the audience (his name was changed after a $50,000 lawsuit was filed by a real person with the same name) and the Senator continued to appear off and on until Allen went off the air in 1949 (the real Sergei N. Stroganoff was an accountant who died in Cedar Grove, N.J. in 1965).

There was life in the Senator afterward. Delmar appeared as a Claghorn knock-off on Broadway in Texas Li’l Darlin’ and then again as a Texas oil man on the CBS radio quiz show Funny Side Up. Into the 1960s, Delmar gave motivational talks and appeared at sales conferences as the Senator. And there was a re-creation of the Alley with Min Pious, Parker Fennelly and Peter Donald on Les Crane’s Nightlife late night show in 1965, again on PBS in 1972, when Delmar had retired to West Palm Beach, and again on WBZ Boston in 1975 (Delmar’s appearances in the Alley would not have heard on that station as it was a CBS affiliate).

The Senator was a Dixiecrat, but Allen was no partisan political humourist—he had Delmar take cracks at President Truman now and then. These days, jokes involving American politics bring out an extreme nastiness and cruelty in far too many people (especially on “social” media). I’d like to think audiences can still laugh about Senator Glass being “broken up,” Senator Byrd “ravin” and Senator Aiken “back,” spoken by a character so loyal to his part of the country, he only drank from Dixie Cups and refused to wear a Union suit.

Kenny Delmar, who brought the Senator to life, would tell you it was all a joke, son. And he told them very well.