Steve Allen (comedian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Steve Allen" redirects here. For other uses, see Steve Allen (disambiguation).
Steve Allen
Steve Allen at the 39th Emmy Awards, September, 1987. Photo by Alan Light
Born December 26, 1921
New York City, New York
Died October 30, 2000
Los Angeles, California

Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American musician, comedian and writer instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. Allen is called the father of TV talk shows.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Allen was born in New York City on St Stephen's Day (hence his first name) to Carroll Allen and Belle Montrose, Irish-American Catholics. Milton Berle once called Belle Montrose "the funniest woman in vaudeville."

His first radio gig was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers' college in Tempe (now Arizona State University) while still a sophomore. After a stint in the infantry during World War II, Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California, where he was stationed in the Army. Allen started out as an announcer for KFAC in Los Angeles, then moved on to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-night-a-week comedy show called Smile Time. Working as a comedian for that station, Allen had the chance to move on to CBS Radio's KNX in Hollywood. His music and talk format gradually added more talk to his half-hour show, boosting his popularity and creating standing-room-only studio audiences. During one "episode" of the show reserved primarily for an interview with Doris Day, Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to adlib for the first time because Doris Day was a no-show.[1] For 13 weeks in 1950, his show substituted for Our Miss Brooks, giving him a national audience. After Los Angeles, Allen went to New York and to work for local TV station WCBS. He achieved national attention when he was pressed into service at the last minute to host Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts when its host was unable to appear. He turned one of Godfrey's live Lipton commercial's upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera, then pouring both into Godfrey's ukulele. With the audience (including Godfrey, watching from Miami) uproariously and thoroughly entertained, the moment gave Allen major clout as a comedian and host.

Departing CBS, he conceived a local late-night New York talk-variety TV program in 1953 for what is now WNBC-TV. The following year, on September 27, 1954, the show went on the full NBC network as The Tonight Show, with fellow radio personality Gene Rayburn (who later went on to host hit game shows such as Match Game) as the original announcer/sidekick. The show ran from 11:15 pm to 1:00 am on the east coast.

While Today Show developer Pat Weaver is often credited as Tonight's co-creator, Allen often pointed out that the show was previously "created" — by himself — as a local show.

"This is Tonight, and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: this program is going to go on forever", Allen told his nationwide audience that first evening. "Boy, you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around." It was as host of The Tonight Show that Allen pioneered the "man on the street" and audience-participation comedy bits that have become commonplace on late-night TV.

In 1956, while still hosting Tonight, Allen added a Sunday-evening variety show. The Allen programs helped nurture the careers of singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, who were regulars on his early Tonight Show and Sammy Davis, Jr.. Allen also provided a nationwide audience for his famous "man on the street" — comics such as Ernie Kovacs, Pat Harrington, Jr., Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Dayton Allen and Tom Poston.

Allen remained host of Tonight and took on the additional duties of hosting a Sunday night NBC variety show designed to compete with Ed Sullivan, on which he presented various acts including Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis until 1957, when he left the late-night show to devote his attention to the weekly program. Unable to beat Sullivan, it eventually moved to Monday nights. (After an ill-fated nightlife-oriented replacement Tonight! America After Dark, the old Tonight format returned later in the year with Jack Paar at the helm). Allen amassed a huge windfall for his work because he had opted to be paid in Polaroid stock.

John Antonelli's 1985 documentary Kerouac, the Movie starts and ends with footage of Kerouac reading from Visions of Cody as Allen accompanies on soft jazz piano, on The Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1959. "Are you nervous?" Allen asks him, and Kerouac answers nervously, "Naw."

From 1962-1964, Allen re-created the Tonight Show madness on a new late-night Steve Allen Show syndicated by Westinghouse TV. The show, taped in Hollywood, was marked by the same wild and unpredictable stunts, comedy skits that often extended down the street to a supermarket known as the Hollywood Ranch Market. He also presented Southern California eccentrics including health food advocate Gypsy Boots and an early musical performance by Frank Zappa.

The show also featured plenty of jazz played by Allen and members of the show's band, the Donn Trenner Orchestra, which included such virtuoso musicians as guitarist Herb Ellis and flamboyantly comedic hipster trombonist Frank Rosolino. While the show was not an overwhelming success in its day, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Harry Shearer, Robin Williams and a number of other prominent comedians have cited Allen's "Westinghouse show", which they watched as teenagers, as highly influential on their own comedic visions.

Allen later produced a second half-hour show for Westinghouse titled Jazz Scene which features West Coast jazzmen like Rosolino, Stan Kenton and Teddy Edwards. The short-lived show was hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr..

Allen went on to host a slew of television programs up until the 1980s, including the game show I've Got a Secret (where he coined the popular phrase 'Is it bigger than a bread box?') and The New Steve Allen Show in 1961. He was a regular on the extremely popular panel game show What's My Line? from 1953 to 1954 and returned as a guest panelist until the series' end in 1967.

From 1986 through 1988, Allen hosted a daily 3-hour comedy show that was heard nationally on the NBC Radio Network, featuring sketches and America's best known comedians as regular guests. His co-host was radio personality Mark Simone and they were joined frequently by comedy writers Larry Gelbart, Herb Sargent and Bob Einstein.

Allen was also a composer who supposedly wrote over 7,000 songs. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write fifty songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs Let's Go to Church Next Sunday was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting.

Allen's best-known songs are This Could Be the Start of Something Big and The Gravy Waltz, which won a Grammy Award in 1963 for best jazz composition. Allen was also an actor, appearing in such films as The Benny Goodman Story, starring as Benny Goodman in 1955, a film widely derided for its one-dimension and often wildly inaccurate representation of Goodman's career and personality.

Allen was also the producer of the award-winning PBS series Meeting of Minds, a "talk show" with actors playing notable historical figures, with Steve Allen as host. This series pitted Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei and other historical figures in dialogue and argument. A proposed revival of this show was rejected as "too cerebral."

He was also a comedy writer and author of over fifty books, including Dumbth, a commentary on the American educational system, and Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality.

Allen was a secular humanist and Humanist Laureate for the Academy of Humanism, a member of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. He was a student and supporter of general semantics, recommending it in Dumbth and giving the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1992. Allen was a supporter of world government and served on the World Federalist Association Board of Advisers. [1]

In spite of his liberal position on free speech, his later concerns about the smuttiness he observed on television caused him to make proposals restricting the content of programs, allying himself with the Parents Television Council. Coincidentally, a full-page ad on the subject appeared in newspapers a day or two before his unexpected death. He was also notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music. On one occasion, in a spirit of not-so-subtle mockery, he had Elvis Presley wear a top hat and tails while singing Hound Dog to an actual hound, who was similarly attired. Allen also was known to "interpret" the lyrics of actual rock songs to his audience as little more than a series of grunts. In later years, Allen had speaking engagements at which he referred to himself as an "involved Presbyterian".

Allen's second wife was actress Jayne Meadows, who was the daughter of Christian missionaries and the sister of actress Audrey Meadows. The union produced one son. They were married from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Allen died on October 30, 2000 of cardiac disease triggered by a minor traffic accident that occurred earlier that day. He was 78. Allen is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park at Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, California.

Steve Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a TV star at 1720 Vine St. and a radio star at 1537 Vine St.

[edit] Shows

[edit] Songs

  • "This Could Be the Start of Something Big"
  • "The Gravy Waltz"

[edit] Books

Allen's series of mystery novels "starring" himself and wife Jayne Meadows were in part ghostwritten by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook

[edit] Quote

"How many humanists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Ten: one to screw in the lightbulb and nine to fight for the right to do so!"

Jack LaLanne on his talk show: "I don't believe in vitimins." Allen: "But I've seen them!"

[edit] Other

  • Steve Allen lent his voice to two episodes of the series The Simpsons, in "Separate Vocations" in the third season, and "'Round Springfield" in the sixth season. He was also impersonated in the Family Guy movie: Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, in which Stewie Griffin is sent to "Hell" and Allen greets him there and began taking his shirt off, much to the horror of Stewie (although all he wanted him to do was fix his collar). Then he finds out that there's only one television program in Hell: Who's the Boss.
  • Steve Allen was the subject of an invention on Mystery Science Theater 3000, the Steve-o-meter. If Steve Allen has already thought of someone's idea, the Steve-o-meter buzzes. He had even thought of the Steve-o-meter.
  • Gave a personal introduction to a 1990 rebroadcast of Free to Choose, a documentary on free markets.
  • Despite later protests against the sport of professional wrestling, Allen appeared in WWE "Wrestlemania VI" in 1990. He performed a short skit in the bathroom where he insulted The Bolsheviks and the Russian national anthem. Steve also conducted a backstage interview with the tag team of Rhythm & Blues as well as providing commentary during the Rick Rude vs. Jimmy Snuka match.
  • Allen served as the President of Encino Little League in Encino, CA.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.steveallen.com

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Preceded by:
–		 Host of The Tonight Show
1954 – 1957		 Succeeded by:
Jack Paar
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../s/t/e/Steve_Allen_%28comedian%29_6420.html"
In other languages