Steve Allen (comedian)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You have new messages (last change).
“Steve Allen” redirects here. For other uses, see Steve Allen (disambiguation).
Steve Allen
Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows at the 39th Emmy Awards in September 1987.
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, and raised on the southside of Chicago by his mother's Irish-Catholic family,— 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 job was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers' college in Tempe (now Arizona State University) while still a sophomore. He enlisted in the U. S. Army during World War II and was trained as an infantryman. He spent his service time at Camp Roberts, California and did not serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California. Allen became as an announcer for KFAC in Los Angeles, then moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-night-a-week comedy show called Smile Time, co-starring Wendell Noble. Allen had an opportunity to move to CBS Radio's KNX in Hollywood and did so. His music and talk format gradually changed to include 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, his guest star failed to appear. Instead, Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to adlib for the first time.[1] In 1950, his show substituted for 13 weeks for Our Miss Brooks, exposing him to a national audience for the first time. Allen next went to New York to work for 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. Allen 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, Allen gained major recognition as a comedian and host.

Leaving CBS, he created a 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. 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 New York 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" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become common place on late-night TV.

In 1956, while still hosting Tonight, Allen added a Sunday-evening variety show scheduled directly against The Ed Sullivan Show on CBS and Maverick on ABC. One of Allen's guests was comedian Johnny Carson, a future successor to Allen as host of The Tonight Show; among Carson's material during that appearance was a portrayal of how a poker game between Allen, Sullivan and Maverick star James Garner, all impersonated by Carson, would transpire. Allen's programs helped the careers of singers Steve Lawrence, and Eydie Gorme who were regulars on his early Tonight Show, and Sammy Davis, Jr.. Also appearing on occasion were Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, despite Allen's personal distaste for Rock 'n Roll music. Allen also provided a nationwide audience for his famous "man on the street" comics, such as Pat Harrington, Jr., Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Dayton Allen and Tom Poston.

Allen remained host of Tonight for three nights a week (Monday and Tuesday nights were taken over by Ernie Kovacs) until 1957, when he left the late-night show to devote his attention to the weekly program. Unable to beat Sullivan in the ratings, the Sunday show 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 to 1964, Allen re-created the Tonight Show 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. One notable program which Westinghouse refused to distribute featured Lenny Bruce, during the time the comic was repeatedly being arrested on obscenity charges; footage from this program was first telecast in 1998 in a Bruce documentary aired on HBO.

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 (who Allen credited with originating the "Hiyo!" chant later popularized by Ed McMahon). 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 featured West Coast jazz musicians such as Rosolino, Stan Kenton and Teddy Edwards. The short-lived show was hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr..

Allen hosted a number of television programs up until the 1980s, including the game show I've Got a Secret and The New Steve Allen Show in 1961. He was a regular on the popular panel game show What's My Line? (where he coined the popular phrase 'Is it bigger than a breadbox?') from 1953 to 1954 and returned as a guest panelist until the series ended in 1967. In 1977 he produced Steve Allen's Laugh-Back, a syndicated series combining vintage Allen film clips with new talk-show material reuniting his 1950s TV gang. He returned to network television in 1980 with The Steve Allen Comedy Hour on NBC.

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 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 50 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. He also wrote lyrics for the standards "Picnic" and "South Rampart Street Parade."

Allen was also an actor. He wrote and starred in his first film, the Mack Sennett compilation Down Memory Lane, in 1949. His most famous film appearance is in 1955's The Benny Goodman Story, in the title role. The film is applauded for its music, but widely derided for its one-dimensional and often wildly inaccurate representation of Goodman's career and personality.

Allen was 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. This is the show Steve Allen wanted to be remembered for, because he believed that the issues and characters were timeless, and would survive long after his passing. Meeting of Minds did not prove to be a television evergreen: a proposed revival of the show was rejected as being "too cerebral."

Steve Allen was also a comedy writer, and author of more than 50 books, including Dumbth, a commentary on the American educational system, and Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality. He also wrote book-length commentaries on show-business personalities ("Funny People," "More Funny People").

Despite his Catholic upbringing, 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 saw on radio and television, particularly the programs of Howard Stern, caused him to make proposals restricting the content of programs, allying himself with the Parents Television Council. Coincidentally, his full-page ad on the subject appeared in newspapers a day or two before his unexpected death. Allen had been making speeches in which he referred to himself as an "involved Presbyterian".

Allen was also notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music, although he was showman enough to scoop Ed Sullivan by being one of the first to present Elvis Presley on network television (after Presley had appeared on the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey Stage Show and Milton Berle shows). On this occasion, in a spirit of not-so-subtle mockery, he had Elvis 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. Sometimes he would recite nonsensical songs slowly, accompanied by soft music, as if they were Shakesperian sonnets, as in an oft-repeated clip featuring his reading of "Be-Bop-a-Lula" (Gene Vincent meets Franklyn MacCormack). Other times he would adopt a stentorian tone, as in his pulpit-pounding recitation of "Shake Your Booty." Despite Allen's anti-rock perspective, Jerry Lee Lewis was so impressed by Allen as an individual that he named one of his sons after Allen.

Allen's second wife was actress Jayne Meadows, daughter of Christian missionaries, and sister to actress Audrey Meadows. The marriage of Allen and Meadows produced one son. They were married from 1954 until his death in 2000. Allen had three children from an earlier marriage that ended in divorce.

Allen survived a bout with colon cancer in 1986 and continued to star in nightclubs and television. He died on October 30, 2000 of heart failure triggered by a traffic accident that occurred earlier that day in which he suffered several broken ribs, one of which punctured a lung. 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 vitamins." 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.
  • Allen was "interviewed" in a Space Ghost: Coast to Coast episode entitled "Boatshow".

[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"