Everything about Steve Allen totally explained
Steve Allen, born
Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (
December 26 1921 –
October 30 2000) was an
American television personality,
musician, actor,
comedian and
writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. He graduated to become the first host of
The Tonight Show, where he was instrumental in innovating the concept of the television
talk show. Thereafter he hosted numerous game and variety shows, including the
Steve Allen Show,
I've Got a Secret,
The New Steve Allen Show and was a regular panel member on CBS's
What's My Line?.
Allen was also known as a prolific
composer, having penned over 10,000 songs, one of which was recorded by
Perry Como and
Margaret Whiting. Allen won a
Grammy award in 1963 for best
jazz composition with his song
The Gravy Waltz. Allen additionally wrote more than 50 books. He has two stars on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Biography
Early life
Allen was born in
New York City, the son of Isabelle Allen (
née Donohue), a
vaudeville comedienne who performed under the name
Belle Montrose, and Carroll Allen, a vaudeville performer who used the stage name Billy Allen. Allen was raised on the
south side of Chicago by his mother's
Irish Catholic family.
Milton Berle once called Allen's mother "the funniest woman in
vaudeville."
Allen's first radio job was on station KOY in
Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers College (now
Arizona State University) in
Tempe, Arizona, 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, near
Monterey, California, and didn't serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California.
Career
Allen became an announcer for
KFAC in
Los Angeles and then moved to the
Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-nights-a-week
comedy show called "Smile Time" co-starring Wendell Noble. Allen had an opportunity to move to CBS Radio's
KNX in Los Angeles and did so. His music-and-talk format gradually changed to include more talk on 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, so Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to
ad lib for the first time. For 13 weeks in 1950, his show replaced
Our Miss Brooks, for the first time exposing Allen to a national audience. 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 commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera and 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 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. on the east coast.
While
Today Show developer
Pat Weaver is often credited as
Tonight's creator, Allen often pointed out that he'd previously created it 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 commonplace 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..
In 1956 NBC offered Allen a new, prime-time Sunday night
Steve Allen Show aimed at dethroning CBS's top-rated
Ed Sullivan Show. The show included a typical run of star performers, including early TV appearances by
Elvis Presley and
Jerry Lee Lewis. However, Allen, a pianist whose love of jazz influenced all his TV shows and the music presented on them, had a strong personal distaste for
rock 'n roll music. He "came from the sheet music era, where songwriters crafted compositions that anyone could play around the piano at home." For him, the "nonsense lyrics" of rock 'n' roll "were expressions of the semicoherent sexual frenzy barely contained within the recordings and live performances. Rock 'n' roll was about the excitement the artists pitched and the kids caught; it wasn't supposed to hold up when lyrics were amputated from the big beat. But that comic bit was just one of Allen's misdemeanors." He often presented skits ridiculing rock musicians. For instance, controversy surrounded his decision to present Elvis Presley wearing a white bow tie and black tails and singing
Hound Dog to a live basset hound for comedic effect. On the other hand, Allen was the first television show host to present many African American jazz musicians. 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. All were relatively obscure performers prior to their stints with Allen, and all went on to stardom.
Allen remained host of "Tonight" for three nights a week (Monday and Tuesday nights were taken over by
Ernie Kovacs) until early
1957, when he left the "Tonight" show to devote his attention to the Sunday night program. It was his (and NBC's) hope that the Steve Allen show could defeat Ed Sullivan in the ratings. While he did defeat Sullivan on a few occasions, Sullivan continued to dominate. But ironically, what the critics had called an epic battle of two television giants ended up with both beaten handily by the western
Maverick. In September 1959, Allen relocated to Los Angeles and left Sunday night television. Back in LA, he continued to write songs, hosted other variety shows, and wrote books and articles about comedy.
The 1985
documentary film Kerouac, the Movie starts and ends with footage of
Jack Kerouac reading from
On The Road as Allen accompanies on soft jazz piano from
The Steve Allen Plymouth Show in 1959. "Are you nervous?" Allen asks him; Kerouac answers nervously, "Naw."
Allen helped the recently invented
Polaroid camera become popular by demonstrating its use in live commercials and amassed a huge windfall for his work because he'd opted to be paid in
Polaroid Corporation stock.
From 1962 to 1964, Allen recreated the
Tonight Show on a new late-night
Steve Allen Show, known as The Steve Allen Playhouse, which was syndicated by Westinghouse TV. The show, taped in Hollywood, was marked by the same wild and unpredictable stunts and 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, quirky physics professor Dr.
Julius Sumner Miller, whacko comic Prof.
Irwin Corey, 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. Regis Philbin took over hosting the Westinghouse show in 1964, but only briefly.
The theater in Hollywood so billed as the "Steve Allen Playhouse" at the corner of La Mirada and Vine was an old vaudeville theater. It was built in 1906 and was the theater where Bob Hope did his first stand-up act. It was also the theater where the "You Bet Your Life" program with Groucho Marx was filmed. During a renovation, the entire interior of the building was burned out, and it's now a mental health clinic.
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 (whom Allen credited with originating the 'Hiyo!' chant later popularized by
Ed McMahon). While the show wasn't 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 being 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 (replacing original host
Garry Moore) in
1964 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 frequently as a panelist after
Fred Allen died in March 1956 until the series ended in 1967. In the summer of 1967, he brought most of the regulars from over the years back with "
The Steve Allen Comedy Hour" featuring the debuts of
Rob Reiner,
Richard Dreyfuss, and
John Byner and featuring
Ruth Buzzi, who would become famous soon after on "Laugh-In." In 1968–71, he returned to syndicated nightly variety-talk with the same wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman in later years, including becoming a human hood ornament, jumping into vats of oatmeal and cottage cheese, and being slathered with dog food, allowing dogs backstage to feast on the free food. Allen in those two years also introduced
Albert Brooks and
Steve Martin for the first time to a national audience. A syndicated version of
I've Got A Secret hosted by Allen and featuring panelists
Pat Carroll and
Richard Dawson was taped in Hollywood and premiered in local syndication in 1972. 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. From 1986 through 1988, Allen hosted a daily three-hour comedy show heard nationally on the
NBC Radio Network that featured 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 an accomplished
composer who wrote over 10,000 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 composed the score to the
Paul Mantee imitation
James Bond film
A Man Called Dagger (1967) with the score orchestrated by
Ronald Stein.
Allen was also an
actor. He wrote and starred in his first film, the
Mack Sennett comedy 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, while an average biopic of its day, was heralded for its music featuring many alumni of the Goodman band. Allen later recalled his one contribution to the film's music, used in the film's early scenes: The accomplished Benny Goodman could no longer produce the sound of a clarinet beginner, and that was the only sound Allen
could make on a clarinet!
Allen could also play a trumpet--sort of. He wrote and recorded a tune called "Impossible" in which he tries to play it straight but continues to burst out laughing. (The recording has been played on the
Dr. Demento radio show.)
From 1977 to 1981, Allen was the
producer of the award-winning
PBS series,
Meeting of Minds, a "
talk show" with actors playing the parts of notable historical figures and Steve Allen as the host. This series pitted the likes of
Socrates,
Marie Antoinette,
Thomas Paine,
Sir Thomas More,
Attila the Hun,
Karl Marx,
Emily Dickinson,
Charles Darwin, and
Galileo Galilei in dialogue and argument. This was the show Allen wanted to be remembered for because he believed that the issues and characters were timeless and would survive long after his passing. This may be more an indictment of popular tastes, which Allen himself wrote about in his last book, "Vulgarians at the Gates," than of any obtuseness on the shows' part.
Allen was 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'). Perhaps influenced by his son's involvement with a religious cult, he became an outspoken critic of organized religion and an active member of such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group which debunked pseudo-scientific claims. (For more about Allen's skepticism, see Paul Kurtz, "A Tribute to Steve Allen",
Skeptical Inquirer magazine, January/February 2001.)
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). "Allen found a way ... to satisfy the puritans. He assured viewers that he wouldn't allow Presley 'to do anything that will offend anyone.' NBC announced that a 'revamped, purified and somewhat abridged Presley' had agreed to sing while standing reasonably still, dressed in black tie." In fact, on this occasion Allen had Elvis wear a top hat and the white tie and tails of a 'high-class' musician while singing "
Hound Dog" to an actual
hound, who was similarly attired. According to Jake Austen, "the way Steve Allen treated Elvis Presley was his federal crime. Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd, and so he decided to goof on him. Allen set things up so that Presley would show his contrition by appearing in a tuxedo and singing his new song 'Hound Dog' to an elderly basset hound..."
Elaine Dundy says that Allen smirkingly presented Elvis "with a roll that looks exactly like a large roll of toilet paper with, says Allen, the 'signatures of eighteen thousand fans.' " Presley looked "at Steve as if to say: 'It's all right. I’ve been made a worse fool in my life,' and after he patted the basset hound he's about to sing
Hound Dog to, he wiped his hands on his trousers as if to wipe away Steve Allen, the dog and the whole show." Guitarist
Scotty Moore later said Elvis and the members of his band were "all angry about their treatment the previous night". "The next day, as Elvis entered the RCA studios to record 'Hound Dog,' fans greeted him with signs that declared, 'We Want the Real Elvis' and 'We Want the Gyrating Elvis.' In the press, critics were no kinder with the singer than they'd ever been, this time pronouncing him a 'cowed kid' who had demonstrated, once again, that he 'couldn’t sing or act a lick.' " In a column in
Newsweek, John Lardner wrote, " 'Like Huckleberry Finn, when the widow put him in a store suit and told him not to gap or scratch,' [Elvis] had been 'fouled' by NBC's attempt to 'civilize him ... for the good of mankind.' " Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career. The singer "was later featured in a mediocre cowboy sketch with Allen,
Andy Griffith, and
Imogene Coca. As 'Tumbleweed Presley' his big joke was 'I'm warning you galoots, don't step on my blue suede boots.' " That apparent mockery was consistent with other situations in which Allen had singers in such comic scenarios on his show, in contrast to the simple "singing in front of a curtain" style of the Sullivan show. The house singers on the early
Tonight show were subjected to many such stunts.
It must be remembered that Allen was in his late thirties at the time, and was brought up in his formative years with a big band/jazz perspective.
Stan Freberg and others of his generation also comically mocked rock 'n' roll at the time, but credit must be given for simply having the artists on in the first place. Rock 'n' roll was just coming into its own, and the nation itself didn't embrace it collectively at first, particularly folks like Allen who were brought up in the big band/crooner era. At the very least, he was an unintentional trailblazer of rock simply by breaking in new artists, per Sullivan.
Jerry Lee Lewis was so touched by Allen's booking of him for the first time before a national audience that he named his first son Steve Allen Lewis after him.
Allen also had many black jazz artists on his early
Tonight show, all exposed to a national audience for the first time, including
Earl Hines,
Billie Holiday,
Bobby Short,
Coleman Hawkins,
Lionel Hampton,
Sarah Vaughn,
Thelonius Monk,
Dizzy Gillespie,
Miles Davis, and
Count Basie. Allen was honored with numerous awards from black organizations for that very same trailblazing.
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.
Personal life
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, Steve Allen Jr., Brian Allen, and David Allen, from an earlier marriage to Dorothy Goodman that ended in divorce.
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. 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 made a last appearance on the Tonight show on
September 27,
1994, for the show's 40th anniversary broadcast.
Jay Leno was effusive in praise and actually knelt down and kissed his ring.
Death
On
October 30,
2000, Allen was driving to his son's home in
Encino, California, when his car was struck by another vehicle backing out of a driveway. Neither Allen nor the other driver believed he was injured and damage to both vehicles was minimal, so the two exchanged insurance information and Allen continued on. Shortly after arriving at his son's home, Allen didn't feel quite right and decided to take a nap. While napping, he suffered a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead shortly after 8 p.m. Autopsy results concluded that the traffic accident earlier in the day had caused a blood vessel in his chest to rupture, causing blood to leak into the sac surrounding the heart. This condition is known as
haemopericardium.
(External Link
) In addition, he suffered four broken ribs as a result of the accident. Allen was 78 years old when he died. He is interred in
Forest Lawn Memorial Park-Hollywood Hills in
Los Angeles.
Shows
Songs
"Theme from Picnic"
"This Could Be the Start of Something Big"
"The Gravy Waltz"
"The Saturday Evening Post"
"Impossible"
Books
Bop Fables (1955)
Fourteen for Tonight (1955)
The Funny Men (1956)
Wry on the Rocks (1956)
The Girls on the Tenth Floor and Other Stories (1958)
- 1970 printing: ISBN 0-8369-3608-6
The Question Man... (1959)
Mark It and Strike It: An Autobiography (1960)
Not All of Your Laughter, Not All of Your Tears (1962)
Dialogues in Americanism (1964)
Letter to a Conservative (1965)
The Ground is Our Table (1966)
Bigger Than A Breadbox (1967)
The Flash of Swallows (1969)
The Wake (1972)
Princess Snip-Snip and the Puppy-Kittens (1973)
Curses! or... How Never to Be Foiled Again (1973)
What To Say When It Rains (1974)
Schmock-Schmock! (1975)
Meeting of Minds (1978)
- ISBN 0-517-53383-9
- 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-550-4
Chopped-Up Chinese (1978)
Ripoff: A Look at Corruption in America (1979)
Meeting of Minds, Second Series (1979)
- ISBN 0-517-53894-6
- 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-565-2
Explaining China (1980)
Funny People (1981)
Beloved Son: A Story of the Jesus Cults (1982)
More Funny People (1982)
How to Make a Speech (1986)
How to Be Funny: Discovering the Comic You (1987)
- With Jane Wollman
- ISBN 0-07-001199-0
- 1992 printing: ISBN 0-87975-792-2
- 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-206-4
The Passionate Nonsmoker's Bill of Rights: The First Guide to Enacting Nonsmoking Legislation (1989)
"Dumbth": And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter (1989)
- ISBN 0-87975-539-3
- 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-237-4
Meeting of Minds, Vol. III (1989)
Meeting of Minds, Vol. IV (1989)
The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories (1990)
Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality (1990)
Hi-Ho, Steverino: The Story of My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of Television (1992)
- ISBN 0-942637-55-0
- large-print edition: ISBN 1-56054-521-6
More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality (1993)
Make 'em Laugh (1993)
Reflections (1994)
The Man Who Turned Back the Clock, and Other Short Stories (1995)
The Bug and the Slug in the Rug (1995)
But Seriously...: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind (1996)
Steve Allen's Songs: 100 Lyrics with Commentary (1999)
Steve Allen's Private Joke File (2000)
Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio—Raising the Standards of Popular Culture (2001)
Allen's series of mystery novels "starring" himself and wife Jayne Meadows were in part ghostwritten by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook
The Talk Show Murders (1982)
Murder on the Glitter Box (1989)
Murder in Manhattan (1990)
Murder in Vegas (1991)
The Murder Game (1993)
Murder on the Atlantic (1995)
Wake Up to Murder (1996)
Die Laughing (1998)
Murder in Hawaii (1999)
Quote
"How many humanists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Ten: one to screw in the light bulb 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!"
Further Information
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