NRR Project: The Fred Allen Show
NBC Radio
Broadcast Oct. 7, 1945
30 min.
Fred Allen (1894-1956) was the funniest man in radio.
Jack Benny is the best-remembered of the radio comedians, but he was served by a staff of writers. For nearly 20 years, the dough-faced Fred Allen wrote, edited, and produced a comedy show that was, for a time, the highest-rated comedy program on the air.
Fred Allen was Boston-born, under the name of John F. Sullivan. He grew up hard, coming from an impoverished background and going to work at an early age. His workplace was an ideal springboard – it was a library. There he found a book on juggling, and taught himself how to do it.
Years of work in vaudeville followed. Allen gravitated to comedy, and soon was billing himself as “Freddy James, the World’s Worst Juggler.” Allen’s sharp, incisive wit propelled him onto Broadway, where he worked his way up to starring roles in the comedy revues of the day.
Finally, in 1933 radio came calling. For nine years, Allen created an hour-long comedy show once a week – a monumental task that found him working 12-hour days and 80-hour weeks. Gradually, he built up a cadre of talented voice actors who could handle any verbal challenge.
Beginning in December 1942, Allen created the popular “Allen’s Alley” segment, in which he went from door to door to ask various eccentrics about a topic of the day. Minerva Pious played Mrs. Nussbaum, a Jewish New Yorker; Parker Fennelly played Titus Moody, a dour New Englander. Alan Reed, later the voice of Fred Flintstone, played poet Falstaff Openshaw.
Also in 1942, the sponsors and NBC cut Allen’s show from an hour to a half-hour, to Allen’s dismay despite saving Allen from the undue stress of producing so much material a week. In this new format, the jokes came fast and thick; Allen’s comedic momentum was unrivaled. He hosted celebrity guests and put them through their comedic paces, making fun of hoary old entertainment cliches, other radio programs, and more.
Allen took 1944 off due to hypertension. He returned in the fall of 1945, and experienced his greatest period of success. Not only average listeners but other comedians would tune in to enjoy his work. His gift for improvisation perked up many a show, and sometimes led to his show running long and getting cut off. This and his on-air antipathy towards NBC’s executives got him in hot water time and again.
In the Oct. 7, 1945 broadcast, Fred welcomed ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and his dummy Charlie McCarthy to the program. They essayed a skit in which Charlie is set to leave Bergen, and he and Fred come up with a corny act with which to break back into vaudeville. They fail spectacularly, and Allen is offered a job -- without Charlie. He dumps him, and Charlie is reduced to begging Bergen for his job back.
The broadcast selected by the National Recording Registry features the debut in Allen’s Alley of Senator Claghorn, voiced by announcer Kenny Delmar. The senator was from the Deep South – “we call people from Alabama Yankees!” he proclaimed. Given to repeating himself and riding over Allen, the brash and daffy politician was a big hit.
In the end, the encroachments of television and the success of radio quiz shows destroyed his ratings. Additionally, his hypertension returned. After 1949, he would no longer hold a position on the radio dial.
Listening to his entire run of preserved shows is a pleasure and an education.
The National Recording Registry Project tracks one writer’s expedition through all the recordings in the National Recording Registry in chronological order. Next time: Merle Travis’ Folk Songs of the Hills.
