Fred Allen

Fred Allen (1894-1956), born John Florence Sullivan, was one of the premiere comedians of radio in the 1930's and 1940s. Like many of the comics of early radio, such as Jack Benny and George Burns, he came to radio from vaudeville and the theatre.

After a couple of false starts, Allen achieved success on NBC with a show that ran from 1933 to 1940 under a number of names before settling on Town Hall Tonight. In 1940, he moved to CBS with the Texaco Star Theater, which ran from 1940 to 1944. That show ended when Allen had to take a year off because of ill health due to hypertension. He returned to radio with The Fred Allen Show, which aired on NBC from 1946 to 1950, when ratings competition and Allen's own declining health led to its demise.

Allen is perhaps best remembered for the feature, Allen's Alley, a fictional street peopled by eccentric characters, most of them broadly-drawn stereotypes. In each visit to the Alley, Allen would chat with the likes of the housewife Mrs. Nussbaum, the poet Falstaff Openshaw, and the unreconstructed Southern Senator Claghorn (who was the prototype for Warner Brothers' Foghorn Leghorn).

Allen's sense of humor inclined strongly to satire and wordplay. He was regularly in conflict with networks, sponsors, and censors, who were quite timid about making fun of public figures or current events, not to mention references to--ahem!--"marital relations."

Attempts to make his brand of humor, in particular, Allen's Alley, work on television were unsuccessful, and Allen's career faded in the early 1950s, except for an occasional guest spot.

To learn more, see Wikipedia and The American Scholar.

Series description provided by Frank Bell.