Fred Allen: His Life and Wit

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

For two decades Fred Allen, ``the man with the flat voice,'' was America's most brilliant radio humorist, and for a time his program was the most popular in the country. This appreciative biography, enlivened by hundreds of quotations from Allen's books, journals, letters, scrapbooks and scripts, follows the career of Boston-born John Florence Sullivan (1894-1956) from his early days as a vaudeville juggler to his subsequent appearances as a Broadway comedian, culminating in his 25 years of national prominence. Boston Globe art and book critic Taylor ( Saranac ) discusses Allen's meticulous working methods, his longstanding ``feud'' with Jack Benny, his happy marriage and working relationship with Portland Hoffa, Allen's wife of 27 years, and the characters he used to interview in Allen's Alley : Ajax Cassidy, Sen. Beauregard Claghorn, Titus Moody, Mrs. Pansy Nussbaum and Falstaff Openshaw. Allen's cleverness and wit, his preeminence as a master of pace and timing, acknowledged and proclaimed by the likes of James Thurber and Groucho Marx, are fully represented in this delightful, distinguished biography. Photos. (June)

Library Journal

Unlike Jack Benny, his long-time contemporary, Fred Allen is perhaps almost forgotten today, except for those who grew up listening to the radio for an evening's entertainment. He was, nevertheless, one of the leading radio comedians of the 1930s and 1940s. This book covers Allen's roots in Boston, his days of vaudeville and Broadway revues, and his coast-to-coast success on radio. Television was his downfall, however, and nearly overnight his type of humor, shrewd and sardonic, became passe. This book is very much worth reading, but its excerpts from radio scripts really do little more than suggest what it was that made Allen so funny. Listening to tapes of Allen's actual broadcasts would give a better sense of his remarkable style.-- Steve Lewis, Central Connecticut State Univ., New Britain