Review by Booklist Review
Allen, the famous radio and vaudeville comic, worked his way through high school as a runner in the reading room of Boston Public Library. He was eventually promoted to Sunday director of the Children's Department. From the library he went on to vaudeville, Broadway, and, of course, his famous radio program, "The Fred Allen Show," which ran for 18 years. Taylor's serious (at times rather ponderous) recounting of Allen's personal and professional life is brightened by many quotes and samples of Allen's comic routines and writing. Allen was a brilliant satirist whose impact upon the fine art of comedy is readily recognized by Taylor. Bibliography of books and articles. To be indexed. --Denise Perry Donavin
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
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) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
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 (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The life of a great American satirist whose work--aside from its influence on Garrison Keillor, Woody Allen, Bob and Ray, the Mighty Carson Art Players, and others--disappeared with the rise of a cathode-ray tube. As with his excellent study of this country's fight against tuberculosis (Saranac: America's Magic Mountain, 1986), Taylor researches in depth, gives many absorbing pages detailing radio wit Allen's rich background in vaudeville and the tenor of the radio days that he and Jack Benny bestrode like twin colossi. From Cambridge, Mass., Allen entered vaudeville in his teens, billing himself as the World's Worst Juggler. After catching the juggling and patter of W.C. Fields, he added jokes to his act and became a tireless collector of humor. A devout Catholic, he married chorine Portland Hoffa, who converted from Judaism for him and became his very talented ""wooge"" (female stooge). Headliners together, they eventually moved to radio, with Allen writing, casting, directing, and starring in half-hour shows. His nasal delivery flattened his tremendously gifted metaphors and lent sandpaper reality to outlandish imagination. Unlike Benny or any other radio comedian, Allen wrote his own material, but later took on an assistant or two (the show went hour-length early in 1934 and stayed there for eight years), including 21-year-old Herman Wouk. Allen's fabulous feud with Jack Benny captivated the nation, had it riveted to both their shows. Some of Allen's earlier material seems antediluvian now, Taylor admits, but long quotes from later shows has Allen rasping out real sparks. ""Fred Allen's books are out of print,"" writes Allen, ""his movie and television appearances were negligible, and radio, as he conceived of it, is obsolete. Yet be does not dwindle away and disappear."" And this is a marvelous reminder of why he should not. First-rate. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
