The comedian Fred Allen (1894 - 1956) is not well remembered today, but was among the most popular performers on radio, was born to an Irish Catholic family and remained a devout Catholic throughout his life.
Born as John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Allenās wildly popular absurdist humor, which relied heavily on wordplay and recurring characters, such as the pompous southern Senator Claghorn (whose voice would later be borrowed for the Warner Brothers cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn) and the tightlipped New England farmer Titus Moody) was influential on a generation of comedians and comedy show formats.
Some of Allenās comedic innovations on his show, such as the sketch troupe the Mighty Allen Art Players (copied by Johnny Carson as the Mighty Carson Art Players) and a satire of the weekly news headlines, would become staples on shows such as āRowan and Martinās Laugh-Inā and later, āSaturday Night Live.ā Allenās mock feud with Jack Benny (they were good friends in real life) was enjoyed by fans of both their shows - an early example of a series cross-over. He was well known for his ad-libbed, often topical humor (delivered in an instantly recognizable nasal voice), and quips such as āCalifornia is a fine place to live ā if you happen to be an orange,ā and āTelevision is a device that permits people who havenāt anything to do to watch people who canāt do anything.ā His topical, intellectual, often sardonic humor was a strong influence on performers such as David Letterman.
Allen married Portland Hoffa, a chorus girl from a stage production in which he had headlined in 1922. The two were instantly smitten with each other and after a three year courtship, she surprised him by converting to Catholicism. They were married by Father Allen in the Actorās Chapel on West 49th Street in New York in 1927, and remained married and devoted to each other until his death in 1956. Allen continued to attend Sunday Mass throughout his life. He lived a quiet, disciplined life centered around his profession and his wife, far from Hollywood scandal, and said he had gone into a nightclub on only about three occasions in his life.
A voracious reader and writer since his days as a teenage librarian, he spent his later years as a guest star on quiz shows such as āWhatās Your Lineā and writing his memoirs of life in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio and television.
Allen was known throughout his career for defending and supporting performers who had not achieved the level of success he had, and who were often subject to the injustices of theater managers and corporate executives, as well as quietly offering large amounts of his own wealth to help support performers who had not been able to make the transition when vaudeville collapsed. Allen celebrated social justice before it was a commonly-used term.
As one biographer noted, Allen was known as a soft touch to many of New Yorkās beggars, and his pleasure in distributing money to the needy sprang not from a desire to demonstrate benevolence, but to deal with the poor on a one-to-one basis, to recognize the poor as individuals and celebrate their dignity, and to respond to their needs.
When Allen died of a massive heart attack while walking home from picking up a newspaper in 1956, among the personal items returned by the police to Portland was the rosary he had on his person. There were also two rolls of money he had carried on his person, one roll clasped, another carried loose, to provide a dollar or two (not a small amount in the 1950s) to any street corner person who asked him for change. Allen died and lived as a Catholic, pursuing excellence in his profession and social justice for those who approached him, and in his humor, which celebrated the humor but also stuck up for the dignity of the common man.
Allen is buried at Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York, as is Jimmy Cagney, Babe Ruth, New York Yankee Second Baseman and Manager Billy Martin, Harry Houdiniās wife Bess, Sal Mineo, author Fulton Oursler, and even mobster Dutch Schulz.
