Steve Allen Reads Letters to the Editor
Steve Allen, the Father of All Talk-Show Hosts
See the article in its original context from
April 14, 1994
,
Section C , Folio
xvPurchase Reprints
TimesMachine is an sectional do good for domicile delivery and digital subscribers.
About the Annal
This is a digitized version of an commodity from The Times's impress archive, earlier the kickoff of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.
Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to piece of work to improve these archived versions.
Before Dave or Jay or even Johnny there was Steve Allen. Much of what is at present called talk television tin exist direct traced to the man who created the "This evening" testify on NBC in 1954. And anyone who doubts information technology need simply to drop by the Museum of Tv and Radio anytime in the next five months.
Today the museum begins a retrospective of Mr. Allen's broadcasting career, which has spanned more than four decades. The book of Mr. Allen's work is extraordinary, and and then is the impression it leaves on those who plumb information technology, said the museum's television curator, David Bushman.
"Nigh all of the conventions of what we accept come up to know as the talk show are there, from the opening monologue to the barrack with the band leader to the regular characters in sketches," Mr. Bushman said of Mr. Allen'south iv-year reign on the testify. Creating and Breaking the Rules
It is less well known, Mr. Bushman added, that Mr. Allen also helped pave the way for Oprah, Phil and Geraldo. For case, ane night early on in his career Mr. Allen broke with his entertainment format and did an entire 90-minute show on organized crime. Another time, Mr. Allen decided to demonstrate what happens to people who try to drive after they drink. He consumed half dozen double vodkas in the grade of the show, reducing himself to giddy embarrassment.
He also did theme shows with guests like "sons of famous men" and "wives of famous comedians." Such things turn upward today in listings of what's on Sally or Montel.
Mr. Allen himself has not been reluctant to point out that much of what Johnny Carson did in his 30-yr tenure on "Tonight" and even what David Letterman and Jay Leno exercise on tardily-nighttime television set has its roots in what Mr. Allen and his bandage of characters did. Seen in the vintage tapes and kinescopes collected by the museum, Mr. Bushman said, the lineage is unmistakable. Jell-O and Other Treats
A brusk prune from one of Mr. Allen's most famous bits, "The Question Man," makes it clear where Mr. Carson's far more famous "Carnac the Magnificent" routine came from. Mr. Letterman has acknowledged his debt to Mr. Allen'southward stunt sense of humor; during the retrospective one can come across Mr. Allen rolling around in a giant bowl of tossed salad with a female wrestler or jumping into a vat of Clot-O. (If you take hold of the correct rerun of Mr. Letterman'south show on cable, you will see him sticking himself to a wall in a Velcro costume or dropping into a basin of milk while covered in Rice Krispies.)
Mr. Allen, now 72, is to attend the ii special seminars today, which boot off the retrospective at the museum, at 25 West 52d Street. (Both are sold out.) In an interview yesterday at the Park Avenue flat of the actress Audrey Meadows, the sister of Mr. Allen's married woman, Jayne, Mr. Allen, who is mildly hobbled by a instance of sciatica and has exchanged his trademark blackness-framed glasses for a tortoise-trounce look, said he was extremely pleased by the effort past the museum in assembling the 5-month series of programs.
"I'g amazed that they went to so much trouble," Mr. Allen said.
But he said he didn't see the creation of the realm of late-night idiot box equally the crowning artistic achievement of his career.
"I encounter where it was important in one context," he said. "But if you evaluate it in the context of the great tapestry of Western ideas. . . ." That very thought evokes peals of the familiar, infectious Allen laugh.
The metaphor Mr. Allen prefers for conveying the importance of the "Tonight" testify is the paper towel.
"They are very useful objects," he said of paper towels. "Otherwise we'd be drying our easily on our shirts. Simply compared to a smashing opera? The talk show is garbage compared to that level of achievement."
Still, he acknowledged with pride that his old show made a lot of people express mirth. "It was the second-best sketch-comedy testify in the history of television," he said, trailing only Sid Caesar's "Your Bear witness of Shows." The Kickoff Evidence
Unfortunately, the museum's retrospective cannot fully document that level of excellence. The programme does include the commencement "Tonight" show, on Sept. 27, 1954 (guests included Wally Cox and Willie Mays), to be shown on Fri at 12:15 P.One thousand., besides as compilations of highlights on other dates. (Among the memorable moments: Mr. Allen's famous routine of reading aloud, with a great show of emotion, letters to the editor of The Daily News and impromptu comedy derived from interviews with people on the street outside his onetime Hudson Theater, another routine that presaged Mr. Letterman's exchanges with his Broadway neighbors.)
But very few of Mr. Allen'south four years on "Tonight" have survived what he called "a cultural atrocity." An NBC employee in the tardily 1950's fabricated a decision to clear space by burning upward tapes of erstwhile programs stored in New Bailiwick of jersey. Mr. Allen said every i of his "This evening" shows stored there was lost. The few that survive -- he said he has only about 25 -- come from other sources.
Some classic programs are gone forever, Mr. Allen said, including a ninety-minute interview with Carl Sandburg and an entire show with Richard Rodgers around the piano.
The bulk of the museum programs consist of Mr. Allen's post-"Tonight" work: his Sunday night variety prove on NBC (which included the showtime "human in the street" routine, a comedy fleck with Elvis Presley earlier he sang from the waist upwardly for Ed Sullivan and a memorable night when the Three Stooges followed Lenny Bruce as guests); his later syndicated shows for Westinghouse (where a very immature Woody Allen performed stand up-upward comedy), and Gilt West Dissemination (where Steve Martin joined the men in the street).
Likewise included are many television interviews of Mr. Allen, with Edward R. Murrow and Mike Wallace amidst others, some of Mr. Allen'south early radio piece of work and i full program based on his PBS series "Coming together of Minds," in which actors portraying great thinkers and other figures of history gathered in a talk-evidence format (and won a Peabody Laurels in the procedure.)
Mr. Bushman said his research into Mr. Allen's career, which has also included an enormous body of musical work and the publication of more than xl books, revealed a man "of alien artistic sensibilities." Mr. Bushman called Mr. Allen "a man with two sides: the serious man trapped in a vaudevillian's trunk."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/14/arts/steve-allen-the-father-of-all-talk-show-hosts.html
0 Response to "Steve Allen Reads Letters to the Editor"
Post a Comment