Fred Allen's Treadmill to Oblivion

[Yhtapmys]

I have fruitlessly hunted through used bookstores for this years (I found one of Fred's other books) but see someone has uploaded a scanned copy at Archive.org

http://www.archive.org/details/tredmilltooblivi000176mbp

I read it many years ago and am now just peering at it again. Anyone who's a fan of Fred or interested in his experiences in radio should read it.

Yhtapmys

[Yhtapmys]

Sorry I didn't mention off the top that this is Fred Allen's birthday.

Now, he mentions an incident in Treadmill to Oblivion about being cut off the air. It happened in 1947. Here's a story on it.

Air During Banned Wisecrack
New York, April 21—(AP)— Radio Comedian Fred Allen, cut off the air last night about 25 seconds, says "It's like walking into a pool room and plunking down your 60 cents for an hour's play, and then you find the owner has hidden the cue on you."
The National Broadcasting Company, explaining why the Allen program was cut off the air, said in a statement that "We asked that changes be made in the script, and the changes were not made. Therefore, the program was off the air for about 25 seconds at the beginning."
Allen said that "NBC told me I couldn't kid radio on the air." He said he refused to change lines, making a joke about his program's running overtime the week before, because the suggested changes didn't improve the script.
In the program opening, unheard by radio listeners, Allen told of his company's "vice-president in charge of program ends" who noted the time saved when programs ran overtime.
"When the vice-president saved up enough seconds, minutes and hours to make two weeks, he uses the two weeks of our time for his vacation," Allen said.

COMEDIAN CUT OFF AIR HALF MINUTE FOR NETWORK QUIP
NEW YORK, April 21 —(UP) — Fred Allen was cut off the air for more than half a minute last night by the National Broadcasting Company to eliminate a jest about a mythical network official.
Allen was explaining to Portland Hoffa, his wife, why their program had been cut off the previous week. It had run overtime.
"There's a little . . ." was as far as he got last night.

To make things worse, NBC fades out both Bob Hope and Red Skelton a couple of nights later when they tried to comment on it.

Yhtapmys

[mackdaddyg]

Being a huge fan of Fred Allen, I'm glad to see his book mentioned here. It is a fun read, although a lot of it consists of transcripts from his radio shows. Still, his commentary is entertaining, although to me it ends on a somewhat sour note from him, which is completely understandable.

"Much Ado About Me" is the book he was working on when he passed away. It is more like a biography and talks about his childhood and vaudeville years. It's well worth seeking out, and I think you can find it on ebay without too much trouble.

I really wish he could have stuck around a few more years. I love that guy's sense of humor. Given the number of years he was on radio, it seems like a lot of his stuff is still not available. My understanding is the infamous episode that started the Benny/Allen feud is in a library archive somewhere, but nobody has a copy publicly available.

[Yhtapmys]

I really wish he could have stuck around a few more years. I love that guy's sense of humor. Given the number of years he was on radio, it seems like a lot of his stuff is still not available.

I agree with comments, on this message board I think, that Fred would have made a good late night talk show host, though writing a nightly monologue on his own would have been too much for him (likely he would have carried on a dialogue with Portland, as in radio). He was smart enough to adapt, though. I could see him doing Allen's Alley one night of the week and other social commentary formats on other nights. And he could certainly have carried on the Benny feud.

Fred had elements of a talk show in his 30s broadcasts with the Average Man's Roundtable and People You Wouldn't Expect to Meet. It strikes me as the ideal format for him.

Fred also was also smart enough to study things and then develop. There's an interesting Chicago Tribune article from, I think, 1950, where he flew to Chicago to see how live television was done there because it came across differently in style than programming from New York.

Yhtapmys