Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Will Rogers
birth date	November 04, 1879
birth place	Oologah, Indian Territory (now Oklahoma)
death date	August 15, 1935
death place	Point Barrow, Alaska Territory(now Alaska)
death cause	Airplane Crash
occupation	Actor, comic, columnist, radio personality
party	Democratic
spouse	Betty Blake (1879–1944)
children	William Vann "Bill" RogersMary Amelia RogersJames Blake RogersFred Stone Rogers
website	}}

William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, actor, and one of the best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s.

Known as Oklahoma's favorite son, Rogers was born to a prominent Cherokee Nation family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). He traveled around the world three times, made 71 movies (50 silent films and 21 "talkies"), wrote more than 4,000 nationally-syndicated newspaper columns, and became a world-famous figure. By the mid-1930s, Rogers was adored by the American people. He was the leading political wit of the Progressive Era, and was the top-paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Rogers died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed near Barrow, Alaska.

His vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion, and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was readily appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His short aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Rogers even provided an epigram on his most famous epigram: :When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn't like." I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved.

Early years

Will Rogers was born on the Dog Iron Ranch in Indian Territory, near present-day Oologah, Oklahoma. The house he was born in had been built in 1875 and was known as the "White House on the Verdigris River." His parents, Clement Vann Rogers (1839–1911) and Mary America Schrimsher (1838–1890), were both Cherokee, and Rogers himself was 9/32 (just over 1/4) Cherokee. Rogers quipped that his ancestors didn't come over on the ''Mayflower'' but they "met the boat." Mary Rogers was quarter-Cherokee and a hereditary member of the Paint Clan. She died when Will was 11, and his father remarried less than two years after her death.

Rogers was the youngest of eight children. He was named for the Cherokee leader Col. William Penn Adair. Only three of his siblings, sisters Sallie Clementine, Maude Ethel, and May (Mary), survived into adulthood.

His father, Clement, was a leader within Cherokee society. A Cherokee judge, he was a Confederate veteran and served as a delegate to the Oklahoma Constitutional Convention. Rogers County, Oklahoma is named in honor of Clement Rogers. He served several terms on the Cherokee Senate. Clement Rogers achieved financial success as a rancher and used his influence to help soften the negative effects of white acculturation on the tribe. Roach (1980) presents a sociological-psychological assessment of the relationship between Will and his father during the formative boyhood and teenage years. Clement had high expectations for his son and desired him to be more responsible and business-minded. Will was more easygoing and oriented toward the loving affection offered by his mother, Mary, rather than the harshness of his father. The personality clash increased after his mother's death, and young Will went from one venture to another with little success. Only after Will won acclaim in vaudeville did the rift begin to heal, but Clement's untimely death in 1911 precluded a full reconciliation.

Rogers was a good student and an avid reader of ''The New York Times,'' but he dropped out after the 10th grade. He later claimed he was a poor student, saying that he "studied the Fourth Reader for ten years." He was much more interested in cowboys and horses, and learned to rope and use a lariat.

First jobs

Rogers worked the Dog Iron Ranch for a few years. Near the end of 1901, he and a friend left home with aspirations to work as gauchos in Argentina. They arrived in Argentina in May 1902, and spent five months trying to make it as ranch owners in the pampas. Rogers and his partner lost all their money, and in his words, "I was ashamed to send home for more," so the two friends separated and Rogers sailed for South Africa. It is often claimed he took a job breaking in horses for the British Army, but the Boer War had ended three months earlier. Rogers actually got work at Piccione's ranch in Mooi River Station.

He began his show business career as a trick roper in "Texas Jack's Wild West Circus":

He (Texas Jack) had a little Wild West aggregation that visited the camps and did a tremendous business. I did some roping and riding, and Jack, who was one of the smartest showmen I ever knew, took a great interest in me. It was he who gave me the idea for my original stage act with my pony. I learned a lot about the show business from him. He could do a bum act with a rope that an ordinary man couldn't get away with, and make the audience think it was great, so I used to study him by the hour, and from him I learned the great secret of the show business—knowing when to get off. It's the fellow who knows when to quit that the audience wants more of.

Grateful for the guidance but anxious to move on, Rogers quit the circus and went to Australia. Texas Jack gave him a reference letter for the Wirth Brothers Circus there, and Rogers continued to perform as a rider and trick roper, and worked on his pony act. He returned to the United States in 1904, and began to try his roping skills on the American vaudeville circuits.

Vaudeville

On a trip to New York City, Rogers was at Madison Square Garden when a wild steer broke out of the arena and began to climb into the viewing stands. Rogers quickly roped the steer to the delight of the crowd. The feat got front page attention from the newspapers, giving him valuable publicity and an audience eager to see more. William Hammerstein came to see his vaudeville act, and quickly signed Rogers to appear on the Victoria Roof—which was literally on a rooftop—with his pony. For the next decade, Rogers estimated he worked for fifty weeks a year at the Roof and at the city's myriad vaudeville theaters.

Rogers described these early years at the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Columbia Theater in New York City. "I got a job on Hammerstein's Roof at $140 a week for myself, my horse, and the man who looked after it. I remained on the roof for eight weeks, always getting another two week extension when Willie Hammerstein would say to me after the Monday matinee, 'you're good for two weeks more'.. . Marty Shea, the booking agent for the Columbia, came to me and asked if I wanted to play burlesque. They could use an extra attraction... I told him I would think about it, but 'Burlesque' sounded to me then as something funny." Shea and Sam A. Scribner, the general manager of the Columbia Amusement Company, approached Rogers a few days later; Shea told Scribner Rogers was getting $150 and would take $175. "'What's he carrying?' Scribner asked Shea. 'Himself, a horse, and a man'. answered Shea." Scribner replied "'Give him eight weeks at $250'".

In 1908, Rogers married Betty Blake, and the couple had four children: Will Rogers, Jr. (Bill), Mary Amelia (Mary), James Blake (Jim), and Fred Stone. Bill became a World War II hero, played his father in two films, and became a member of Congress. Mary became a Broadway actress, and Jim was a newspaperman and rancher; Fred died of diphtheria at age two. The family lived in New York, but they managed to make it home to Oklahoma during the summers. In 1911, Rogers bought a 20-acre (8.1 hectare) ranch near Claremore, Oklahoma, which he intended to use as his retirement home, for US$500 per acre.

In the fall of 1915, Rogers began to appear in Florenz Ziegfeld's ''Midnight Frolic''. The variety revue began at midnight in the top-floor night club of Ziegfeld's New Amsterdam Theatre, and drew many influential—and regular—customers. By this time, Rogers had refined his act to a science. His monologues on the news of the day followed a similar routine every night. He appeared on stage in his cowboy outfit, nonchalantly twirling his lasso, and said, "Well, what shall I talk about? I ain't got anything funny to say. All I know is what I read in the papers." He then made jokes about what he had read in that day's newspapers. The line "All I know is what I read in the papers" is often incorrectly described as Rogers's most famous punch line, when it was in fact his opening line.

His run at the New Amsterdam ran on into 1916, and Rogers's obvious popularity led to an engagement on the more famous ''Ziegfeld Follies''. At this stage Rogers' act was strictly physical, a display of daring riding and clever tricks with his lariat. He discovered that audiences identified the cowboy as the archetypical American — doubtless aided by Theodore Roosevelt's image as a cowboy. Rogers' cowboy showed an unfettered man free of institutional restraints, with no bureaucrats to order his life. When he came back to the United States and worked in Wild West shows, he noticed that audiences were just as fascinated by his frontier, Oklahoma twang. By 1916, a featured star in Ziegfeld's Follies on Broadway, he moved into satire by transforming the "Ropin' Fool" to the "Talkin' Fool". At one performance, with President Woodrow Wilson in the audience, he improvised a "roast" of presidential policies that had Wilson, and the entire audience, in stitches and proved his remarkable skill at off-the-cuff, witty commentary on current events. The rest of his career he built around that skill.

An editorial in ''The New York Times'' said that "Will Rogers in the Follies is carrying on the tradition of Aristophanes, and not unworthily." Rogers branched into silent films too, for Samuel Goldwyn's company Goldwyn Pictures. He made his first silent movie, ''Laughing Bill Hyde'', filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1918. Many early films were made near the major New York performing market, so Rogers could make the film, yet still rehearse and perform in the ''Follies''. He eventually appeared in most of the ''Follies'', from 1916 to 1925.

Movies

Hollywood discovered Rogers in 1918, as Samuel Goldwyn gave him the title role in ''Laughing Bill Hyde''. A three-year contract with Goldwyn, at triple the Broadway salary, moved Rogers west. He bought a ranch in Santa Monica and set up his own production company. While Rogers enjoyed film acting, his appearances in silent movies suffered from the obvious restrictions of silence—not the strongest medium for him, having gained his fame as a commentator on stage. It helped somewhat that he wrote a good many of the title cards appearing in his films. In 1923, he began a one-year stint for Hal Roach and made 12 pictures. Among the films he made for Roach in 1924 were three directed by Rob Wagner: ''Two Wagons Both Covered'', ''Going to Congress'' and ''Our Congressman''. He made two other feature silents and a travelogue series in 1927, and did not return to the screen until his time in the 'talkies' began in 1929.

He made 48 silent movies, but with the arrival of sound in 1929 he became a top star in that medium. His first sound film, ''They Had to See Paris'' (1929), finally gave him the chance to exercise his verbal magic. He played a homespun farmer (''State Fair)'' in 1933, an old-fashioned doctor (''Dr. Bull'') in 1933, a small town banker (''David Harum '') in 1934, and a rustic politician (''Judge Priest'') in 1934. He was also in ''County Chairman'' (1935), ''Steamboat 'Round the Bend'' (1935), and ''In Old Kentucky'' (1935). His favorite director was John Ford.

Rogers appeared in 21 feature films alongside such noted performers as Lew Ayres, Billie Burke, Richard Cromwell, Jane Darwell, Andy Devine, Janet Gaynor, Rochelle Hudson, Boris Karloff, Myrna Loy, Joel McCrea, Hattie McDaniel, Ray Milland, Maureen O'Sullivan, ZaSu Pitts, Dick Powell, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Mickey Rooney, and Peggy Wood. He was directed three times by John Ford. He appeared in three films with his friend Stepin Fetchit (aka Lincoln T. Perry): ''David Harum'' (1934), ''Judge Priest'' (1934) and ''The County Chairman'' (1935).

With his voice becoming increasingly familiar to audiences, he was able to basically play himself, without normal makeup, in each film, managing to ad-lib and even work in his familiar commentaries on politics at times. The clean moral tone of his films led to various public schools taking their classes, during the school day, to attend special showings of some of them. His most unusual role may have been in the first talking version of Mark Twain's novel ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.'' His popularity soared to new heights with films including ''Young As You Feel'', ''Judge Priest'', and ''Life Begins at 40'' with Richard Cromwell and Rochelle Hudson.

Newspapers and magazines

Rogers demonstrated multiple skills, and was an indefatigable worker. He toured the lecture circuit. The ''New York Times'' syndicated his weekly newspaper column, 1922-35. Going daily in 1926 his short "Will Rogers Says" reached forty million newspaper readers. He wrote frequently for the mass-circulation upscale magazine, ''The Saturday Evening Post'', where Rogers advised Americans to embrace the frontier values of neighborliness and democracy on the domestic front while remaining clear of foreign entanglements. He took a strong, highly popular stand in favor of aviation, including a military air force of the sort his flying buddy, General Billy Mitchell, advocated.

Rogers began a weekly column, titled "Slipping the Lariat Over," at the end of 1922. He had already published a book of wisecracks and had begun a steady stream of humor books. Through the continuing series of columns for the McNaught Syndicate between 1922 and 1935, as well as in his personal appearances and radio broadcasts, he won the loving admiration of the American people, poking jibes in witty ways at the issues of the day and prominent people—often politicians. He wrote from a non-partisan point of view and became a friend of presidents and a confidant of the great. Loved for his cool mind and warm heart, he was often considered the successor to such greats as Artemus Ward and Mark Twain. Rogers was not the first entertainer to use political humor before his audience. Others, such as Broadway comedian Raymond Hitchcock and Britain's Sir Harry Lauder, preceded him by several years. The legendary Bob Hope is the best known political humorist to follow Rogers's example.

Travel

From about 1925 to 1928, Rogers traveled the length and breadth of the United States in a "lecture tour". (He began his lectures by pointing out that "A humorist entertains, and a lecturer annoys.") During this time he became the first civilian to fly from coast to coast with pilots flying the mail in early air mail flights. The National Press Club dubbed him "Ambassador at Large of the United States." He visited Mexico City, along with Charles Lindbergh, as a guest of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow. (Morrow's daughter Anne later married Lindbergh.) Rogers gave numerous after-dinner speeches, became a popular convention speaker, and gave dozens of benefits for victims of floods, droughts, or earthquakes.

He made a trip to the Orient in 1931 and to Central and South America the following year. In 1934, he made a globe-girdling tour and returned to play the lead in Eugene O'Neill's stage play ''Ah, Wilderness!'' He had tentatively agreed to go on loan from Fox to MGM to star in the 1935 movie version of the play; however, his concern over a fan's reaction to the 'facts-of-life' talk between his character and its son caused him to decline the role—and that freed up his schedule allowing him to fly with Wiley Post that summer.

Radio

Radio was the exciting new medium, and Rogers became a star there as well, recycling his newspaper pieces. From 1930 to 1935, he made radio broadcasts for the Gulf Oil Company. This weekly Sunday evening show, ''The Gulf Headliners'', ranked among the top radio programs in the country. Since he easily rambled from one subject to another, reacting to his studio audience, he often lost track of the half-hour time limit in his earliest broadcasts, and was cut off in mid-sentence. To correct this, he brought in a wind-up alarm clock, and its on-air buzzing alerted him to begin wrapping up his comments. By 1935, his show was being announced as "Will Rogers and his famous Alarm Clock."

In January 1934, Rogers used a taboo word that led the NAACP to protest. He used the word “nigger” in a radio skit, referring to a song as a “nigger spiritual” Rogers had used the word in print in his syndicated newspaper columns on a few occasions, but this was evidently the first time he used it on the radio.

Politics

Rogers was a staunch Democrat, but he also supported Republican Calvin Coolidge. Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was his favorite. Although he supported Roosevelt's New Deal, he could just as easily joke about it: :Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago.

Rogers served as a goodwill ambassador to Mexico, and a brief stint as mayor of Beverly Hills. During the depths of the Great Depression, angered by Washington's inability to feed the people, he embarked on a cross country fund raising tour for the Red Cross.

Presidential campaign, 1928

Rogers thought all campaigning was bunk. To prove the point he mounted a mock campaign in 1928 for the presidency. His only vehicle was the pages of ''Life,'' a weekly humor magazine. Rogers ran as the "bunkless candidate" of the Anti-Bunk Party. His only campaign promise was that, if elected, he would resign. Every week, from Memorial Day through Election Day, Rogers caricatured the farcical humors of grave campaign politics. On election day he declared victory and resigned.

Philosophy and style

After Rogers gained recognition as a humorist-philosopher in vaudeville, he gained a national audience in acting and literary careers from 1915 to 1935. In these years, Rogers increasingly expressed the views of the "common man" in America. He downplayed academic credentials, noting, "Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." Americans of all walks admired his individualism, his appreciation for democratic ideas, and his liberal philosophies on most issues. Moreover, Rogers extolled hard work and long hours of toil in order to succeed, and such expressions upheld theories of many Americans on how best to realize their own dreams of success. He symbolized the self-made man, the common man, who believed in America, in progress, in the American Dream of upward mobility, and whose humor never offended even those who were the targets of it.

America in the 1920s was disenchanted and alienated from the outside world. Rogers seemed to many an anchor of stability; his conventional home life and "old fashioned" morality reminded people of an innocent past. His newspaper column, which ran from 1922 to 1935, stressed both "old" morality and the belief that political problems were not as serious as they sounded. In his films, Rogers began by playing a simple cowboy; his characters evolved to explore the meaning of innocence in film. In his last movies, Rogers explores a society fracturing into competing classes from economic pressures. Throughout his career, Will Rogers was a link to a better, more comprehensible past.

In 1926, the high-circulation weekly magazine ''The Saturday Evening Post'' financed a European tour for Rogers in return for the publication of his articles. Rogers made whirlwind visits to numerous European capitals and met with both international figures and common people. His articles reflected a fear that Europeans would again go to war, and thus he recommended that the United States should assume an isolationist posture. He reasoned that for the moment American needs could best be served by concentrating on domestic questions and avoiding foreign entanglements. He commented: :America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we can’t confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on.

Rogers was famous for his use of language. He effectively utilized up-to-date slang and invented new words to fit his needs. He also made frequent use of puns and terms which closely linked him to the cowboy tradition, as well as speech patterns using a southern dialect.

Brown (1979) argues that Rogers held up a "magic mirror" that reflected iconic American values. Rogers was the archetypical "American Democrat" thanks to his knack of moving freely among all social classes, his stance above political parties, and his passion for fair play. He represented the "American Adam" with his independence and self-made record. Rogers furthermore represented the "American Prometheus" through his commitment to utilitarian methods and his ever-optimistic faith in future progress.

Quotes and one-liners

One of Will Rogers' most famous lines, "I have never yet met a man that I dident like," was part of a longer quotation and in its original form was in reference to Leon Trotsky:

:"I bet you if I had met him and had a chat with him, I would have found him a very interesting and human fellow, for I never yet met a man that I dident like. When you meet people, no matter what opinion you might have formed about them beforehand, why, after you meet them and see their angle and their personality, why, you can see a lot of good in all of them.

:"The average citizen knows only too well that it makes no difference to him which side wins. He realizes that the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey have come to resemble each other so closely that it is practically impossible to tell them apart; both of them make the same braying noise, and neither of them ever says anything. The only perceptible difference is that the elephant is somewhat the larger of the two.

:"Every guy just looks in his own pocket and then votes. And the funny part of it is that it's the last year of an administration that counts. [A president] can have three bad ones and then wind up with everybody having money in the fourth, and the incumbent will win so far he needn't even stay up to hear the returns. Conditions win elections, not speeches.

:"I bet any Sunday could be made as popular at church as Easter is, if you made 'em fashion shows too. The audience is so busy looking at each other that the preacher might as well recite "Gunga Din".

:"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."

:"Mother's Day, it's beautiful thought, but it's somebody's hurtin' conscience that thought of the idea. It was someone who had neglected their mother for years, and then they figured out: I got to do something about Momma. And knowing Momma was that easy, they figured, “we'll give her a day, and it will be all right with Momma.” Give her a day, and then in return Momma gives you the other 364. See?

:"One sure certainty about our Memorial Days is that as fast as the ranks from one war thin out, the ranks from another take their place. Prominent men may run out of Decoration Day speeches, but the world never runs out of wars. People talk peace, but men give up their life's work to war.

:"Thanksgiving Day! In the days of our founders, they were willing to give thanks for mighty little, for mighty little was all they expected. … Those old boys in the Fall of the year, if they could gather a few pumpkins, potatoes and some corn for the Winter, they was in a thanking mood. But if we can't gather in a new car, a new radio, a new tuxedo and some Government relief, we feel like the world is agin' us.

:"Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."

:"Americans will feed anyone that's not close to them."

:"Our foreign policy is an open book - a checkbook."

:"I belong to no organized party, I'm a Democrat."

:"Lettin' the cat out of the bag is a lot easier than puttin' it back in."

:"People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing."

:"The income tax has made more liars out of Americans than golf."

:"If stupidity got us in this mess, why can't it get us out?"

:"Everybody says this here thing we're involved in ain't a real war. Congress says it ain't a war. The President says it ain't a war. 'Course the guys over here getting shot at say it's the best damned imitation they ever saw."

:"A senator got up today in Congress and called his fellow senators sons of wild jackasses. Now, if you think the senators were hot, imagine how the jackasses must feel."

:"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

:'The only problem with Boy Scouts is, there aren't enough of them."

Aviation and death

Rogers became an advocate for the aviation industry after noticing advancements in Europe and befriending Charles Lindbergh, the most famous aviator of the era. During his 1926 European trip he witnessed the European advances in commercial air service and compared them to the almost nonexistent facilities in the United States. Rogers' newspaper columns frequently emphasized the safety record, speed, and convenience of this means of transportation, and he helped shape public opinion on the subject.

In 1935 the famed aviator Wiley Post, an Oklahoman, became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast to Russia. He attached a Lockheed Explorer wing to a Lockheed Orion fuselage, fitting floats for landing in the lakes of Alaska and Siberia. Rogers visited Post often at the airport in Burbank, California while he was modifying the aircraft, and asked Post to fly him through Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column. When the floats Post had ordered did not arrive at Seattle in time, he used a set that was designed for a larger type, making the already nose-heavy hybrid aircraft still more nose-heavy. However, according to the research of Bryan Sterling, the floats were the correct type for the aircraft.

After making a test flight in July, Post and Rogers left Seattle in the Lockheed Orion-Explorer in early August and then made several stops in Alaska. While Post piloted the aircraft, Rogers wrote his columns on his typewriter. Before they left Fairbanks they signed and mailed a burgee belonging to the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club. The signed burgee is on display at South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, California. On August 15, they left Fairbanks, Alaska for Point Barrow. They were a few miles from Point Barrow when they became uncertain of their position in bad weather and landed in a lagoon to ask directions. On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft, uncontrollably nose-heavy at low speed, plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing and ending inverted in the shallow water of the lagoon. Both men died instantly.

Legacy

Oklahoma honors

One of Oklahoma's two statues in the National Statuary Hall Collection, housed in the United States Capitol, is of Rogers. The work was paid for by a state appropriation and was sculpted in clay by Jo Davidson, a close friend of Rogers whom he nicknamed the "headhunter" because Davidson was always looking for heads to sculpt, then cast in bronze in Brussels, Belgium. Dedicated on June 6, 1939 before a crowd of more than 2,000 people, the statue faces the floor entrance of the House of Representatives Chamber next to National Statuary Hall. The Architect of the Capitol, David Lynn, said there had never been such a large ceremony or crowd in the Capitol.

Oklahoma leaders asked Rogers to represent the state as one of their two statues in the Capitol, and Rogers agreed on the condition that his image would be placed facing the House Chamber, supposedly so he could "keep an eye on Congress." Of the statues in this part of the Capitol, the Rogers sculpture is the only one facing the Chamber entrance. According to guides at the Capitol, each President rubs the left shoe of the Rogers statue for good luck before entering the House Chamber to give the State of the Union Address. Oklahoma has named many places and buildings for Rogers. His birthplace is located two miles east of Oologah, Oklahoma. The house was moved about ¾ mile (1.2 km) to its present location overlooking its original site when the Verdigris River valley was flooded to create Oologah Lake. The family tomb is at the Will Rogers Memorial Museum in nearby Claremore, which stands on the site purchased by Rogers in 1911 for his retirement home. In 1944, Rogers' body was moved from a holding vault in California to the tomb; his wife Betty was interred beside him later that year upon her death. A casting of the Davidson sculpture that stands in National Statuary Hall, paid for by Davidson personally, resides at the museum. Both the birthplace and the museum are open to the public.

Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City was named for him, as was the Will Rogers Turnpike, also known as the section of Interstate 44 between Tulsa and Joplin, Missouri. Near Vinita, Oklahoma, a statue of Rogers stands outside the west anchor of the McDonald's that spans both lanes of the interstate. A recent expansion and renovation of the Will Rogers World Airport includes a statue of Will Rogers on horseback in front of the terminal.

There are 13 public schools in Oklahoma named Will Rogers, including Will Rogers High School in Tulsa. The University of Oklahoma named the large Will Rogers Room in the student union for him, as did the Boy Scouts of America with the Will Rogers Council and the Will Rogers Scout Reservation near Cleveland.

In 1947, a college football bowl game was named in his honor, but the event folded after the first year.

California memorials

Rogers's home, stables, and polo fields are preserved today for public enjoyment as Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades. His widow, Betty, willed the property to the state of California upon her death in 1944, under the condition that polo be played on the field every year. Will Rogers Elementary School in Santa Monica is named for Rogers, as is Will Rogers Elementary School in Ventura. There are two Middle Schools named Will Rogers (one in Long Beach and the other in Fair Oaks). A United States Navy submarine USS ''Will Rogers'' is also named in his honor. A small park on Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills was named Will Rogers Memorial Park after him. Also, a beach in Malibu was named Will Rogers Beach.

U.S. Route 66 is known as the Will Rogers Highway; a plaque dedicating the highway to the humorist is located opposite the western terminus of Route 66 in Santa Monica.

The California Theatre in San Bernardino is the site of the humorist's final show. He always performed in front of special jewelled curtains of which he had two.

While he was using one, he would send the other to the site of his next performance. Due to his untimely death, the curtain before which he performed last remained with the California Theatre where the artifact stays to this day, and two memorial murals by Ken Twitchell grace the exterior of the fly loft. The California Theatre also named one of its reception spaces the Will Rogers Room.

Texas memorials

The Will Rogers Memorial Center was built in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1936. A mural of Rogers on his horse, Soapsuds, hangs in the lobby of the coliseum, and a bust of Rogers sits in the rotunda of the Landmark Pioneer Tower. A life-size statue of Rogers on Soapsuds, titled ''Into the Sunset'' and sculpted by Electra Waggoner Biggs, resides on the lawn.

A casting of ''Into the Sunset'' stands in the entrance to the main campus quad at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. This memorial was dedicated on February 16, 1950, by Rogers' longtime friend, Amon G. Carter. Carter believed Texas Tech was the perfect setting for the statue and that it would fit into the traditions and scenery of west Texas.

The statue stands at 9 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 3,200 pounds; its estimated cost was $25,000. On the base of the statue, the inscription reads "Lovable Old Will Rogers on his favorite horse, 'Soapsuds,' riding into the Western sunset."

Today, Texas Tech tradition and legend surround the statue. According to one legend, the plan to face Will Rogers so that he could be riding off into the sunset did not work out as it would cause Soapsuds' rear to be facing visitors entering campus from downtown. To solve this problem, the horse and Will were turned 23 degrees to the east so the horse's posterior was facing in the direction of Texas A&M;, one of the school's rivals.

Before every home football game the Saddle Tramps wrap Old Will with red crepe paper. Will Rogers and Soapsuds have also been wrapped in black crepe paper to mourn national tragedies.

A third casting resides at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

National tributes

In 1936, the NVA Hospital located in Saranac Lake, New York was renamed to the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital in his honor by the National Vaudeville Artists association. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

Rogers's eldest son, Bill, starred as his father in the 1952 biopic ''The Story of Will Rogers''. Rogers also came to life for modern audiences in the Tony Award-winning musical ''The Will Rogers Follies'', with Keith Carradine in the lead role, and he was also portrayed by James Whitmore in the one-man show ''Will Rogers' U.S.A.''

Colorado Springs philanthropist Spencer Penrose named a monument on Cheyenne Mountain the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun in honor of his good friend.

On November 4, 1948, the United States Post Office commemorated Rogers with a first day cover of a 3-cent stamp with his image—the inscription reads, "In honor of Will Rogers, Humorist, Claremore, Oklahoma." He was also later honored on the centennial of his birth, in 1979, with the issue of a United States Postal Service 15-cent stamp as part of the "Performing Arts" series.

The Barrow, Alaska airport (BRW), located about 16 miles (26 km) from the location of their fatal airplane crash, is known as the Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport.

The final boat of the Benjamin Franklin class ballistic missile submarines USS Will Rogers is named in his honor. It is the only US Naval vessel named for an American humorist.

The Will Rogers Theatre, an Art Deco movie house designed by Rapp and Rapp, opened in Chicago's Belmont-Central shopping district in 1936. It operated until 1986 and was razed in 1987.

The Will Rogers Theater in Charleston, Illinois, also an Art Deco movie house was opened in 1938 and desiged by Roy M. Kennedy. It had 1,000 seats in its single auditorium. The theatre was placed on the Register of Historic Places in 1984. It was later twinned and then closed by AMC in 2010.

Film portrayals

Rogers was portrayed by A.A. Trimble in cameos in both the 1936 film, ''The Great Ziegfeld'', and the 1937 film, ''You're a Sweetheart''.

Rogers was portrayed by his son, Will Rogers, Jr., in a cameo in the 1949 film, ''Look for the Silver Lining'', and as the star of the 1952 film, ''The Story of Will Rogers''.

Rogers was portrayed by actor Keith Carradine in the 1994 film ''Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle''. Carradine had played Rogers three years earlier on Broadway, in the stage musical, ''The Will Rogers Follies.''

Filmography

Silent films

''Laughing Bill Hyde'' (1918)

''Almost A Husband'' (1919)

''Jubilo'' (1919)

''Water, Water Everywhere'' (1919)

''The Strange Boarder'' (1920)

''Jes' Call Me Jim'' (1920)

''Cupid The Cowpuncher'' (1920)

''Honest Hutch'' (1920)

''Guile Of Women'' (1920)

''Boys Will Be Boys'' (1921)

''An Unwilling Hero'' (1921)

''Doubling For Romeo'' (1921)

''A Poor Relation'' (1921)

''The Illiterate Digest'' (1920)

''One Glorious Day'' (1922)

''The Headless Horseman'' (1922)

''The Ropin' Fool'' (1922)

''Fruits Of Faith'' (1922)

''One Day in 365'' (1922) (unreleased)

''Hollywood'' (1923) cameo

''Hustling Hank'' (1923)

''Two Wagons Both Covered'' (1923)

''Jus' Passin' Through'' (1923)

''Uncensored Movies'' (1923)

''The Cake Eater'' (1924)

''The Cowboy Sheik'' (1924)

''Big Moments From Little Pictures'' (1924)

''High Brow Stuff'' (1924)

''Going to Congress'' (1924)

''Don't Park There''(1924)

''Jubilo, Jr.'' (1924) (part of the ''Our Gang'' series)

''Our Congressman'' (1924)

''A Truthful Liar'' (1924)

''Gee Whiz Genevieve'' (1924)

''Tip Toes'' (1927)

''A Texas Steer'' (1927)

Travelog Series

''In Dublin'' (1927)

''In Paris'' (1927)

''Hiking Through Holland'' (1927)

''Roaming The Emerald Isle'' (1927)

''Through Switzerland And Bavaria'' (1927)

''In London'' (1927)

''Hunting For Germans In Berlin'' (1927)

''Prowling Around France'' (1927)

''Winging Round Europe'' (1927)

''Exploring England'' (1927)

''Reeling Down The Rhine'' (1927)

''Over The Bounding Blue'' (1928)

Sound films

''They Had To See Paris'' (1929)

''Happy Days'' (1929)

''So This Is London'' (1930)

''Lightnin''' (1930)

''Young As You Feel'' (1930)

''Ambassador Bill'' (1930)

''Business and Pleasure'' (1930)

''A Connecticut Yankee'' (1931)

''Down To Earth'' (1932)

''Too Busy To Work'' (1932)

''State Fair'' (1933)

''Doctor Bull'' (1933)

''Mr. Skitch'' (1933)

''David Harum'' (1934)

''Handy Andy'' (1934)

''Judge Priest'' (1934)

''The County Chairman''

''Life Begins At Forty'' (1935)

''Doubting Thomas'' (1935)

''Steamboat Round the Bend'' (1935)

''In Old Kentucky'' (1935)

References and further reading

Biographies

Anderson, Gary Clayton pending Will Rogers biography, 2010.

Ketchum, Richard M. ''Will Rogers: His Life and Times'', 1973.

O'Brien, P. J. ''Will Rogers, Ambassador of Good Will Prince of Wit and Wisdom.'' (1935) online edition

Robinson, Ray. ''American Original: A Life of Will Rogers.'' (1996). 288 pp. online edition

Rollins, Peter C. ''Will Rogers: A Bio-Bibliography.'' Greenwood, 1984. 282 pp.

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling, ''Will Rogers' World'' (1989),

Yagoda, Ben. ''Will Rogers: A Biography'' (1993) excerpt and text search

Scholarly studies

Brown, William R. "Will Rogers and His Magic Mirror." ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'' 1979 57(3): 300-325.

Coleman, Timothy S. "All We Know of Nation Is What We See in the Pictures: Will Rogers and the National Imaginary in 1920's and 1930's America." PhD dissertation, Wayne State U. 2003. 183 pp. DAI 2004 64(12): 4245-A. DA3116488 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Jenkins, Ronald Scott. "Representative Clowns: Comedy and Democracy in America." PhD dissertation Harvard U. 1984. 208 pp. DAI 1984 45(4): 1187-A. DA8416931 Fulltext: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Johnson, Bobby H. and R. Stanley Mohler. "Wiley Post, His Winnie Mae, and the World's First Pressure Suit." Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1971.

Roach, Fred, Jr. "Will Rogers' Youthful Relationship with His Father, Clem Rogers: a Story of Love and Tension." ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'' 1980 58(3): 325-342. Issn: 0009-6024

Roach, Fred, Jr. "Vision of the Future: Will Rogers' Support of Commercial Aviation." ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'' 1979 57(3): 340-364.

Rollins, Peter C. "Will Rogers: Symbolic Man, Journalist, and Film Image." Journal of Popular Culture 1976 9(4): 851-877. Issn: 0022-3840

Rollins, Peter C. "Will Rogers, Ambassador sans Portfolio: Letters from a Self-made Diplomat to His President." ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'' 1979 57(3): 326-339. *Smallwood, James M. "Will Rogers of Oklahoma: Spokesman for the 'Common Man.'" ''Journal of the West'' 1988 27(2): 45-49. Issn: 0022-5169

Southard, Bruce. "Will Rogers and the Language of the Southwest: a Centennial Perspective." ''Chronicles of Oklahoma'' 1979 57(3): 365-375.

Books by Rogers

Rogers, Will. ''Letters of a Self-Made Diplomat to His President'' (1926) online edition

Rogers, Will, and Joseph H. Carter. ''Never Met a Man I Didn't Like'' (1991) excerpt and text search

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies.'' ed. by Arthur Frank Wertheim, (1992). 288 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 1, The Harding/Coolidge Years, 1922-1925.'' ed. by James M. Smallwood, (1980). 431 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 2: The Coolidge Years, 1925-1927.'' ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1980). 368 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 3: The Coolidge Years, 1927-1929.'' ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1981). 304 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers' Weekly Articles. Vol. 4: The Hoover Years, 1929-1931.'' ed. by Steven K. Gragert, (1981). 278 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers's Daily Telegrams. Vol. l, The Coolidge Years, 1926-1929.'' ed. by James M. Smallwood, 1978. 453 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Will Rogers' Daily Telegrams. Vol. 4, The Roosevelt Years, 1933-1935.'' ed. by James M. Smallwood, (1979). 457 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''Convention Articles of Will Rogers.'' ed. by Joseph A. Stout, 1976. 174 pp.

Rogers, Will. ''The Writings of Will Rogers. Volume 3: Illiterate Digest.'' ed. by Joseph A. Stout, Jr., 1974. 230 pp. online edition

Rogers, Will. ''Autobiography'' (1948), ed. by Donald Day; 410pp; online edition

Rogers, Will. ''Rogers-isms: the Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference'', (1919). Online at Project Gutenberg

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling, eds. ''Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (And Writers, Politicians Comedians, Browsers)'' (1995).

The Papers of Will Rogers

See also

Will Rogers phenomenon

Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun

Will Rogers Memorial

List of people on the cover of Time Magazine: 1920s - 19 July 1926

''The Will Rogers Follies''

Notes

References

“Claim Will Rogers Is Free To Insult Race Under Agreement.” Kansas City (MO) Plaindealer, 2 February 1934, p. 2.

“Protest Will Rogers’ Radio Speech.” Pittsburgh Courier, 27 January 1934, p. 1.

Sterling, Bryan B., and Frances N. Sterling, eds. ''Will Rogers Speaks: Over 1,000 Timeless Quotations for Public Speakers (And Writers, Politicians Comedians, Browsers).'' (1995).

“Will Rogers Hurls Back A Second Insult.” Baltimore Afro-American, 3 February 1934, p. 1.

External links

The Official Site of Will Rogers

Will Rogers Birthplace

Will Rogers Museums

Will Rogers State Historic Park

Will Rogers Polo Club

Will Rogers World Airport

Will Rogers in 3 excerpts from 1935 broadcasts

Will Rogers Institute

The Tulsa World's Will Rogers site

Category:1879 births Category:1935 deaths Category:Accidental deaths in Alaska Category:Actors from Oklahoma Category:American actors Category:American columnists Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American humorists Category:American silent film actors Category:California Democrats Category:Cherokee people Category:Mayors of Beverly Hills, California Category:Musical theatre characters Category:Native American actors Category:Native American writers Category:Oklahoma Democrats Category:People from Rogers County, Oklahoma Category:Cherokee Nation (19th century) Category:Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States Category:United States presidential candidates, 1932 W Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:Native American journalists Category:Museum of Polo and Hall of Fame inductees

ar:ويل روجرز ca:Will Rogers de:Will Rogers es:Will Rogers fr:Will Rogers id:Will Rogers it:Will Rogers ms:Will Rogers ja:ウィル・ロジャース pt:Will Rogers simple:Will Rogers sh:Will Rogers fi:Will Rogers

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Currentnumber	21, 29, 31
Currentposition	Defensive back
Birth date	February 02, 1972
Birth place	Jacksonville, Florida
Heightft	6
Heightin	2
Weight	200
Highschool	Terry Parker High School
College	Indiana
Draftyear	1995
Draftround	5
Draftpick	161(By the Pittsburgh Steelers)
Debutyear	1995
Debutteam	Arizona Cardinals
Finalteam	Buffalo Bills
Finalyear	2001
Pastteams	Arizona Cardinals (1995-1996) Pittsburgh Steelers (1998-1999) Buffalo Bills (2001)
Statseason	2001
Statlabel1	Games played
Statvalue1	58
Statlabel2	Games started
Statvalue2	6
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Statvalue3	1.0
Statlabel4	Fumble recoveries
Nfl	BRO523158
Pfr	BrowLa20
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Ufl	}}

Lance Allen Brown (born February 2, 1972 in Jacksonville, Florida) is a former professional American football defensive back in the National Football League. He played five seasons for the Arizona Cardinals (1995–1996), the Pittsburgh Steelers (1998–1999), and the Buffalo Bills (2001).

Brown is the son of Allen and Melvania Brown. He is married to Gloria Campos, a news anchor for WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas. Currently, Brown works as a freelance writer, and is a sports broadcaster for Irving Community Television.

References

Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:People from Jacksonville, Florida Category:Players of American football from Florida Category:American football defensive backs Category:Indiana Hoosiers football players Category:Arizona Cardinals players Category:Pittsburgh Steelers players Category:Buffalo Bills players

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Name	Fred Allen
Birth name	John Florence Sullivan
Birth date	May 31, 1894
Birth place	Cambridge, Massachusetts
Death date	March 17, 1956
Death place	New York City, New York
Show	The Fred Allen Show
Network	CBS, NBC
Style	Comedian
Country	United States

Fred Allen (born John Florence Sullivan, May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956) was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show (1932–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.

His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning (in ''On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio'') wrote that Allen was radio's most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master ad libber, Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles), while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk (who began his career writing for Allen).

Fred Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to television.

Childhood

Born as John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Irish Catholic parents, Allen barely knew his mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, who died of pneumonia when he was not quite three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, and his infant brother, Robert, were taken in by one of his mother's sisters, "my Aunt Lizzie", around whom he focused the first chapter of his second memoir, ''Much Ado About Me''. The father was so shattered by the mother's death that, according to his son, he drank more heavily. His aunt suffered as well: her husband Michael was partially paralyzed by lead poisoning shortly after they married, leaving him mostly unable to work, something Allen remembered as causing contention among Lizzie's sisters. Eventually, Allen's father remarried and offered his sons the choice between coming with him and his new wife or staying with Aunt Lizzie. Allen's younger brother chose to go with their father, but Allen decided to stay with his aunt. "I never regretted it," he wrote.

Vaudeville

Allen took piano lessons as a boy, his father having brought an Emerson upright along when they moved in with his aunt. He learned exactly two songs – "Hiawatha" and "Pitter, Patter, Little Raindrops" – and would be asked to play "half or all my repertoire" when visitors came to the house. He also worked at the Boston Public Library, where he discovered a book about the origin and development of comedy. Enduring various upheavals at home (other aunts came and went, prompting several moves), Allen also took up juggling while learning as much as possible about comedy.

Some library co-workers planned to put on a show and asked him to do a bit of juggling and some of his comedy. When a girl in the crowd told him, "You're crazy to keep working here at the library; you ought to go on stage," Allen decided his career path was set.

He took a later job in 1914 at the age of 20 with a local piano company, added to his library work, and appeared at a number of amateur night competitions, soon taking the stage name Fred St. James and booking with the local vaudeville circuit at $30 a week, enough at that time to allow him to quit his jobs with the library and the piano company. Often billing himself as the world's worst juggler, Allen refined and advanced the mix of his clumsy juggling and the comic routines such as standard jokes and one- liners with humor directed at his own poor juggling abilities. He toured the world in a decade worth of vaudeville work during which a billing mixup provided the stage name change that stayed with him the rest of his life. His agent was named Edgar Allen, from whom he eventually borrowed the last name to become Fred Allen.

While performing in vaudeville, Allen commissioned comic-strip artist Martin Branner to cover a theatre curtain with an elaborate mural painting depicting a cemetery with a punchline on each gravestone. This was the cemetery where old jokes go to die. In Allen's act, the audiences would see the curtain (and have at least a minute to read its punchlines) before Allen made his entrance. Audiences often would be laughing at the curtain before Allen even appeared. Robert Taylor's biography of Allen includes an impressive full-length photo of Branner's curtain painting, and many of the punchlines are clearly legible in the photo.

Allen's wit was at times not intended for the vaudeville audience but rather for other professionals in show business. After one of his appearances failed one day, Allen made the best of it by circulating an obituary of his act on black-bordered funeral stationery.

In 1921 Fred Allen and Nora Bayes toured with the company of Lew Fields. Their musical director was a nineteen-year-old Richard Rodgers. Many years later, when he and Oscar Hammerstein II appeared as mystery guests on ''What's My Line?'', Rodgers recalled Allen's act, sitting on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling down, playing a banjo while telling jokes.

Broadway

Allen gave vaudeville itself a timeline of 1875–1925 in ''Much Ado About Me'', but he actually left vaudeville a few years earlier, moving to work in such Shubert Brothers stage productions as ''The Passing Show'' in 1922. The show played well in its runup to Broadway but lasted only ten weeks at the Winter Garden Theatre. Allen did, however, take something far more lasting from the show: one of the show's chorus girls, Portland Hoffa, who became his wife in 1927.

He also took good notices for his comic work in several of the productions, particularly ''Vogues'' and ''Greenwich Village Follies'', and continued to develop his comic writing, even writing a column for ''Variety'' called "Near Fun." A salary dispute ended the column: Allen wanted only $60 a week to give up his theater work to become a full-time columnist, but his editor tried a sleight-of-hand based on the paper's ad rates to deny him. He spent his summer in Boston, honed his comic and writing skills even further, worked in a respectfully received duo that billed themselves as Fink and Smith, and played a few of the dying vaudeville houses.

He returned to New York to the pleasant surprise that Portland Hoffa was taking instruction to convert to Roman Catholicism. After the couple married, Allen began writing material for them to use together ("With a vaudeville act, Portland and I could be together, even if we couldn't find any work"), and the couple divided their time between the show business circuit, Allen's New England family home and Old Orchard Beach, Maine, in summers.

Radio

Fred Allen's first taste of radio came while he and Portland Hoffa waited for a promised slot in a new Arthur Hammerstein musical. In the interim, they appeared on a Chicago station's program, ''WLS Showboat'', into which, Allen recalled, "Portland and I were presented... to inject a little class into it." Their success in these appearances helped their theater reception; live audiences in the Midwest liked to see their radio favorites in person, even if Allen and Hoffa would be replaced by Bob Hope when the radio show moved to New York several months afterward.

The couple eventually got their Hammerstein show, ''Polly'', which opened in Delaware and made the usual tour before hitting Broadway. Also in that cast was a young Englishman named Archie Leach, who received as many good notices for his romantic appeal as Allen got for his comic work. Hammerstein retooled the show before bringing it to New York, replacing everyone but two women and Allen. Leach decided to buy an old car and drive to Hollywood. "What Archie Leach didn't tell me," Allen remembered, "was that he was going to change his name to Cary Grant."

''Polly'' never succeeded in spite of several retoolings, but Allen did go on to successful shows like ''The Little Show'' (1929–30) and ''Three's a Crowd'' (1930–31), which eventually led to his full-time entry to radio in 1932.

''Town Hall Tonight''

Allen first hosted ''The Linit Bath Club Revue'' on CBS, moving the show to NBC and becoming ''The Salad Bowl Revue'' (in a nod to new sponsor Hellmann's Mayonnaise, which was marketed by the parent company of Linit) later in the year. The show became ''The Sal Hepatica Revue'' (1933–34), ''The Hour of Smiles'' (1934–35), and finally ''Town Hall Tonight'' (1935–39) [in 1939–40, however, sponsor Bristol-Myers, which advertised Ipana toothpaste as well as Sal Hepatica during the program, altered the title to ''The Fred Allen Show'', over his objections]. Allen's perfectionism (odd to some, considering his deft ad-libs) caused him to leap from sponsor to sponsor until ''Town Hall Tonight'' allowed him to set his chosen small-town milieu and establish himself as a bona fide radio star.

The hour-long show featured segments that would influence radio and, much later, television; news satires such as ''Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In'''s "Laugh-In Looks at the News" and ''Saturday Night Live's'' "Weekend Update" were influenced by ''Town Hall Tonight's'' "The News Reel", later renamed "Town Hall News" (and in 1939–40, as a sop to his sponsor, "Ipana News"). ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson's'' "Mighty Carson Art Players" routines referenced Allen's Mighty Allen Art Players, in name and sometimes in routines. Allen and company also satirized popular musical comedies and films of the day, including and especially ''Oklahoma!''. Allen also did semi-satirical interpretations of well-known lives – including his own.

The show that became ''Town Hall Tonight'' was the longest-running hour-long comedy-based show in classic radio history. In 1940, Allen moved back to CBS with a new sponsor and show name, ''Texaco Star Theater'' (every Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. EST on CBS, then Sundays at 9:00 p.m. in the fall of 1941). By 1942, he shortened the show to half an hour, at 9:30 p.m. EST – under network and sponsor edict, not his own. He also chafed under being forced to give up a ''Town Hall Tonight'' signature, using barely known and amateur guests effectively, in favor of booking more recognizable guests, though he liked many of those. Guests included singers from Kingston, New York, the original woman behind the "Aunt Jamima" on syrup bottles, and more guests up the road - from Saugerties, like the singer, Donald Gardner.

Back to NBC

He took over a year off due to hypertension and returned in 1945 with ''The Fred Allen Show'' on NBC, Sunday nights at 8:30 p.m. EST. Standard Brands' Blue Bonnet Margarine & Tenderleaf Tea, and later, Ford Motor Company, were the sponsors for the rest of the show's life. (Texaco revived ''Texaco Star Theater'' in 1948 on radio, and more successfully on television, making an American icon out of star Milton Berle).

Allen again made a few changes, including the singing DeMarco Sisters, to whom he'd been tipped by arranger-composer Gordon Jenkins. "We did four years with Mr. Allen and got one thousand dollars a week," Gloria DeMarco remembered. "Sunday night was the best night on radio." Sunday night with Fred Allen seemed incomplete on any night listeners didn't hear the DeMarco Sisters – whose breezy, harmonious style became as familiar as their cheerfully sung "Mr. Al-len, Mr. Alll-llennnn" in the show's opening theme. During the theme's brief pause, Allen would say something like, "It isn't the mayor of Anaheim, Azusa and Cucamonga, kiddies." That device became a signature for three of the four years.

Allen's Alley

The other change, born in the Texaco days and evolving from his earlier news spoofs, proved his most enduring, premiering December 6, 1942. The inspiration for the mythical Main Street of "Allen's Alley" came from the small-town heartland folks who were often profiled in the newspaper columns written by O. O. McIntyre (1884–1938), one of the most popular columnists of the 1930s with some seven million readers.

"Allen's Alley" followed a brief Allen monologue and comic segment with Portland Hoffa ("Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!"), usually involving gags about her family which she instigated. Then a brief music interlude would symbolize the two making their way to the fictitious Alley. The segment was always launched by a quick exchange that began with Hoffa asking Allen what he would ask the Alley denizens that week. After she implored him, "Shall we go?" Allen would reply with cracks like, "As the two drumsticks said when they spotted the tympani, 'let's beat it!'"; or "As one strapless gown said to the other strapless gown, 'What's holding us up?'"

A small host of stereotypical characters greeted Allen and Hoffa down the Alley, discussing Allen's question of the week, usually drawing on news items or popular happenings around town, whether gas rationing, traffic congestion, the Pulitzer Prizes, postwar holiday travel, or the annual Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus visit.

The Alley went through a few changes in the first installments. Early denizens included sarcastic John Doe (John Brown), self-possessed Senator Bloat and town drunk Sampson Souse (Jack Smart), dimwitted Socrates Mulligan (Charlie Cantor), pompous poet Falstaff Openshaw (Alan Reed), and wry Jewish housewife Pansy Nussbaum (Minerva Pious). By 1945, Pious and Reed were joined by two new Alley denizens: Parker Fennelly as stoic New England farmer Titus Moody, and Kenny Delmar, the new show's announcer, as bellowing Southern senator Beauregard Claghorn. Pious is credited with tipping Allen to Delmar, who based the character on a real-life person he had encountered while hitchhiking in 1928. Within weeks, Claghorn became one of the leading comedy characters of radio as listeners across the country began quoting his catchphrases: "Somebody, Ah say, somebody knocked"; "I'm from the South, Suh"; "That's a joke, son"; and "Pay attention, boy!" Claghorn served as the model for the Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn, who first appeared the following August in the Oscar-nominated ''Walky Talky Hawky''.

Other characters had catchphrases that were almost as famous as Claghorn's, such as Titus Moody's "Howdy, Bub", and Falstaff Openshaw's "That is precisely why I am here." Mrs. Nussbaum always greeted Allen by saying, "You were expecting maybe...", and then she would mispronounce the name of a glamorous film star. The Alley sketches made only one further cast change, when Peter Donald's chipper Irishman Ajax Cassidy succeeded Reed's Falstaff. Despite the ethnic diversity, the Alley characters seemed less citified and more akin with O. O. McIntyre's small-town America. Allen's topical humor is sometimes thought an acquired taste for audiences curious about his generation of radio stars; Dunning has written that when he "went into topical humour, he may have forfeited his only opportunity to be the Mark Twain of his century. He had flashes of undeniable brilliance. But the main body of his work deals with the day-to-day fodder of another time, and sons have seldom been amused by the embarrassments or tragedies of their fathers."

But others find many parallels to today's world and its absurdities. The "Allen's Alley" stereotypes make some cringe, as Allen biographer Robert Taylor noted (in ''Fred Allen: His Life and Wit''), but others find them lancing more than lauding stereotypes, letting listeners make up their own minds about how foolish they could be. "Interestingly enough," wrote Frank Buxton and Bill Owen in ''The Big Broadcast 1920-1950'', "[Claghorn, Nussbaum, Moody, and Cassidy] were never criticized as being anti-Southern, anti-Semitic, anti-New England or anti-Irish. The warmth and good humor with which they were presented made them acceptable even to the most sensitive listeners."

Allen employed a writing staff but they served as his sounding boards and early draft consultants as much as actual writers; it was Allen who had the final edit and rewrite of each week's script, working as long as twelve hours a day in his own right on ideas or sketches. His ad-libbing ability caused many a show to fade away behind the ending network identification, because Allen often ate up air time. It was not as unusual for him as for others to sign off with "We're a little late, so good night, folks." Buxton and Owen believed the Allen show needed it more than anyone else of his era.

Allen also "died" more eloquently than other radio comics, particularly in the later years. When a joke was greeted with an awkward silence, Allen would comment on the lack of response, with his ad-libbed "explanation" almost always funnier than the original joke.

Closing the Alley

Allen's Alley was radio's top-rated show of the 1946-47 season. Allen was able to negotiate a lucrative new contract as a result not only of the show's success, but thanks in large measure to NBC's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to CBS. The CBS talent raids broke up NBC's hit Sunday night, and Benny also convinced George Burns and Gracie Allen and Bing Crosby to join his move.

But a year later, he was knocked off his perch, not by a talent raid but by a show on a third rival network, ABC (the former NBC Blue network). The quiz show, ''Stop the Music'', hosted by Bert Parks, required listeners to participate live, by telephone. The show became a big enough hit to break into Allen's grip on that Sunday night time slot. At first, Allen fought fire with his own kind of fire: he offered $5,000 to any listener getting a call from ''Stop the Music'' or any similar game show while listening to ''The Fred Allen Show''. He never had to pay up, nor was he shy about lampooning the game show phenomenon (especially a riotous parody of another quiz show Parks hosted, lancing ''Break the Bank'' in a routine called "Break the Contestant" in which players didn't receive a thing but were compelled to give up possessions when they blew a question.)

Unfortunately, Allen fell to number 38 in the ratings, as television began its rise as well. By this time, he had changed the show again somewhat, changing the famed "Allen's Alley" skits to take place on "Main Street," and rotating a new character or two in and out of the lineup. He stepped down from radio again in 1949, at the end of his show's regular season, as much under his doctor's orders as because of his slipping ratings. He decided to take a year off, but it did more for his health (he suffered from hypertension) than his career; after the June 26, 1949 show, on which Henry Morgan and Jack Benny guested, Fred Allen never hosted another radio show full time again.

The Feud

Good friends in real life, Fred Allen and Jack Benny inadvertently hatched a running gag in 1937, when a child prodigy, violinist Stuart Canin, gave a very credible performance on the Allen show, inspiring an Allen wisecrack about "a certain alleged violinist," who should hide in shame over his poor playing. Allen often mentioned his show-business friends on the air ("Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" was Allen's way of saying hello to his pal Jack Haley), and on the Canin broadcast Allen knew Benny would be listening. Benny, according to Allen biographer Taylor, burst out laughing, then responded in kind on his own program. And they were off and running, going at it for over a decade and doing it well enough to convince some if not many fans of both shows that the two comedians really were blood enemies.

The Allen-Benny feud was the longest-playing, best-remembered dialogic running gag in classic radio history. The gag even pushed toward a boxing match between the two comedians and the promised event was a sellout. It also never happened, really. The pair even appeared together in films, including ''Love Thy Neighbor'' (1940) and ''It's in the Bag!'' (1945), Allen's only starring vehicle, also featuring William Bendix, Robert Benchley, and Jerry Colonna. He also starred with Oscar Levant in O'Henry's Full House, starring in the story "The Ransom of Red Chief."

Some of the feud's highlights involved Al Boasberg, who is credited with helping Benny refine his character into (arguably) America's first stand-up comedian. Boasberg was well known behind the scenes as a top comedy writer, but he seldom received recognition in public. He worked, uncredited, on many films (including the Marx Brothers' hit ''A Night at the Opera''). Steaming mad because of his long battles for recognition, Boasberg was said to have delivered a tirade that ended up (in slightly altered form) in an Allen-Benny feud routine:

Allen: ''Why you fugitive from a Ripley cartoon ... I'll knock you flatter than the first eight minutes of this program.''

Benny: ''You ought to do well in pictures, Mr. Allen, now that Boris Karloff is back in England.''

Allen: ''Why, if I was a horse, a pony even, and found out that any part of my tail was used in your violin bow, I'd hang my head in my oatbag from then on.''

Benny's side of the feud included a tart interpretation of Allen's ''Town Hall Tonight'' show, which Benny and company called "Clown Hall Tonight." A signature element of the feud was that, whenever one guested on the other's shows, the host was liable to hand the guest the best lines of the night. (Both Benny and Allen revealed later that each man's writers consulted with each other on routines involving the feud.)

They toned the gag down after 1941, though they kept it going often enough as the years continued, climaxing on Allen's May 26, 1946 show, in which a sketch called "King for a Day," satirizing big-money game shows, featured Benny pretending to be a contestant named Myron Proudfoot on Allen's new quiz show. Allen: ''Tomorrow night, in your ermine robe, you will be whisked by bicycle to Orange, New Jersey, where you will be the judge in a chicken-cleaning contest.''

Benny (rapturously): ''I'm KING for a Day!''

[Allen proceeds to have Benny's clothes pressed:]

Allen: ''And that's not all!''

Benny: ''There's more?''

Allen: ''Yes! On our stage we have a Hoffman pressing machine.''

Benny: ''Now wait a minute! Wait a minute!''

Allen: ''An expert operating the Hoffman pressing machine will press your trousers in seconds.''

Benny: ''NOW WAIT A MINUTE!!!'' (total audience hysteria laughter, as Benny's pants are literally removed).

Allen: ''Quiet, King!''

Benny: ''Come on, Allan, give me my pants!''

Allen: ''Keep your shirt on, King.''

Benny: ''You bet I'll keep my shirt on!''

Allen: ''We're a little late, folks! Tune in next week---''

Benny: ''Allen, this is a frame--- (starts laughing himself) Where are my pants!''

Allen: ''Benny, for 15 years I've been waiting to catch you like this!''

Benny: ''Allen, you haven't seen the end of me!''

Allen: ''It won't be long now!''

Benny: ''I want my pants!''

Allen and Benny couldn't resist one more play on the feud on Allen's final show. Benny appeared as a skinflint bank manager and mortgage company owner bedeviling Henry Morgan. Typically, Allen handed Benny the show's best crack: "Listen, I was never ''this'' cheap on my ''own'' program!"

Benny even used the feud on his TV show, which depicted Benny and Allen as rivals for the sponsor's favors. When the sponsor pointed out that Benny was also a musician, Allen countered with a passage on his clarinet.

As Benny said in his co-memoir, ''Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story'' (1990; his daughter, Joan, added her own recollections and published the book after her father's death), ''[T]he sky was the limit. Or rather, the mud was the limit."

Censorship

Allen may have battled censors more than most of his radio contemporaries. "Fred Allen's fourteen-year battle with radio censorship," wrote the ''New York Herald-Tribune'' critic John Crosby, "was made particularly difficult for him by the fact that the man assigned to reviewing his scripts had little sense of humor and frankly admitted he didn't understand Allen's peculiar brand of humor at all." Among the blue pencils, according to Crosby, were:

Allen was barred from saying "Brenda never looked lovelier", at the time of socialite Brenda Frazier's wedding, unless he could get direct permission from the Frazier family itself.

Allen was ordered to change the Cockney accent he assigned the character of a first mate aboard the ''Queen Mary'' — on the grounds that the ship's first mate could only be a cultured man who might not like a Cockney accent.

Allen actually had to fight to keep Mrs. Nussbaum in the Allen's Alley routines – because NBC feared Jewish-dialect humour "might offend all Jews", never mind that Jewish dialect humour had been a vaudeville and burlesque staple for years.

Allen was ordered not to even mention the fictitious town of North Wrinkle until or unless it could be ''proven'' that no such town actually did exist. (It didn't.)

"Allen not only couldn't poke fun at individuals", Crosby wrote, "he also had to be careful not to step on their professions, their beliefs, and sometimes even their hobbies and amusements. Portland Hoffa was once given a line about wasting an afternoon at the rodeo. NBC objected to the implication that an afternoon at the rodeo was wasted and the line had to be changed. Another time, Allen gagged that a girl could have found a better husband in a cemetery. (The censor) thought this might hurt the feelings of people who own and operate cemeteries. Allen got the line cleared only after pointing out that cemeteries have been topics for comedy since the time of Aristophanes."

Life after the Alley

After his own show ended, Allen became a regular attraction on NBC's ''The Big Show'' (1950–1952), hosted by Tallulah Bankhead. He appeared on 24 of the show's 57 installments, including the landmark premiere, and showed he had not lost his trademark ad-lib skill or his rapier wit. (The show's head writer, Goodman Ace, later told radio host Richard Lamparski that Allen's lucrative NBC contract was a large factor in getting him on the show, though Allen also wrote the segments on which he appeared and consulted with the respected Ace and staff on other portions of the show.)

In some ways, ''The Big Show'' was an offspring of the old Allen show: his one-time ''Texaco Star Theater'' announcer, Jimmy Wallington, was one of ''The Big Show's'' announcers, and Portland Hoffa made several appearances with him as well. On the show's premiere, in fact, Allen – with a little prodding from head writer Goodman Ace – could not resist one more play on the old Allen-Benny "feud," a riotous parody of Benny's show called "The Pinch Penny Program."

Television

It was also on ''The Big Show's'' premiere that Allen delivered perhaps his best-remembered crack about television: "You know, television is called a new medium, and I have discovered why they call it a Medium – because it is neither Rare nor Well Done." That did not stop the Museum of Broadcast Communications from considering Allen "the intellectual conscience of television." Aside from his famous crack about not liking furniture that talked, Allen observed that television allowed "people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."

Allen tried three short-lived television projects of his own, including a bid to bring "Allen's Alley" to television in a visual setting similar to ''Our Town''. NBC apparently rejected the idea out of hand. "Television is a triumph of equipment over people," Allen observed after that, "and the minds that control it are so small that you could put them in the navel of a flea and still have enough room beside them for the heart of a network vice president." His other two TV tries were quiz shows. ''Judge for Yourself'' (subtitled ''"The Fred Allen Show'') was a game show incorporating musical acts. The idea was to allow Allen to ad-lib with guests à la Groucho Marx, but the complicated format had to be revamped in the middle of the run. (The star was "lost in the confusion of a half hour filled with too many people and too much activity," wrote Alan Havig.)

A comedy series, ''Fred Allen's Sketchbook,'' did not catch on.

Allen finally held down a two-year stint as a panelist on the CBS quiz show ''What's My Line?'' from 1954 until his death in 1956 (March 17, 1956). Allen actually appeared as a Mystery Guest on ''What's My Line?'' on July 17, 1955, when he was taking a week off from the show to have an emergency appendectomy. Afterwards he joked about the operation: "It was an emergency. The doctor needed some money hurriedly."

Allen also spent his final years as a newspaper columnist/humorist and as a memoirist, renting a small New York office to work six hours a day without distractions. He wrote ''Treadmill to Oblivion'' (1954, reviewing his radio and television years) and ''Much Ado About Me'' (1956, covering his childhood and his vaudeville and Broadway years, and detailing especially vaudeville at its height with surprising objectivity); the former – which included many of his vintage radio scripts – was the best-selling book on radio's classic period for many years.

Death

thumb|The headstone of Fred Allen in Gate of Heaven Cemetery But before he completed the final chapter of his memoir (the book was published as the author had left it), Allen took one of his regular midnight walks on West 57th Street in New York on the night of St. Patrick's Day, 1956 – and suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of 61. A myth for many years (first perpetuated by the ''New York Times'' story the next day reporting his death) was that he died walking his dog, but his biographer Robert Taylor revealed Allen had never owned a dog. A tireless letter writer, Allen's letters were edited by his wife into the publication of ''Fred Allen's Letters'' in 1965.

The following Sunday after his death, the producers of ''What's My Line?'' wanted to do a Fred Allen tribute and retrospective, but, as host John Daly stated in a special message before the opening credits, Allen's wife Portland Hoffa said no, instead wishing that the show be conducted as it always was, in honor of her husband. Steve Allen sat in Fred's chair on the panel, and he, Arlene Francis and Bennett Cerf gave heartfelt tributes to Fred at the end of that program. Dorothy Kilgallen thanked Steve Allen for stepping in at a difficult moment.

Allen is buried at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York (his headstone has both his real and stage names) and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a radio star on 6709½ Hollywood Blvd. and a TV star on 7021 Hollywood Blvd. His widow, Portland Hoffa, married bandleader Joe Rimes in 1959 and celebrated a second silver wedding anniversary well before her own death of natural causes in Los Angeles on Christmas Day, 1990. Hoffa has a star on the Walk of Fame as well. Fred Allen was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. A pedestrian passageway in Boston's Theatre District, designated "Allen's Alley", also honors his memory.

Cultural legacy

Allen was an influence on the writing and comedic timing of satirist Stan Freberg.

Tex Avery's cartoon ''Thugs with Dirty Mugs'' features the main character addressing the audience and showing them his Fred Allen impersonation in one scene. ''The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos'' features a Fred Allen fox screaming about being misinformed, hinting about his heated feuds with censors who were often at the last minute forcing script changes on his show because of its content. Warner Brothers spoofed Allen's radio show with their 1936 cartoon ''Toy Town Hall''.

Bibliography

Allen, Fred. ''Much Ado About Me'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956).

Allen, Fred. ''Treadmill to Oblivion'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1954).

Allen, Fred, ed. by Joe McCarthy, ''Fred Allen's Letters'' (New York: Doubleday, 1965)

Allen, Fred, ed. by Stuart Hample, ''all the sincerity in hollywood...'' (New York: Fulcrum Publishing, 2001). (The lower-case of the title was a tribute to Allen's habit, later in his life, of typing his letters in all-lower case, à la poet E. E. Cummings.)

Smith, H. Allen, introduction by Fred Allen. ''Low Man on a Totem Pole'', Doubleday, Doran, 1941.

References

Sources

Jack Benny and Joan Benny, ''Sunday Nights at Seven: The Jack Benny Story''. (New York: Warner Books, 1990).

Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, ''The Big Broadcast: 1920-1950'' (New York: Flare Books/Avon, 1972).

John Crosby, ''Out of the Blue: A Book About Radio and Television'' (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952).

Alan Havig, ''Fred Allen's Radio Comedy'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).

Ben Schwartz, "The Man Who Invented Jack Benny" ('Written By', Writer's Guild of America, 2002)

Robert Taylor, ''Fred Allen: His Life and Wit'' (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989).

John Dunning, ''On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio''. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Hilmes, M. (1997). Radio voices American broadcasting, 1922-1952. Minnesota Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

External links

Fred Allen Fred Allen's Radio, television, and film appearances

Fred Allen In-depth Fred Allen Biographical Interview with Martin Gostainian

Laughterlog.com Biography with list of radio, television, film and record appearances

Final ''What's My Line?'' appearance on March 11, 1956

Irving Wallace on Fred Allen

Listen to

Internet Archives: ''The Fred Allen Show'' (150 episodes in MP3 format)

OTR Network Library: ''The Fred Allen Show'' (84 episodes)

''Biography in Sound'': "A Portrait of Fred Allen" (May 29, and December 18, 1956)

Category:1894 births Category:1956 deaths Category:American comedians Category:American radio personalities Category:National Radio Hall of Fame inductees Category:Boston University alumni Category:Burials at Gate of Heaven Cemetery Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Peabody Award winners Category:People from Cambridge, Massachusetts Category:People from New York City Category:Vaudeville performers

da:Fred Allen de:Fred Allen es:Fred Allen no:Fred Allen pt:Fred Allen ru:Фред Аллен fi:Fred Allen

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
Name	Steve Allen
Birth name	Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen
Birth date	December 26, 1921
Birth place	New York City, New York, U.S.
Death date	October 30, 2000
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S
Spouse	(divorced) (his death)
Occupation	Actor, comedian, television personality, musician, writer
Years active	1940s–2000 }}

Stephen Valentine Patrick William "Steve" Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was an American television personality, musician, composer, actor, comedian, and writer. Though he got his start in radio, Allen is best-known for his television career. He first gained national attention as a guest host on ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts''. He graduated to become the first host of ''The Tonight Show'', where he was instrumental in innovating the concept of the television talk show. Thereafter, he hosted numerous game and variety shows, including ''The Steve Allen Show'', ''I've Got a Secret'', ''The New Steve Allen Show'', and was a regular panel member on CBS' ''What's My Line?''

Allen was a "creditable" pianist, and a prolific composer, having penned over 14,000 songs, one of which was recorded by Perry Como and Margaret Whiting, others by Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Les Brown, and Gloria Lynne. Allen won a Grammy award in 1963 for best jazz composition, with his song ''The Gravy Waltz''. His vast number of songs have never been equaled, however; singer/songwriter Julian Barry is said to have written over 5000 compositions. Allen wrote more than 50 books and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Allen was born in New York City, the son of Billy and Isabelle Allen (née Donohue), a vaudeville comedienne. Allen was raised on the south side of Chicago by his mother's Irish Catholic family. Milton Berle once called Allen's mother "the funniest woman in vaudeville."

Allen's first radio job was on station KOY in Phoenix, Arizona, after he left Arizona State Teachers College (now Arizona State University) in Tempe, while still a sophomore. He enlisted in the U.S. Army during World War II and was trained as an infantryman. He spent his service time at Camp Roberts, near Monterey, California and did not serve overseas. Allen returned to Phoenix before deciding to move back to California.

Career

Allen became an announcer for KFAC in Los Angeles and then moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing a five-nights-a-week comedy show, ''Smile Time'', co-starring Wendell Noble. After Allen moved to CBS Radio's KNX in Los Angeles, his music-and-talk half-hour format gradually changed to include more talk on a full-hour, late-night show, boosting his popularity and creating standing-room-only studio audiences. During one episode of the show reserved primarily for an interview with Doris Day, his guest star failed to appear, so Allen picked up a microphone and went into the audience to ad lib for the first time. His radio show attracted a huge local following, and in 1950 it replaced ''Our Miss Brooks'', exposing Allen to a national audience for the first time.

Allen's first television experience had come in 1949 when he answered an ad for a TV announcer for professional wrestling. He knew nothing about wrestling, so he watched some shows and discovered that the announcers did not have well-defined names for the holds. When he got the job, he created names for many of the holds, some of which are still used today. The gig lasted several months before ABC decided to replace the matches with old movies.

After CBS radio gave Allen a weekly prime time show, CBS television believed it could groom him for national small-screen stardom and gave Allen his first network television show. ''The Steve Allen Show'' premiered at 11 am on Christmas Day, 1950, and was later moved into a thirty-minute, early evening slot. This new show required him to uproot his family and move from LA to New York, since at that time a coast to coast program could not originate from LA. The show was only a modest ratings success, and was canceled in 1952, after which CBS tried several shows to showcase Allen's talent.

Allen achieved national attention when he was pressed into service at the last minute to host ''Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts'' because Godfrey was unable to appear. Allen turned one of Godfrey's live Lipton commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera and then pouring both into Godfrey's ukulele. With the audience (including Godfrey, watching from Miami) uproariously and thoroughly entertained, Allen gained major recognition as a comedian and host.

He was a regular on the popular panel game show ''What's My Line?'' (where he coined the popular phrase, "Is it bigger than a breadbox?") from 1953 to 1954 and returned frequently as a panelist after Fred Allen died in March 1956, until the series ended in 1967.

''The Tonight Show''

Leaving CBS, he created a late-night New York talk-variety TV program in 1953 for what is now WNBC-TV. The following year, on September 27, 1954, the show went on the full NBC network as ''The Tonight Show'', with fellow radio personality Gene Rayburn (who later went on to host hit game shows such as ''Match Game'', 1962–1982) as the original announcer. The show ran from 11:15 pm to 1:00 am on the East Coast.

While ''Today'' developer Sylvester "Pat" Weaver is often credited as the ''Tonight'' creator, Allen often pointed out that he had previously created it as a local New York show. Allen told his nationwide audience that first evening: "This is ''Tonight'', and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first: this program is going to go on ''forever...'' you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around!"

It was as host of ''The Tonight Show'' that Allen pioneered the "man on the street" interviews and audience-participation comedy breaks that have become commonplace on late-night TV.

The Steve Allen Show

In 1956, NBC offered Allen a new, prime-time, Sunday night variety hour, ''The Steve Allen Show'', aimed at dethroning CBS's top-rated ''Ed Sullivan Show''. The show included a typical run of star performers, including early TV appearances by Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis. Many popular film and television stars were guest stars: Bob Hope, Kim Novak, Errol Flynn, Abbott and Costello, Esther Williams, Jerry Lewis, Martha Raye, The Three Stooges, and a host of others.

The show's regulars were Tom Poston, Louis Nye, Bill Dana, Don Knotts, Pat Harrington, Jr., Dayton Allen, and Gabriel Dell. All except film veteran Dell were relatively obscure performers prior to their stints with Allen, and all went on to stardom. The comedians in Allen's gang were often seen in "The Man in the Street," featuring interviews about some topical subject. Poston would appear as a dullard who couldn't remember his own name; Nye was "Gordon Hathaway," fey Madison Avenue executive; Dana played amiable Latino "Jose Jimenez"; Knotts was an exceedingly jittery man who, when asked if he was nervous, invariably replied with an alarmed "No!"; Harrington was Italian immigrant "Guido Panzini"; Dayton Allen played wild-eyed zanies answering any given question with "Why not?". Gabe Dell usually played straight men in sketches (policemen, newsmen, dramatic actors, etc.).

Other recurring routines included "Crazy Shots" (also known as "Wild Pictures"), a series of sight gags accompanied by Allen on piano; Allen inviting audience members to select three musical notes at random, and then composing a song based on the three notes; a satire on radio's long-running ''The Answer Man'' and a precursor to Johnny Carson's Carnac the Magnificent (Sample answer: "Et tu, Brute."/Allen's reply: "How many pizzas did you eat, Caesar?")

The live Sunday night show aired opposite ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' on CBS and ''Maverick'' on ABC. One of Allen's guests was comedian Johnny Carson, a future successor to Allen as host of ''The Tonight Show''. Among Carson's material during that appearance was a portrayal of how a poker game between Allen, Sullivan, and ''Maverick'' star James Garner (all impersonated by Carson) would transpire. Allen's programs also featured a good deal of music; he helped the careers of singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, who were regulars on his early ''Tonight Show'', and Sammy Davis, Jr.

Allen's show also had one of the longest unscripted "crack-ups" on live TV when Allen began laughing hysterically during "Big Bill Allen's Sports Roundup." He laughed uncontrollably for over a minute, with the audience laughing along, because, as he later explained, he caught sight of his unkempt hair on an off-camera monitor. He kept brushing his hair and changing hats to hide the messy hair, and the more he tried to correct his appearance the funnier it got.

Allen helped the recently invented Polaroid camera become popular by demonstrating its use in live commercials and amassed a huge windfall for his work because he had opted to be paid in Polaroid Corporation stock.

Allen remained host of "Tonight" for three nights a week (Monday and Tuesday nights were taken up by Ernie Kovacs) until early 1957, when he left the "Tonight" show to devote his attention to the Sunday night program. It was his (and NBC's) hope that the Steve Allen show could defeat Ed Sullivan in the ratings. Nevertheless the TV Western ''Maverick'' often bested both ''The Ed Sullivan Show'' and ''The Steve Allen Show'' in audience size. In September 1959, Allen relocated to Los Angeles and left Sunday night television (the 1959-'60 season originated from NBC Color City in Burbank as ''The Steve Allen Plymouth Show'', on Monday nights). Back in Los Angeles, he continued to write songs, hosted other variety shows, and wrote books and articles about comedy.

Later TV projects

From 1962 to 1964, Allen re-created ''The Tonight Show'' on a new late-night ''The Steve Allen Show'', which was syndicated by Westinghouse TV. The five-nights-a-week taped show was broadcast from an old vaudeville theater renamed ''The Steve Allen Playhouse'' on 1228 N. Vine St. in Hollywood. (Several sources have erroneously identified Allen's show using the name of his theater.)

The show was marked by the same wild and unpredictable stunts and comedy skits that often extended down the street to a supermarket known as the Hollywood Ranch Market. He also presented Southern California eccentrics, including health food advocate Gypsy Boots, quirky physics professor Dr. Julius Sumner Miller, wacko comic Prof. Irwin Corey, and an early musical performance by Frank Zappa.

During one episode, Allen placed a telephone call to the home of Johnny Carson, posing as a ratings company interviewer, asking Carson if the Television was on, and what program he was watching. Carson didn't immediately realize the caller was Allen, and the exchange is classic humor from both, beginning to end. A rarity is the exchange between Allen and Carson about Carson's guests, permitting him to plug his own show on a competing network.

One notable program, which Westinghouse refused to distribute, featured Lenny Bruce during the time the comic was repeatedly being arrested on obscenity charges; footage from this program was first telecast in 1998 in a Bruce documentary aired on HBO. Regis Philbin took over hosting the Westinghouse show in 1964, but only briefly.

The show also featured plenty of jazz played by Allen and members of the show's band, the Donn Trenner Orchestra, which included such virtuoso musicians as guitarist Herb Ellis and flamboyantly comedic hipster trombonist Frank Rosolino (whom Allen credited with originating the "Hiyo!" chant later popularized by Ed McMahon). While the show was not an overwhelming success in its day, David Letterman, Steve Martin, Harry Shearer, Robin Williams, and a number of other prominent comedians have cited Allen's "Westinghouse show," which they watched as teenagers, as being highly influential on their own comedic visions.

Allen later produced a second half-hour show for Westinghouse, titled ''Jazz Scene'', which featured West Coast jazz musicians such as Rosolino, Stan Kenton, and Teddy Edwards. The short-lived show was hosted by Oscar Brown, Jr.

Allen hosted a number of television programs up until the 1980s, including ''The New Steve Allen Show'' in 1961 and the game show ''I've Got a Secret'' (replacing original host Garry Moore) in 1964. In the summer of 1967, he brought most of the regulars from over the years back with ''The Steve Allen Comedy Hour'', featuring the debuts of Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Byner and featuring Ruth Buzzi, who would become famous soon after on "Laugh-In." In 1968–71, he returned to syndicated nightly variety-talk with the same wacky stunts that would influence David Letterman in later years, including becoming a human hood ornament; jumping into vats of oatmeal and cottage cheese; and being slathered with dog food, allowing dogs backstage to feast on the free food. During the run of this series, Allen also introduced Albert Brooks and Steve Martin to a national audience for the first time.

A syndicated version of ''I've Got A Secret'' hosted by Allen and featuring panelists Pat Carroll and Richard Dawson was taped in Hollywood and aired during the 1972-73 season. In 1977, he produced ''Steve Allen's Laugh-Back'', a syndicated series combining vintage Allen film clips with new talk-show material reuniting his 1950s TV gang. From 1986 through 1988, Allen hosted a daily three-hour comedy show heard nationally on the NBC Radio Network that featured sketches and America's best-known comedians as regular guests. His cohost was radio personality Mark Simone, and they were joined frequently by comedy writers Larry Gelbart, Herb Sargent, and Bob Einstein.

Composer, actor, and author

Allen was an accomplished composer who wrote over 10,000 songs. He began his recording career in 1953 by signing with Decca Records's Brunswick Records sublabel. In one famous stunt, he made a bet with singer-songwriter Frankie Laine that he could write 50 songs a day for a week. Composing on public display in the window of a Hollywood music store, Allen met the quota, winning $1,000 from Laine. One of the songs, ''Let's Go to Church Next Sunday'', was recorded by both Perry Como and Margaret Whiting. Allen's best-known songs are "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and "The Gravy Waltz," the latter having won a Grammy award in 1963 for Best Jazz Composition. He also wrote lyrics for the standards "Picnic" and "South Rampart Street Parade." Allen composed the score to the Paul Mantee imitation James Bond film ''A Man Called Dagger'' (1967), with the score orchestrated by Ronald Stein.

Allen was also an actor. He wrote and starred in his first film, the Mack Sennett comedy compilation ''Down Memory Lane'', in 1949. His most famous film appearance is in 1955's ''The Benny Goodman Story'', in the title role. The film, while an average biopic of its day, was heralded for its music, featuring many alumni of the Goodman band. Allen later recalled his one contribution to the film's music, used in the film's early scenes: the accomplished Benny Goodman could no longer produce the sound of a clarinet beginner, and that was the only sound Allen ''could'' make on a clarinet! In 1960, he appeared as the character "Dr. Ellison" in the episode "Play Acting" of CBS's anthology series ''The DuPont Show with June Allyson'' though his ''The Steve Allen Show'' had been in competition with the June Allyson program the preceding season.

Allen could play a trumpet—sort of. He wrote and recorded a tune called "Impossible," in which he tries to play it straight, but continues to burst out laughing. (The recording has been played on the Dr. Demento radio show.)

From 1977 to 1981, Allen was the producer of the award-winning PBS series, ''Meeting of Minds'', a "talk show" with actors playing the parts of notable historical figures and Steve Allen as the host. This series pitted the likes of Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and Galileo Galilei in dialogue and argument. This was the show Allen wanted to be remembered for, because he believed that the issues and characters were timeless and would survive long after his passing. This may be more an indictment of popular tastes—which Allen himself wrote about in his last book, "Vulgarians at the Gates"—than of any obtuseness on the show's part.

Allen was a comedy writer and author of more than 50 books, including ''Dumbth'', a commentary on the American educational system, and ''Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality''. Twenty of his books were concerned with his viewsa about religion. He also wrote book-length commentaries on show business personalities ("Funny People"; "More Funny People"). Perhaps influenced by his son's involvement with a religious cult, he became an outspoken critic of organized religion and an active member of such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group that debunked pseudoscientific claims.

Allen and rock music

Allen was notoriously contemptuous of rock 'n' roll music, although he was showman enough to scoop Ed Sullivan by being one of the first to present Elvis Presley on network television (after Presley had appeared on the Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey ''Stage Show'' and Milton Berle shows). "Allen found a way... to satisfy the Puritans. He assured viewers that he would not allow Presley 'to do anything that will offend anyone.' NBC announced that a 'revamped, purified and somewhat abridged Presley' had agreed to sing while standing reasonably still, dressed in black tie." In fact, on this occasion, Allen had Elvis wear a top hat and the white tie and tails of a "high class" musician while singing "Hound Dog" to an actual hound, who was similarly attired. According to Jake Austen, "the way Steve Allen treated Elvis Presley was his federal crime. Allen thought Presley was talentless and absurd, and so he decided to goof on him. Allen set things up so that Presley would show his contrition by appearing in a tuxedo and singing his new song 'Hound Dog' to an elderly basset hound..." Elaine Dundy says that Allen smirkingly presented Elvis "with a roll that looks exactly like a large roll of toilet paper with, says Allen, the 'signatures of eighteen thousand fans.' " Presley looked "at Steve as if to say, 'It's all right. I've been made a worse fool in my life,' and after he patted the basset hound he is about to sing ''Hound Dog'' to, he wiped his hands on his trousers as if to wipe away Steve Allen, the dog, and the whole show." Guitarist Scotty Moore later said that Elvis and the members of his band were "all angry about their treatment the previous night." "The next day, as Elvis entered the RCA studios to record 'Hound Dog,' fans greeted him with signs that declared, 'We Want the Real Elvis' and 'We Want the Gyrating Elvis.' In the press, critics were no kinder with the singer than they had ever been, this time pronouncing him a 'cowed kid' who had demonstrated, once again, that he 'couldn't sing or act a lick.' " In a column in ''Newsweek'', John Lardner wrote, "Like Huckleberry Finn, when the widow put him in a store suit and told him not to gap or scratch, [Elvis] had been 'fouled' by NBC's attempt to 'civilize him... for the good of mankind.'" Presley often referred to the Allen show as the most ridiculous performance of his career.

The singer "was later featured in a mediocre cowboy sketch with Allen, Andy Griffith, and Imogene Coca. As 'Tumbleweed Presley,' his big joke was, 'I'm warning you galoots, don't step on my blue suede boots.' " That apparent mockery was consistent with other situations in which Allen had singers in such comic scenarios on his show, in contrast to the simple "singing in front of a curtain" style of the Sullivan show. The house singers on the early ''Tonight'' show were subjected to many such stunts. In addition, Allen's skit with Presley actually was less a put-down of Presley and mainly a satire of country music stage shows like the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride, the Shreveport-based country music radio show (over KWKH) Presley performed on in 1954 and 1955. It's highly debatable, given Presley's spirited performance, whether unlike the top hat and tails performance, there was any put-down motivation on Allen's part with this particular skit, since he could have easily done it in any of his other programs.

In a 1996 interview Allen was asked about the show. Asked if NBC executives expressed any concerns about Elvis's planned appearance, Allen replied that he'd "read more nonsense about " it, and "a lot of wrong reports have gotten into the public -". "If there ever was, I never heard about it. And since it was my show, I think it would have brought to my attention. " Regarding Elvis's movements he stated "No! I took no objection to the movements I'd seen him make on the Dorsey Brothers show. I didn't see a problem. Of course, I had read about some of the controversy, much of it generated by Ed Sullivan, who was opposite of our show on CBS. It didn't matter to me. I was using good production sense in booking him."

In his book "Hi-Ho Steverino!" Allen wrote the following: "When I booked Elvis, I naturally had no interest in just presenting him vaudeville-style and letting him do his spot as he might in concert. Instead we worked him into the comedy fabric of our program." "We certainly didn't inhibit Elvis' then-notorious pelvic gyrations, but I think the fact that he had on formal evening attire made him, purely on his own, slightly alter his presentation."

Allen also appeared on the shows of entertainers, even the rock and roll program ''The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC.

Later career

In the late 1970s early 80s, Steve Allen recorded a solo piano Pianocorder album for the Pianocorder Contemporary Artists Series, joining other illustrious artists-pianists of the day such as Liberace, Floyd Cramer, Teddy Wilson, Roger Williams, and Johnny Guarnieri to name a few. His solo album was very popular. Pianocorder was founded by Joseph Tushinsky. The Pianocorder was the first modern mechanical player piano made for the public that used solenoids to power the keys. Later, it was bought out by Yamaha-Disklavier and discontinued and is known today as the Yamaha Disklavier. During the late 80s, Allen and his second wife Jayne Meadows made numerous appearances on the drama ''St. Elsewhere'', playing Victor Erlich's estranged parents.

The 1985 documentary film ''Kerouac, the Movie'' starts and ends with footage of Jack Kerouac reading from ''On the Road'' as Allen accompanies on soft jazz piano from ''The Steve Allen Plymouth Show'' in 1959. "Are you nervous?" Allen asks him; Kerouac answers nervously, "Noo," a take-off on the character usually played by Don Knotts.

Allen appeared in a PSA advocating for New Eyes for the Needy in the 1990s.

Personal life

Steve Allen was married to Dorothy Goodman in 1943 and they had three children, Steve Jr., Brian, and David. That marriage ended in divorce in 1952. Allen's second wife was actress Jayne Meadows, sister to actress Audrey Meadows. The marriage of Allen and Meadows produced one son, Bill Allen. They were married from 1954 until his death in 2000.

Allen received a traditional Irish Catholic upbringing. He later became a secular humanist and Humanist Laureate for the Academy of Humanism, a member of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. He received the Rose Elizabeth Bird Commitment to Justice Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1998. He was a student and supporter of general semantics, recommending it in ''Dumbth'' and giving the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1992. In spite of his liberal position on free speech, his later concerns about the lewdness he saw on radio and television, particularly the programs of Howard Stern, caused him to make proposals restricting the content of programs, allying himself with the Parents Television Council. His full-page ad on the subject appeared in newspapers a day or two before his unexpected death. Allen's views evolved in the last dozen years of his life, as he called himself an "involved Presbyterian". He had been married for decades to Jayne Meadows, who was the daughter of a Christian missonary.

Allen made a last appearance on ''The Tonight Show'' on September 27, 1994, for the show's 40th anniversary broadcast. Jay Leno was effusive in praise and actually knelt down and kissed his ring.

Death

On October 30, 2000, Allen was driving to his son's home in Encino, California, when his car was struck by another vehicle backing out of a driveway. Neither Allen nor the other driver believed he was injured and damage to both vehicles was minimal, so the two exchanged insurance information and Allen continued on.

Shortly after arriving at his son's home (after carving pumpkins with his grandchildren and taping a radio tribute to an old friend, satirist Paul Krassner), Allen did not feel right and decided to take a nap. While napping, he suffered a massive heart attack and was pronounced dead shortly after 8 p.m. Autopsy results concluded that the traffic accident earlier in the day had caused a blood vessel in his chest to rupture, causing blood to leak into the sac surrounding the heart (known as haemopericardium.) In addition, he suffered four broken ribs as a result of the accident.

Allen was two months shy of his 79th birthday at the time of his death. He is interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park-Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles.

Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — a television star at 1720 Vine St. and a radio star at 1537 Vine St.

Shows

''Songs for Sale'' (1950–1952)

''What's My Line?'' (regular panelist, 1953–1954; frequent guest panelist 1954-1967)

''Jukebox Jury'' (1953)

''Talent Patrol'' (1953–1955)

''The Steve Allen Show'' (1956–61)

''The Tonight Show'' (1954–1957, NBC)

''The Steve Allen Westinghouse Show'' (1962–1968)

''I've Got a Secret'' (1964–1967, 1972–1973)

''The Steve Allen Show'' (Filmways production, 1968–1969)

''Match Game'' (panelist, 1974)

''Meeting of Minds'' (1977–1981, PBS)

''Steve Allen Comedy Hour'' (1980–1981)

''The Start of Something Big'' (1985–1986)

''Space Ghost Coast to Coast'' (1997, one episode, Guest)

''Homicide: Life On The Street (1998): Steve and Jayne appeared as guests (January 16, 1998).

Songs

"Theme from ''Picnic''"

"This Could Be the Start of Something Big"

"Pretend You Don't See Her, My Heart"

"The Gravy Waltz"

"The Saturday Evening Post"

"Impossible"

"Cool Yule"

Comedic Discography

"Man in the street" (1963) (Signature 1004)

"Funny phone calls" (1963) (Dot 3472, re-issued as Casablanca 811-366-1-ML)

"More funny phone calls" (1963) (Dot 3517, re-issued as Casablanca 811-367-1-ML)

Musical Discography

''Soulful Brass'' with Oliver Nelson (Impulse!, 1968)

''Soulful Brass #2'' with Oliver Nelson (Flying Dutchman, 1969)

Books

{|class="wikitable" |- !Year!!Title!!Notes!!Identifiers |- | 1955 || ''Steve Allen's Bop Fables'' || illustrated by George Price || |- | 1955 || ''Fourteen for Tonight'' || short stories || |- | 1956 || ''The Funny Men'' || || |- | 1956 || ''Wry on the Rocks'' || poems || |- | 1958 || ''The Girls on the 10th Floor and Other Stories'' || short stories || ; ISBN 0-8369-3608-6 (1970 printing) |- | 1959 || ''The Question Man...'' || photographs by Gene Lester || |- | 1960 || ''Mark It and Strike It: An Autobiography'' || || |- | 1962 || ''Not All of Your Laughter, Not All of Your Tears'' || Steve's first novel || |- | 1964 || ''Dialogues in Americanism'' || transcript of three debates: Allen vs. William F. Buckley, Jr.; Robert M. Hutchins vs. L. Brent Bozell, and James MacGregor Burns vs. Willmoore Kendall || |- | 1965 || ''Letter to a Conservative'' || || |- | 1966 || ''The Ground is Our Table'' || photographs by Arthur Dubinsky || |- | 1967 || ''Bigger than a Breadbox'' || with commentary by Leonard Feather; illustrations by Rowland B. Wilson || |- | 1969 || ''A Flash of Swallows: New Poems'' || poems || ISBN 0837567343; |- | 1972 || ''The Wake'' || || ISBN 0-385-07608-8 |- | 1973 || ''Princess Snip-Snip and the Puppy-Kittens'' || illustrated by David Gantz || |- | 1973 || ''Curses! or... How Never to Be Foiled Again'' || illustrated by Marvin Rubin || ISBN 0-87477-008-4 |- | 1974 || ''What To Say When It Rains'' || || ISBN 0-8431-0357-4 |- | 1975 || ''Schmock-Schmock!'' || || ISBN 0-385-09664-X |- | 1978 || ''Meeting of Minds'' || || ISBN 0-517-53383-9; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-550-4 |- | 1978 || ''Chopped-Up Chinese'' || || |- | 1979 || ''Ripoff: A Look at Corruption in America'' || with Roslyn Bernstein and Donald H. Dunn || ISBN 0-8184-0249-0 |- | 1979 || ''Meeting of Minds, Second Series'' || || ISBN 0-517-53894-6; 1989 printing: ISBN 0-87975-565-2 |- | 1980 || ''Explaining China'' || || ISBN 0-517-54062-2 |- | 1981 || ''Funny People'' || || ISBN 0-8128-2764-3 |- | 1982 || ''Beloved Son: A Story of the Jesus Cults'' || || ISBN 0-672-52678-6 |- | 1982 || ''More Funny People'' || || ISBN 0-8128-2884-4 |- | 1986 || ''How to Make a Speech'' || || ISBN 0-07-001164-8 |- | 1987 || ''How to Be Funny: Discovering the Comic You'' || with Jane Wollman || ISBN 0-07-001199-0; 1992 printing: ISBN 0-87975-792-2; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-206-4 |- | 1989 || ''The Passionate Nonsmoker's Bill of Rights: The First Guide to Enacting Nonsmoking Legislation'' || with Bill Adler, Jr. || ISBN 0-688-06295-4 |- | 1989 || ''"Dumbth": And 81 Ways to Make Americans Smarter'' || || ISBN 0-87975-539-3; 1998 revised edition: ISBN 1-57392-237-4 |- | 1989 || ''Meeting of Minds, Vol. III'' || || ISBN 0-87975-566-0 |- | 1989 || ''Meeting of Minds, Vol. IV'' || || ISBN 0-87975-567-9 |- | 1990 || ''The Public Hating: A Collection of Short Stories'' || || ISBN 0-942637-22-4 |- | 1990 || ''Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality'' || || ISBN 0-87975-638-1 |- | 1992 || ''Hi-Ho, Steverino: The Story of My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of Television'' || || ISBN 0-942637-55-0; large-print edition: ISBN 1-56054-521-6 |- | 1993 || ''More Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion & Morality'' || || ISBN 0-87975-736-1 |- | 1993 || ''Make 'em Laugh'' || || ISBN 0-87975-837-6 |- | 1994 || ''Reflections'' || || ISBN 0-87975-904-6 |- | 1995 || ''The Man Who Turned Back the Clock, and Other Short Stories'' || || ISBN 1-57392-002-9 |- | 1995 || ''The Bug and the Slug in the Rug'' || || ISBN 1-880851-17-2 |- | 1996 || ''But Seriously...: Steve Allen Speaks His Mind'' || || ISBN 1-57392-090-8 |- | 1999 || ''Steve Allen's Songs: 100 Lyrics with Commentary'' || || ISBN 0-7864-0736-0 |- | 2000 || ''Steve Allen's Private Joke File'' || || ISBN 0-609-80672-6 |- | 2001 || ''Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio—Raising the Standards of Popular Culture'' || || ISBN 1-57392-874-7 |}

Allen's series of mystery novels "starring" himself and wife Jayne Meadows were in part ghostwritten by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook.

''The Talk Show Murders'' (1982), ISBN 0-440-08471-7

''Murder on the Glitter Box'' (1989), ISBN 0-8217-2752-4

''Murder in Manhattan'' (1990), ISBN 0-8217-3033-9

''Murder in Vegas'' (1991), ISBN 0-8217-3462-8

''The Murder Game'' (1993), ISBN 0-8217-4115-2

''Murder on the Atlantic'' (1995), ISBN 0-8217-4647-2

''Wake Up to Murder'' (1996), ISBN 1-57566-090-3

''Die Laughing'' (1998), ISBN 1-57566-241-8

''Murder in Hawaii'' (1999), ISBN 1-57566-375-9

References

External links

Entertainer Steve Allen dead at 78

Steve Allen tribute (Skeptical Inquirer January 2001)

Steve Allen Interview at Archive of American Television

http://www.box.net/shared/a7kkghvxti Steve Allen Pianocorder/LX Piano Solo "The Shadow of Your Smile"

http://www.box.net/shared/gmr3y5scmj Steve Allen Pianocorder/LX Piano Solo

Steve Allen interview by Mike Wallace on ''The Mike Wallace Interview'' July 7, 1957

http://www.tedstrong.com/steveallen.shtml

FBI file on Steve Allen

Category:1921 births Category:2000 deaths Category:American comedians Category:American comedy musicians Category:American game show hosts Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American skeptics Category:American television talk show hosts Category:Arizona State University alumni Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California Category:Dot Records artists Category:Drake University alumni Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Peabody Award winners Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:People from New York City Category:Westinghouse Broadcasting Category:People from Tempe, Arizona Category:American writers

ca:Steve Allen da:Steve Allen de:Steve Allen es:Steve Allen fr:Steve Allen it:Steve Allen no:Steve Allen pl:Steve Allen (komik) pt:Steve Allen simple:Steve Allen sh:Steve Allen (komičar) fi:Steve Allen

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Stephen Colbert
birth name	Stephen Tyrone Colbert
birth date	May 13, 1964
birth place	Washington, D.C., United States
medium	Theatre, television, film, books
religion	Roman Catholic
nationality	American
active	1984–present
genre	Sketch comedy, news satire, improvisational comedy, character comedy, political satire, observational comedy, blue comedy
subject	American culture, American politics, American conservatism, The Christian Right, political punditry, popular culture, current events, mass media/news media, egomania, xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, sexuality
influences	Don Novello, Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Dean Martin, Jon Stewart, Steve Martin Bill O'Reilly
influenced	Rob Corddry, Ed Helms, Aasif Mandvi
spouse	Evelyn McGee-Colbert (3 children)
notable work	Chuck Noblet in''Strangers with Candy''Stephen Colbert in''The Daily Show'' and''The Colbert Report''Writer,''I Am America (And So Can You!)''Co-writer,''America (The Book)''Phil Ken Sebben and Myron Reducto in ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law''Professor Richard Impossible in ''The Venture Bros.''
signature	Stephen Colbert Signature.svg
website	ColbertNation.com

}} Stephen Tyrone Colbert ( or ; born May 13, 1964) is an American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor. He is the host of Comedy Central's ''The Colbert Report'', a satirical news show in which Colbert portrays a caricatured version of conservative political pundits.

Colbert originally studied to be an actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre when he met famed Second City director Del Close while attending Northwestern University. He first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago; among his troupe mates were comedians Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, with whom he developed the critically acclaimed sketch comedy series ''Exit 57''.

Colbert also wrote and performed on the short-lived ''Dana Carvey Show'' before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series ''Strangers with Candy''. He gained considerable attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. It was his work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series ''The Daily Show'', however, that first introduced him to a wide audience.

In 2005, he left ''The Daily Show with Jon Stewart'' to host a spin-off series, ''The Colbert Report''. Following ''The Daily Show's'' news-parody concept, ''The Colbert Report'' is a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows such as ''The O'Reilly Factor''. Since its debut, the series has established itself as one of Comedy Central's highest-rated series, earning Colbert three Emmy Award nominations and an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006. Colbert was named one of ''Time's'' 100 most influential people in 2006. His book ''I Am America (And So Can You!)'' was No. 1 on ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list.

Early life

Colbert was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, on James Island, the youngest of eleven children in an Irish Catholic family. Colbert and his siblings, in order from oldest to youngest, are James ("Jimmy"), Edward ("Eddie"), Mary, William ("Billy"), Margo, Thomas ("Tommy"), Jay, Elizabeth ("Lulu"), Paul, Peter, and Stephen.

Many of his ancestors immigrated to North America from Ireland in the 1800s before and during the Great Famine.

His father, James William Colbert, Jr., was the vice president for academic affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina. His mother, Lorna Colbert (née Tuck), was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert describes his parents as devout people who also strongly value intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to question the Church and still be Catholic. The emphasis his family placed on intelligence and his observation of negative stereotypes of Southerners led Colbert to train himself to suppress his Southern accent while he was still quite young. As a child, he observed that Southerners were often depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television; to avoid that stereotype, he taught himself to imitate the speech of American news anchors.

Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, but his family is actually of Irish and distant German descent. Originally, the name was pronounced in English; Stephen Colbert's father, James, wanted to pronounce the name , but maintained the pronunciation out of respect for his own father. However, James offered his children the option to pronounce the name whichever way they preferred. Stephen started using later in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Stephen's brother Ed, an intellectual property attorney, retained ; this was shown in a February 12, 2009 appearance on ''The Colbert Report'', when his youngest brother asked him, " or ?" Ed responded "", to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell".

On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and two of his brothers, Peter and Paul, were killed in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina. They were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut. Shortly thereafter, Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the more urban environment of East Bay Street in Charleston. By his own account, Colbert found the transition difficult and did not easily make new friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert later described himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he also developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially ''Dungeons & Dragons'', a pastime which he later characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation.

Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but, by his own assessment, was not highly motivated academically. During his time as a teenager, he also briefly fronted a Rolling Stones cover band. When he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a severely perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage. The damage was severe enough that he was unable to pursue a career that would involve scuba diving. The damage also left him deaf in his right ear. For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but ultimately he applied and was accepted to Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had also enrolled. There he continued to participate in plays while studying mainly philosophy; he found the curriculum rigorous but was more focused than he had been in high school and was able to apply himself to his studies. Despite the lack of a significant theater community at Hampden-Sydney, Colbert's interest in acting escalated during this time. After two years, he transferred to Northwestern University's School of Speech (later named School of Communication) to study performance, emboldened by the realization that he loved performing even when no one was coming to shows.

Early career in comedy

While at Northwestern, Colbert studied with the intent of becoming a dramatic actor; mostly he performed in experimental plays and was uninterested in comedy. He began performing improvisation while in college, both in the campus improv team No Fun Mud Piranhas and at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago as a part of Del Close's ImprovOlympic at a time when the project was focused on competitive, long form improvisation, rather than improvisational comedy. "I wasn't gonna do Second City", Colbert later recalled, "because those Annoyance people looked down on Second City because they thought it wasn't pure improv—there was a slightly snobby, mystical quality to the Annoyance people". After Colbert graduated in 1986, however, he was in need of a job, and a friend who was employed at Second City's box office offered him work answering phones and selling souvenirs. Colbert accepted, and discovered that Second City employees were entitled to take classes at their training center for free. Despite his earlier aversion to the comedy group, he signed up for improvisation classes, and enjoyed the experience greatly.

Shortly thereafter, he was hired to perform with Second City's touring company, initially as an understudy for Steve Carell. It was there he met Amy Sedaris and Paul Dinello, with whom he often collaborated later in his career. By their retelling, the three comedians did not get along at first—Dinello thought Colbert was uptight, pretentious and cold, while Colbert thought of Dinello as "an illiterate thug"—but the trio became close friends while touring together, discovering that they shared a similar comic sensibility.

When Sedaris and Dinello were offered the opportunity to create a television series for HBO Downtown Productions, Colbert left The Second City and relocated to New York in order to work with them on the sketch comedy show ''Exit 57''. The series debuted on Comedy Central in 1995 and aired through 1996. Despite only lasting for 12 episodes, the show received favorable reviews and was nominated for five CableACE Awards in 1995, in categories including best writing, performance, and comedy series.

Following the cancellation of ''Exit 57'', Colbert worked for six months as a cast member and writer on ''The Dana Carvey Show'', alongside former Second City cast mate Steve Carell, as well as Robert Smigel, Charlie Kaufman, Louis C.K., and Dino Stamatopoulos, among others. The series, described by one reviewer as "kamikaze satire" in "borderline-questionable taste", had sponsors pull out after its first episode aired, and was canceled after seven episodes. Colbert then worked briefly as a freelance writer for ''Saturday Night Live'' with Robert Smigel. Smigel also brought his animated sketch ''The Ambiguously Gay Duo'' to ''SNL'' from ''The Dana Carvey Show''; Colbert provided the voice of Ace on both series, opposite Steve Carell as Gary. Needing money, he also worked as a script consultant for VH1 and MTV, before taking a job filming humorous correspondent segments for ''Good Morning America''. Only two of the segments he proposed were ever produced, and only one aired, but the job led his agent to refer him to ''The Daily Show's'' then-producer, Madeline Smithberg, who hired Colbert on a trial basis in 1997.

Television career

''Strangers with Candy''

During the same time frame, Colbert worked again with Sedaris and Dinello to develop a new comedy series for Comedy Central, ''Strangers with Candy''. Comedy Central picked up the series in 1998 after Colbert had already begun working on ''The Daily Show''. As a result he accepted a reduced role, filming only around twenty ''Daily Show'' segments a year while he worked on the new series.

''Strangers with Candy'' was conceived of as a parody of after school specials, following the life of Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old dropout who returns to finish high school after 32 years of life on the street. Most noted by critics for its use of offensive humor, it concluded each episode by delivering to the audience a skewed, politically incorrect moral lesson. Colbert served as a main writer alongside Sedaris and Dinello, as well as portraying Jerri's strict but uninformed history teacher, Chuck Noblet, seen throughout the series dispensing inaccurate information to his classes. Colbert has likened this to the character he played on ''The Daily Show'' and later ''The Colbert Report'', claiming that he has a very specific niche in portraying "poorly informed, high-status idiot" characters. Another running joke throughout the series was that Noblet, a closeted homosexual, was having a "secret" affair with fellow teacher Geoffrey Jellineck despite the fact that their relationship was apparent to everyone around them. This obliviousness also appears in Colbert's ''Daily Show'' and ''Colbert Report'' character.

Thirty episodes of ''Strangers with Candy'' were made, which aired on Comedy Central in 1999 and 2000. Though its ratings were not remarkable during its initial run, it has been characterized as a cult show with a small but dedicated audience. Colbert reprised his role for a film adaptation, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005 and had a limited release in 2006. The film received mixed reviews. Colbert also co-wrote the screenplay with Sedaris and Dinello.

''The Daily Show''

Stephen Colbert joined the cast of Comedy Central's parody-news series ''The Daily Show'' in 1997, when the show was in its second season. Originally one of four correspondents who filmed segments from remote locations in the style of network news field reporters, Colbert was referred to as "the new guy" on-air for his first two years on the show, during which time Craig Kilborn served as host. When Kilborn left the show prior to the 1999 season, Jon Stewart took over hosting duties, also serving as a writer and co-executive producer. From this point, the series gradually began to take on a more political tone and increase in popularity, particularly in the latter part of the 2000 U.S. presidential election season. The roles of the show's correspondents were expanded to include more in-studio segments, as well as international reports which were almost always done in the studio with the aid of a greenscreen.

Unlike Stewart, who essentially hosts ''The Daily Show'' as himself, Colbert developed a correspondent character for his pieces on the series. Colbert has described his correspondent character as "a fool who has spent a lot of his life playing not the fool — one who is able to cover it at least well enough to deal with the subjects that he deals with". Colbert was frequently pitted against knowledgeable interview subjects, or against Stewart in scripted exchanges, with the resultant dialogue demonstrating the character's lack of knowledge of whatever subject he is discussing. Colbert also made generous use of humorous fallacies of logic in explaining his point of view on any topic. Other ''Daily Show'' correspondents have adopted a similar style; former correspondent Rob Corddry recalls that when he and Ed Helms first joined the show's cast in 2002, they "just imitated Stephen Colbert for a year or two". Correspondent Aasif Mandvi has stated "I just decided I was going to do my best Stephen Colbert impression".

Colbert has appeared in several recurring segments for ''The Daily Show'', including "Even Stevphen" with Steve Carell, in which both characters were expected to debate a selected topic but instead would unleash their anger at one another. Colbert commonly hosted "This Week in God", a report on topics in the news pertaining to religion, presented with the help of the "God Machine". Colbert filed reports from the floor of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention as a part of ''The Daily Show's'' award-winning coverage of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Presidential elections; many from the latter were included as part of their ''The Daily Show: Indecision 2004'' DVD release. In several episodes of ''The Daily Show'', Colbert filled in as anchor in the absence of Jon Stewart, including the full week of March 3, 2002, when Stewart was scheduled to host ''Saturday Night Live''. After Colbert left the show, Rob Corddry took over "This Week in God" segments, although a recorded sample of Colbert's voice is still used as the sound effect for the God Machine. Later episodes of ''The Daily Show'' have reused older Colbert segments under the label "Klassic Kolbert". Colbert won three Emmys as a writer of ''The Daily Show'' in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

''The Colbert Report''

Since October 17, 2005, Colbert has hosted his own television show, ''The Colbert Report'', a ''Daily Show'' spin-off which parodies the conventions of television news broadcasting, particularly cable-personality political talk shows like ''The O'Reilly Factor'' and ''Glenn Beck''. Colbert hosts the show in-character as a blustery right-wing pundit, generally considered to be an extension of his character on ''The Daily Show''. Conceived by co-creators Stewart, Colbert, and Ben Karlin in part as an opportunity to explore "the character-driven news", the series focuses less on the day-to-day news style of the ''Daily Show'', instead frequently concentrating on the foibles of the host-character himself.

The concept for ''The Report'' was first seen in a series of ''Daily Show'' segments which advertised the then-fictional series as a joke. It was later developed by Stewart's Busboy Productions and pitched to Comedy Central, which greenlighted the program; Comedy Central had already been searching for a way to extend the successful ''Daily Show'' franchise beyond a half hour. The series opened to strong ratings, averaging 1.2 million viewers nightly during its first week on the air. Comedy Central signed a long-term contract for ''The Colbert Report'' within its first month on the air, when it immediately established itself among the network's highest-rated shows.

Much of Colbert's personal life is reflected in his character on ''The Colbert Report''. With the extended exposure of the character on the show, he often references his interest in and knowledge of Catholicism, science fiction, and ''The Lord of the Rings'', as well as using real facts to create his character's history. His alternate persona was also raised in South Carolina, is the youngest of 11 siblings, and is married. The actual Colbert's career history in acting and comedy, however, is often downplayed.

Politics

2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner

On Saturday, April 29, 2006, Stephen Colbert was the featured entertainer for the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Standing a few yards from U.S. President George W. Bush—in front of an audience the Associated Press called a "Who's Who of power and celebrity"—Colbert delivered a searing routine targeting the president and the media. In his politically conservative character from ''The Colbert Report'', Colbert satirized the George W. Bush Administration and the White House press corps with such lines as:

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Colbert received a chilly response from the audience. His jokes were often met with silence and muttering, apart from the enthusiastic laughter of a few in the audience. The major media outlets paid little attention to it initially. ''Washington Post'' columnist Dan Froomkin and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism professor Todd Gitlin claimed that this was because Colbert's routine was as critical of the media as it was of Bush. Richard Cohen, also writing for ''The Washington Post'', responded that the routine was not funny. The video of Colbert's performance became an internet and media sensation, while, in the week following the speech, ratings for ''The Colbert Report'' rose by 37% to average just under 1.5 million total viewers per episode. In ''Time'' magazine James Poniewozik called it "the political-cultural touchstone issue of 2006". Writing six months later, ''New York Times'' columnist Frank Rich referred to Colbert's speech as a "cultural primary" and called it the "defining moment" of the 2006 midterm elections. The performance earned Colbert the "Gutsiest Move" Award on Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards on June 13, 2007.

2008 Presidential bid

Under his fictional persona in ''The Colbert Report'', Colbert dropped hints of a potential presidential run throughout 2007, with speculation intensifying following the release of his book, ''I Am America (And So Can You!)'', which was rumored to be a sign that he was indeed testing the waters for a future bid for the White House. On October 16, 2007, he announced his candidacy on his show, stating his intention to run both on the Republican and Democratic platforms, but only as a "favorite son" in his native South Carolina. He later abandoned plans to run as a Republican due to the $35,000 fee required to file for the South Carolina primary, however he continued to seek a place on the Democratic ballot and on October 28, 2007, campaigned in the South Carolina state capital of Columbia, where he was presented with the key to the city by Mayor Bob Coble.

After announcing his presidential ticket, he asked his viewers to cast their votes by donating to DonorsChoose.org, an online charity connecting individuals to classrooms in need. Colbert's promotion inspired $68,000 in donations to South Carolina classrooms, which benefited over 14,000 low-income students. Colbert teamed up with DonorsChoose.org again in 2008 by asking supporters of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to do the same. As a lead-up to the Pennsylvania primary, he created a "straw poll that makes a difference", where people could donate to Pennsylvania classroom projects in honor of their favorite candidate. Colbert viewers donated $185,000 to projects reaching 43,000 students in Pennsylvania public schools.

On November 1, 2007, the South Carolina Democratic Party executive council voted 13–3 to refuse Colbert's application onto the ballot. "The general sense of the council was that he wasn't a serious candidate and that was why he wasn't selected to be on the ballot", stated John Werner, the party's director. In addition, he was declared "not viable", as he was only running in one state. Several days later he announced that he was dropping out of the race, saying that he did not wish to put the country through an agonizing Supreme Court battle. CNN has reported that Obama supporters pressured the South Carolina Democratic Executive Council to keep Colbert off the ballot. One anonymous member of the council told CNN that former State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum had placed pressure on them to refuse Colbert's application despite his steady rise in polls.

Though Colbert's real-life presidential campaign had ended, current Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Joe Quesada established in an interview on ''The Colbert Report'' that Colbert's campaign was still going strong in the fictional Marvel Universe, citing the cover art of a then-recent issue of ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' which featured a Colbert campaign billboard in the background. Background appearances of Colbert campaign ads continued to appear in Marvel Comics publications, as recently as August 2008's ''Secret Invasion'' #5 (which also features a cameo of an alien Skrull posing as Colbert). In October 2008, Colbert made an extended 8-page appearance webslinging with Spider-Man in ''The Amazing Spider-Man'' issue #573.

2010 Congressional testimony

On September 24, 2010, Colbert testified in character before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Security. He was invited by committee chairwoman Zoe Lofgren to describe his experience participating in the United Farm Workers' "''Take Our Jobs''" program, where he spent a day working alongside migrant workers in upstate New York. At the end of his often-humorous testimony, Colbert broke character in responding to a question from Rep. Judy Chu, D-CA, and explained why he cares about the plight of migrant workers:

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Democratic committee member John Conyers questioned whether it was appropriate for the comedian to appear before Congress and asked him to leave the hearing. Though Colbert offered to depart at the direction of the committee chairwoman, Rep. Lofgren requested that he stay at least until all opening testimony had been completed, whereupon Conyers withdrew his request.

Conservative pundits took aim at his Congress testimony not long after.

"As John Conyers notes, the media and spectators turned out to see whether Colbert would address the panel seriously as an expert on immigration and make the panel a joke, or stay in character and make the panel a bigger joke," - Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.}}

2010 Washington D.C. rallies

In September 2010, following Glenn Beck's ''Restoring Honor rally'', a campaign developed that called for Colbert to hold his own rally at the Lincoln Memorial. On the September 10, 2010 episode of the ''Daily Show'' and the ''Colbert Report'' Stewart and Colbert made preannouncements of a future event. On September 16, 2010, Stewart and Colbert announced competing rallies on the Washington, DC Mall on October 30, 2010, Stewart's "''Rally to Restore Sanity''", and Colbert's "''March to Keep Fear Alive''". Both were eventually merged into the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

Super PAC

In May 2011, Colbert filed a request with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking for a media exemption for coverage of his political action committee, ColbertPAC, on ''The Colbert Report''.

In June 2011, during a public meeting, the FEC voted 5-1 to grant ''The Colbert Report'' a limited media exemption. The exemption allows unlimited donations of airtime and show resources to promote the Colbert Super PAC without requiring disclosure to the FEC, but only for ads appearing on ''The Colbert Report''. Following the hearing, Colbert formally filed paperwork for the creation of his Super PAC with the FEC secretary.

Other work

Stephen Colbert is co-author of the satirical text-and-picture novel ''Wigfield: The Can Do Town That Just May Not'', which was published in 2003 by Hyperion Books. The novel was a collaboration between Colbert, Amy Sedaris, and Paul Dinello, and tells the story of a small town threatened by the impending destruction of a massive dam. The narrative is presented as a series of fictional interviews with the town's residents, accompanied by photos. The three authors toured performing an adaptation of ''Wigfield'' on stage the same year the book was released. Colbert appeared in a small supporting role in the 2005 film adaptation of ''Bewitched''. He has made guest appearances on the television series ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', ''Spin City'', and ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'', and on the improvisational comedy show ''Whose Line Is It Anyway?''. He voiced the characters of Reducto and Phil Ken Sebben in the Adult Swim's ''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law'' but left the show in 2005 to work on The Colbert Report. His characters were both killed, though he returned to voice Phil for the series finale. Colbert also has provided voices for Cartoon Network's ''The Venture Bros.'', Comedy Central's ''Crank Yankers'', and ''American Dad!'', as well as for Canadian animated comedy series ''The Wrong Coast''. He appeared as Homer Simpson's life coach, Colby Krause, in the ''Simpsons'' episode "He Loves to Fly and He D'ohs". Colbert filled in for Sam Seder on the second episode of ''The Majority Report'' on Air America Radio, and has also done reports for ''The Al Franken Show''. He appeared on a track on ''Wig in a Box'', a tribute album for ''Hedwig and the Angry Inch''. Colbert read the part of Leopold Bloom in ''Bloomsday on Broadway XXIV: Love Literature Language Lust: Leopold's Women Bloom'' on June 16, 2005 at Symphony Space in New York City. He appeared in a series of TV commercials for General Motors, as a not-too-bright investigator searching for the elusive (and non-existent in real life) "Mr. Goodwrench". He also portrayed the letter Z in ''Sesame Street: All-Star Alphabet'', a 2005 video release.

Colbert is a producer of ''The 1 Second Film'', the world's largest nonprofit collaborative art film. His video request that IMDb list his credit for ''The 1 Second Film'' ("it is as valid as most of my credits") enabled thousands of the film's producers to be listed in the massive movie database until they were removed in early 2007.

Colbert has released one book associated with ''The Colbert Report'', ''I Am America (And So Can You!)''. It was released on October 7, 2007 by Grand Central Publishing. Grand Central Publishing is the successor to Warner Books, which published ''America (The Book)'', written by ''The Daily Show'' staff. The book contains similar political satire, but was written primarily by Colbert himself rather than as a collaboration with his ''Colbert Report'' writing staff.

On November 23, 2008, his Christmas special, ''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!'', aired on Comedy Central. It was released on DVD in November 2008.

In January 2010, Colbert was named the assistant sports psychologist for the US Olympic speed skating team at the 2010 Winter Olympics. He was also invited to be part of NBC's 2010 Winter Olympics coverage team by Dick Ebersol, chairman of NBC Universal Sports. In April, Colbert performed as Harry in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's musical ''Company'', presented by the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Center. The show, featuring Neil Patrick Harris in the starring role, ran for four nights and was filmed for later showings in movie theaters, which began June 15. In May 2011, Colbert joined Charleston to Bermuda Race yachting race, as the captain of ship "the Spirit of Juno". He finished second, five miles behind leaders "Tucana".

Personal life

Although, by his own account, he was not particularly political before joining the cast of ''The Daily Show'', Colbert has described himself as a Democrat according to a 2004 interview. In an interview at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Institute of Politics, he stated that he has "no problems with Republicans, just Republican policies". He is also a practicing Roman Catholic and Sunday school teacher.

Colbert lives in Montclair, New Jersey with his wife, Evelyn McGee-Colbert, who appeared with him in an episode of ''Strangers with Candy'' as his mother. She also had an uncredited cameo as a nurse in the series pilot and a credited one (as his wife, Clair) in the film. McGee-Colbert actually met Jon Stewart, later a good friend of Colbert, before she met her husband in 1990. She is the daughter of prominent Charleston civil litigator Joseph McGee, of the firm Buist Moore Smythe McGee. The couple has three children: Madeleine, Peter, and John, all of whom have appeared on ''The Daily Show''. Colbert prefers, however, that his children not watch his show, ''The Colbert Report'', saying that "kids can't understand irony or sarcasm, and I don't want them to perceive me as insincere".

Awards and honors

In 2000 Colbert and the other Daily Show writers were the recipients of three Emmy Awards as writers for ''The Daily Show'' and again in 2005 and 2006. In 2005 he was nominated for a Satellite Award for his performance on ''The Colbert Report'' and again in 2006.

He was also nominated for three Emmys for ''The Colbert Report'' in 2006, including Best Performance in a Variety, Musical Program or Special, which he lost to Barry Manilow. Manilow and Colbert would go on to jokingly sign and notarize a revolving biannual custody agreement for the Emmy on the ''Colbert Report'' episode aired on October 30, 2006. He lost the same category to Tony Bennett in 2007 and Don Rickles in 2008.

In January 2006, the American Dialect Society named ''truthiness'', which Colbert coined on the premiere episode of ''The Colbert Report'', as its 2005 Word of the Year. Colbert devoted time on five successive episodes to bemoaning the failure of the Associated Press to mention his role in popularizing the word ''truthiness'' in its news coverage of the Word of the Year. On December 9, 2006, Merriam-Webster also announced that it selected ''truthiness'' as its Word of the Year for 2006. Votes were accepted on their website, and according to poll results, truthiness won by a five-to-one margin.

In June 2006, after speaking at the school's commencement ceremony, Colbert received an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts degree from Knox College. ''Time'' named Stephen Colbert as one of the 100 most influential people in 2006 and in May 2006, ''New York'' magazine listed Colbert (and Jon Stewart) as one of its top dozen influential persons in media. Colbert was named Person of the Year by the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado on March 3, 2007 and was also given the Speaker of the Year Award by The Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) on March 24, 2007 for his "drive to expose the rhetorical shortcomings of contemporary political discourse".

Colbert was named the 2nd Sexiest TV News Anchor in September 2006 by Maxim Online, next to Mélissa Theuriau of France and was the only man featured on the list. In November 2006, he was named a "sexy surprise" by ''People'' in the Sexiest Man Alive honors and in the December 2006 issue of ''GQ'' he was named one of ''GQ's'' "Men of the Year".

He was nominated for a TCA Award for ''The Colbert Report'' by the Television Critics Association in 2006 and also received two Peabody Awards for his work on ''The Daily Show: Indecision 2000'' and ''Indecision 2004''. In February 2007, Ben & Jerry's unveiled a new ice cream flavor in honor of Colbert, named Stephen Colbert's AmeriCone Dream. Colbert waited until Easter to sample the ice cream because he "gave up sweets for Lent". Colbert will donate all proceeds to charity through the new Stephen Colbert AmeriCone Dream Fund, which will distribute the money to various causes.

After the Saginaw Spirit defeated the Oshawa Generals in Ontario Junior League Hockey, Oshawa Mayor John Gray declared March 20, 2007 (the mayor's own birthday) Stephen Colbert Day, honoring a previous bet with Stephen. At the event, Mayor Gray referred to the publicity the bet brought the city, remarking, "This is the way to lose a bet".

Colbert was honored for the Gutsiest Move on the Spike TV Guys' Choice Awards on June 13, 2007 for his performance at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. In August 2007, Virgin America named an airplane. "Air Colbert", in his honor. On October 28, 2007, Colbert received the key to the city of Columbia, South Carolina from Mayor Bob Coble.

On December 20, 2007 Colbert was named Celebrity of the Year by The Associated Press. On April 2, 2008 he received a Peabody Award for The Colbert Report, saying in response, "I proudly accept this award and begrudgingly forgive the Peabody Committee for taking three years to recognize greatness".

In 2008 Colbert won the Emmy award for writing again, this time as a writer for the ''Colbert Report''. Colbert delivered the Class Day address to the graduating class of Princeton University on June 2, 2008, and accepted the ''Class of 2008 Understandable Vanity Award'', consisting of a sketch of Colbert and a mirror. He also has been announced as the Person of the Year for the 12th annual Webby Awards.

In 2008, East Carolina University associate professor Jason Bond named a species of trapdoor spider ''Aptostichus stephencolberti'' in honor of Stephen Colbert. In January 2010, Colbert received the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for his album ''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!''. He also announced the nominees for Song of the Year while toting a pre-released Apple iPad. Colbert will be the 2011 commencement speaker for Northwestern University, and receive an honorary degree.

COLBERT Treadmill

In 2009 NASA engineered a new treadmill for the International Space Station. It was brought to the ISS by the Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' during the STS-128 mission in August of 2009. The complex machine is now used eight hours daily by Astronauts and Cosmonauts living aboard the space station in order to maintain their muscle mass and bone density while spending long periods of time in a zero gravity environment. While engineers at NASA where constructing this treadmill it was simply called T-2 for more than two years. However, on April 14, 2009 the treadmill became the most famous piece of exercise equipment in the world when NASA renamed it to the "Combined Operational Load-Bearing External Resistance Treadmill", or COLBERT. NASA named the treadmill after Colbert, who took an interest during the Node 3 naming census for the ISS module, ''Tranquility''.

Colbert urged his followers to post the name "Colbert", which upon completion of the census received the most entries totaling 230,539, 40,000 votes more than the second place choice of Serenity. The COLBERT is expected to last the life of the ISS and will have seen about 38,000 miles when the Space Station is retired in 2020 but was also built with 150,000 mile lifespan if needed till 2028 or longer. Colbert realized he was the recipient of an extremely rare honor when astronaut Suni Williams came on ''The Colbert Report'' to announce that NASA had named the treadmill after him. Despite being an acronym, the COLBERT is the only piece of NASA engineered equipment in space that is named after a living human being.

Filmography

! Year!!Title!!Role!!Notes
1993		Chet Davies	First role
1995	''Exit 57''	Various
1996	''The Dana Carvey Show''	Various
	''Shock Asylum''	Dr. Dewalt
''The Daily Show''		1997–2005 (regular)2005 – present (recurring)
		Happy Successful Guy	Also known as ''Snow Days''
'' Whose Line is it Anyway''	Stephen Colbert
''Strangers with Candy''	Chuck Noblet	1999–2000
2000	''Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law	Myron Reducto / Phil Ken Sebben / The Eagle of Truth	2000–2007
2003	''Nobody Knows Anything''	TV Newsman
2003	''Chalkzone	Himself (paring-up w/ Kurtwood Smith)
	''Curb Your Enthusiasm''	Tourist Man
''Law and Order: Criminal Intent''	James Bennett
''The Venture Bros.''	Professor Richard Impossible	2004–2006
	''The Great New Wonderful''	Mr. Peersall
	Stu Robison
''Outlaw Tennis''	Announcer	Video game
''The Colbert Report''		2005 – present
2006		Chuck Noblet	Feature film based on TV show
	''The Love Guru''	Jay Kell (Hockey Announcer)
''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!''	Santa Claus, Stephen Colbert
	''Monsters vs. Aliens''	The President (voice)
''The 1 Second Film''	Self/Producer

Bibliography

Colbert, Dinello, Sedaris. ''Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just May Not'' (Hyperion, May 19, 2004) ISBN 0-7868-8696-X

''America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction'' (Warner Books, September 2004) ISBN 0-446-53268-1

''I Am America (And So Can You!)'' (Grand Central Publishing, October 9, 2007) ISBN 0-446-58050-3

Discography

''A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!'' in 2008

''Stephen Colbert with the Black Belles — Charlene II (I'm Over You)'' in 2011

References

External links

; General

The Colbert Report Official Site

Stephen Colbert Producer Profile for The 1 Second Film

Wikiality.com, a wiki dedicated to Stephen Colbert and ''The Colbert Report''

Collected news and commentary at ''The New York Times''

Stephen Colbert: His Many Faces - slideshow by ''Life magazine''

; Audio/Video in 2008 in 2005 in 2006

Colbert interview transcript, ''60 Minutes''. (April 30, 2006)

Colbert in an open, hour-long interview and Q & A session arranged by Harvard's Institute of Politics. He speaks about the nature of his TV-show character and the interplay between wearing the mask and using it to make political points.

, (April 30, 1441/59811 Transcript). (April 29, 2006)

A 2007 appearance at the Glamour magazine Women of the Year Awards to honor Nancy Pelosi.

Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from South Carolina Category:Actors from Washington, D.C. Category:American people of German descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American comedians of Irish descent Category:American film actors Category:American media critics Category:American satirists Category:American television actors Category:American television personalities Category:American television talk show hosts Category:American television writers Category:American voice actors Category:American writers of German descent Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Hampden–Sydney College alumni Category:Northwestern University alumni Category:People from Charleston, South Carolina Category:People from Essex County, New Jersey Category:Second City alumni Category:South Carolina Democrats Category:United States presidential candidates, 2008 Category:Writers from South Carolina Category:Writers from Washington, D.C. Category:Writers Guild of America Award winners Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American political pundits

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