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1921-2000 |
Did anybody ever find something Steve Allen couldn't do well?
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
IT
REALLY wouldn't have surprised me to learn that Steve Allen had
already written his own eulogy when he died last week at age
79. In fact, it wouldn't have surprised me to hear he'd actually
videotaped himself reading it, had composed some new funeral
music to be played in the background, had booked a dozen show
business superstars to "say a few words" over him and
written it all up in advance to save the guys from Variety
and The Hollywood Reporter the trouble of covering it
themselves.
And, I might add, it wouldn't surprise me to find out he did
a sensational job on all of those tasks.
In short, I've known for more than 40 years that Steve Allen could do darn near anything he wanted to do--and do it better than most anybody else out there. He was television's original Renaissance man: An all-around talent who always represented the very highest standards in a medium that ultimately embraced the lowest common denominator.
I first became aware of Steve Allen in the early 1950s, before my parents bought their first TV set. He already was doing late night television on a local station in New York City by 1953 and his name began popping up in the New York-based syndicated show biz columns that I devoured as a kid. That was a long time ago and I couldn't prove it today, but I'm guessing I already sort of knew about Steve Allen from reading Earl Wilson or Ed Sullivan before I actually saw him on a TV screen. He was one of those "hot" talents who always seemed to be saying something clever or doing something off the wall, so I'm sure I was prepped well in advance by the time I first saw him.
Well, that first exposure was something, all right. Here was this bookish guy with horn-rimmed glasses who looked like the Prudential insurance man who used to come by our house to collect the monthly premium from my dad. He looked like a guy who probably could save you money on your income tax or something, but you'd never figure him to make you laugh.
But I'm pretty sure "Steverino" had me laughing without letup no more than five or six minutes after I first stayed up late to watch the new "Tonight Show" on NBC. I'm guessing I was maybe 14 at the time and Steve Allen's brand of silly, irreverent and insanely clever humor was like catnip to me.
In those days, the airwaves weren't filled with standup comics like they are today and even the funniest TV sitcoms, like "I Love Lucy," weren't exactly subtle. So, Steve Allen almost had the playing field to himself. There just wasn't anybody like him around: A genuinely smart and sophisticated guy who could do really wacky stuff and somehow retain his dignity. (The great Ernie Kovacs, who hosted "Tonight" later when Allen needed a few nights off each week, was even wackier. But Kovacs was so far out that the mainstream audience was baffled and network executives probably were a little afraid of him.)
Comedy was Steve Allen's primary activity, but he also did all this other stuff. He played a mean piano, which is what he usually did to start off his show, often making wisecracks between riffs. He also wrote a kazillion songs, some of them hits like "This Could Be the Start of Something Big" and the lyrics for the "Theme From Picnic," the hit 1955 movie. And the guy could write, too. I still have my dogeared copy of "Fourteen for Tonight," a paperback collection of pretty good short stories by Steve Allen that came out during his late-night days. He also played the leading role in a major studio feature film: Universal's "The Benny Goodman Story" in 1955. (Goodman dubbed the clarinet playing, a rare example of Allen not doing everything.)
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Some of Allen's obits credited him with creating "The Tonight Show." That's not true. The program was created by NBC's Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, a brilliant and innovative network executive who also created "The Today Show." (Sadly, too many people today think of him only as the father of actress Sigourney Weaver.)
But Steve Allen did a lot more than simply host a program so durable that it's still running 46 years after its network debut. In his brief sojourn (1954-57) as host of the network show, Allen literally invented most of the fundamentals of what we now think of as "late night TV." He was doing "man on the street" interviews decades before Dave Letterman graduated from weatherman duties. He was doing sketch comedy long before Johnny Carson and his "Mighty Carson Players." He had a sidekick "announcer" (Gene Rayburn) and a genial bandleader (Skitch Henderson) and a stock company of comics, singers and characters long before Jack Paar rounded up his gang.
In those "Tonight Show" days, Allen had two of the hottest young talents in the pop music world as regulars: Steve Lawrence, a boy singer whose "Poinciana" was a big record hit in my junior high years, and Eydie Gorme, a high energy song-belter and stylist who probably could shatter twice as many wine glasses as today's high-amp recording "divas." Their music fell into that weird period between the end of the Big Band Era and the Rock Revolution, but they were considered pretty "cool" in 1954-55, as strange as that may seem today. When Steve and Eydie fell in love and became a team, it was a network programmer's dream come true.
Bear in mind that there wasn't much on early 1950s TV that really was "with it" the way Steve Allen's late night show was in 1954-55. It became so hot that NBC finally decided to take a big gamble and gave him an hour in prime time on Sunday nights, starting on June 24, 1956, right opposite TV's No. 1 variety hour, CBS' "Ed Sullivan Show."
I remember that show very fondly, but I was surprised to look up the records and see that it never really became a big hit. It didn't make the top 25 in either the 1956 or 1957 TV seasons, but by its second season it had helped knock Sullivan out of the top 25. (Sullivan was No. 2 in 1956, the year Allen's Sunday night show premiered. Later ABC's "Maverick" kicked both their butts.)
It was on the Sunday night show that Allen's beloved "man on the street" comedians really became national icons: "Nervous" Don Knotts; cool, slightly effete Gordon Hathaway (Louis Nye); dense Tom Poston; loveably timid Jose Jimenez (Bill Dana) and the whole zany pack. There never has been a prime time ensemble to match those marvelously funny people.
You never knew quite what to expect from "The Steve Allen Show," especially when it came to musical acts. Allen actually had Elvis Presley on before The King's famous "Ed Sullivan Show" appearance where they refused to let his hips swivel. The rock acts in those days were so startling that sometimes you couldn't tell if they were real or some bizarre Steve Allen parody. I remember the time Allen brought out this absolutely ludicrous character with wild hair who pounded on a piano keyboard, even "played" a few bars with his rear end and sang really gross songs. I kept waiting for the punchline, for the geek to take off the mask and be revealed as Pat Harrington, Jr. or Gabe Dell. Turned out he was an authentic rock star of "tomorrow": Jerry Lee Lewis.
By
1961, when the Sunday night show left the air and Jack Paar had
been hosting NBC's late night show for several years, Steve Allen
moved into a quieter phase of his career. By that, I mean he
was only about three times busier than most everybody else in
show business.
Though Allen certainly did a lot of goofy things in his career,
he never lost his aura as a really important person in show business.
When you think of him today, you think of him as a guy who always
set the bar higher and never stopped trying to master something
new. I also found him always to be a gracious, generous man who
never looked down his nose at anybody.
In 1980, after I'd written a complimentary column about him, I was surprised to get a personal letter from him, which said, "The mail has me so swamped at the moment, forgive me for not being able to recall whether I've earlier thanked you for your kind column of May 7th. If not: Thanks for your kind column of May 7th. Cordially, Steve Allen."
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Not long after that, I invited Allen to appear on a panel of TV pioneers at a semi-annual meeting of the Television Critics Assn. He wrote back that he'd be out of the country on that date and wouldn't be able to attend, but then he amusingly asked why the nation's critics wanted to talk with him at this particular time, wondering if "you know something about my health that my doctor hasn't told me yet?"
Allen never slowed down enough to take all the bows he deserved for his past achievements. He was too involved with life for much of that. He should have gone on a lot longer, but he still left behind a mountain of milestones in his remarkable career. Now that he's gone, it's suddenly apparent just how unique a person Steve Allen was. I think we're going to recognize that more and more as time goes by.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The portrait of Steve Allen is © 1983 by Walt Disney Productions. The photo from "The Benny Goodman Story" is ©1955 by Universal-International Pictures. The Steve Allen signature is from Ron Miller's personal collection.
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