Was Steve Allen a grouch according to a majority, or did he just appear that way?

Cafe Society
1

With Johnny Carson’s passing, a number of tributes have popped up since. On one, Doc Severinsen is interviewed, and a film is shown of he and Steve Allen at an award show. Steve was the presenter of an award for best fanfare (for what exactly, I’m not too sure), and, upon being asked to provide a sample of the winning fanfare, Severinsen kept going and going until Allen forcefully removed the trumpet with hardly a smile on his face, and with seemingly aggressive body language. I’m used to a slight gleam in the comedian’s eye when seeing stuff like this, and none was apparent.

Along this line, I’ve also seen footage of Frank Zappa on Allen’s own show, whereon Zappa performed his bicycle concerto[sup]1[/sup]. Allen had a more jaunty demeanor this time, but still he told Zappa to never do that again (or come back again?) with hardly a smile.

And, I think we’ve all seen the footage of Jerry Lee Lewis kicking out the bench before the bridge of Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On, only to see it promptly and defiantly fly back[sup]2[/sup]. Certainly this was a pretentious move for the day by Lewis, but such a retaliation doesn’t seem to be without similar spirit as well.

This is all I’ve seen, really, of Steve Allen; I haven’t seen him very much with any other people. But, the frequency of my limited exposure and such happenings leads me to be suspicious, which inspires this question.

  1. I was amused when Zappa asked if the pianist could mute the strings of his piano, only to be met with a prompt shaking of the pianist’s head.

  2. The movie Great Balls of Fire gives this scene thorough dramatic license, allowing the bench to fly at least thrice the height of which it flew originally.

2

I get the impression Allen was a bit full of himself, judging from some of his other work (i.e. Meeting of Minds) but if he could spoof himself on Simpsons, I’d be happy to forgive a few testy moments.

3

Allen always struck me as a stuffed shirt, though I suppose some regarded him as the thinking man’s comedian. Yes he was/is funny, but his claims to have written something like 4,500+ songs speaks volumes.

4

Allen absolutely hated rock music, so it’s not surprising he was hostile to rock musicians. I also think he was a bit too full of himself – his “Meeting of Minds” show that he was so proud of really wasn’t much more than a dull bunch of talking heads talking Matters of Consequence.

5

Wasn’t Steve Allen also vehemently against comedians who “worked blue,” or cursed or referred to anything vaguely risque or sexual in their act?

6

Steve Allen is, or at least was, an honourary chairman of the Parents Television Council , which is one of those community standards watchdog groups. His association with this bunch of reactionary anti-fun busy-bodies is enough to qualify him way beyond “grouch”, IMO.

thwartme

7

There was Steve Allen
There was Stevereno!

Stevereno was the funniest man on the Planet. His afternoon show was a classic and I couldn’t wait for it to come on. Often, when he came out for the Monologue, he was dressed in a bathrobe and swim trunks, anything could happen and for the love of comedy, the producers had something whacky lined-up and hilarious for Steve.
One of the funniest skits was Steve was to Box a Kangaroo. They met a center-ring,the bell rang,the Kangeroo stood stoic with little boxing gloves on his paws. Steve began shadow-boxing,the crowd egg him on,Steve slowly worked his way in and gave the Roo a little love-tap on the nose. With That, the Roo Kicked Steve with both feet and stomped and beat him to a pulp. Steve literally crawled out of the ring for his life!

8

Steve improvised much of the music he played on his shows, making up little joke songs on the spur of the moment. He never learned to read music, but he had a transcriber write down everything he played and sang. They were all copyrighted, even the little two-couplet songs. He joked about that fact once on a show, replaying a few of the mini-songs he had copyrighted. One trick he was fond of was having a handful of audience members play one note each on his piano. He would then improvise a jazz solo based on that random phrase.

Louie Nye, a regular on his show, originated the “Hi Ho, Steverino!” phrase.

9

After Allen died, most of the tribute clips showed him breaking up into his trademark hysterical laughter, hardly ever being able to finish a bit without cracking up.

He was a champion against stupidity, an ardent skeptic, and a proselytizer of reading and knowledge. This can make a man cranky when dealing with idiots who just won’t get the point, as those of us who frequent GQ can attest.

It’s true that he hated rock music with a passion. Even the ghost-written mysteries under his name always have a anti-rock music episode, whether it’s needed for the plot or not.

But what he hated in comedy was the cheap, gratuitous use of blue language. And that’s hard to argue with. It’s still true today that if a comedian if dying, he or she can just stick in some blue language to make the audience laugh. This isn’t comedy. Allen, however, was a big supporter of Lenny Bruce even though he was famously “dirty” for the time, because Bruce used his language to a purpose. That’s a hugely important nuance.

10

The dullest commencement speech I ever heard was my sister’s BA graduation when Steven Allen spoke. You would think that as a comedian, he would be sympathetic to a captive audience and throw in some jokes along with your standard life-lesson business.

Instead, he had a list of Things that are Important to Know to Live a Good and Responsible Life on which I can Expound in Great Detail. Unfortunately, he didn’t say how long this list was. 10 points? 20? Nope–I don’t remember past 33! All humorless, condescending (as if he were addressing middle schoolers), and incredibly conservative/old-fashioned (with only the tiniest sprinkling of genuine insight).

The guy was undoubtedly funny and talented, but I suspect I saw the Steve Allen he most wanted people to “respect” and was closer to his authentic self–the stuck-up, self-important prig.

11

I’d be interested to know what he thought of George Carlin, who also used his language, including certain dirty words, in insightful ways.

12

He sounds like a funny, irreverent man who got more uptight and crotchety as he got older. That would be a first. :slight_smile:

As far as his dislike of rock and roll, I blame, simply, changing public tastes. You and your music preferences get older, but young people don’t. This happens to almost everyone: e.g., Louis Armstrong, as great and timeless a musical genius as there ever was, hated bebop.

Allen came up at a time when American society was more highbrow, so his cultured, bookworm schtick fitted in better. He may have changed less than those around him, but the contrast was more noticeable because he was a public figure for a long time.

I never understood, however, how someone could write so damn many songs without stumbling onto a good one.

13

Had to work with him briefly once. I was the “middleman” in a slight confrontation he was having with a stage manager, and my impression of him was that he was an old fart, totally full of himself. Of course, by that time, he really was an old fart, and considering his long career, I guess he felt entitled to be full of himself.

Still - I had worked with far more famous actors who were always gracious, or could at least express an opinion without making it sound like a barked command.

So yeah…“grouch” seems to be a pretty good definition of Steve Allen.

14

IIRC, Jerry Lee Lewis named his oldest son Steve Allen Lewis, because Steve Allen was the only honest man he had met in show business.

15

I’ve been watching the old “What’s My Line” on GSN. They’re in the 1953 season and the fresh young comedian Steve Allen is a featured panelist and he is quite funny.

However, the fact that he hated rock so strongly didn’t do much to endear him to the younger crowd. About the same time, Mitch Miller came along who hated rock even more.

16

He did do one: “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.”

It’s that second one he never got around to.

As for the rest of his career, well, it’s got to be a sad thing being a genius renaissance man in your 20s and 30s and then having to live the rest of your life in that shadow.

Remember that Allen was a hugely successful comic and radio personality, invented the Tonight Show, had a major prime time variety show, and: put out several highly praised jazz albums (including one under a pseudonym to ensure that it wasn’t his name skewing the reviews); was a noted short story writer; put out several books of humor, including the seminal Bop Fables; wrote a bestselling autobiography; and produced some of the standard works on humorists starting with The Funny Men, all in the 1950s.

I’ll bet Orson Welles wasn’t a bundle of laughs toward the end of his career either.

But if you haven’t seen Allen in action on his own show, you can’t appreciate what zest he had. He was much more alive than any late night figure since.

17

Another one of Steverino’s skits involving Rock & Roll…
He had two bags on his desk, one bag with adjectives,one bag with nouns…

He would then draw one slip from each bag to name a “Rock Group”

Example, I remember… Communist Toothbrush!!

18

Well, whaddya expect? He was blitzed on Gallo and waiting on an offer for a Transformers sequel.

19

I should have known that Exapno would be here to stand up for Steve. Well done, EM.

You’re absolutely right about this. Years before I was a big fan of David Letterman, I was a big fan of Steve Allen, based on a comedy record our family owned, “Steve Allen’s Funny Phone Calls,” and his syndicated daily daytime talk show that ran from the late 1960s to the early 1970s. I was a teenager at the time and thought he was a comic genius.

I never cared for Johnny Carson that much, and rarely watched him. To me, he was square, the Establishment, where Allen was cool, the non-conformist. And just a lot funnier. Particularly in the sketches, Johnny always seemed forced and predictable, and most of the humor seemed to come from his breaking character. Allen’s sketches, with great comedians like Louis Nye and Tom Poston, were off-beat, unpredictable, and sometimes just weird.

Steve originated a lot of things that others, particularly Letterman in his early years, emulated, copied, or out-and-out stole. In Letterman’s case it ranged from jokes (“We polled the audience, and if you’ve ever been polled, you know how painful it can be.”) to the funny phone calls (a classier and funnier version of “Crank Yankers”) to stunts like the velcro wall jumping. (BTW, Letterman, to his credit, frequently admitted his indebtedness to Allen.)

Remember the train wreck that was Chevy Chase’s late night talk show? And how he had a keyboard built into his desk, and played little bits now and then? I’d wager a fair sum of money that Chevy was imitating Steve. Unfortunately, what Chevy didn’t realize was that Steve really was a Renaissance man, and Chevy wasn’t.

And I don’t know about anyone else, but I liked Meeting of Minds. At the time I thought it was a worthwhile attempt to make classic philosophers and thinkers accessible to ordinary folks. Its biggest flaw, IMO, was that Steve worked his wife, Jayne Meadows, into too many of them. Steve was incredibly loyal and devoted to Jayne, which is admirable, but she was nowhere near as talented as he was in any respect. (I still recall her incredibly annoying laugh.)

If, later in life, Steve didn’t suffer fools lightly and wasn’t always the nicest guy in person, well, I, for one, forgive him.

Is that the one on which the stand-in was his black cleaning lady? Do you remember her name? Has that album become a valuable collector’s item or does no one still realize it was actually Steve?

20

Steve strikes me as one of those unfortunate souls who never quite survived the 60s.

Consider pre-60s Steve: the hip funnyman, instigator of mad stunts, accessible Class B intellectual and defender of Lenny Bruce.

Then consider post-60s Steve: the stodgy crank polemicist, Class C mystery writer and decry-er of George Carlin, Communist Toothbrush-like rock bands et al.

Then again, a lot of things (& people) didn’t survive the 60s. Maybe Steve was just a statistic.