Treadmill to Oblivion

Treadmill to Oblivion PDF Author: Fred Allen
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In the spring of 1932, I had finished a two-year run in Threes A Crowd, a musical revue in which I appeared with Clifton Webb and Libby Holman. The following September I was to go into a new show. I had no contract; merely the producers promise. When I returned to New York to start rehearsals, I discovered that there was to be no show. It had been a hot summer. Many people hadn’t been able to keep things. One of the things the producer hadn’t been able to keep was his promise. With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely. This will be a boon to show business where more chorus girls are kept than promises. With no immediate plans for the theater, I began to wonder about radio. Many of the big-name comedians were appearing on regular programs. In the theater the actor had uncertainty, broken promises, constant travel and a gypsy existence. In radio, if you were successful, there was an assured season of work. The show could not close if there was nobody in the balcony. There was no travel and the actor could enjoy a permanent home. There may have been other advantages but I didn’t need to know them. The pioneer comedians on radio were Amos and Andy, Ray Knight and his Cuckoo Hour, the Gold Dust Twins, Stoopnagle and Budd and the Tasty Yeast Jesters. With the exception of Amos and Andy, who had been playing smalltime vaudeville theaters under the name of Sam and Henry, the others were trained and developed in radio. All of these artists performed their comedy routines in studios without audiences. Their entertainment was planned for the listener at home. In the early 1930’s when the Broadway comedians descended on radio, things went from hush to raucous. The theater buffoon had no conception of the medium and no time to study its requirements. The Broadway slogan was “Its dough—lets go!” Eddie Cantor, Jack Pearl, Ed Wynn, Joe Penner and others were radio sensations. They brought their audiences into the studios, used their theater techniques and their old vaudeville jokes, and laughter, rehearsed or spontaneous, started exploding between the commercials. The cause of this merriment was not always clear. The bewildered set owner in Galesburg, Illinois, suddenly realized that he no longer had to be able to understand radio comedy. As he sat in his Galesburg living room he knew that he had proxy audiences sitting in radio studios in New York, Chicago and Hollywood watching the comedians, laughing and shrieking “Vass you dere, Charlie” and “Wanna buy a duck” for him.

Treadmill to Oblivion

Treadmill to Oblivion PDF Author: Fred Allen
Publisher: Ravenio Books
ISBN:
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
In the spring of 1932, I had finished a two-year run in Threes A Crowd, a musical revue in which I appeared with Clifton Webb and Libby Holman. The following September I was to go into a new show. I had no contract; merely the producers promise. When I returned to New York to start rehearsals, I discovered that there was to be no show. It had been a hot summer. Many people hadn’t been able to keep things. One of the things the producer hadn’t been able to keep was his promise. With the advance of refrigeration, I hope that along with the frozen foods someday we will have frozen conversation. A person will be able to keep a frozen promise indefinitely. This will be a boon to show business where more chorus girls are kept than promises. With no immediate plans for the theater, I began to wonder about radio. Many of the big-name comedians were appearing on regular programs. In the theater the actor had uncertainty, broken promises, constant travel and a gypsy existence. In radio, if you were successful, there was an assured season of work. The show could not close if there was nobody in the balcony. There was no travel and the actor could enjoy a permanent home. There may have been other advantages but I didn’t need to know them. The pioneer comedians on radio were Amos and Andy, Ray Knight and his Cuckoo Hour, the Gold Dust Twins, Stoopnagle and Budd and the Tasty Yeast Jesters. With the exception of Amos and Andy, who had been playing smalltime vaudeville theaters under the name of Sam and Henry, the others were trained and developed in radio. All of these artists performed their comedy routines in studios without audiences. Their entertainment was planned for the listener at home. In the early 1930’s when the Broadway comedians descended on radio, things went from hush to raucous. The theater buffoon had no conception of the medium and no time to study its requirements. The Broadway slogan was “Its dough—lets go!” Eddie Cantor, Jack Pearl, Ed Wynn, Joe Penner and others were radio sensations. They brought their audiences into the studios, used their theater techniques and their old vaudeville jokes, and laughter, rehearsed or spontaneous, started exploding between the commercials. The cause of this merriment was not always clear. The bewildered set owner in Galesburg, Illinois, suddenly realized that he no longer had to be able to understand radio comedy. As he sat in his Galesburg living room he knew that he had proxy audiences sitting in radio studios in New York, Chicago and Hollywood watching the comedians, laughing and shrieking “Vass you dere, Charlie” and “Wanna buy a duck” for him.

Fred Allen's Radio Comedy

Fred Allen's Radio Comedy PDF Author: Alan Havig
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1439905606
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Tracing a career that lasted from 1912 into the 1950s, Havig describes the "verbal slapstick" style that was Fred Allen's hallmark and legacy to American comedy.

Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy

Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy PDF Author: Kathryn Fuller-Seeley
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520295048
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
"Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century--by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating "Fall Guy" character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack's pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering "showrunners" combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors' products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932's depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s"--Provided by publisher.

Fred Allen

Fred Allen PDF Author: Robert Taylor
Publisher: Little Brown
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
A biography of the man who created some of America's wittiest and most popular radio shows and an entertaining look at twetieth-century comedy.

All the Sincerity in Hollywood--

All the Sincerity in Hollywood-- PDF Author: Fred Allen
Publisher: Chicago Review Press - Fulcrum
ISBN: 9781555911546
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Allen offered a thinking person's humor, delivered every week to 30 million Americans in his 17-year-long radio show (1932-1949). The book showcases many of Fred Allen's previously published and unpublished letters, essays, radio scripts, and quips.

Much Ado About Me

Much Ado About Me PDF Author: Fred Allen
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1839740981
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
Much Ado About Me, first published in 1956, is the autobiography of comedian Fred Allen's childhood and vaudeville career. (His long career in radio is documented in his other book, Treadmill to Oblivion). Much Ado About Me is a warm wise and wonderfully entertaining autobiography, jammed with extraordinary events and even more extraordinary people. Here is Fred Allen's early life in the suburbs of Boston; his apprenticeship in the Boston Public Library; the happy exciting round of Amateur Nights; the wonderful, improbable world of Scollay Square; the hopes, the anxieties and the fantastic adventures of a smalltime entertainer billed as Freddy James, the "World's Worst Juggler." From his first stage appearances on 'Amateur Nights' to his U.S. and international tours, Much Ado About Me is a warm and entertaining look at one of America's top stage performers and the golden age of Vaudeville. Included are 8 pages of illustrations.

The Comedians

The Comedians PDF Author: Kliph Nesteroff
Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
ISBN: 0802190863
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
“Funny [and] fascinating . . . If you’re a comedy nerd you’ll love this book.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews, National Post, and Splitsider Based on over two hundred original interviews and extensive archival research, this groundbreaking work is a narrative exploration of the way comedians have reflected, shaped, and changed American culture over the past one hundred years. Starting with the vaudeville circuit at the turn of the last century, the book introduces the first stand-up comedian—an emcee who abandoned physical shtick for straight jokes. After the repeal of Prohibition, Mafia-run supper clubs replaced speakeasies, and mobsters replaced vaudeville impresarios as the comedian’s primary employer. In the 1950s, the late-night talk show brought stand-up to a wide public, while Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, and Jonathan Winters attacked conformity and staged a comedy rebellion in coffeehouses. From comedy’s part in the civil rights movement and the social upheaval of the late 1960s, to the first comedy clubs of the 1970s and the cocaine-fueled comedy boom of the 1980s, The Comedians culminates with a new era of media-driven celebrity in the twenty-first century. “Entertaining and carefully documented . . . jaw-dropping anecdotes . . . This book is a real treat.” —Merrill Markoe, TheWall Street Journal

Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy

Laughs, Luck . . . and Lucy PDF Author: Jess Oppenheimer
Publisher: Gregg Oppenheimer
ISBN: 9780815605843
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The man Lucille Ball called the brains of I Love Lucy gives us an inside view of television history as it was being made. Jess Oppenheimer's famous sitcom was the most popular and influential television phenomenon in the history of the medium. Forty-five years after its debut, it remains a favourite the world over.

The Broadcast 41

The Broadcast 41 PDF Author: Carol A Stabile
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1906897867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
How forty-one women—including Dorothy Parker, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lena Horne—were forced out of American television and radio in the 1950s “Red Scare.” At the dawn of the Cold War era, forty-one women working in American radio and television were placed on a media blacklist and forced from their industry. The ostensible reason: so-called Communist influence. But in truth these women—among them Dorothy Parker, Lena Horne, and Gypsy Rose Lee—were, by nature of their diversity and ambition, a threat to the traditional portrayal of the American family on the airwaves. This book from Goldsmiths Press describes what American radio and television lost when these women were blacklisted, documenting their aspirations and achievements. Through original archival research and access to FBI blacklist documents, The Broadcast 41 details the blacklisted women's attempts in the 1930s and 1940s to depict America as diverse, complicated, and inclusive. The book tells a story about what happens when non-male, non-white perspectives are excluded from media industries, and it imagines what the new medium of television might have looked like had dissenting viewpoints not been eliminated at such a formative moment. The all-white, male-dominated Leave it to Beaver America about which conservative politicians wax nostalgic existed largely because of the forcible silencing of these forty-one women and others like them. For anyone concerned with the ways in which our cultural narrative is constructed, this book offers an urgent reminder of the myths we perpetuate when a select few dominate the airwaves.

The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book

The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book PDF Author: Vince Waldron
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557834539
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The first and only complete, fully authorized "biography" of one of TV's most beloved sitcoms, including the first complete viewer's guide to all 158 episodes, as well as special behind-the-scenes trivia and a full chapter concordance. 50 black and white photos.