The Funniest Man
10/2006
How many contemporary comedians, do you think, read the history of comedy before they embark on their careers?
As a teenage librarian in early 1900s Boston, John F. Sullivan read such history. Boston at that time, by the way, was mayored by "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, maternal grandfather of The Kennedy Boys. Sullivan later recalled that Honey Fitz "sang Sweet Adeleine so many times, city hall had diabetes."
John F. Sullivan made a successful career of being funny although he often wondered why people found him amusing and was willing to recount that they sometimes did not. He was not the type to insist that he was wild and crazy. As a young small-timer on vaudeville circuits, he billed himself as "Freddie James, The World's Worst Juggler" and finished his act by projecting pictures of Washington, Lincoln and Old Glory on the curtain to insure applause.
Years later, after he discovered that he was a master of comedy-writing and observational monologue, Sullivan, as "Fred Allen" on his radio show, did a voice of a farmer saying that he had put a radio in his henhouse because "hens can learn plenty about layin' eggs from that Fred Allen feller."
From 1932-49, Fred Allen was a big star in the days when radio was a medium of comedy and drama. However he never led a tabloid personal life. He only visited Hollywood to cinematize his contrived feud with good friend, Jack Benny. Even then, Hollywood was full of hooey and Allen knew that New York offered more substantive and interesting people, "People You Never Thought You'd Meet" such as a ferryboat captain. He attended Mass every Sunday and was married to one woman, Mary Portland Hoffa Sullivan, 'til death did they part in 1956.
In addition to modesty, Fred Allen possessed and demonstrated other virtues that used to be encouraged in Catholic nurturing. They are no longer encouraged because all we have to do is forgive everybody and give them a pass when they come up short. One of these virtues was Excellence, a desire to do things well and then do them better. After all, God does his best for us. Other virtues were justice and honesty. God is just and God is truth.
Social justice: Allen noticed and deplored the way vaudevillians, especially the small-timers who could do no other work, were treated by theater circuits. He made sure the Keiths', Loews', Schuberts' exploitation was memorialized in his autobiography, Much Ado About Me. Likewise he remembered otherwise forgotten names for their competence and fair treatment. He gave away large amounts of his own wealth to less-successful colleagues who had become down and out when vaudeville died.
Honesty: Allen didn't care for marketing that insulted intelligence or took advantage of the public's lack of it. He spoofed commercials: a mattress that "takes all the guesswork out of sleeping." He made fun of sacred cows that had been set up for everybody to revere, but which were for some charlatan's profit: "Jackson Heights overlooks the World's Fair. And that started a trend."
The honesty and honor of Allen's comedy led to many a conflict with sponsors and network executives and Fred was one of the first to go when television started to take over the imagination. Nevertheless he is considered by old radio buffs to be -- and rightly so -- the funniest man in radio.