In a St. Louis department-store show window one day in 1932, Fred Allen, a reformed juggler, made his television debut. The performance was part promotion stunt for his touring show (Three's a Crowd), part demonstration of a new gadget called Sanabria Giant Television,* which transmitted a fuzzy image of Allen to an audience on the store's third floor. "I just stood there and talked," Allen recalls. "It must have come out on the screen like a jumping passport."
Last week Comic Allen, who retired from radio in 1949 because of failing health (hypertension) and a falling Hooper, was back on television....
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