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When the U.S. declared war, Fred came home, joined the Army, entertained in camps. After the war he took the name of an actors' agent, broke into the Keith circuit as Fred Allen, touring with the likes of Sophie Tucker, Eva Tanguay, Rooney & Bent. His act began on a dark stage with a spotlight on a placard, reading: "Mr. Allen Is Quite Deaf. If You Care to Applaud, Please Do So Loudly." His suit, he confided to the audience, had been made in Jersey City—"I'm a bigger man there than I am here."
The Shuberts brought Allen to Broadway in The Passing Show of 1922. From then until 1928, Fred was never out of a Broadway show. But for all those years, convinced that the little juggler from Boston would never last in the big time, he never even unpacked his trunk. In 1928, feeling more secure, he married Portland, a chorine in George White's Scandals. In the next three years he had his biggest Broadway hits, The Little Show and Three's a Crowd. But in 1932, he found himself without a booking. Why not fool around with that new thing, radio, for a couple of months?
"Get the Flat Voice!" Before he even got on the air, the couple of months became seven. When he did, it was by a flounder. An unwary adman, carrying an Allen audition record to the president of a corn products company, took the costly economy of going by Manhattan subway. On the way. the portable record-player got banged up. All the sponsor could hear was Allen's rasp. "Get me that man with the flat voice!" he ordered.
In the next three years Allen had three shows. It was in 1935, with Town Hall Tonight, that Fred really got on the radio beam. Not long after, he latched on to the biggest stunt of his career: his feud with Jack Benny. One night he assured a guest on his program, a twelve-year-old violinist, that he played the Flight of the Bumble Bee better than Benny played it after 40 years of practicing. Showman Benny knew a cue when he heard one. For ten years radio's biggest running gag has been kept alive without a single backstage strategy conference.
But Benny, never too glib with an ad lib, has seldom had the last word. Fred is the deadliest remarksman in show business. Once Jack twitted Fred about some fictitious "signs they hold up on your program telling people when to laugh. We don't have them on our show." Fred retorted: "You must remember, Jack, we're dealing with a class of people who can read."
Beyond the Moon. In 1943, Fred began to get dizzy spells. Diagnosis: hypertension. He got orders to quit radio. While he was resting, he took his third trip to the other side of the moon (Hollywood), made the third of his four pictures (Thanks a Million, Sally, Irene and Mary, Love Thy Neighbor, It's in the Bag), and a few observations: "California is a wonderful place to live—if you're an orange"; "Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars"; "An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer."
A year later, now healthy but a mild hypochondriac, he came back to the air, began his present half-hour show. Its main attractions: a ten-minute sketch involving a guest star and a short stroll down the most famed of all airlanes: Allen's Alley.