Fred Allen: His Life and Wit

In using the Boston Library archives and conducting interviews, author Robert Taylor undoubtedly researched carefully Fred Allen's life. He may have been a little careless in checking -other- facts, however. For example, on just the fifth page of FRED ALLEN - HIS LIFE AND WIT (1989), Taylor declares, "There were virtually a school of gifted Lower East Side personalities: Jolson, of course, and Cantor, Sophie Tucker, George Burns, Fanny Brice, George Jessel, and the master songwriter Irving Berlin."Let's see... When Al Jolson ("of course") emigrated to America with mom and sibs, his cantor dad was already settled in suburban Washington, D.C. Sophie Tucker's family came from the Ukraine to Hartford, CT. and "Georgie" Jessel was born in the Bronx. Three outta seven wrong.A photo caption has Ed Gardner of Duffy's Tavern as Archie Gardner (Archie was the character Ed played on radio). On the Benny/Allen feud, Taylor incotrrectly IDs Schubert's "The Bee" as Rimsky-Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee" and totally misconstrues a famous quiz show parody where Jack wins a free pants pressing. Taylor claims Fred's trousers are removed as Jack yells "You haven't seen the end of me!" He omits Allen's retort "It won't be long now!" as this would defy the author's conclusion that Fred was the one in his shorts.For those familiar with Fred's own  MUCH ADO ABOUT ME  (1956) and  TREADMILL TO OBLIVION  (1954), also the posthumous  FRED ALLEN'S LETTERS  (1966), this volume will mostly be a condensed rehash. Any new material is of dubious importance. A layout of Boston's abbatoir district, a chapter on BF Keith and other vaudeville impresarios, early 20th Century Australian history, an outline of radio's development, Old Orchard, ME. (then and now) and bios on various Allen acquaintances bring the page total to 323. There's an additional 16 pages of glossy photo repros, also index, contents, bibliography, acknowlegements, etc.As a devotee of Fred Allen I was willing to work through both the familiar and the unnecessary to read some insights on this ultimate humorist, but there were few to be found, thus FRED ALLEN - HIS LIFE AND WIT is only recommended to those new to the subject, as a convenient way of sampling more definitive previous works.

if you want to know what it was like to be both a vaudeville and burlesque performer fighting to break into mainstream entertainment, then this is the book.reading this i got the sense that as great as Fred was, he lived his life in the shadow of Jack Benny. He tried too hard, knocking himself out working overtime to constantly produce new material. He micro-managed. But in the end, he worked himself to death.

My mother, who grew up on Fred Allen, loved it. And as a retired schoolteacher with 50 years of classroom experience who has no problem correcting my brothers' and my grammar when she says a book is great it must be well written.I copied and pasted this review from one about "All The Sincerity In Hollywood" because everything applies here too.

Really liked the idea of learning more about Fred Allen but this book is dramatically out of balance -- it spends too much time on his very early life and not nearly enough time on his later years and best work.

This book has too much of the writer showing off his cleverness and erudition at the expense of actually telling the story. Towards the end the organization of facts eludes him completely; Allen's battles with censorship and the ending of his radio career are jumbled together in a confusing chapter which tumbles back and forth in time for no real reason and very little effect. There's not much written about the radio world Allen worked in, and too much irrelevant information is dragged in about locations he may have spent time in with quotes from notable but unrelated sources, or the life histories of other famous people he came in contact with. One gets the impression that Mr. Taylor considers himself smarter and a better judge of wit than his subject, whom he struggles to understand. His writing style is annoying. It's sad that this is the only Allen biography (so far).

Fred Allen is one of my favorite radio personalities.

I thought it sort of boring and long-winded. I will collect other books on him. I'm sure Fred Allen's story will come alive from another author. It is a story worth telling.

I'm a big Fred Allen fan, I played his shows on my radio show. This biography goes into great detail on his early life, his years of struggles in vaudeville, honing his writing skills. I could not finish it, there is way too much mundane detail. The writing style is very dry, no zip or zazz. The biography of Queen Victoria was racy in comparison. IT would be much better to buy a CD or MP3 of his shows.

Having Robert Taylor write this book was akin to having Bertrand Russell to write a pamplet on how to wire a 3-pin plug. Or ask a Michelin starred TV chef to prepare a cheese sandwich.All you want is fresh bread, a slice of mouse-trap and some butter. With the starred chef you would have bread made by Tibetan monks from an ancient recipe. The cheese would be from the milk of some obscure Mongolian goat and the source of the butter would be..... you know what I mean. It photographed beautifully but tasted awful.Taylor must have worn out several copies of aThesourous; plumbed the depths of obscure and sometime ancient dictionaries to produce text that would impress the sophisticates. Never has an entertainment biography had me charging to my dictionary so much for so little reward. Wit should not be in the title , the way it is cloaked takes the sting out of this humourless book. It gets a little intesting when Jack Benny comes on the scene, but read any book about Benny you will find it more rewarding.Check out MUCH ABOUT ME to get a digestible picture of the life of this marvellous and literate comedian. Not only does Taylor produce a tiresomely detailed description of Allens's life, but mini, mostly irrelevant details about people met on his way. A tortuous book for the lay man to read. He never uses one word where 1000 will do; hard work.No doubt the detail is there, but forget it if you want an intertaining read.