Fred Allen

Trivia

• Fred Allen was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988.
• Star of CBS Radio's "Texaco Star Theater" (1940-1944).
• Biography in: "Who's Who in Comedy" by Ronald L. Smith; pg. 10-12. New York: Facts on File, 1992. ISBN 0816023387
• Worked in vaudeville under a variety of names, including John Sullivan (the one his parents gave him), Paul Huckle, Fred St. James and Benjamin Franklin.
• In July, 1955, had an appendectomy, which caused him to miss two telecasts of "What's My Line?" (1950) where he had found a home as a regular weekly panelist.
• He was awarded two Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Radio (6709 1/2 Hollywood Boulevard) and for Television (7021 Hollywood Boulevard) in Hollywood, California.
• Radio comic of the 1930s and '40s.

Quotes

• "Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for stars."
• "My eyes look as though they are peeping over two dirty ping pong balls."
• "I learned law so well, the day I graduated I sued the college and got my tuition fees back."
• "To a newspaperman a human being is an item with the skin wrapped around it."
• "Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted."
• "Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything."
• "A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known, then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized."
• "You can take all of the sincerity in Hollywood and put into a mosquito's navel and still have room for two caraway seeds and a producer's heart."
• "California is a fine place to live -- if you happen to be an orange."