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Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen (December 26, 1921 – October 30, 2000) was a musician, comedian and writer, who was instrumental around innovating a construct of the television talk show. Allen is known as the Father of TV Talk Shows.
Biography Allen was natural to Carroll Allen & Belle Montrose, Irish-Americans. When years around radio, Allen conceived the local Just released York talk-kind program inside 1953 for what is currently WNBC-TV. A charted seasin, on September 27, 1954, a indicate went on the fully NBC network as The Tonight Show, with fellow radio personality Gene Rayburn as the original announcer/sidekick. the indicate ran from either 1Single:30 to 1 a.m. on the East Coast. When Pat Weaver, the creator of The Today Show, is often credited when Tonight's developer likewise, Allen typically pointed out that a indicate got already "created" -- by Allen -- as a local indicate. "This is Tonight, and I can't think of too much to tell you about it except I want to give you the bad news first -- this program is going to go on FOREVER," Allen told his countrywide audience that 1st evening . "Boy, you think you're tired now. Wait until you see one o'clock roll around." Allen as well joked that it selected a Hudsinside Theatre on 44th Street in Manhattan for the program because "I think it sleeps around 800 people." It wwhen as persons of The Tonight Indicate that Allen pioneered a "man on the street" & audience-participation comedy bits that use get bromide within late-nighttime TV. Around 1956, piece however hosting Tonight, Allen added the Sunday-evening variety. A Allen computer program helped nurture a careers of singers Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme and Sammy Davis Jr.. Allen as well provided the countrywide audience for his illustrious "men on the street" -- comedian like Pat Harrington, Jr., Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Bill Dana and Tom Poston, . Allen remained hikers of Tonight until 1957, when he left. (When an ill-ill-omened nightlife-oriented replacement, Tonight! Us When Dark, a old Tonight format returned late in the month by using Jack Paar at the helm.) Allen went in to carrier a peck of television show higher until the 1980s, including the giveaway ''I've Got a Secret and The New Steve Allen Show in 1961. He was the regular on the super popular panel giveaway What's My Line?'' from 1953 to 1954 and returning as a guest panelist until the series' end in 1967. Allen was too the composer who supposedly wrote ended 7000 songs. Around one renowned stunt, Allen wrote 400 elementary tunes within a single day. Allen's most famous songs come This Can be A Begin of Something Heavy & A Gravy Waltz, which won the Grammy Award in 1963 for best jazz composition. Allen was likewise an actor, appearing in such films when A Benny Goodman Story (1955). Allen was as well a producer of the award-winning PBS series Meeting of Minds, a "talk show" using notable historical numbers, using Steve Allen serving when unsuspecting hosts. This series pitted Socrates, Marie Antoinette, Thomas Paine, Sir Thomas More, Attila the Hun, Karl Marx, Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, Galileo Galilei, & more historical numbers around dialogue and argument. The projected revival of this indicate wwhen rejected as "too cerebral". He was likewise an accomplished comedy writer, & creator of ended Fifty books, including Dumbth, the comment on the American educational system, & Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, & Morality. Allen was the laic humanist & Humanist Laureate for the Academy of Humanism, the member of CSICOP and the Council for Secular Humanism. He was the student & supporter of general semantics, recommending it in Dumbth, & rendering a Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1992. Allen was the supporter of world government and served on the World Federalist Association Board of Advisers [http://www.amherstvigil.org/92798.html]. Around spite of his liberal position on free speech, his later concerns just about a smuttiness he found in television induced him to produce proposals restricting the content of software download. Allen's 2nd married woman was actress Jayne Meadows, by whom he had of these boy. It were married from either 1954 until his dying inside 2000. He died of a cardiac disease triggered by the last minor traffic accident the equivalent day (October 30, 2000) at the age of 78, & is inurned in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California. Steve Allen has ii stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: a TV star at 1720 Vine St. & the radio star at 1537 Vine St.
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Allen's series of detective novel "starring" himself & married woman Jayne Meadows was actually ghostwritten by Walter J. Sheldon, and later Robert Westbrook)
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About.com: Steve Allen Includes new archives, articles, biography, quotations and links. The Official Website of Steve Allen Founder of the Tonight Show. Includes biography, photo album, information on his writing and entertainment career. IMDb: Steve Allen Includes filmography, awards, biography, photos, and news articles. |
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