81 Facts About Steve Allen

Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen was an American television and radio personality, comedian, musician, composer, writer, and actor.

Steve Allen gained national attention as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts.

Steve Allen won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition for "Gravy Waltz," for which he wrote the lyrics.

Steve Allen wrote more than 50 books, including novels, children's books, and books of opinions, including his final book, Vulgarians at the Gate: Trash TV and Raunch Radio.

In 1996, Steve Allen was presented with the Martin Gardner Lifetime Achievement Award from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

Steve Allen has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Hollywood theater named in his honor.

Steve Allen was raised on the South Side of Chicago largely by his mother's Irish Catholic family.

Steve Allen ran away from home at 16 and described in interviews the ease with which he took to begging.

Steve Allen enlisted in the United States Army during World War II and was trained as an infantryman.

Steve Allen served his enlistment period at Camp Roberts, California.

Steve Allen became an announcer for radio KFAC in Los Angeles, then moved to the Mutual Broadcasting System in 1946, talking the station into airing his five-nights-a-week comedy show Smile Time, co-starring Wendell Noble.

Steve Allen's program attracted a huge local following; as the host of a 1950 summer replacement show for the popular comedy Our Miss Brooks, he found himself in front of a national audience for the first time.

The Steve Allen Show premiered at 11 am on Christmas Day, 1950, and was later moved to a thirty-minute, early evening slot.

Steve Allen achieved national attention in early January 1951, when he was pressed into last-minute service to guest host the hugely popular Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts when Godfrey was unable to appear.

Steve Allen turned one of Godfrey's live Lipton tea and soup commercials upside down, preparing tea and instant soup on camera, then pouring both into Godfrey's iconic ukulele.

Steve Allen continued on the show until 1954, and returned frequently as a panelist until the series ended in 1967.

Steve Allen once appeared as a regular contestant on June 19,1966, but the panel failed to guess his line, which was selling motorcycles; Allen at the time was co-owner of a Los Angeles dealership selling Honda motorcycles.

Steve Allen, known for his infectious high-pitched cackling laugh, laughed uncontrollably for over a minute with the audience laughing along, because, as he later explained, he caught sight of his unkempt hair on an off-camera monitor.

Steve Allen kept brushing his hair and changing hats to hide the messy hair, and the more he tried to correct his appearance the messier and funnier it got.

Steve Allen helped the then-new Polaroid camera become popular by demonstrating its instant-picture capabilities during live commercials and amassed a huge financial windfall for his work because he had opted to be paid for it in Polaroid Corporation stock.

Steve Allen remained host of "Tonight" for three nights a week until early 1957 when he left the show to devote his attention to the Sunday night program.

In September 1959, Allen relocated to Los Angeles and left Sunday night television.

From 1962 to 1964, Allen recreated The Tonight Show on a new show, The Steve Allen Show, which was syndicated by Westinghouse TV.

The new Steve Allen show could be programmed by local stations as an alternative to the networks' late-night shows, but many stations opted to broadcast the Steve Allen show during the daytime hours.

Steve Allen presented Southern California eccentrics, including health food advocate Gypsy Boots, quirky physics professor Dr Julius Sumner Miller, wacko comic Professor Irwin Corey, and an early musical performance by Frank Zappa.

Steve Allen later produced a second half-hour show for Westinghouse, titled Jazz Scene USA, which featured West Coast jazz musicians such as Rosolino, Stan Kenton, and Teddy Edwards.

In 1964 Steve Allen returned to network television as moderator of the game show I've Got a Secret.

The Filmways show was offered to local stations in both 60-minute and 90-minute versions; during each taping, after an hour had passed, Steve Allen simply said goodbye to part of his audience and continued the show for those stations using the longer version.

Steve Allen returned to guest host The Tonight Show for a single 1971 episode, and then became a semi-occasional guest host from 1973 to 1977.

From 1977 until 1981, Steve Allen wrote, produced and hosted the award-winning show Meeting of Minds, which aired on the Public Broadcasting Service.

Jayne Meadows-Steve Allen played most of the female characters, wisely eschewing Emily Dickinson, played by Katherine Helmond, and the Empress Tz'u-hsi, played by Beulah Quo.

Steve Allen was a "philosophy fanatic" and avid reader of classic literature and history.

Steve Allen wrote the scripts based on the actual writings and actions of the guests, and as host would lead the conversations to different subjects.

Steve Allen resisted monopolizing these roles, but Allen was insistent.

Steve Allen first conceived the show in 1959 but took almost 20 years to make it become reality.

Steve Allen initially produced a version in 1971 that aired locally in Los Angeles and earned three Local Emmy Awards.

Steve Allen then produced the first shows at his own expense, which resulted in attracting major backers.

In 1981, the show won an Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series, and Steve Allen's writing was Emmy nominated.

Steve Allen appeared on a 1976 episode of Witness to Yesterday as composer-pianist George Gershwin.

Steve Allen signed Mitch Miller to reunite his old choral group for a new series of Sing Along with Mitch musical hours, and signed Miller to a pilot with an option for a 13-week series.

Steve Allen hired Allen for two primetime projects: The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, similar to Allen's 1950s variety hour, with comic characters and sketches; and The Big Show, an attempt to stage spectacular events for television.

Steve Allen was excited about the opportunity, only to be disappointed: Johnny Carson opposed the plan and voiced his objections to Silverman.

Silverman's own schedule of new NBC shows was failing and NBC couldn't afford to alienate Carson, the network's most important asset, so the new Steve Allen show was abandoned.

From 1986 through 1988, for Steve Allen hosted a daily, three-hour long comedy program, broadcast over the NBC Radio Network, featuring sketches and some of America's better-known comedians as regular guests.

On October 30,1988, Steve Allen portrayed a radio newscaster in a remake of the famous The War of the Worlds broadcast of fifty years earlier.

Steve Allen then signed with Decca Records, recording for their subsidiaries Brunswick Records and then Coral Records.

In 1953 Steve Allen added lyrics to "South Rampart Street Parade," a 1938 instrumental hit for Bob Crosby, written by Bob Haggart and Ray Bauduc.

Steve Allen wrote the lyrics for the standard "Theme from Picnic" from the film Picnic in 1955; the song was a No 13 US hit in a vocal version for The McGuire Sisters in 1956.

In 1957, Jerry Vale had a minor hit with the Steve Allen composition "Pretend You Don't See Her".

Steve Allen later set words to it, and the collaboration won the 1964 Grammy Award for Best Original Jazz Composition.

Steve Allen's other produced musical was the 1969 London show Belle Starr, which starred Betty Grable as the American West character.

Steve Allen wrote the music, and was one of three credited lyricists.

Steve Allen continued to compose material and in 1985, Allen wrote 19 songs for Irwin Allen's television mini-series Alice in Wonderland.

Steve Allen famously scooped Ed Sullivan by being one of the first to present Elvis Presley on network television.

Steve Allen assured viewers that he would not allow Presley 'to do anything that will offend anyone.

Steve Allen appeared on the shows of other entertainers, even the mildly rock and roll program The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom on ABC; Boone had appeared as a guest on Steve Allen's variety hour.

Steve Allen wrote and starred in his first film, the Mack Sennett comedy compilation Down Memory Lane, in 1949; Allen cast himself as a "TV disc jockey" showing Sennett's old comedy films on live television.

Steve Allen later recalled his one contribution to the film's music, used in the early scenes.

The accomplished Benny Goodman no longer could produce the sound of a clarinet beginner, and that was the only sound Steve Allen could produce on a clarinet.

In 1960, he appeared as the character "Dr Ellison" in the episode "Play Acting" on CBS's anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson though his The Steve Allen Show had been in competition with the program the preceding season.

Steve Allen sometimes appeared as himself as a TV host in feature films and TV shows.

Steve Allen was a comedy writer and author of more than 50 books, including several volumes of autobiography; children's books; a series of mystery novels; and numerous volumes of essays and opinions.

Steve Allen ostensibly authored a long-running series of mystery novels in the 1980s and '90s "starring" himself and Meadows as amateur sleuths.

Steve Allen worked to promote critical thinking with such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group that debunked pseudoscientific claims, and the California-based group The Skeptics Society.

Steve Allen wrote many pieces for their publication, Skeptic, on such topics as the Church of Scientology, genius, and the passing of science fiction giant Isaac Asimov.

In 2011 Steve Allen was selected for inclusion in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry's Pantheon of Skeptics.

In 1986, Steve Allen was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

Steve Allen was on the advisory board of the Los Angeles Student Film Institute.

Steve Allen appeared in a public service announcement advocating for New Eyes for the Needy in the 1990s.

Steve Allen had last guest-hosted The Tonight Show in 1982, and made his last appearance on it on September 27,1994, for the show's 40th-anniversary broadcast.

Steve Allen narrated The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling, a documentary of professional wrestling from its origins to 1998.

Steve Allen received the Rose Elizabeth Bird Commitment to Justice Award from Death Penalty Focus in 1998.

Steve Allen was a student and supporter of general semantics, recommending it in Dumbth and giving the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture in 1992.

Steve Allen was a Democrat, even though Jayne Meadows was a Republican.

Steve Allen endorsed Lyndon B Johnson in the 1964 United States presidential election.

Steve Allen wrote pamphlets on a variety of issues, including problems facing migrant workers, capital punishment and nuclear weapons proliferation.

Steve Allen once considered running for a seat in Congress from California, calling his politics "middle-of-the-road radicalism".

On October 30,2000, Steve Allen was involved in a minor traffic crash while traveling to visit his youngest son at home in Los Angeles.

However, Steve Allen's autopsy revealed that he actually died from hemopericardium, caused by injuries sustained in the crash.

Steve Allen is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles.

Jayne Meadows was buried next to Steve Allen following her death in 2015.