Allen, Stephen Valentine Patrick William

▪ 2001

“Steve” 

      American entertainer, composer, and author (b. Dec. 26, 1921, New York, N.Y.—d. Oct. 30, 2000, Encino, Calif.), was a prolific, versatile, creative, and influential modern-day renaissance man. Although he could be considered to have made his greatest impact when he created and hosted what became The Tonight Show—the mold for television talk shows—he also composed thousands of songs (his best known: “This Could Be the Start of Something Big”), recorded about 40 albums, wrote newspaper columns and more than 50 books, engaged in political activism, and appeared in films (most notably, 1955's The Benny Goodman Story), in television variety and quiz shows and dramas, and on the Broadway stage. Allen's parents were vaudeville entertainers, and he often traveled with his mother when she toured after his father's death. He therefore attended a number of schools before they settled in Phoenix, Ariz., to ease his asthma. Allen attended Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa, and Arizona State Teachers College but dropped out and became a radio disc jockey and entertainer. Though drafted into World War II military service in 1943, he was released after a few months because of his asthma and returned to radio, first back in Phoenix and then in Los Angeles. His talent for humorous ad-libbing made him an audience favourite, and in 1950 he was given The Steve Allen Show on CBS television in New York City. In 1953 he began hosting a local NBC late-night talk show, Tonight, which became a network show the following year and was named The Tonight Show. Before Allen left the show in 1957, he instituted such present-day staples of late-night TV shows as the opening monologue, man-in-the-street interviews, and zany stunts. In the meantime, in 1956 Allen had begun a second incarnation of The Steve Allen Show on Sunday nights in competition with the popular Maverick and The Ed Sullivan Show. It ran until 1961. A third incarnation ran from 1962 to 1964 in syndication, and The Steve Allen Comedy Hour appeared in the early 1980s. Of all Allen's creations, he was most proud of the Emmy Award-winning series Meeting of Minds, which ran on the Public Broadcasting Service from 1977 to 1981. In it, actors portrayed famous persons from various eras engaging in roundtable discussions of philosophy and important issues, with Allen as moderator. In recent years Allen had taken up a crusade against the vulgarity he saw as increasingly permeating popular culture, and at the time of his death he was finishing work on his 54th book, Vulgarians at the Gate.

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