Fred Allen

He got married to Portland Hoffa, in 1927, who also appeared on his ‘Allen’ Alley’ sketch.

He died on March 17, 1956 following a heart attack and was laid to rest at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

Fred Allen was born John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His mother Cecilia Herlihy passed away when he was just three. His father, James Henry Sullivan, devastated by his wife’ death, took to drinking.

He and his baby brother, Robert, were brought up by their Aunt Lizzie. Eventually, Allen's father got married again and asked his sons to stay with him, however, Allen decided to stay with his aunt.

Allen joined piano classes and started working at the Boston Public Library and took up juggling.

He was asked by his library colleagues to do juggling and comedy for a show, they organized. While performing one of the audiences cried out ‘You ought to go on stage’ which inspired him to pursue comedy as a career.

He adopted the stage-name Fred St. James and started performing at the local vaudeville circuit at $30 a week. He toured all around the world performing monologue comedy.

In 1917, he returned to the New York circuit and changed his stage-name to Fred Allen and tried to earn more salary.

In 1922, he had the theater-curtain covered with an elaborate painting depicting a cemetery with several punch lines on the gravestones, called ‘Old Joke Cemetery’.

‘Allen's Alley’, first aired in 1942 was a reoccurring sketch on ‘The Fred Allen Show’ satirizing small town America which showed the comedian and his wife meet a colorful array of exaggerated characters.