Steve Allen and the Start of Something Big in Late-Night TV

“…The Start of Something Big…”

There’s no controlling the unrolling of your fate, my friend,

Who knows what’s written in the magic book…”

“This Could Be the Start of Something Big”

Music and Lyrics by Steve Allen

Alexandria, VA – YouTube has become a go-to site for anyone attempting DIY projects for house, garden, or automobile; projects that tax the abilities of the domestically timid.

For me however, it serves as a memory jog, a fact-check of an event – even an opportunity to relive moments that have been preserved on the site or see something for the first time.

Growing up an Army brat, we lived overseas and I missed some culturally significant moments: the Kennedy assassination, the first theatre run of Mary Poppins, the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, the NASA Gemini Space Program, news coverage of the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, even Batman on television. I remember coming home to the states in 1968 and watching the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson for the first time. It was eye-opening.

I don’t know why but I caught the bug recently to see the genesis of the Tonight Show. The hosts during my lifetime have been Jack Parr, Johnny Carson, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Fallon. I was amazed to learn that the original Tonight was hosted by the multi-talented Steve Allen. I searched for Allen about his time on Tonight and found quite a few interviews with late night legends David Letterman and Conan O’Brien who clearly held Allen in high regard.

Some fun facts about Steve Allen emerged during the course of those interviews that illuminated the versatility of Allen and his talents. Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen was born 26 December 1921 to Bill Allen and Belle Montrose, two Vaudevillians. His father died while Steve was an infant and he spent his formative years being shuttled from relative to relative. After running away from home at 16, he bummed around the country, begging scraps to eat, attended what is now the University of Arizona for a year, joined the Army during WW II, and after being discharged, found a job in radio in Los Angeles where his music and comedy began to blossom, eventually getting on national radio.

But it was during the infant days of television that launched Allen as an institution. Local audiences loved his radio programs, so the NBC network decided Allen would host a “new” national, late-night television program, Tonight, which premiered on 27 September 1954. What Steve Allen created with his format for Tonight became the bedrock formula for many late-night shows, a format still in favor today. Allen was the first host to feature a monologue. He mixed comedy with a wide variety of music featuring regulars Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gormé, Andy Williams, and the Skitch Henderson band.

He was the first to include quirky comedy gags like donning a suit with hundreds of Lipton tea bags on it and being lowered into a huge vat of hot water to brew the tea. He would read real letters to the editor from the New York Daily News like an angry writer, then have them signed by a humorous writer in place of the real one. Allen provided his entire audience with plastic rain hats and wraps, then began what is considered the biggest pie fight in television. He also created the Man on the Street interviews and chatted with a cast of comedy regulars: Pat Harrington Jr. as golf pro Guido Panzini; Tom Poston who can’t remember his name when the camera is on; Don Knotts as nervous and quivering D.D. Morrison; and Louis Nye as Madison Avenue native Gordon Hathaway (Hi-Ho Steve-a-rino).

Over the course of his life Steve Allen composed music and lyrics to some 4,000 songs (some say upwards of 8,500), acted in films, wrote 50 books, and after the Tonight Show, starred in and produced another eight television programs. Pretty eclectic guy who did it all up from the bootstraps.

But it is the YouTube video of Allen as comedic sports reporter “Bill Allen” that is a classic. Allen came back late from a commercial break, threw on a wig and press hat, looked in the monitor and saw his unkempt appearance, and convulsed in laughter, not being able to do the routine, his trademark high-pitched giggle reigning supreme.

So, when you get a chance, check out Steve Allen. He wrote the book on late-night TV when Tonight really was “the start of something big.”