Allen, Steve, 1921-2000

A radio and television performer, actor, composer, pianist, and singer.

Renowned American comedian, composer, lyricist, musician, television pioneer, performer, and author.

Steve Allen (1921-2000), comedian, composer, lyricist, musician, television pioneer, performer, and author, was born into a vaudeville family. His mother, a comedienne in her own right, performed under the name of Belle Montrose. He attended Arizona State Teachers' College in Tempe (now Arizona State University) in the fall of 1942 before beginning his entertainment career of over fifty years. In 1942, Allen left college to become a radio announcer for KOY in Phoenix. Arizona State University awarded Allen an Alumni Achievement Award in 1966 and an honorary doctorate in 1982.

Steve Allen pioneered late-night television talk shows, originating the format and hosting the first Tonight Show, which ran from 1953 to early 1957. Other highlights of his television career included The Steve Allen Show (1956-1960) and the game show I've Got a Secret . Allen also created and hosted the award-winning public television series Meeting of Minds (1977-1981), which featured imagined conversations between historical figures. In 1985 he wrote the words and music for a CBS-TV all-star production of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland .

Allen composed over 4,000 songs, the most famous of which was This Could Be the Start of Something Big . He also wrote lyrics for such movie music as Picnic, Houseboat, and On the Beach . As a writer, Allen produced numerous novels, plays, poems, and magazine and newspaper articles. Steve Allen is survived by his wife, actress-comedienne Jayne Meadows, whom he married in 1954.

Stephen Valentine Patrick William Allen was born on December 26, 1921, in New York, New York. Both parents were in a vaudeville act under the stage name Billy Allen and Belle Montrose. Allen attended eighteen schools. He attended Drake University in 1941 and the University of Arizona in 1945. On August 23, 1942, Allen married Dorothy Goodman whom he met while attending Arizona State Teachers' College. The two divorced in 1952 and on July 31, 1954, he married the actress/comedienne Jayne Meadows. They have one son, William Christopher, a former Executive Vice President, MTM Television in Hollywood. Allen's three sons by his first marriage include Steve, Jr., doctor in Elmira, New York; Brian, real estate broker in Seattle; and David, songwriter in Los Angeles. Steve Allen made his debut on Phoenix radio station KOY in 1942, where he worked as an announcer, writer, and pianist. Two years later Allen left for Los Angeles, where he performed on radio stations KFAC, KMTR, and KNX from 1944 to 1950. He began his television career in New York City in 1950 on CBS. He was awarded the New York City Board of Trade Award for the television documentary on organized crime, "The Commandment" (1953). Allen was the creator and host of the original "Tonight Show" (1954-1956), which introduced such future stars as Steve Lawrence, Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, Don Knotts, Jonathan Winters, and the Smothers Brothers. Allen starred in the critically-acclaimed "Steve Allen Show" (1956-1960; 1968-1972), which won the Variety Show of the Year Award in 1958 and the George Foster Peabody Award for the best comedy show of 1960. Allen won Look magazine's television award for "What's My Line" in 1953, and hosted "I've Got a Secret" for three seasons (1964-1967). He created, wrote, and hosted the PBS-TV series "Meeting of Minds" (1977-1981), which garnered the prestigious Peabody, Emmy, and Television Critics Circle awards, as well as awards from the National Organization for Women, and numerous other organizations. Allen was inducted into the Television Academy's Hall of Fame in 1986. Steve Allen has a life membership in the Composers and Lyricists Guild and was honored in the 1984 Guinness Book of World Records as the most prolific composer of modern times. He has recorded more than forty albums and composed more than four-thousand songs including: "This Could Be the Start of Something Big," "Picnic," and "Gravy Waltz," which won the Grammy Award in 1964. He wrote the title lyrics for the film themes for On the Beach and Bell, Book, and Candle, and scores for several musicals, including the Broadway production of Sophie (1963) and the CBS-TV version of Alice in Wonderland (1985). Allen starred on Broadway in The Pink Elephant (1953), and wrote the play, The Wake, which won a Los Angeles drama critic's nomination as the best play of 1977. Allen also played the title role in the 1956 motion picture, The Benny Goodman Story, and starred in The Comic (1969). As a writer, Steve Allen's published credits include memoirs, poetry, short stories, plays, novels, children's books, .social commentary, humor and satire, radio and television scripts, reviews, essays, and magazine and newspaper articles. He was a regular columnist for Song Hits, Downbeat, and Cosmopolitan, as well as for several newspapers. Allen's first collection of poetry was published in 1946. His poems have been published in other book-length collections, and in Atlantic Monthly, Saturday Review, and other periodicals. Allen wrote a scholarly study of migratory farm labor, The Ground Is Our Table (1966), and a study of white-collar crime in America, Rip-Off: A Look at Corruption in America (1979). Other book-length non-fiction works by Allen focus on Jesus cults, the atomic bomb, and corruption, and include two popular studies of comedians, The Funny Men (1956) and Funny People (1981). Allen's first novel, Not All Your Laughter, Not All Your Tears, was published 1962. In 1982 Allen wrote his first mystery novel, The Talk Show Murders, which was followed by Murder on the Glitter Box in 1989. He has also written a book for children, Princess Snip Snip and the Puppykittens (1973). In all, Steve Allen has authored 35 published books, from his first, Bop Fables (1955), to his most recent, Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality (1990). Allen has published close to 500 essays, articles, and syndicated columns and given hundreds of speeches on a wide range of social issues; democratic rights, censorship, interracial justice, mental health, police corruption, prison reform, capital punishment, disarmament, morality and nuclear war, education, and mental health. His byline has appeared in hundreds of magazines and newspapers, including Esquire, Ladies Home Journal, Look, Variety, TV Guide, Playbill, Cue, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and the Detroit News. Steve Allen's honors for community service include those from the American Civil Liberties Union, Sane (National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), the American Cancer Society, the National Association for Mental Health, and the Boy Scouts of America. Allen died on October 31st, 2000.