The Fred Allen Show: Old-Time Radio Comedy

Fred Allen presents a comedy hour of loosely connected sketches, opening with a news spot about the New York circus arriving at Madison Square Garden, then turning to a bumbling poet, taxi riots, and a Hollywood studio where Allen plays a movie producer. Allen's harried studio boss juggles temperamental actresses, a self-declared tough-guy actor, a dieting ingenue and a Soviet visitor eager to learn American methods. The sketches are built on rapid-fire wordplay and mistaken phrases. The series aired on CBS and NBC, and this episode dates from April 4, 1934, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious...

Judge Allen holds a makeshift court in a series of comic cases, with the Judge's clerk Portland Hoffa and his regulars bringing in a stream of odd defendants. Among them are a feuding couple seeking separation, a vain patient who wants damages from a plastic surgeon, and a streetcar motorman accused of drunkenness after a man is injured on the tracks. The Judge's ideas about law grow increasingly absurd, and the proceedings drift from one unlikely case to the next. This is the Fred Allen comedy series, first broadcast on March 28, 1934, on CBS and NBC, with Fred Allen, Portland...

Fred Allen hosts his full-hour variety program, the Hour of Smiles, on Bristol-Myers, a show he introduces with his cast of Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious. After a newsreel parody and music from Lenny Hayton and the Ipana Troubadours, Allen presents Judge Allen's Cut Rate Court, where he hears a string of absurd cases. Cases include a window-breaking inventor, a taxi-and-truck collision, a pet-shop shoplifting charge, and a dispute over an opera performance. The judge's rulings grow increasingly ridiculous as the defendants and witnesses make their claims.

With Judge Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar, Minerva...

Dr. Allen runs the Bedlam Sanitorium, where a string of odd patients and visitors turn each visit into chaos. A patient who claims to be cured gets a bill for fifty dollars, a bloodhound with a head cold tries to track stolen chickens, and a baby is brought in by a neighbor who borrows babies to win favors. A chef and a stout patient quarrel over stolen food, and a gang of visiting European doctors goes along on an emergency call. This is the Fred Allen radio comedy series, first broadcast on November 24, 1933, on CBS and NBC. Fred Allen...

Inspector Allen, a bumbling detective running the Tiptoe Detective Agency, takes on a string of odd cases. Clients arrive with a stolen car missing a spare tire, a vanished vegetable-store truck and then a series of thefts of spinach. Allen uses trained ants to trace a trail of sand, and his investigation leads him toward a riverbank where a group of boys is involved. Along the way he handles a dentist's complaint, a squabble over a pair of short pants and a visit from a family whose father has taken a job as a window dresser. The program is...

Judge Allen opens a cut-rate court that is open day and night and lets people pay fines in installments. Over one busy morning he hears a string of odd cases, from a filling station quarrel over a small car to a shoplifter who leaves things behind in public places. Each hearing turns absurd, with the judge's rulings growing more unlikely as the cases pile up. The Fred Allen series presents this 1933 episode, first broadcast on January 22, 1933, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious in the leading roles. The program is a comic sketch built on wordplay...

Mr. Allen, the owner of Mammoth Department Store, hires an efficiency man named Mr. Finchpenny to save the failing business. Finchpenny proposes cutting staff and advertising, but Allen fires him over his salary demands and decides to run the store himself. Allen walks the floors and finds the store in disarray, with customers waiting on each other and staff causing confusion. A customer orders goods from the store, and a supplier demands payment. The episode is a Christmas-season comedy from the Fred Allen series, first broadcast on December 25, 1932, with Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, Kenny Delmar and Minerva Pious in...