November 30 (it turns out) is the birthday of Woody Allen (b. 1935). We used to think it was December 1, but Allen’s recent memoir set the record straight. I originally planned a highly ambitious post for today, one that would talk about all of his movies, but as the date drew nigh I realized what a heavy lift it was, and also that we’re just year away from a much bigger birthday benchmark, next year (if there is a next year) when he turns 90. Meantime, we punt.
I call this post “More TV Work”, because we already discussed Allen’s career as a TV writer, in this previous post. Today’s will mostly focus on Allen’s own personal TV appearances, and some other oddments.
Fresh from Greenwich Village nightclubs and cafes, Allen began doing stand-up on tv variety shows in 1960. It’s a testament to his will to succeed that he did them at all, but it was a necessary rung on the ladder to the secruity he eventually achieved. He didn’t like doing stand-up (as evidenced by the fact that he retired from it a decade later), but he grit his teeth and did it. And thankfully, there are many clips from these early years for us now to enjoy. As a performer, he hit almost all of the variety shows, often repeatedly, including The Steve Allen Show, The Tonight Show (under both Jack Paar and Johnny Carson), The Andy Williams Show, Kraft Music Hall, The Dean Martin Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and The Ed Sullivan Show. He also did sets on hip music shows like Hootennany and Hullabaloo and proto-reality like Candid Camera. On the British show Hippodrome he boxed with a kangaroo! He even deigned to show on game and panel shows like To Tell the Truth, Password, I’ve Got a Secret, and What’s My Line?
Many of these were an uneasy cultural fit. Like contemporaries Mort Sahl and Nichols and May, Allen’s urban, college-educated sensibility often went against the grain of the Middle America thing. There’s many an uncomfortable interaction where he comes off as patently smarter than his hosts, and everyone’s smiles seem plastered on. Dick Cavett provided one of the very best American TV platforms Allen ever had, because the men were even matched, had similar senses of humor, and similar early careers. Woody also made the rounds of the other talk shows, including those of Gypsy Rose Lee, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, David Frost and, as we have said, The Tonight Show.
In the wake of his first comedy album (Woody Allen, 1964), Woody was given an entire half hour on British television, surely one of the first TV stand-up specials, and naturally it offered him a rare chance to set the entire tone for his presentation. Two more albums later, CBS gave him his first and last TV variety special The Woody Allen Special (1969), a bizarre but irresistable concoction that featured some monologues and sketches by Woody, supported by Tony Randall, Barney Martin, and a young Candice Bergen, a musical performance by The 5th Dimension, and a polite but tense verbal sparring match between Woody and the Reverend Billy Graham.
As I wrote in this earlier post, the first place I ever encountered Woody was on the kid’s show Hot Dog (1970), which he co-hosted with Jonathan Winters and Joanne Worley. More on that here.
Ironically, Allen’s finest original work for television is among his most obscure creations. Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story (1972) is a short-film he created for for PBS, but it was rejected as being too politically explosive, so it never aired. It’s a devastating take-down of the Nixon Administration, in which he plays a very Allen-esque version of Henry Kissinger. It’s a 26 minute short combining hilarious found footage of actual embarrassing Nixon and Agnew moments, with cleverly inserted original material. As a film it fits in very snugly with his work of the period, including What’s Up, Tiger Lily?, Take the Money and Run, and (for political reasons) Bananas, as well as the later Zelig. You could get a nice little mini-festival by showing those movies on the same bill. The cast includes Louise Lasser, Diane Keaton (doing a hilarious cock-eyed thing), Conrad Bain, Graham Jarvis, and early Allen regular Dan Frazer. It’s almost never screened anywhere but at present you can see it on Youtube.
By 1972 Allen was an established movie director and actor. He decided he no longer needed the TV grind, and dropped it. After that point, his appearances on the medium became rare indeed. He naturally remained an important figure in American pop culture, but he was no longer in the trenches, nor someone who could be counted on to pop on your screen from time to time (like, say, your David Brenners and your Robert Kleins). He had made it to show biz Olympus.
For more on show biz history, please check out No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcoming Electric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.