Monday, October 21, 2019

Boris Karloff Month Day 21: Fred Allen

Welcome back to Boris Karloff month! Once again I'm looking at one of Boris Karloff's comedy appearances. This time it's an episode of Fred Allen from November 18, 1945. Although Boris seemed pretty relaxed in the other comedy shows I've looked at previously, he seems kind of at a loss in this program; Allen was a notorious ad-libber, so perhaps the ad-libs were throwing him off?

I'm not much of a Fred Allen fan - I've enjoyed his appearances on Information Please and Jack Benny, but most of his own material is dated and corny. It's especially embarrassing to hear him joke about Benny being unfunny when his material has none of Benny's wit. Allen was great at ad-libbing, but his show's writers were pretty average of their time. The only highlight of this episode is when Karloff explains how he will create an atomic joke weapon! You can hear it at archive.org by clicking here!

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