Hollywood is a place where people from Iowa mistake each other for movie stars.

Fred Allen didn't like making movies. Part of the problem was that they made movies in Los Angeles, a town he hated but that gave him some of his sharpest material.

Fred's radio humor was literate and didn't amuse the camera. The disingenuousness that he disliked in radio was an accepted part of the movie business. His films were largely forgettable.

Love Thy Neighbor (1940) is an attempt to prolong the laughs (and profits) of the famous Fred Allen/Jack Benny mock feud. Both ply their radio personas. Jack Benny has much more success in pictures playing a character other than Jack Benny. Fred seems more mean spirited than is necessary for the laughs the movie is after. Perhaps the less than glowing critical reviews of this film have as much to do with Fred Allen not being credited on the writing staff as the acting.

It's In the Bag! (1945) is much better received by today's reviewers. The film is based on a Russian novel The Twelve Chairs. Fred plays the owner of a flea circus, Fred Trumble Floogle, who can never quite provide for his family. Suddenly he finds he has an inheritance from a murdered rich uncle. The inheritance turns out to be chairs, which Floogle sells, only to find out that the fortune, along with the evidence of the murder, is hidden in one of the chairs.

We're Not Married (1952) is actually a quite fun star-filled romp lead by Fred and Ginger (Yes, that Ginger--Ginger Rogers, but not Fred Astaire, Fred Allen.) Also featured is Marilyn Monroe, Mitzi Gaynor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, and Eve Arden. Five couples discover that the Justice of the Peace that married them did so illegally, making their marriages void. Fred and Ginger are the sunny married hosts of a morning radio talk show who loathe each other off mic.

Filmography