Treadmill to Oblivion: My Days in Radio Paperback – September 10, 2007

Fred Allen was a great wit during the Golden Days of Radio. His program, along with The Jack Benny Show and The Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show are just a few of the old programs that have aged well. Most if the other comedy shows if this era seem quaint, naive and even tedious.Fred Allen's influence was evident in the 1970s with the advent of Johnny Carson's "Mighty Carson Art Players" and Garrison Keillor's "News from Lake Wobegon." Both Carson and Keillor creations were direct ancestors of Allen's Alley, a weekly feature of Allen's show. [By the way, the Warner Brothers cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn was based on Allen's Alley denizen Senator Claghorn.]This book tells the story of Allen's career in radio including: Allen's "feud" with Jack Benny that provided both stars years of comedic gold; Allen's difficulty dealing with censors, finicky sponsors, and NBC executives; and the rise of television that ended radio's reign as king and Allen's career.Allen tells some great stories in this book, including one about the night an eagle broke free from its trainer during a broadcast and terrorized the audience. Allen recounts how the rise in popularity of give-away programs stole listeners from Fred and all the great radio stars. Allen even bought an insurance policy that guaranteed his listeners comparable prizes should they be called by a "give-away" show while listening to Allen's program. Allen also decries the devastating role television played in the demise of program's like his.This is an excellent book about the Golden Days of Radio as told by one of the best writers/performers of that period. While I have an original copy of the book, I was thrilled when it became available as an e-book. It is reasonably priced and in a fornat that is easy to read.

I have been watching reruns of the TV show "Whats My Line", in which Fred Allen was a panelist for a number of years. I had mixed feelings about how he acted during the show and found myself wondering who this man was. This book was inexpensive, so I bought it. He writes about the medium of broadcast radio before the advent of television. I not only gained a better understanding of why Fred Allen was highly thought of in the entertainment world, but how TV changed Radio, just as the Internet is changing TV. Much of it is quite humorous, and it is very much worth a read.

Re-read. First read this in print several years ago, and I was so happy to see a digital copy was made!The book focuses exclusively on Fred Allen's radio career and more than half of it is snippets of scripts. So much of the humor of the scripts is lost without hearing the delivery in your head, so the casual reader might not get much from this book, but avid Fred Allen fans will delight in this.I had forgotten that Fred Allen was one of the only stars from the golden age of radio who wrote most (if not all) of his scripts by himself. Much of his material was based on topical humor, so the man was constantly reading newspapers and saving clippings to use each week. No wonder he was miserable all the time. ;)I don't really recall so many typos in the formatting of the scripts in the print edition, and I certainly can't imagine a perfectionist like Fred Allen allowing so many, so I think the transfer to e-book got a little sloppy along the way... Not unreadable by any means! Just noticeable.Looking forward to re-reading his memoir in the near future - even though it will be a sad reminder of his untimely death.

This is the strangest book I have ever read , its like the 1st page someone handed Mr. Allen a mic and said " your on ", he never seems to just talk in normal terms about his show , every single line in this book is full of one liners , gaffs , digs , innuendo , gags , it never ends , he can't seem to turn himself off as a comedic writer , it is interesting the take on how corporations used to sponsor radio shows and had ad men who oversaw such things , fire up your wikipedia cause he mentions products that don't even exist anymore , one interesting note is Hellman's Mayonaise used to sponser but only during summer months , during winter months they would not sponsor shows. I love old time America but this book was just a tough read for me.

This is one great read a worthy of anyone's time

Good book about a great original