Fred Florence Sullivan, renowned by his professional moniker Fred Allen, was a U.S. comedian who rose to prominence in the 20th century. He is particularly famous for being one of the most well-known radio comedians of his era. Allen had been a piano enthusiast from an early age and while he worked for the Boston Public Library, he took up a job at a piano company. However, after reading about comedies in his spare time at the library he took it seriously and also learnt juggling so that he could work in the vaudeville scene. Before long he became a popular comic and juggler, not only in his native Boston but also in the more lucrative New York circuit. Allen not only became a popular comic in the vaudeville circuit but also in Broadway. However, it was as a radio comic that he shot to fame and his work in ‘The Fred Allen Show’ is particularly famous. His comedy was absurdist in nature and at the time, it became a huge hit as he became one of the biggest icons of an era that was called the ‘Golden Age of American Radio’. Here is a collection of some of his greatest quotes that have been excerpted from his work, writings, shows and life. Read on the thoughts and quotations of Fred Allen that will lift your spirits besides tickling your funny bone.
You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer’s heart.
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
