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0-19 (Rev, 1-11-80) MARK 1fanh by Steve had o4 Winston. $4.95: = ° ° e e By MIKE NEWBERRY THE YOUNG MAN with the starry-eyed eyeglasses on the cover this ok is not the Skeesiz bf a Wronie you know. He is Btev . is not that StPVe Alle Mead. ows, his wife, says it well when - she comments that he is really eight other men: “A published writer of earthy prose and poetry. a deep thinker, a comedian, a pianist, a coniposer, a crusader, & motion picture star, and a ten- der father.” She iy too modest, however. He is as well a religious man, a philosonher, a serious ci- tizen, and a decent human being. And so this is the autobiogra- phy of at least a dozen men. It is as thoughtful and thought- filled as you would expect such @ one man sympos‘um to be. From this you might get the impression that I am a Steve Allen fan. I cannot tell w Nie. I am. However, having read the half- baked dozen of theatrical auto- biograph'es with their ersatz schmalz, ghost written and ghost r'dden confessions, and “As Told To” I. Have - Sinned-For-Profit hysteria, if I were not a fan of Mr. Allen's his book would make me one. For Mr. Allen is an hon- est man. In television, as we have learn- ed, an honest man is rare. But even rarer is an honest man who writes well. , Of “a rather warlike tribe” of South Side Chicago Irish, as he tells it, Steve Allen’s youth was kin to Studs Lonegan’s, His father was a vaudevillian. His mother a one-night stand comedienne. H’s boyhood went ° from boarding school to worse, boyish pranks (that his TV per. sonality has not outgrown), run- ning away from home (what home?), and all the rest; with a bit of Huck Finn-ism thrown in for good measure, Years later when he became a dise jockey “break'ng more rec. orda than I played’ and a wrest. ling mmentator, his boyish ir- revertnce -and: tough-witted up- bringg brightened his prose. é 62 SEP 22 1960 — a “Comedy ix aty.. 1 ; writes, “What else are iokes ~ about? They’re about fat) people, stingy people, dumbbells, small. ' hotel rooms, drunks, sexual prob- Sa man degan Tolson Mohr Parsons Belmont Callahan 1 tragedy descend- it began then, un- upon him, cognized, in his turbulent youth, ; it does with us all. The Steve Allen who {s co- cy, saying: I am a do-gooder’ The cynica be damned! was not born immaculately in a TV tube. He is a man born of the boy his autobiography belittles.’ . Christianity and Commun’sm are the two words that occur must often in this book. Sometimes in just opposition, sometimes in comparison, often in opposition, though not super- ficially so. Mr. ANen throughout his book seeks to find the true value of each. It is a tortuous search and one which gives him no easy peace, nor one for which he offers a sloganized solution. There are some who will say he over-reaches h's grasp, he is ill- equipped for his task. That may be. Yet, in a time when the pug- dy little fingers of « successful men so often greedy seek no more than petty self-satisfaction it is encouraging to see a man whose conrage defies the Imitations of the easy touch and does aspire to “the great ideas” of mankind, . Of his knowledge of commun- ism, let me just say, that though r. Allen defiantly says he is a ubseriber to “The Worker”, one doubts that he has gone deeper than its thin pages of the fat volumes of Marx. Had he done so, he would not attribute to ¢ommun'sts the ideas of anti- rommunists, as he does. Let the reader not think how- ever that this is a solemn or self- righteous. book. ; Here are hilarious tales and inside insights of TV inan‘ties to delight even an Ed Sullivan fan. Many is the time I found myself laughing aloud as I read, something I seldom do. But then too I found the hu- -mor had.a thoughtful tone. What is comedy .I began to ask my- self? : Comedy is not humorous, Steve Allen Says. Knowing comedy as he does ht.ggys it is not humor- ous at all. It is cruel, it is in- sulting, tt is sad, it is trag’c; HERI ‘ALL FORMAT. lems, high prices, war. . . : “There may not de laughter in hell, but there couldn't possi- bly be Jaughter in heaven,” Steve Allen says. 7 + them men ridiculed as clowns; the satirist, unlike the clown, knows that laughter is the balm we soothe our wounds with. If the lineage seems too grandiose for a Steve Allen (and I imagine he would be the first to protest his innocence of it) I believe it is a true one. For he is a true believer. He is a true believer in hu- manity. Though he calls his be- lief Christianity, his philosophy is that of a seeker. If this ‘s so then the name-taz is unimpor- tant. Humanity is bedeviled with too many “ces” and “isms” and as the Soviet noet Tvardovsky wise- ly noted at a recent Writers’ Conference, in the arts, a name- tag doesn’t, of itself, helo wuch. Not that they don't exist. They just don’t- assi:t. In this sense Steve Allen may yet, if he has not yet, enter the heritage of the ‘great sativists, Who can pred ct? Who knows? Schooled in the kleiglight- blinded world of TV he has Tearn- ed to see through the picture tube into the real world. He is now free to prove hwAyrong — or right — hia talengis. DeLoach __._ Malone McGuire Rosen Tamm Trotter ____ W.C, Sullivan __ Tele. Room Ingram Gandy b7C Lk, t* The Washington Post ond Times Herald The Washington Dally News The Evening Star New York Herald Tribune _____ New York Journal-American New York Mirror New York Daily News \/00-/212/a-4 Nor " ONDED a] : Date ME, ae —_ New York Post The New York Times The Worker The New Leader The Wall Street Journal -t f-60 oa