The Mighty Allen Art Players

The Milwaukee Journal – Feb 21, 1943   Browse this newspaper>>

The Mighty Allen Art Players

Two Russian one Englishman, a Yank and a star who impersonates Chinese detectives. That’s Fred Allen and his famed “Mighty Art Players.”

TAKE Charlie Cantor, for instance. Charlie was born in Russia on Sept. 4, 1898. He was such a tiny tot when his parents brought him to America that he never knew the name of his birthplace. His parents never mentioned it, so he honestly wouldn’t know his home town if you showed it to him.

Fred Allen fans currently know Cantor’s voice as either Socrates Mulligan or Rensselaer Nussbaum, two residents of that mythical slum section called Allen’s Alley. Charlie doesn’t even have to clear his throat to change to a high voiced dope, a rasp throated taxi driver or a mincing vice-president.

His voice agility makes him quite a favorite with radio directors . . . which should provide listeners with a lot of fun trying to identify him on as many as three shows in one night on, says, CBS, NBC and Blue.

Cantor, whose radio career began about 20 years ago, is 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighs 158 pounds, has brown eyes and is the constant butt of Allen gags about bald heads. He attended Public School 194, De Witt Clinton high school, City College of New York and New York university, all in New York.

His first job was shoe salesmanship. While attending school he took vacation jobs in vaudeville. Then he decided he wasn’t going to be a businessman. Twelve years ago, business, as far as Cantor was concerned, was a fine place to starve to death.

Today acting is feeding him well despite the fact that few directors in radio know he is an excellent musician.

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A NATIVE of Hull, England, is John Brown, educated in England, Australia and New York. John was born Apr 4, 1904, and came to America to New York for a phonograph recording company.

To Allen fans, Brown is John Doe of  Allen’s Alley . The character is one of Fred’s favorite tongue in cheek representations of a man who knows all the answers of the popularity poll conductors, before they even ask them. When Brown isn’t being John Doe, he may be a race track tout, a haughty vice president, a pompous college professor, the typical Dodger fan, a sleazy voiced gold brick salesman or just a wise guy.

Like Cantor, Brown is in such demand on other programs and listeners can find him by listening for strident lawyers, sniveling gangsters or kind fathers giving their children homely advice.

Brown too, started in a nonprofessional job . . . that of jewelry salesman. In 1934, David Freeman and Harry Tugend first used him in Eddie Cantor and Fred Allen programs, after an uneventful career of amateur dramatics, little theater work and stock company appearances in Haverstraw and Rockville Center, N. Y.

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The next character, wizard is AlanReed, native New Yorker, who was born on Aug. 20, 1907, attended Public School 52, George Washington high school and Columbia university—without ever suspecting that he one day would rise to “anonymous fame” as Falstaff Openshaw.

Even after a career which started when he took a job in the American Legion state headquarters as office boy, took him through a theatrical stock company in Oklahoma and finally landed him in radio in 1926, Reed still cannot understand why straight, poetic reading in a cultured voices makes him a comedian.

Reed, in addition to his excellent Ghetto characterizations, often is heard as an overstuffed vice-president, an English butler, the lisping lackey of a guest star from Hollywood . . . and adds to his laurels by stellar performances in other programs. Among these, perhaps his finest is the programs. Among these, perhaps his finest is the portrayal of Poppa Levy his finest is the portrayal of Poppa Levy in “Abie’s Irish Rose.” (NBC-WTMJ, 7 p. m., Saturdays.)

LAST, but far from least is the veteran of the Mighty Allen Art Players—a tiny, gracious good sport who has been with Fred Allen for nearly all of his 10 years in radio.

She is Minerva Pious, native of Odessa, Russia, and graduate of Bridgeport (Conn.) high school.

Min, as she is known to everyone in radio, played a week in stock while in high school; two weeks with the Theater Guild at Westport, Conn., and once worked as secretary to a Connecticut judge.

Harry Tugend, Allen’s earliest radio director, discovered her unparalleled gift of voice characterization and she since has delighted millions with her portrayals.

To the 5 foot, 108 pound voice mimic comes every type of characterization in the feminine category. She plays dumb stenos, dowagers debutantes, gangster molls, secretaries, housewives, burlesque queens, gum chewing dames on dozens of programs . . . and is widely known to the listeners as Mrs. Pansy Rensselaer Nussbaum, or Mrs. Socrates Mulligan of  Allen’s Alley .