Alan Reed
ALAN REED, who plays the role of
Pasquale on Life With Luigi (CBS, Sundays, at 10 P.M., EDT), has done spots on
virtually every radio program in New York and Hollywood, including a dozen or
more daytime serials. His best known roles have been Falstaff Openshaw, poet,
on the Fred Allen Show, Clancy the cop on Duffy’s Tavern and Mr. Weamish on the
Baby Snooks Show. Today his voice is heard in twenty-twwo dialects on almost
all of major shows.
Alan Reed was born in New York and
started his preparations for the theater during grammar school days when, as
Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” he caught
his beard in the stage door. Quick thinking made him play it that way ever
since.
After extracting as much humor as
he could from prep school. Reed moved his 210 pounds to Columbia University,
where he became the intercollegiate broad-jumping champion wrestler and writer
of college plays, just to prove that a brawny arm could swing a delicate pen
Reed considered this good training
for the theater and, when he finished school, he took a job in an Oklahoma City
stock company. That lasted three weeks. Next he was with the Provincetown
Players in a cycle of sea plays by Eugene O’Neill, the same plays which later
were made into the movie, “Long Voyage Home.” After that he tried a whirl
behind the scenes as manager and production chief of the New Playwright’s
Theater, a little theater job which included everything from shifting scenery
to shifting lines.
This was good experience, but
little theater work didn’t pay very well, so Reed took to the vaudeville
boards. Trouping, he saved a stake of $2,800 and tried the candy business and
the gymnasium business in a succession.
About the time that radio began to
emerge from the crystal set stage, Reed began haunting the broadcasting studios
and found his services in great demand. He has acted in radio exclusively ever
since—with the exception of a role as an immigrant in the Broadway play, “Hope
for a Harvest,” which starred Fredric March and Florence Eldridge, just before
the war—and listeners are glad of it.
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