Radio mirror (May-Oct 1934)

PEOPLE told me some years ago when I decided to marry Fred and spend the rest of my life laughing, that they rather envied me for my prospects of being perpetually close to a man with a keen sense of humor. I won't go so far as to say that I have spent all my years of wedded bliss with Fred Allen in an attitude of merriment, but I will venture to say that I could have had no fhore interesting experience of any kind, matrimonially speaking, than the experience of being the wife of a man who is, to quote an old phrase, "a servant of the public", Fred does not make me a victim of his jokes and I suppose that I ought to thank him for that. It must be pretty terrible to be the wife of a practical joker. But the charming thing about being the wife of Fred Allen is that I do get a lot of laughs out of the every day occurrences y/hich confront married couples. Sometimes they are pointed a little more sharply as far as humor is concerned by the gift my husband has of using "dry wit". Fred really is not very anxious to be a comedian of the stage or the air or anything. And I suppose that is why his humor in his private life is charming. He never makes a tremendous effort to be funny and the funny ideas simply roll out in the course of his ordinary conversation. That provides a certain thrill for me because I never know what he is going to say next. I have heard of wives who say that they like the kind of a husband who keeps them perpetually interested, keeps then™ on the qui vive, not knowing what they are going to FRED do next. Personally, I belieye it is a little bit more exciting to be married to a man who has such a fund of ingenuity with words that you never know what he is going to say next. After all, if you never know what a husband is going to do next, what he does next may resolve itself into a night away from home. But if his originality is confined entirely to conversation, it is apt to be the sort that keeps him at home nights instead of running around where one cannot keep a wifely finger on him. When I said a little while back that Fred was not anxious to be a comedian I believe I spoke a very true word. I share his belief, which is that he was never really cut out for a comedian. My husband is essentially a reader and a scholar and I believe that he would prefer reading and writing to getting up and entertaining people by making funny remarks about whatever comes into his mind. There was a time, when Fred attained his first success on the stage, that we went out a great deal and we had a good time doing it, but in the recent years Fred has become more and more of a retiring person. The "quiet little evenings at home" which are supposed to be the ideal for married couples are something besides an ideal for us. They are more or less of a regular reality. Most people on the stage who are constantly trying to think up new ways of making a living thereby are haunted continually by the spectre of approaching unpopularity. Fred worries a little about the time when he will seem no longer funny to his public, *but he worries about it in a rather calm, restrained fashion, and, although I could hardly say that he is a confirmed optimist, I do not believe he ever gets considerably upset about what may happen to him year after next. He works very hard at the task at hand and 1 suppose that has an awful lot to do with his success on the radio. For a comedian, Fred takes his work, it seems to me, very seriously. One of my friends who frequently writes me from a distant city, seems to think New York is the hub of everything and that anybody who lives in it ought to have a very exciting time. She probably was very much surprised when I wrote her a letter not so long ago telling her the truth about the Private Lives of the Aliens. New York in a sense is an exciting place, and being the wife of a radio performer and performing myself, as I do, probably seems exciting to people who have no part in it. But the fact of the matter is, Fred and I live about as monotonously and quietly as two people could possibly live in a small town. We seem to be very much left to ourselves in this city of eight million people. This is not because we are neglected, but from Fred Allen writes all hU own Broadcast programs provides the gags and collects!