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STEVE ALLEN PART TWO
HOLLYWOOD INHABITANT

In Part One of the story of my bunny hole search on Steve Allen, I was searching for a possible connection to Donald Trump and Steve Allen. This was inspired by the humorous now-confirmed-to-be-a-typo from a Presidential Tweet. POTUS was seeking to spell out “SMOKING GUN,” but instead wrote “SMOCKING GUN.” This led to a series of hilarious memes showing Hillary in her tent. However, it sparked something else in me, and to my own inner mind, equally hilarious.

The dinosaur memory was of Steve Allen breaking out into frenetic yelps of “SMOCK! SMOCK! SMOCK!” at odd times during his show, which gave my immature brain much delight. I had the thought that there may perhaps be a connection between Donald Trump and Steve Allen, and that it might be worthwhile searching for it.

There may or may not be one, but if there is, I have not found any direct connections. I did find some interesting things, so I continued my search even though the use of “SMOCK” did not mean either Hillary’s “dress” or Steve Allen.

I guess because of the fondness I always had for Steve Allen, I needed to find out more about him.

So instead of trying to tie him to Donald Trump, the following is just a focus on a Hollywood Inhabitant, which is something we are learning is a worthwhile digging proposition here in the Q Universe.

*texokie puts on her digging clothes and boots. She goes to the Qanteen Qitchen to put on a large fresh pot of covfefe and to make sammiches for her fellow FReeQs to consume while she is out of the building on her dig. She rummages and rustles around inside the Qanteen Qloset gathering her back pack, flashlight, cell phone, rope, shovel, and other equipment. She leaves a message on the Qanteen Refrigerator/Qooler saying “Out to dig - come after me if I’m not back by this evening!” She grabs a couple of the sammiches and some water and heads out. Her dig begins with basic Wiki digging*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Allen

Steve Allen was born in New York City into a Vaudeville family. Reportedly, his mom was considered by Milton Beryl to be “the funniest woman in Vaudeville….”

I won’t go into the whole gamut of Steve Allen’s storied and accomplished public life, but will pick out a few things that caught my eye. First, was a detail I had never known; during a stint as a wrestling announcer, he discovered that there was no really good terminology to describe to a tv audience the wrestling holds he was viewing. So he made them up - which made the audience laugh, and more to the point, actually became adopted as standard wrestling terms. The following is an example:

“…After the first match got under way, Allen began ad-libbing in a comedic style which had audiences outside the arena laughing. An example:
Leone gives Smith a full nelson now, slipping it up from either a half-nelson or an Ozzie Nelson. Now the boys go into a double pretzel bend with variations on a theme by Velox and Yolanda….”

LOL! I always assumed “Nelson” was wrestler that the hold was named after! Turns out it was Ozzie Nelson!

Tiny factoid stumbled across during the dig:
In the previous examination of Steve Allen’s life, in pursuit of a connection to Donald Trump, I cited a connection he had to Regis Philbin at the Friars Club. Westinghouse sponsored Steve’s show, “The Steve Allan Show,” in the mid 60’s. “… Philbin briefly took over hosting the Westinghouse sponsored show in 1964…”

He featured a lot of young talent on his show, debuting on TV such people as Rob Reiner, Richard Dreyfuss, and John Byner. He also featured Ruth Buzzi, and introduced Albert Brooks and Steve Martin to national audiences.

The article discusses his work as musician, composer, actor, and author. Then makes the following statement about his attitude about the direction of the media culture:

“…Despite his lifelong reputation for political liberalism, morally Allen was highly critical of vulgarity on both television and radio, and particularly strident in criticizing Howard Stern and other shock-jocks. At the time of his death he was completing a book on the subject called Vulgarians at the Gate, about what he saw as “the rising tide of smut on television.””

The article describes Allen as a freethinker and humanist, and
“became an outspoken critic of organized religion and an active member of the scientific skepticism movement. He worked to promote critical thinking with such humanist and skeptical organizations as the Council for Media Integrity, a group that debunked pseudoscientific claims, and the California-based group The Skeptics Society. He wrote many pieces for their publication, Skeptic, on such topics as the Church of Scientology, genius, and the passing of science fiction giant Isaac Asimov.”

Snip
“…Wishing to counter the influence of the American religious right, Allen wrote both a 1990 critique of the Bible (Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion and Morality) as well as a sequel. A sample passage from the book that illustrated his view of the Judeo-Christian God reads:

‘The proposition that the entire human race — consisting of enormous hordes of humanity — would be placed seriously in danger of a fiery eternity characterized by unspeakable torments purely because a man disobeyed a deity by eating a piece of fruit offered him by his wife is inherently incredible.’”

In his personal life, “Allen and Dorothy Goodman married in 1943 and had three children: Steve Jr., Brian, and David. That marriage ended in divorce in 1952.
Allen’s second wife was actress Jayne Meadows, sister of actress Audrey Meadows. That union produced one son, Bill Allen, named for Steve’s father. They were married in Waterford, Connecticut, on July 31, 1954, and remained married until his death in 2000. He was a Democrat; his wife was a Republican. In the later 1950s, author and philosopher Gerald Heard worked with psychiatrist Sidney Cohen to introduce intelligent, adventurous people to LSD, and Steve Allen was one of these.”

Snip

“Allen made a last appearance on The Tonight Show on September 27, 1994, for the show’s 40th anniversary broadcast. Jay Leno was effusive in praise and actually knelt and kissed Allen’s ring.”

As mentioned in Part One, it was noted that Allen died as a complication from an automobile accident. Here is a little more detail:

Allen died on October 30, 2000, at the age of 78. At first, it was suspected he had suffered a fatal heart attack while napping at his son’s Los Angeles area home. However, a Los Angeles Coroner’s spokesperson later said autopsy results showed the real cause of death was a ruptured blood vessel caused by chest injuries he did not realize he had sustained in a minor traffic accident earlier in the day.

According to Jayne Meadows, “Typical of Steve, [who] was the dearest, sweetest man: He was hit by a man, backing into him, breaking all of his ribs, that pierced his heart ... and when he got out of the car, he said to the man, ‘What some people will do to get my autograph’.”

*texokie sits down in the tunnel on a convenient rock and pulls out a sammich, contemplating the results of the dig so far. As she absently flicks away a couple of grubs which have fallen onto her sammich, she thoughtfully reviews the information she has gathered*

WHO THE HECK IS GERALD HEARD?????

*texokie marks the next digging direction with her spray paint and finishes her sammich*