SOURCE: "Fred Allen: Strickly from Misery (with a rebuttal by Mr. Allen)," in These Were Our Years: A Panoramic and Nostalgic Look at American Life between the Two World Wars, edited by Frank Brookhouser, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959, pp. 486-94.

In the following essay, originally published in 1944, Zolotow offers personal observations of Allen, to which Allen himself replies in footnotes.

NOTE: Fred Allen read this chapter on himself. His observations are printed, exactly as he wrote them, in the footnotes. Mr. Allen does not like capital letters.

Unlike some comedians who are lifelong victims of a self-hatred implanted when they were young and who are compelled to devote their humor to ridiculing themselves, Fred Allen has always poured out his bitterness and his scorn upon the world. For a long time he was a successful radio star, earning plenty of money, with a nice wife with whom he lived...