SOURCE: Alan R. Havig, "Fred Allen's Comedy of Language," in Fred Allen's Radio Comedy, Temple University Press, 1990, pp. 127-52.

In the following excerpt, Havig characterizes Allen's humor as "verbal slapstick, " which he attributes to Allen's use of puns, double entendres, and hyperbole.

The 1930s and 1940s were years of mighty as well as mighty interesting events in the United States and abroad. For Fred Allen, the Great Depression, the world war—especially on the home front—and postwar tensions with the Soviet Union all found a place in his skeptical observance of current events, as did "human interest" stories from the newspapers' back pages. Allen's scripts were especially sensitive to goings-on in his own town, New York City. More than on any other network radio program, the metropolis of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Coney Island, immigrant neighborhoods, the subway, and the Brooklyn Dodgers played a continuing role on...