Woody Allen: Television Days
Years before regaling us with stories about his affair with a married woman at the age of fourteen, and his redemption courtesy of an English monk named Father Joe, Tony Hendra wrote Going Too Far, which may be the definitive book dedicated to Baby Boomer humor (if not the only book dedicated to Boomer Humor), covering everything from the rise of “sick humor” in the 1950s to the pop-culture assimilation of Boomer humor via Saturday Night Live and beyond. In a section on standup comedy in the early sixties, Hendra compares Woody Allen and Bill Cosby:
What these two apparently disparate comedians had in common was that, unlike the premise-oriented routines of their early-sixties counterparts [like Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and Dick Gregory], their comedy tended to center on themselves. It had been rare before this that the New Comedians brought their own experiences or personal history so intensely to their work.
Both ethnic comedians whose sensibilities were shaped largely by the urban environments from which they emerged (Philadelphia for Cosby, Brooklyn for Allen), the two had traveled similar career paths as well, appearing in nightclubs and on college campuses, recording comedy albums, and popping up on television variety and talk shows of the time. Soon, however, they would embark on vastly different journeys: Cosby, in 1965, landed the plum role of Alexander Scott on NBC’s I Spy, becoming the first black actor to star in an episodic drama on American television, and went on to dominate TV with his Reagan-era series about the Huxtables, an upper-middle-class African-American family living in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, Woody, who was from Brooklyn, made films about Manhattan – first funny films, then not-funny films, and finally films that were sometimes funny and sometimes not.
Interestingly, Allen’s career might have turned out differently – more like Cosby’s, perhaps? – had his 1962 sitcom pilot, The Laughmakers, been picked up by a network. Written by Allen and featuring one of his future wives – Louise Lasser – plus Alan Alda and Sandy Baron, The Laughmakers was about a struggling Greenwich Village improv troupe whose fortunes change radically once they bring in a new, female player who is torn between creating comedy and poetry.
I wish I could report that the networks did viewers a terrible disservice in failing to recognize Woody’s brilliance, but the truth is the pilot is dreadful, and it is hard to imagine anyone but the hardest-core Woody fans forcing themselves to sit through it. If they did, they would likely recognize not just a sprinkling of classic Woody Allen jokes (like the one about his distraught mother taking an overdose of Mah-Jongg tablets), but also a theme that is pure Woody: the conflict between comedy and “serious art,” in this case poetry.
Woody had written for sketch-comedy shows (including several Sid Caesar and Art Carney specials) and sitcoms (Buddy Hackett’s Stanley) before, but this was his first sitcom pilot, and who’s to say what would have happened if a network had picked it up? Fortunately, Woody didn’t abandon TV completely after the failure of The Laughmakers – if he had, we never would have been treated to the sight (and sounds) of his duet with a French poodle on I’ve Got a Secret; his hilarious but substantial discussions about religion and politics with Billy Graham and William Buckley, Jr. on specials in the late 1960s; his witty contributions to the delightful 1970 kidvid show Hot Dog; and his monologues and/or interviews on the Sullivan, Carson, (Steve) Allen, and Frost shows (Frost to Allen: “Did you encounter a lot of prejudice as a child?” Allen to Frost: “My parents were not fond of me, and I always thought it was because of my religious beliefsâ€Â).
Woody’s most renowned TV project is Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story, a half-hour special made for WNET, the New York pubcaster in 1971 which heralded Zelig in its ingenious interspersing of actual documentary footage and faux-documentary footage and its depiction of an unassuming-looking man played by – who else – Woody Allen – who finds himself walking among the lions of history. In this case the lion — OK, maybe more like a shark — is Richard Nixon, who summons his old confidante Wallinger to the White House after being elected president. Given free run of the place, Harvey is shown barking into the phone, demanding an injunction against The New York Times – “It’s a New York, Jewish, Communist, left-wing, homosexual newspaper, and that’s just the sports section” – and explaining that the administration’s decision to bomb Laos was reached because “we were not happy with the way it was spelled.” Written and filmed by Allen over a ten-day period and offered to PBS free of charge, Men in Crisis has never aired on television – scheduled to premiere on PBS stations in February 1972, when Nixon was at the height of his popularity and gearing up for re-election, the show was pulled at the last minute by the network, fearful of government retribution. Instead, they aired Come to Florida Before It’s Gone, starring Stanley Myron Handelman, who had a thriving television career of his own but who – to the best of my knowledge – has never been compared to Bill Cosby.
Four must-see Woody TV programs, all available for viewing at The Paley Center for Media in New York and Los Angeles:
1) The Laughmakers (1962): Not great (see above), but an interesting early glimpse into Woody’s thematic preoccupations.
2) The Woody Allen Special (1969): Woody and Candice Bergen portray actors directed to play a scene nude; Woody and Billy Graham discuss everything from sex to God (”God is perfect,” Graham says when asked by Allen if God is egotistical, to which Woody replies, “You know, it’s funny, when I look in the mirror in the morning it’s hard for me to believe that.”)
3) The Kraft Music Hall: Woody Allen Looks at 1967 (1967): Woody and William Buckley, Jr., discuss politics and world affairs, including the Middle East (asked by one audience member if Israel should give back land it won in war, Woody replies, “No, I think they should sell it back”).
4) I’ve Got a Secret (1964): Woody makes his television singing debut alongside a very uncooperative talking French poodle.
David Bushman is Curator, Television at The Paley Center for Media
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Great to stumble across your references to Woody Allen. I have been trying to track down the I've Got a Secret episode which featured Woody singing to a poodle. The first guest with a secret that night was the father of a former classmate. I know that GSN holds the rights to I've Got a secret. Any idea if I could get a copy of a portion of that kinescope featuring that first contestant.
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