The Leisurely Style

When CBS stretches his daily television show to an hour and a half next week, Steve Allen will leave the category of the up & coming, and will join a more glamorous class: the arrived. With his regular program and his weekly hour as M.C. of Songs for Sale (Sat. 10 p.m., CBS radio & TV), he will be putting in 8 1/2 hours a week before the cameras, more than anyone else in the business, including the persistent young woman of the commercials who keeps shouting, "Be Happy! Go Lucky!"

The Steve Allen Show (Mon.-Fri., 12 noon) started six months ago; since then, listeners with an aversion for the usual determined chatter shows have found welcome relief in Allen's aimless, leisurely style. A comic of the Godfrey school that grew with TV, Allen tells few set jokes, prefers the kind of cracks that grow suddenly and spontaneously out of ordinary situations. For the first five minutes of his show, he simply sits and chews over whatever happens to be on his fast-moving mind. Then he wanders around, reads (and makes appropriate cracks at) his fan mail, eats delicacies sent in by women fans, chats with members of the audience, plays the piano or other instruments, brings on guest performers, acts out "sight gags," e.g., chatting with Wanda the Walking Doll, interviewing a man while slung over his back.

Allen's rise to TV stardom has been rapid. Until one year ago he was best known as a disc jockey in Los Angeles. There he built up a faithful following for his midnight radio show and, by popular demand, dispensed more chatter than records. His fans included workers in Hollywood's film industry, and, because of comments from them (Groucho Marx: "the freshest and most promising thing I've seen in radio in a long time"), CBS began to take notice.

In Manhattan, he is getting a lot of laughs, good reviews, and $2,000 a week for playing one of the simplest (and most difficult) of roles: that of the natural nice guy who occasionally comes out with a funny crack.

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