No Laughter, Please

The play, Flamingo, telecast on last week's Danger, was written by Steve Allen. The music for the featured song, Forbidden Love, was composed by Steve Allen. The leading man: Steve Allen. Allen admits to even greater versatility: "I can play the tuba, make up songs from any four notes struck at random, and do a lot of stupid little things like a tap dance with my fingernails." In addition, Allen records bebop fairy tales, is writing a novel ("It's about the crackup of a marriage"), is working on a critical analysis of his fellow TV comics ranging from Milton Berle to Red Buttons, and is doing the words and music for a proposed Broadway musical. In his spare time, he appears once a week on TV's What's My Line? and five times a week on the Steve Allen Show (weekdays, 11:20 p.m.) over Manhattan's station WNBT. Such wide activity has its problems. One of them: Allen finds it hard to figure out just how much money he is making: "Some weeks it's $4,000, other weeks about $2,200. Anyway, it comes out over $150.000 a year."

Allen's best performance is given on the show seen by the fewest people, his 40-minute, late-at-night program telecast locally in New York City. In four months he has built up the same sort of fanatic following that once belonged to Jerry Lester and Dagmar. But, unlike the frenzied Broadway Open House, the Steve Allen Show is often relaxed to the point of torpor. Steve sits at a table, fidgeting with his mail, complaining about the public-address system, or asking unimportant questions of his off-camera crew. Sometimes he has his barber in to give him a haircut or has a meal served to him from a nearby restaurant. There is usually an interview, often punctuated by long, thoughtful silences and frequently marked by a rather insane literacy. (Sample: after listening to a seemingly endless sales message, Allen observed, "The foregoing commercial is now available on long-playing records.") Allen's pressagent, Jim Moran, is a weekly visitor, and he ordinarily arrives toting a stuffed bearcat or boa constrictor that he claims to have bagged while crossing Central Park to the studio. Allen ends each show with a visit to his studio audience for ad lib conversations. In startling contrast to most TV interrogators, he sometimes asks sensible questions and gets sensible answers.

Allen, 31, believes that most televiewers watch shows only for the satisfaction of saying, "God, isn't that awful!" With this in mind, his aim is to "try not to bother people." He says: "It's more important to be liked or not to be hated than it is to be laughed at."

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