The son of American vaudeville entertainers, bespectacled American comedian Steve Allen led a peripatetic childhood, shunted off from one relative or boarding school to another. As a balm to his loneliness, Allen became a voracious reader, providing himself with a wide and varied intellectual base. Breaking into showbiz as a radio disc jockey, Allen soon learned that inserting humor here and there would draw a lot more attention than merely announcing the records and reading the stockyard reports. In order to supply himself with an endless stream of material, Allen memorized every joke book and "college humor" magazine that he could get his hands on; the result was his uncanny ability to conjure up precisely the right wisecrack at the right time. Developing a strong following while hosting a radio program on Los Angeles' KNX in 1948, Allen received his first network exposure in 1949, and was also featured in several films, including Down Memory Lane (1949) and I'll Get By (1950). In 1953, Allen was hired to host a local late-night program on New York's WNBC-TV, which later developed into the NBC network's Tonight Show. Extraordinarily busy during the years 1956 and 1957, Allen hosted Tonight, headlined his own hour-long weekend variety TV series, starred as the title character in …  » Read more