Live! . . . From Santa Ana! . . . ‘It’s Hi-Ho, Steverino!’ : Television: Steve Allen, original host of ‘The Tonight Show,’ will be honored at a benefit for Rancho Santiago College programs.

While in far-off laboratories the Soviets were perfecting Sputnik and Ford was fine-tuning the Edsel, Steve Allen was reciting a quickly assembled monologue. He was bantering with the bandleader. He was chatting with celebrities about their latest projects.

And as a result, he invented a product that would have far greater impact on the lives of Americans today--or, more accurately, tonight . Steve Allen, as is increasingly remembered, gave birth to the late-night TV talk show.

“Hosting a talk show is literally the easiest job in show business. What the hell is there to it?” says Allen today, thinking back on his tenure from 1954 to 1957 as the original host of “The Tonight Show.”

“You just say, ‘Oh, really, Bob--what did you do then?’ and for this you get big money.”

Maybe, but as Allen and his “Tonight Show” successors--Jack Paar, Johnny Carson and Jay Leno--came to realize, the job also offers a commanding perch overlooking American popular culture. Jokes, sketches and performers introduced on “Tonight” and its brethren often echo through bedrooms to work-time coffee breaks the next day, and to movie ticket and record purchases the next weekend.

In recognition of that legacy--and a career that stretched into several other fields after his years on “Tonight”--Allen has found himself the subject of tributes ranging from the rather appropriate Museum of Broadcasting to the more unlikely pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Tonight, the father of “Tonight” will be feted in Santa Ana, where the City Council has declared it “Steve Allen Night,” and Rancho Santiago College’s TV/Video Communications Department will honor him with its 1992 Television Tribute.

The Rancho Santiago event, which is open to the public and later will be shown on the college’s public-access cable program, is scheduled to include a half hour of clips from several of Allen’s TV series and a chance for audience members to ask questions of the entertainer. The event benefits the college’s telecommunications programs.

Those expecting to hear saccharine reminiscences about the so-called Golden Age of Television, however, may be disappointed.

“I was lucky enough--because of my age bracket, not out of any innate wisdom--to totally overlook ‘Leave It to Beaver’ and shows of that sort,” Allen, 71, said of his channel mates in the ‘50s.

“In fact, in the rare cases I would see them, I would think, ‘My God! This is awful; this is what Minnow had in mind when he said ‘vast wasteland,’ “--a reference to former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minnow’s famous description of television programming.

And while television has offered a stream of worthwhile programs--Allen lists “Cheers,” “Evening Shade” and “Saturday Night Live” among his current favorites, along with PBS documentaries and news shows--the overall worth of the medium remains in question, he said.

Broadcasting could be the tool to make this generation “the best educated people in history,” he said, and yet “in an age when science is at the absolute peak of its achievements . . . never did so many people believe in astrology, never did so many people go flocking into so many stupid little cult religions. The Reagans, great examples they were, with the astrologers in the White House,” Allen said, drifting onto a favored topic: politics.

And with politics and television ever more inseparable, Allen said Thursday in a telephone interview, he had watched the recent vice-presidential debate with interest.

Vice President Dan Quayle “probably came over a little better than his reputation would have led you to expect; there was intended and unintended humor in the admiral’s (James Stockdale) presentation, and (Tennessee Sen. Al) Gore acquitted himself very well,” he said.

“Quayle also came over somewhat unattractive when he was making his negative points. It’s always difficult to seem attractive when making a negative statement, but some people could do it,” Allen said. “Jack Kennedy had no trouble with it; Ronnie Reagan had no trouble with it; Patrick Buchanan, by way of contrast, has a terrible problem with it. If he says anything the least bit critical, his natural schmuckiness gets all over the screen.”

Allen, in addition to hosting several television shows, composing thousands of songs and penning nearly 40 books, also moderated television debates among important personages--all of whom were dead. His late 1970s PBS series “Meeting of Minds” featured round-table discussions among such notables at Attila the Hun, Cleopatra and Sigmund Freud, portrayed by actors, including Allen, his wife, Jayne Meadows, and others.

Excerpts from “Meeting of Minds” will be shown at tonight’s event, but the focus will likely be “Tonight,” also the centerpiece of Allen’s recently published memoir, “Hi-Ho, Steverino!”

In fact, 35 years after he left the program, Allen remains entangled in the gossipy-world of “Tonight” intrigue.

Soon after Leno took over the show and faced unflattering comparisons to his predecessor, Allen said, he wrote him words of encouragement, noting that when Jack Paar took over from Allen in 1957, the critics had “actually said things as cruel as, ‘This man is no Steve Allen,’ ” a pattern repeated when Carson became host five years later.

“ ‘Here’s the next step, Jay,’ I said. ‘Six months later Johnny or Jack hadn’t gotten any better, and now America loved them because they got used to them.’ ”

The letter, Allen said, sparked a call from “Tonight’s” then-producer, Helen Kushnick, who invited Allen to appear on the show. But after Allen appeared on the then-competing “Dennis Miller Show,” any interest from “Tonight” vanished, Allen said.

“Now that Helen’s no longer there, I suppose,” Allen said, “I’ll get a call soon.”

* The tribute to Steve Allen begins today at 5:30 p.m. with a reception at Johnson Center, Room U-201, and continues at 7 p.m. at Philips Hall, Rancho Santiago College, 17th and Bristol streets, Santa Ana. Admission: $10. Information: (714) 564-5661.