Steve Allen

Steve Allen has been a fixture in American popular culture since he kicked off the first-ever “Tonight” show back in 1954.

Besides being a show business icon, he is also a respected jazz pianist, a composer, a poet, a novelist, a dramatist, an actor and philanthropist.

But most of all, Steve Allen was one of the original TV superstars, a performer instrumental in making television into the intricate part of our lives that it has become today.

It is ironic, therefore, that Allen is directing his considerable energies these days against the very medium that made him famous. TV is leading children down a moral sewer, he asserts, and he has begun an effort on behalf of the Parents Television Council to change it. “They’re going to know,” said one of his solicitations, “that we, their customers, are angry and we want them to stop sponsoring sex, filth, violence and sleaze and instead put their ad dollars in the kinds of decent, family safe programs that are getting huge ratings.”

“All across the political spectrum, thoughtful observers are appalled for what passes as entertainment these days,” Allen recently wrote. “No one can claim that the warning cries are simply the exaggerations of conservative spoil sports or fundamentalist preachers. Even people who fall far short of a state of personal sanctity--myself, for example--are revolted.”

The Times recently interviewed the 77-year-old Allen in his Van Nuys offices about the state of the arts and television in particular, and his campaign to clean things up.

*

Question: What is the aim of the Parents Television Council?

*

The Parents Television Council has done superb work in taking advantage of the public resentment about the degree of vulgarity on TV. Nobody suggests that there should be such a commandment as “Thou shalt never do a dirty joke.” But I don’t want my grandchildren, or any children, to be exposed to them. And at the moment, there’s an astonishing situation in which some of the television executives and advertisers and radio executives, production executives and studio executives, seem to take a less admirable moral position than professional pornographers, who generally say, “What we’re doing is purely for grown-ups.” However, the networks are taking no such high-minded position. So think of that. The people that run our networks are not as admirable in this connection as the professional pornographers.

Q: The television industry has tried to develop some sort of rating system. Obviously, you feel this hasn’t worked.

*

Under this rating system, things have gotten dirtier than they ever were before the rating system. The same question came several years ago when there was a national wave of anger about the content of the lyrics of some popular songs. Let’s rape a woman, let’s kill a cop . . . really sickening messages. And the record business’ response to that was to give it a rating. The result was that the kids who want to hear filthy lyrics knew exactly where to go. As soon as they had that rating on it, that’s where they went.

Q: Has the the council been successful to date? Are you going after the advertisers of shows you dislike?

*

We’re attacking everybody who’s guilty all the way down to the ushers who are saying, “This way folks, to the filthiest show in town,” on every sidewalk. The council reported to me recently that the total number of letters received in response to some very blunt newspaper ads has I think passed 150,000, and the great majority of them enclosed money. So a lot of money is coming in. So far as I understand it, every penny is now being used to buy new ads in additional papers. What we are trying to do is awaken the public consciousness. And that is working out.

This is not one of those things where everybody was nice and happy until we came along and stirred up trouble. There is a real problem that caused these groups to show up for duty. Among the groups that are participating is the Christophers, which have just celebrated their 50th anniversary. Their approach historically has been to praise the good, and there is beautiful stuff in television, and there’s even ethically and morally admirable stuff, whether it’s documentaries or drama. I was at a human rights meeting recently and a priest referred to the famous saying, “It is better to light one little candle than to curse the darkness.” A lovely thought. And when I responded a few minutes later, I said I personally feel that there’s room for both candle-lighting and darkness cursing.

I do feel that while those who praise the good are doing very important work, that’s not enough. Because a lot of people now are spitting on the good and are becoming enormously successful by doing so. The two most obvious examples are Howard Stern and Madonna. If Madonna’s success and her high station in our industry depended on either her physical beauty or her prowess as a singer or dancer, it would not have been reached. She is a superstar, but it doesn’t mean a damn to be a star anymore. And I’m sure somebody in her family is ashamed of the way she did it.

Q: When do you think values began to change?

*

I think it was part of the social revolution of the 1960s. I’ve been in television for 50 years, and for about 13 or 14 of those years I was involved in talk shows. And talk shows, in addition to their obvious faults and merits, can be used as a sort of a measuring stick of society in a way that other forms of entertainment cannot. And I remember it clearly, as compared to, say, the 1950s, which are still referred to, accurately, as the Golden Age of Comedy. In those days, nobody ever did a vulgar joke on television. You’ll never see anything vulgar on Jackie Gleason shows or Sid Ceasar. Some of the guys, at 2 in the morning in a club, might work a little rough, but they would never think of doing that on television. They knew families were watching.

So when did all that nice stuff begin to change? It seemed to me it was the mid- or early ‘60s. None of us hosting the shows decided, “Hey, let’s sneak in a little filthy stuff.” That never happened. But some of the guests used to feel free to talk dirty when they came on. There were some good things going on in the ‘60s. But suddenly it was hip to be disrespectful. Of the cops, of your parents, of the church, of the government, whatever. I could never see the sense of that, and I’ve always had a sort of a hip, jazz musician’s liberal mentality myself.

Q: Does anybody raise the 1st Amendment as an argument when you talk about your campaign?

*

Oh yeah. And they should, because it’s definitely a legitimate concern. One of the ways I sometimes respond is by saying, “I doubt if you are my superior in terms of respect for the 1st Amendment, but I hope you realize how wide the latitude that amendment permits.” For example, if Hitler were found alive and somehow became an American citizen, even he and his followers would be entitled to constitutional protections. But it doesn’t mean therefore we have to give up criticism of them. We have the right to criticize, as they have the right to create.

Q: Back in the ‘50s, you were no stranger to having controversial guests. For example, you once had Lenny Bruce on your show.

*

What Lenny Bruce did for a living is not at all what today’s foul-mouthed comics do. Lenny was a true social philosopher. Today’s comedians just take a pretty good joke and stick a four letter word in it. Very often when I address young audiences, or audiences consisting entirely of comedians who want my advice as an older guy who’s done it, I’ve often said, “You want to do hip comedy? Get every Lenny Bruce album that he ever made and spend about six months listening to it. Don’t steal his stuff, you can’t do that. But listen to his mind-set. Listen to his attitude. Listen to his voice as a social critic. And then, if you’re half that hip when you end up, then you’ll have what you want.” His satire hasn’t been surpassed by anybody now. A lot of comedians just say something dirty and expect the audience to laugh at the word.

Q: Do you think you are winning this fight? There does seem to be a proliferation of family oriented channels coming onto television recently.

*

If you care about this issue, then do some good work, support the guys that are doing it right, doing it clean. Attempts to do virtuous things are not always successful. The ratings have to be good or even the world’s greatest shows go off. One of the things when people say, “What can we do?” I say, “Support the good.” If you think a show is nice, or at least neutral or harmless, go with it. And I think people actually ought to see or hear one or two examples of the uglier programs so that they will see precisely the degree of horror that they are transmitting. Because just to say, “Oh, that show is dirty, now, what’s for lunch?” doesn’t really convey the emotional message.

Q: Are there any shows you think are particularly egregious?

*

Well, this is no news flash, because Howard Stern takes it over the head every day, but he’s the worst. The sad thing is a lot of people see that he’s become big, a lot of impressionable children. And what that means is, you can be big in show business without talent. Because Howard has none. That’s not what he markets. And “Just Shoot Me,” the David Spade Show. I don’t think I’ve ever watched it all they way through, but I’ve seen little eight-minute chunks of it now and then. And I’ve always liked David Spade’s work. And they obviously have clever writers, so it isn’t that they’re so inept they have to go for dirt because they don’t know how to do anything else. The question is, when they are such good producers and writers, and such funny performers, why then do they go this other way?

Q: Will you pressure the network executives as well?

*

There’s an old joke about a farmer who has an obstinate mule. And a stranger comes along and says, “I can help you with the mule,” and the farmer says, “OK, go ahead, I’ve had no luck.” So the guy gives the poor animal a terrible whack over the head with a club. The farmer says, “Why’d you do that?” The stranger said, “Well, first you have to get their attention.” So the function of those ads was to get the attention of the network executives whose attention I don’t think had been properly engaged before this new campaign, and now they have gotten the message. They’re not thrilled with the message, but at least they hear it. And a lot of them are nice guys. Some of them are my personal friends, and I recognize the difficulty of their position.

The public probably thinks that if you run a network, you create programs and then call in people to make them real and get the actors and so on. That’s not what happens. Some of the guys running networks have never created a program in their life, it’s not their field. What their job involves is to deal with the people who do create the programs. Ratings is the only criterion by which they themselves either get fired or keep their jobs. Doesn’t matter how many awards they’ve won, or how they’re the brightest man in show business history. They still can be out, real fast. And they know that.

So on the one hand, they’re trying to satisfy our demands. On the other hand, they’re trying to keep a home for themselves and their children. And, in this society in which there is a market for garbage, it’s not an easy position. So that’s all the more reason for exerting pressure on all the networks. If you could wind it down on the three major networks, that wouldn’t solve the problem of HBO and Showtime and all that. But there would be more programs that people could comfortably watch. Scott Sassa, who was recently installed as the program decider at NBC, on his first day at a big meeting said a marvelous thing, which immediately got ears up all over the industry. He said, “What we have in mind is more family values programming and less sex.” Sounds like he’s Jerry Falwell. Fortunately he’s running a network, so that’s a great moment. We’ll see what he does.

Q: Your focus is on TV because that’s the medium you know best?

*

Television and radio. What I am concerned about is the ability of 9- and 10-year-old children to tap into all the garbage that is being presented now. You wouldn’t let a baby-sitter bring in a little bit of poison and sprinkle it into your children’s lunch or breakfast. But the electronic baby-sitter is bringing in a certain amount of poison.