Marty Allen:
Comic veteran celebrates his 94th birthday with Mill Valley gig.
It’s still 40 minutes before showtime, and there’s just an audience of two backstage at the Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley on Friday night, but Marty Allen is already in full performance mode.
“Somebody asked me ‘ How many ‘ Ed Sullivan Shows’ have you been on?’” he deadpans to a reporter and photographer. “I said, ‘ More than Ed Sullivan!’ ”
At 93 years old — 94 on Wednesday, March 23 — Allen was clearly born without an off switch. His comedy career, spanning 70 years, resembles a runaway freight train, careening from solo comedy ( opening for Nat King Cole) to a long partnership with Steve Rossi, to decades as a game- show staple, and now performing musical comedy revue with wife Karon Kate Blackwell.
A decade or two ago, Allen might have seemed out of touch. But his brand of clean self- deprecating humor, combined with his wife’s earnest give-it- all-you-got singing, seems downright innovative in this era of snark and negativity.
“Ninety- four years old, and I’ve still got it!” Allen says, introducing him--
self to the audience. “But nobody wants it.”
That’s the great thing about outliving 97 percent of your contemporaries. The audience will cheer for you just for showing up, and, if you’re still legitimately entertaining, a celebratory mood breaks out. A celebration of comedy, and a celebration of life.
That was the vibe at the Throckmorton, beginning when the younger Blackwell appeared solo, belting out standards and medleys as if she had a full band behind her, not a piped- in backing track. After she showed some skill on the grand piano on the stage, Allen walked out with his trademark greeting, “Hello dere.”
The Pittsburgh- born Allen wanted to be a journalist (“because I look great in a trench coat”), but he got a couple of early breaks, opening for Sarah Vaughan and Cole in the 1950s. The latter star was “like a brother,” Allen says, and was influential in teaming the more clownish comic with straight- man Rossi. Allen & Rossi appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show” more than 40 times; Sullivan liked their reliability and their wholesome humor.
Allen & Rossi broke up amicably in the 1960s after 15 years together, Allen says, and they remained close friends until Rossi’s death in 2014. Allen was a regular on “Hollywood Squares” and other game shows in the 1970s and 1980s, one of a stable of comics with a fast quip, including Rose Marie and Paul Lynde. The past few decades for Allen have consisted of performing — mostly near his Las Vegas home — as a team with Blackwell.
After about 10 minutes of Catskills- esque stand- up for the Throckmorton crowd, the second half of the show was a career retrospective, with video clips, photos and stories from Allen’s life, in which he has met everyone from Elvis Presley to Joan Crawford to President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty. ( Dancing with the first lady at a White House dinner to the song “I Feel the Earth Move” was a highlight during this story hour.)
Allen appeared on the same episode of “The Ed Sullivan Show” as the Beatles in the early 1960s — he says the lovestruck girls in the crowd were so loud, it was hard to hear.
“There was only one way I could get to them,” Allen recalls. “I said ‘ Hello dere, I’m Ringo’s mother.’ ”
There were more Beatles stories, another medley by Blackwell and a fond memory of a previous Mill Valley birthday shared with San Francisco comics Robin Williams and Mort Sahl. After several standing ovations and a ventriloquist dummy bit, the comedian ended the night with an extended dance number, his wife playing “Boogie and Beethoven” on the piano while Allen scooted back and forth across the floor — never mind that the cane he walked in with was 15 feet away.
The performance was supposed to end after that, but Bay Area comedian Johnny Steele, who had introduced Allen and Blackwell, surprised the comedian with a birthday cake. By that time the crowd was getting out of their seats and singing “Happy Birthday” closer to the stage, the performance long since having become something more intimate. “I’ll stay all night,” Allen says, promising to sign his recent memoir, “Hello Dere,” or just take a photo with anyone who wanted one.
“I’ll never forget my 94th here in Mill Valley,” Allen says, like a man who plans to stick around a while longer. “You made it a marvelous day.”
“I’ll never forget my 94th here in Mill Valley. You made it a marvelous day.”
Marty Allen