Back to the Mines

The sour-faced man with saddlebag eyes gingerly picked his way past a covey of dancing girls, glared at the cameras and sneered: "That is the finale of the old Jack Carter program . . . our show starts where the others leave off." Old friends remembered the touch. After a year in semiretirement, Fred Allen was back this week in the gold mines, digging for all he was worth and giving entertaining signs of hating every minute of it.

Making his television debut on NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour (Sun. 8 p.m.), Allen was the third in Colgate's stable of comedians, which includes Bobby Clark, Eddie Cantor, Martin & Lewis, Bob Hope. His fans noted that the old, surefire Allen formula, modified for TV and bolstered with a $60,000 budget, was still serviceable. Transformed into puppets for the camera, the inhabitants of Allen's Alley talked in their best Bronx, New England, and deep South accents.

The show sizzled with much of Allen at his best--knife-edge thrusts at the income-tax men, rival comedians, and pompous executives. It also fizzled occasionally with some of Allen at his worst, e.g., a leaden slapstick routine kidding TV consultants. By the time he was ready to wind up the program with a familiar traveling salesman version of Carmen, Allen had brought on Guest Stars Sono Osato, Rise Stevens and Monty Woolley, had put on half a dozen sly lampoons and proved himself as fine a mugger as he is an ad-libber.

The full-throttle performance left little doubt that Fred Allen was in television to stay. The challenge to current TV King Milton Berle, who began a new winter series last week, seemed clear enough. Old Campaigner Allen may yet demonstrate that TV needs a little lemon juice to cut the taste of so much custard pie.

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