Mel Allen

• Born: February 14, 1913
• Birthplace: Birmingham, Alabama
• Died: June 16, 1996
• Place of death: Greenwich, Connecticut

Journalist and entertainer

During a radio and television broadcasting career that spanned more than a half century, Allen hosted game, news, and variety shows, and he handled play-by-play announcing for a variety of sports. He was identified closely as a commentator for the New York Yankees baseball team from the late 1930’s until the mid-1960’s.

Early Life

Mel Allen was the first of three children born to Julius and Anna Israel, Russian Jewish immigrants whose families had fled to America to escape czarist pogroms. Allen’s father operated various businesses, including a shoe store and a dry goods emporium, in several small Alabama communities. Prejudice against Jews drove the Israel family to Greensboro, North Carolina, then to Detroit, Michigan, before they returned to settle in Birmingham, Alabama, where Allen was born and attended high school.

Allen, a precocious child, began speaking prior to his first birthday, and began reading before he was two years old. After his grandfather, Avrom, died, Allen honored his late relative by adopting Avrom’s name. Allen graduated from high school at age fifteen and immediately enrolled at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, majoring in law with a view to becoming an attorney. An avid sports fan from an early age—though too small and spindly to play sports—with an encyclopedic memory for statistics, he began writing a sports column for the university newspaper and handled public address announcement duties at Alabama football games. Between 1933 and 1936, while he worked to complete the requirements for undergraduate and law degrees, he was hired as a play-by-play announcer for University of Alabama and Auburn University football.

After earning his degree and passing the bar in 1937, Allen vacationed in New York City, where he auditioned for a job as a staff radio announcer at the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). Hired at a salary of less than ten dollars per day, he was asked to drop his surname in favor of his middle name, to sound “less Jewish,” a not-uncommon practice among entertainers in an era when Nathan Birnbaum became George Burns and Benjamin Kubelsky became Jack Benny to appeal to broader audiences. For the first several years, Allen performed a wide variety of assignments for CBS. His distinctive voice—warm, mellifluous, and nasal, underscored by a homespun southern twang—was heard introducing big bands, narrating radio dramas, hosting game shows (such as Truth or Consequences), covering breaking news (such as the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, when a German passenger airship burned in the skies above New Jersey), and announcing scores of sporting events, from boxing matches to yacht races and from polo to golf.

Life’s Work

Despite the variety of sports he covered, Allen’s first love was baseball. He got a big break by serving as a color commentator for the 1938 World Series. This led to a brief stint in 1939 as the primary announcer for the Washington Senators baseball games. Midseason, he was hired as lead announcer for both the New York Yankees and the New York Giants home baseball games. He meanwhile continued to perform at several other broadcast venues until 1943—the year he legally changed his last name to Allen—when he was drafted into the U.S. Army and served as an announcer for Armed Forces Radio.

After his 1946 discharge, Allen returned to New York, where he announced baseball exclusively for the Yankees, both at home and on the road. During his tenure, he became linked inextricably with the team in its heyday as world champions, and performed play-by-play duties in eighteen straight World Series. In great demand because of his folksy manner, easily recognizable voice, and colorful, evocative descriptions of on-field action, he was also a popular choice to announce other sporting events on both radio and television. During his career, Allen gave play-by-plays of twenty-four All-Star baseball games, fourteen Rose Bowl games, and several Orange Bowl and Sugar Bowl match-ups. For many years beginning in the early 1950’s, his was the voice on sports reports in Fox Movietone newsreels at theaters across the country. He also announced Washington Redskins (1952-1953) and New York Giants (1960) football games, did a season announcing Jackpot Bowling (1959), and hosted the Saturday-morning Monitor program on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).

In 1964, the most famous voice in radio became a pariah. The Yankees summarily fired him and brought in Joe Garagiola as his replacement. With no official explanation from the front office, speculation as to the cause of his dismissal ran rampant. Some thought his usual sponsors—including economically stressed Ballantine Beer—objected to his high salary. Others opined that Allen, a lifelong bachelor, might be gay, despite the fact he was often seen squiring beautiful young women around town. Still others felt Allen’s talkative style had become outmoded and unnecessary in the television age. The most common rumor (reinforced by his occasional on-air lapses) was that Allen had a drug problem: His jam-packed schedule may have forced him into a vicious cycle of stimulants to aid performance and depressants to help him sleep between jobs.

Whatever the reason, Allen almost vanished from the airwaves for a time. NBC no longer wanted him. Movietone let him go. He was relegated to doing temporary work: color commentary for the Milwaukee Braves(1965), radio play-by-play for the Miami Dolphins (1966) and for University of Miami football games (1967), and television announcing for the Cleveland Indians (1968).

After a decade out of the limelight, the Yankees let Allen perform at special occasions. From the mid-1970’s until the mid-1980’s, he hosted previews and postgame commentary on cable telecasts for the team. Equally significant, from 1977 until his death, he hosted the popular syndicated program This Week in Baseball. In his final years, he made cameo appearances in several films (including 1993’s Needful Things) and used his remarkable voice on a few computerized baseball games. Allen died at age eighty-three following a long illness and was interred at Temple Beth El Cemetery in Stamford, Connecticut.

Significance

With one of the most recognizable voices on radio, Allen was identified closely with the New York Yankees for four decades, and he set the standard for early broadcast play-by-play announcers. In recognition of his many contributions to the art form of announcing between the 1930’s and the 1990’s, he was inducted into the National Sportscaster and Sportswriter Association Hall of Fame in 1972. He and fellow announcer Red Barber in 1978 were the first recipients of the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting from the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was enshrined in the Radio Hall of Fame in 1988. Many of his stylistic mannerisms and catchphrases became part of sportscasters’ repertoire.

Bibliography

Appel, Marty. Now Pitching for the Yankees: Spinning the News for Mickey, Billy, and George. Kingston, N.Y.: Total Sports, 2001. Written by a member of the Yankees’ public relations staff, this book details team events and personalities during the 1960’s and 1970’s, touching upon Allen’s influence.

Borelli, Stephen. How About That! The Life of Mel Allen. Champaign, Ill.: Sports 2005. A well-researched biography of the announcer, which chronicles his rise, fall, and resurrection.

Patterson, Ted. The Golden Voices of Baseball. Champaign, Ill.: Sports, 2002. A compendium, complete with photographs of the subjects and compact discs containing snippets of their patter, of the most outstanding examples of baseball play-by-play announcers since the 1930’s.

Smith, Curt. The Voice: Mel Allen’s Untold Story. Guilford, Conn.: Lyons Press, 2007. Another biography; this one deals in depth with Allen’s dismissal from the Yankees, its probable causes, and its definite effects.