Name: Steve Allen on The David Letterman Show, October 23, 1980
Uploaded: 2016-04-16T05:33:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Steve Allen on The David Letterman Show, October 23, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-16. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Steve Allen on The David Letterman Show, October 23, 1980' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2016-04-16. Transcript available.

welcome back to the show what fun we're having this morning and my first guest
is an author
composer performer singer and comedian who has taken it upon himself to write a
book
explaining china ladies and gentlemen please welcome a real thrill for me to
have him here
steve allen
okay what do you want to do uh well the first the first thing i should do i was
uh struck as we say
oh no i was struck yes by a stage hand on the way out i was struck by your uh
your introduction of
this picture into evidence your honor yes and this was the man who was doing
research into how ducks
make out that's right uh actually that this picture does not substantiate the
thesis
this is uh foreplay
and we're not permitted on television at least at this time to do anything much
now that i think of it
let me um i'm real excited you're here uh this morning well then i'll be
running along
there should be no excitement at 10 in the morning here have one of those you
ever use one of those
oh yeah give that a shot well i did star in the benny goodman story yeah so who's
better qualified
than to play one of these there's only one finger that's all you need yeah that's
all you need
what does it say out there made in japan that's interesting what is this we'll
give it a shot
all for elizabeth taylor
let me see um i want to ask you about the tonight show you started the whole
thing you're the reason
we got a desk here you're the reason that talk shows are what they are today
what was that like
the very first tonight show we had no idea that it was uh you know going to go
on and be a 27 year
thing it was just uh you know as in the case with your own show you're just
trying to be funny each
day and and that was all we ever thought of as a matter of fact um you can't
even look back at it
with any great uh attention because the network burned as you probably have
heard just about all
the old kinescope film it had running from about 1949 to about 1956 or so so
all those three years are
gone yes does that bother you that that's just uh well i'm so busy right now it
doesn't but as soon
as i my schedule slacks up a little bit i'll get bothered again by that yeah
hey you did the the
original tonight show for five years right three years three years it seemed
like five uh and then
jack parr did it for five years five years seemed like three
and uh and then mr carson has done it now for 18 years yeah uh why you were the
shortest one of the
bunch so to speak uh in terms of years why why did you leave it after three uh
well they asked me to
do and i did a prime time comedy show and i thought i could do both at the same
time and for a while i
did but i couldn't do justice to uh either or both so i realized that at in
prime time i had about
ten times as many people watching and the salary was eight times as large so it
was an easy decision to
make yeah that's not a great deal of thought to which to give up yeah what
about uh now the show
that i uh remember mostly and love a great deal is the uh the westinghouse show
in the early 60s yeah
and it seemed to me that you're always doing very peculiar things on that show
yes when the writers
should have been writing jokes for me they were concocting plots on my life i
think some of those
things were actually dangerous and i was upon occasion moderately injured and
frequently scared as hell
what was uh was one of them the human tea bag were you uh near you're tell them
about the human tea
bag there was no physical danger in being the human tea bag only hideous
embarrassment but uh
i was attired as i am at the moment in fact this is the same suit i knew it was
still a little more
no i would the whole point was to be dressed like a gentleman of some kind and
then have to
i was covered with little tea bags i had to jump into about 89 gallons of hot
water
imagine a grown man yeah that's when i started groaning as a matter of fact
did uh during all of that did your kids say you come home from the show and you
say geez
dad a human tea bag lay off they refused to speak to me for those three years
the uh one of the things
that i remember vividly and one of the things that i just loved and in fact we
did a version of it here
one day you put a camera outside and you just look at the folks walking by yeah
and i guess you did that
the first uh yeah in fact we did it last saturday i'm doing as you know some
comedy things for nbc right
now and we we did that as part of the show and i loved uh your version of it
which was brilliantly
creative i saw it i don't know two or three weeks ago where you you shot the
people on the street
and then referred to it as a fashion show we had a fashion that was really
funny now uh we have uh
we have a camera this morning down on i believe sixth avenue unless it's been
stolen oh there it is
if you don't mind could you just comment do you need a little piano with this
steve uh yes
at least it helps you know the great value of the piano is uh otherwise people
notice the silences
uh there's a man who seems to have heard what i just said he's smiling
he's not too bright he's he doesn't know the war is over he's still tearing up
his draft card
it's brisk out today yeah yeah that's why people look purposeful where is that
sixth and oh it's i see
it's right near the uh just looking at rock the rock or radio city musical yeah
yeah
there's old white pants again you know i always thought that this this would
make great late night
tv you just let this thing go yeah seriously i i one of my fantasies is having
my own tv station in you
know terra hood indiana or someplace and doing stuff like that well i think you
could also have a family
that would come out at midnight or and just just spend the night on television
i don't i don't mean
entertain i just mean uh you know go to bed brush their teeth hi hi sweetheart
you know the great thing about this as you perceive david is you don't really
have to
see anything very witty it's the people the situation the reality that's funny
entertaining
we have to pause for a commercial uh with any luck at all we'll be back though
hi there we're talking to steve allen on his most recent book explaining china
which we'll get to in
a second so hurry i appreciate your you're doing that you know because you go
on some shows and
literally the hosts do this no names please they say steve allen has a new book
and i think
that's my book book you know there's something else you may be interested in
the monday the game
show started they've already started loading up some of the equipment there you
go
however i do it speaking of the world of game shows i have some sad news johnny
olsen who you know has
been on a lot of them over the years he's now working out in los angeles with
the aspca
whenever there's a cat stuff and they're stuck up in a tree he yells come on
down
very sad
presidents for 20 art no i'm sorry you have a great audience here yeah the
audience is very nice
the interesting thing about them is not that just a good audience which is nice
you know selfishly
speaking for us but they are all of a type they're all hip young people out of
work
i can sort of relate to that now
what we uh i want to uh we brought you brought some videotape from the old show
that we alluded to and
do you mind taking a look at this with us no i have nothing else to do in the
next few minutes
all right this is uh do you know what we're going to look at it's the somebody
mentioned the the human
kite human kite this is now this was an opening to one of your shows yeah this
was how it was
every night typically i did some stupid thing of this sort and i was quite
prepared to fly on this
occasion but i had difficulty getting airborne so this uh take a look at the
monitors mr steve allen
flying this is your uh this is your captain speaking we're about to take off
from la magata airport and we
will be flying at a height of about five and a half inches over the hollywood
ranch market
this last case coffee shop and directly into the los angeles general hospital
honey
i guess we're uh about ready to go john i'll give you the glasses if i may we'll
back up here
a big tail on the right out here
if i grab my little wing birds
okay let it rip
oh brother there was i recall and i don't mean to dwell on it but i do mean to
dwell on it uh is
i love this stuff that you had one time yourself covered with ants and then
some anteaters released
yes uh or was that just a date no it was something a couple of my uncles
dreamed up actually
no all seriousness aside i i was in a sketch i think with i don't know pat harrington
jr and i
was wearing a pith helmet and steward granger wardrobe and i was uh spread
eagle if you've ever
had your beagle spread you're not painful anyway i was helpless prone prostrate
at the same time
and uh then some guy came out with a jar full of real big ants and poured them
all over me and uh
i couldn't do anything about that and then they brought out an anteater
and he ate the ants off me
weird listen don't knock it until you've tried it
it's going to be one of the most exciting moments of my life
we have to take another short break and then we'll come back
thank you very much and that's the sound of music no it's not the sound of
music
that is really that's really what you call toe tapping mute whenever i hear
that music i take out
a small hammer and tap my toes just at infinite now you've got the serious up
here you brought this
book let's talk about the book uh explaining china i started reading this
yesterday uh voluminous
yeah and and tell me what tell me all about it we have two minutes tell me all
about this voluminous
book well first of all the uh if i may point out that the title explain china
has quotation marks around
it uh the point of that is it would take a thousand books to explain china has
a 5 000 year history
it's larger than the united states almost a million people and who could
explain that in one book but
i take a shot at it what do you do there what was it like how long were you
there answer any of those
questions well the food is so great you put on weight that's one thing you do
there and you learn a lot
you don't go to china for the same reasons that you might go to vegas you know
uh but since everything
you see there is unlike the stuff you're used to seeing you spend all day going
wow look at that
yeah imagine this is it uh like when you when you go to a new city um it's
stimulating view is it the
same experience with china it's truly a learning experience and if you plan to
go there as millions
are now trying to do read something first i don't care if you read this book
but do read something
first otherwise it will be very strange to you is it uh um are they friendly
yes chinese well the chinese
of the political left or right have thousands of years uh practice at being
wonderful hosts and uh
you'll be given the most cordial welcome and when the i read um recently where
the the posters and and
so forth are now being removed and it's it's a less political atmosphere yes it
is the boundaries of
freedom are being enlarged by no means as free as cleveland but a lot freer
than they were there just a
few years ago as a matter of fact there were some uh just little pictures we
brought along here we don't
have time to go into the whole thing uh i get which is your best camera for
close-up right here whatever
this is uh ah there it is this is my son bill um standing near a no loitering
sign
in the forbidden city uh he was forbidden to stand there any longer that's why
they called it
anyway that's one picture then here we have uh uh in this sorry on this i'm uh
i'm conducting a class
and uh smiling seem to be the only one having a good time and this is jane's
mother's and father's
church this picture was taken probably about 1930 that's their church in the
background behind the
high wall saint andrews in wuchang and uh oh
somebody in a parker it's uh it's nancy parker ladies and gentlemen
welcome back to the show uh our special guest this morning is mr steve allen
first of all let me
apologize for had dumping on you like that i knew nothing about it not at all
no problem as a matter
of fact on your head that becomes you it took johnny 18 years to get like that
and you made it in
about 20 minutes anyway i want to thank you very much for being here steve
thank you david i've been
a big fan of yours forever and uh it's mutual and i hope you'll come on my show
soon i would love to do
the book the book the most interesting book extremely thank you so i see that
thank you very nice man very
nice man and i appreciate his uh sense of being a good sport i however am
steamed about this whole
development uh well welcome back to the show coming up later in this half hour
dog trainers warren and
faye ekstein will be here with uh what i believe is going to be a fascinating
display they got a great
dog he's a black labrador is that correct and uh real interesting uh you know
halloween is just around
the corner but then again what isn't just around the corner uh and all the
stores are featuring this
year's halloween merchandise we thought we'd like to take a look at some of the
popular trends in
halloween wear this year we went out shopping and found a few uh little devices
first of all
uh this little article uh here's something that a lot of you ladies will want
to rush out and buy
according to the advertisement as seen on tv you look 1 000 years old in
minutes
for all of us who are trying to speed up the aging process okay number two oh
this is nice oh this is
cute this is the badly battered brutally bruised bashed and bloody digit
for age eight and over seven-year-olds are generally too sensitive and i
understand you actually have to
show proof of age to buy one of these things this is useful for the kid who
wants to dress up as an
emergency room patient this is this is sort of nice a freak beak um says it's
easy to apply and comfortable
how many of your own noses just aren't as comfortable as you'd like them to be
and again you must be eight and over let me try this on see
well that is comfortable
put a little snow in this huh no no
we're just joking around here you start doing that kind of stuff and you get
yourself canceled so
our announcer now tomorrow is our last show uh on the show tomorrow we will
have the
we will have uh the david letterman family of the air as our guests on the show
tomorrow
and you should watch it i think it'll be a lot of fun thanks for being here
today have a pleasant
afternoon with you
join me for las vegas gambit that's where contestants beat the house if they've
play their cards right and i'm mixed with great cash prizes on blockbusters
then chuck woolery gives
players a spin on the wheel of fortune and the password is top stars as they
play password plus
followed by card charts so get in the game all of them starting monday october
27th

Steve Allen on The David Letterman Show, October 23, 1980

welcome back to the show what fun we're having this morning and my first guest
is an author
composer performer singer and comedian who has taken it upon himself to write a
book
explaining china ladies and gentlemen please welcome a real thrill for me to
have him here
steve allen
okay what do you want to do uh well the first the first thing i should do i was
uh struck as we say
oh no i was struck yes by a stage hand on the way out i was struck by your uh
your introduction of
this picture into evidence your honor yes and this was the man who was doing
research into how ducks
make out that's right uh actually that this picture does not substantiate the
thesis
this is uh foreplay
and we're not permitted on television at least at this time to do anything much
now that i think of it
let me um i'm real excited you're here uh this morning well then i'll be
running along
there should be no excitement at 10 in the morning here have one of those you
ever use one of those
oh yeah give that a shot well i did star in the benny goodman story yeah so who's
better qualified
than to play one of these there's only one finger that's all you need yeah that's
all you need
what does it say out there made in japan that's interesting what is this we'll
give it a shot
all for elizabeth taylor
let me see um i want to ask you about the tonight show you started the whole
thing you're the reason
we got a desk here you're the reason that talk shows are what they are today
what was that like
the very first tonight show we had no idea that it was uh you know going to go
on and be a 27 year
thing it was just uh you know as in the case with your own show you're just
trying to be funny each
day and and that was all we ever thought of as a matter of fact um you can't
even look back at it
with any great uh attention because the network burned as you probably have
heard just about all
the old kinescope film it had running from about 1949 to about 1956 or so so
all those three years are
gone yes does that bother you that that's just uh well i'm so busy right now it
doesn't but as soon
as i my schedule slacks up a little bit i'll get bothered again by that yeah
hey you did the the
original tonight show for five years right three years three years it seemed
like five uh and then
jack parr did it for five years five years seemed like three
and uh and then mr carson has done it now for 18 years yeah uh why you were the
shortest one of the
bunch so to speak uh in terms of years why why did you leave it after three uh
well they asked me to
do and i did a prime time comedy show and i thought i could do both at the same
time and for a while i
did but i couldn't do justice to uh either or both so i realized that at in
prime time i had about
ten times as many people watching and the salary was eight times as large so it
was an easy decision to
make yeah that's not a great deal of thought to which to give up yeah what
about uh now the show
that i uh remember mostly and love a great deal is the uh the westinghouse show
in the early 60s yeah
and it seemed to me that you're always doing very peculiar things on that show
yes when the writers
should have been writing jokes for me they were concocting plots on my life i
think some of those
things were actually dangerous and i was upon occasion moderately injured and
frequently scared as hell
what was uh was one of them the human tea bag were you uh near you're tell them
about the human tea
bag there was no physical danger in being the human tea bag only hideous
embarrassment but uh
i was attired as i am at the moment in fact this is the same suit i knew it was
still a little more
no i would the whole point was to be dressed like a gentleman of some kind and
then have to
i was covered with little tea bags i had to jump into about 89 gallons of hot
water
imagine a grown man yeah that's when i started groaning as a matter of fact
did uh during all of that did your kids say you come home from the show and you
say geez
dad a human tea bag lay off they refused to speak to me for those three years
the uh one of the things
that i remember vividly and one of the things that i just loved and in fact we
did a version of it here
one day you put a camera outside and you just look at the folks walking by yeah
and i guess you did that
the first uh yeah in fact we did it last saturday i'm doing as you know some
comedy things for nbc right
now and we we did that as part of the show and i loved uh your version of it
which was brilliantly
creative i saw it i don't know two or three weeks ago where you you shot the
people on the street
and then referred to it as a fashion show we had a fashion that was really
funny now uh we have uh
we have a camera this morning down on i believe sixth avenue unless it's been
stolen oh there it is
if you don't mind could you just comment do you need a little piano with this
steve uh yes
at least it helps you know the great value of the piano is uh otherwise people
notice the silences
uh there's a man who seems to have heard what i just said he's smiling
he's not too bright he's he doesn't know the war is over he's still tearing up
his draft card
it's brisk out today yeah yeah that's why people look purposeful where is that
sixth and oh it's i see
it's right near the uh just looking at rock the rock or radio city musical yeah
yeah
there's old white pants again you know i always thought that this this would
make great late night
tv you just let this thing go yeah seriously i i one of my fantasies is having
my own tv station in you
know terra hood indiana or someplace and doing stuff like that well i think you
could also have a family
that would come out at midnight or and just just spend the night on television
i don't i don't mean
entertain i just mean uh you know go to bed brush their teeth hi hi sweetheart
you know the great thing about this as you perceive david is you don't really
have to
see anything very witty it's the people the situation the reality that's funny
entertaining
we have to pause for a commercial uh with any luck at all we'll be back though
hi there we're talking to steve allen on his most recent book explaining china
which we'll get to in
a second so hurry i appreciate your you're doing that you know because you go
on some shows and
literally the hosts do this no names please they say steve allen has a new book
and i think
that's my book book you know there's something else you may be interested in
the monday the game
show started they've already started loading up some of the equipment there you
go
however i do it speaking of the world of game shows i have some sad news johnny
olsen who you know has
been on a lot of them over the years he's now working out in los angeles with
the aspca
whenever there's a cat stuff and they're stuck up in a tree he yells come on
down
very sad
presidents for 20 art no i'm sorry you have a great audience here yeah the
audience is very nice
the interesting thing about them is not that just a good audience which is nice
you know selfishly
speaking for us but they are all of a type they're all hip young people out of
work
i can sort of relate to that now
what we uh i want to uh we brought you brought some videotape from the old show
that we alluded to and
do you mind taking a look at this with us no i have nothing else to do in the
next few minutes
all right this is uh do you know what we're going to look at it's the somebody
mentioned the the human
kite human kite this is now this was an opening to one of your shows yeah this
was how it was
every night typically i did some stupid thing of this sort and i was quite
prepared to fly on this
occasion but i had difficulty getting airborne so this uh take a look at the
monitors mr steve allen
flying this is your uh this is your captain speaking we're about to take off
from la magata airport and we
will be flying at a height of about five and a half inches over the hollywood
ranch market
this last case coffee shop and directly into the los angeles general hospital
honey
i guess we're uh about ready to go john i'll give you the glasses if i may we'll
back up here
a big tail on the right out here
if i grab my little wing birds
okay let it rip
oh brother there was i recall and i don't mean to dwell on it but i do mean to
dwell on it uh is
i love this stuff that you had one time yourself covered with ants and then
some anteaters released
yes uh or was that just a date no it was something a couple of my uncles
dreamed up actually
no all seriousness aside i i was in a sketch i think with i don't know pat harrington
jr and i
was wearing a pith helmet and steward granger wardrobe and i was uh spread
eagle if you've ever
had your beagle spread you're not painful anyway i was helpless prone prostrate
at the same time
and uh then some guy came out with a jar full of real big ants and poured them
all over me and uh
i couldn't do anything about that and then they brought out an anteater
and he ate the ants off me
weird listen don't knock it until you've tried it
it's going to be one of the most exciting moments of my life
we have to take another short break and then we'll come back
thank you very much and that's the sound of music no it's not the sound of
music
that is really that's really what you call toe tapping mute whenever i hear
that music i take out
a small hammer and tap my toes just at infinite now you've got the serious up
here you brought this
book let's talk about the book uh explaining china i started reading this
yesterday uh voluminous
yeah and and tell me what tell me all about it we have two minutes tell me all
about this voluminous
book well first of all the uh if i may point out that the title explain china
has quotation marks around
it uh the point of that is it would take a thousand books to explain china has
a 5 000 year history
it's larger than the united states almost a million people and who could
explain that in one book but
i take a shot at it what do you do there what was it like how long were you
there answer any of those
questions well the food is so great you put on weight that's one thing you do
there and you learn a lot
you don't go to china for the same reasons that you might go to vegas you know
uh but since everything
you see there is unlike the stuff you're used to seeing you spend all day going
wow look at that
yeah imagine this is it uh like when you when you go to a new city um it's
stimulating view is it the
same experience with china it's truly a learning experience and if you plan to
go there as millions
are now trying to do read something first i don't care if you read this book
but do read something
first otherwise it will be very strange to you is it uh um are they friendly
yes chinese well the chinese
of the political left or right have thousands of years uh practice at being
wonderful hosts and uh
you'll be given the most cordial welcome and when the i read um recently where
the the posters and and
so forth are now being removed and it's it's a less political atmosphere yes it
is the boundaries of
freedom are being enlarged by no means as free as cleveland but a lot freer
than they were there just a
few years ago as a matter of fact there were some uh just little pictures we
brought along here we don't
have time to go into the whole thing uh i get which is your best camera for
close-up right here whatever
this is uh ah there it is this is my son bill um standing near a no loitering
sign
in the forbidden city uh he was forbidden to stand there any longer that's why
they called it
anyway that's one picture then here we have uh uh in this sorry on this i'm uh
i'm conducting a class
and uh smiling seem to be the only one having a good time and this is jane's
mother's and father's
church this picture was taken probably about 1930 that's their church in the
background behind the
high wall saint andrews in wuchang and uh oh
somebody in a parker it's uh it's nancy parker ladies and gentlemen
welcome back to the show uh our special guest this 