An actor's popularity is fleeting. His success has the life expectancy of a small boy who is about to look into a gas tank with a lighted match.

It also never happened really. E. Allen was able to negotiate a lucrative new contract as a result not only of the show's success but thanks in large measure to NBC's anxiety to keep more of its stars from joining Jack Benny in a wholesale defection to CBS.

A master ad libber Allen often tangled with his network's executives (and often barbed them on the air over the battles) while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents including Groucho Marx Stan Freberg Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt and novelists William Faulkner John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk (who began his career writing for Allen).