Sunday, March 5, 2000 | 9:28 a.m.
Tape my life, please!
The career of 84-year-old stand-up comic Bernie Allen is one for the books -- and maybe for the screen as well.
After more than 50 years on stage Allen still leaves the audiences laughing.
Although he has slowed down, suffering from the lingering effects of shrapnel wounds he received to his legs in World War II, Allen has not given up the limelight.
The Las Vegan will be at the Riviera Comedy Club Monday through March 12, performing two shows daily at 8 and 10 p.m.
Allen said that Martha Raye and Rocky Graziano jump-started his comedic career in the '50s and Frank Sinatra put it into high gear in the '60s. Along the way he performed before almost every major entertainer in the business, and even counted members of the Gambino crime family among his fans. Allen said he occasionally performed in prisons where his captive audiences included members of the Mafia.
Question: How did you get started in the business?
Answer: In 1947 I opened Bernie's Luncheonette in the Bronx, had it for 10 years. I would do anything for a laugh, flip eggs in the air so they would stick to the ceiling and then drop on my head. That sort of thing. Eventually it became show time in my store during off hours. Everyone from kids to bookmakers came to the restaurant to see me. One of my customers was Moe Silverman, owner of the Paddock Night Club in Yonkers. He hired me to do a stand-up routine on weekends for $35 a week.
Q: Did you give up the restaurant?
A: Not exactly. I had the restaurant and my stand-up routine. But one day a bookie talked me into going to the track and I won $800. That was the beginning of the end. I got hooked on gambling. Two months later I lost the restaurant and all the money I had saved for 10 years.
Q: What did you do after that?
A: I got a job driving a taxi. On Sept. 23, 1957, I picked up a fare who was on his way to Yankee Stadium to see the fight between Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basilio. The fare was Rocky Graziano. I was a Golden Gloves champion before the war, so I knew a lot about boxing. We discussed the fight on the way to the stadium. We got stuck in traffic and I told him how I lost the restaurant, but I cracked him up. I had Rocky laughing all the way to the stadium. He had an extra ticket to the fights. He told me to come on in. After the fight I started back to get my cab and he said, "the hell with the cab. I'm getting you back into show business."
Q: How did he help you?
A: He introduced me to Martha Raye and her new husband, Bob O'Shea. We became good friends. Martha and Bob had just started a private security company and they hired me to help manage it.
Q: How did that lead to a career in comedy?
A: One night the security crew at a building we had a contract with left and went down the street to play basketball. While they were gone the building burned down. The security company dissolved after that. Then Martha took me to see a friend of hers who owned a nightclub on Long Island and convinced him to book me. Before I finished my first joke a fight broke out. But I wasn't going to give up. I got another booking in a small club in the Bronx, where I performed off and on for three years. I started making $150 a weekend and eventually was making $750. For the next five years I worked every small club in the area, 52 weeks a year, earning $1,000 to $1,250 a week.
Q: How did you meet Frank Sinatra?
A: In 1966 a friend of mine invited me to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a Friar's Club dinner honoring comedian Joe E. Lewis -- Frank played his life in the movie "The Jokers' Wild." Every big star in entertainment was there. It was standing room only. I was standing in the back of the room when Bobby Gordon, Lewis' road manager, saw me and asked if I was Bernie Allen. He said he saw my act and laughed so hard he nearly choked on a potato chip. As part of my act, I wore a German army uniform and carried a fake bomb.
Gordon invited me to do my routine and I did. Buddy Hackett starts heckling me, but I wouldn't let him get a word in edgewise. Pretty soon, he was on the stage with me and we had the crowd in an uproar. Everyone went crazy. Frank Sinatra loved it. He was sitting at a table with Jack Entratter, who had the Sands Hotel in Vegas at the time. Frank tells Jack to put me on at the Sands. Three weeks later Entratter called me and said I start Sept. 15 at the Sands, a four-week gig at $1,750 a week. I was held over for 16 weeks, and I never looked back.
Q: Where did your career go from there?
A: Between '66 and '69 I performed in every lounge in Vegas, but then the hotels began closing their lounges. They figured they didn't need the expense. In '69 I was booked into the lounge of the Flambohan Hotel in Puerto Rico for two weeks and then they gave me a five-year contract for 15 weeks per year at $2,500 a week. All the big-name entertainers would come to see my act. One night Steve Rossi, former partner with Marty Allen, came in with Shirley Bassey and Trini Lopez. Rossi was appearing at La Concha Hotel with his partner, Slappy White.
At the end of my show I introduced Rossi to the audience and asked him to sing. He did, we exchanged a few lines which the audience loved and after the show Steve told me he was breaking up with Slappy White and asked if I would be interested in teaming up with him. I agreed and we went back to Vegas with an eight-week contract at the Sahara hotel at $6,000 a week. In '74, the Sahara closed its lounge but before our contract expired we signed with the Howard Hughes organization to appear at the Silver Slipper for 10 weeks at $7,500 a week. We were held over for 36 weeks.
Q: What did you do after you and Rossi split?
A: I had bought real estate in Vegas along the way. It made up for some of the mistakes I made early in my career. The nightclub business was in a terrible slump. Lounges continued to close. Nightclubs were going out of businesses. There wasn't much demand for our kind of talent, but we hung in there for awhile, playing clubs in New York. Then in '89 I got a job in Vegas opening for Redd Foxx at the Hacienda Hotel. I did that till '91, when Redd dropped dead of a heart attack. After that, I headlined at different clubs here, like the Improv and the Comedy Max. Because of my legs, I don't leave town anymore. I do the Riviera Comedy Club a couple of times a year.
Q: What's the future hold for you?
A: I'm still trying to find someone interested in producing a movie based on my life story. Someone like Robin Williams or Howie Mandell could win an Academy Award playing me.
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