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List Price: $28.00Amazon.com's Price: $22.40 You Save: $5.60 (20%)Prices subject to change.
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.45028092
EAN: 9781591023425
ISBN: 1591023424
Label: Prometheus Books
Manufacturer: Prometheus Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 368
Publication Date: October 03, 2005
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Sales Rank: 513262
Studio: Prometheus Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
"If you have ever turned on the TV after the 11 o’clock news and laughed, you owe Steve Allen a debt of gratitude." That’s how Entertainment Weekly described Steve Allen’s enormous contribution to American popular culture in a tribute to the legendary entertainer after his death on October 30, 2000. Steve Allen created the Tonight show—America’s longest running entertainment show and most successful late-night TV show. In so doing he led the way for other American icons: Johnny Carson, Jack Paar, David Letterman, and Jay Leno. The formula we all now take for granted did not exist before Allen: the desk, the opening monologue, breezy chats with celebrities, wacky stunts, comedy sketches, cameras roaming down the hall and outside the theater, off-the-cuff interviews with passers-by, and ad-lib banter with the studio audience. It’s all great fun and it’s all due to the incredibly witty, incurably silly, musically gifted, and ever-likeable Steve Allen.
Based on exclusive interviews, Ben Alba has produced this wonderful history of the first Tonight show, complete with terrific photos from the show and revealing insights from over 30 entertainment legends who knew and worked with Steve Allen—including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Don Knotts, Louis Nye, Tom Poston, Bill Dana, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams, Tim Conway, the Smothers Brothers, Diahann Carroll, Eartha Kitt, and Bill Dana. In addition, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Bill Maher, Bob Costas, and other TV veterans reflect on Allen’s contributions.
Starting with Allen’s early career in radio, Alba shows how the young radio talent developed many of the elements that would soon light up late-night television. He then highlights Allen’s many innovations that made the Tonight show so appealing and enduring: the single-guest and single theme shows, road shows and live segments from across the country, Broadway shows visiting Tonight, creating a forum for jazz artistry and a groundbreaking showcase for African-American talent, musical tributes, and the use of the studio audience as a comedy goldmine.
Alba has created an invaluable, entertaining, and revealing behind-the-scenes look at the birth of an American television institution and its brilliant inventor, whose influence continues to make America stay awake and laugh—night after night.
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
Us war babies, those born b/w '41 &'45, you know who you are do yourself a favor, give yourself a treat and devour a retrospect of what was really going on in the room where "everyone" was watching the one appliance only the most prosperous family member had.
I got this at a 1/2 price store, sorry Ama, was going to save until after my two week school hiatus.
I made the mistake of reading the intro and then the first 100 pages and now my new friend is going on vacation w/me wheather it ... Read More
Rating:  -
Be forewarned, for those interested in a full fledged biography of the true inventor of late night TV, who provided the 'template' of late night variety/talk TV , Steve Allen, this is not the book for you. After a brief, cursory review of his early life the book dissolves into a review of Allen's TV career, especially on NBC. Using lots of secondary sources, e.g.newspaper and magazine accounts, with some oral history mixed in, the book has a choppy format, occasionally going back and forth in time. ... Read More
Rating: -
Steve Allen invented the late-night TV talk show as we now know it. The whole rigamarole was his creation, the desk, the band, the opening monolgoue, the tacky skits, the going up into the audience to answer questions, the guest chatter, according to Ken Tucker in an 'Entertainment Weekly' article tribute in 2000. Steve Allen was born in New York City on St. Stephen's Day and named for the first Christian martyr. His parents were vaudeville performers. Mother was from an Irish family in Chicago. His ... Read More
Rating: -
I normally read a book in about one week. It took me a day and a half to read "Inventing Late Night" - I could not put it down! Ben Alba's book is hilarious, insightful, impeccably researched, sensitive and portrays an accurate accounting of the genesis of late night TV. He gives full credit to the genius of Steve Allen and is loaded with transcripts from many of Allen's side-splitting comedy bits. As a fan of Allen for over fifty years, I've read every accounting possible concerning his numerous contributions ... Read More
Rating: -
Mr. Alba's "Inventing Late Night" gives a wonderful insight into the genuis that was Steve Allen. It is rare book that can be so meticulously researched, yet remain an entertaining page-turner. The fabulous interviews are especially enjoyable. I felt I learned something new about the genesis of the Tonight Show on every page. Mr. Alba is a superb writer with a clever sense of humor.
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