A Tale of Two Hollywood Squares

Within ten days in February show business lost two venerable icons. Marty Allen, as described by the Associated Press, was "the baby-faced, bug-eyed comedian with wild black hair who was a staple of TV variety shows, game shows and talk shows for decades." Nanette Fabray was a comedienne, actress, singer, and dancer who won a Tony Award for the Kurt Weill ("The Threepenny Opera")-Alan Jay Lerner musical "Love Life" and three primetime Emmy Awards for her work as Sid Caesar's sidekick on "Caesar's Hour."

Both were selfless philanthropists. Both were well into their 90s when their time came, and they shared roots that stretch back into the virtual primordial soup of show biz that was vaudeville and the Borscht Belt. And, oh yeah, both became fixtures on Peter Marshall's "The Hollywood Squares."

Marty Allen appeared on "The Hollywood Squares" 149 times;
Nanette Fabray made 236 appearances on the game show.

"Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Miss Nanette Fa-bare-ass."
- Ed Sullivan

Nanette Fabray was born Ruby Bernadette Nanette Fabares in San Diego, October 27, 1920. She grew up in Hollywood, where her mother pushed her into the entertainment industry. She took tap dancing lessons from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, the legendary hoofer best known for his ethereal footwork alongside child star Shirley Temple in five motion pictures from the 1930s (pictured below).

Fabray made her stage debut at the age of three as "Miss New Year's Eve 1923" at the historic Million Dollar Theater in downtown Los Angeles. She subsequently appeared in vaudeville venues as "Baby Nan," performing with, among others, Ben Turpin, a famed silent film comedian known for his distinctively crossed eyes.

"Vaudeville" is a term frequently bandied about, but many people might be unfamiliar with just what vaudeville involved and why it came to be regarded as "the heart of American show business." Evolving from music halls, burlesque shows mixing bawdy comedy with striptease, minstrel shows, carnival sideshows, and P.T. Barnum-type dime museums, vaudeville emerged as a singular genre of variety acts that became the most popular entertainment attraction from the 1880s to the early 1940s.

A typical vaudeville show consisted of a series of separate, unrelated acts advertised on a common bill. Performers could have been classical and popular music artists, singers, dancers, acrobats, magicians, jugglers, strongmen, living statues, trained animals, lecturing authors, one-act play actors, and, of course, comedians and comedy teams, several of whom found bigger fame on the screen, among them W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Jack Benny, Abbott and Costello, Red Skelton, and The Three Stooges (pictured below).

"Southern Gentlemen" Larry Fine, Moe Howard and Shemp Howard
pose with straight man Ted Healy. The act was alternately billed as
"Ted Healy and His Racketeers" and "Ted Healy and His Stooges."

As a teenager, Nanette won a scholarship to Austrian director Max Reinhardt's Theatre Workshop in Hollywood, which led to a contract with Warner Bros. She made her motion picture debut as Mistress Margaret Radcliffe, the queen's lady-in-waiting, in the 1939 historical romance "The Private Lives Elizabeth and Essex," starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn.

In 1955, Bette Davis, pictured here with costar Errol Flynn,
would portray Elizabeth I again, in "The Virgin Queen."

Played by Nanette Fabray, Mistress Margaret Radcliffe was
historically Queen Elizabeth's favorite lady-in-waiting.

Attending junior high school after studying at the Theatre Workshop, Fabray struggled with academics due to an undiagnosed hearing problem, which was ultimately identified as otosclerosis, a disorder involving excessive growth in the bones of the middle ear. "It was a revelation to me," she later recalled. "All these years I had thought I was stupid."

Having learned sign language and relying on hearing aids until four operations between 1955 and 1979 restored her hearing, she was inspired to become a highly visible, or audible, advocate for the hearing impaired. She served on the boards of the National Council on Disability, the President's Committee on Employment of People With Disabilities, and the Better Hearing Institute. She was honored with the President's Distinguished Service Award, the Eleanor Roosevelt Humanitarian Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Humanitarian Award. She also strove to bring closed captioning to television.

Fabray studied opera at the Julliard School in New York City before choosing the musical comedy stage over arias. "I did 12 Broadway shows, just loved it," she remarked. "I had a wonderful, exciting career onstage."

Nanette Fabray poses for the obligatory
Hollywood glamour shot from the early '40s.

Despite her contract with Warner Bros., Fabray never gained a foothold in films, with one rare exception, when she was cast in the acclaimed 1953 MGM musical "The Band Wagon." Directed by Vincente Minnelli, who, besides being married for six years to Judy Garland and fathering Liza Minnelli, is best known as the director of such classic screen musicals as "Meet Me in St. Louis," "An American in Paris," and "Gigi," "The Band Wagon" starred Fred Astaire as a has-been movie star whose hopes for a comeback in a Broadway musical are jeopardized by a maniacal director with highfalutin artistic pretensions.

The title of the movie's show-stopping song "That's Entertainment!"
was later utilized by MGM as the title for a nostalgic series of films
celebrating the studio's golden age of movie musicals. 

The script for "The Band Wagon" was written by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, collaborators responsible for numerous successful and beloved Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals. Theirs was called "the longest-running creative partnership in theater history," spanning six decades.

In the year prior to "The Band Wagon," Comden and Green wrote the screenplay for what has been revered as the best Hollywood musical ever made, "Singin' in the Rain," starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, and Debbie Reynolds. Roger Ebert noted both "Singin' in the Rain" and"The Band Wagon" are "great backstage musicals, one about Hollywood, the other about Broadway."

In "The Band Wagon," Comden and Green based the show's writing couple, Lily and Louis Marton, on themselves, although in real life, the writers weren't married, sharing a strictly professional relationship. Nanette Fabray was cast as Lily while Louis was played by Oscar Levant, a perennially dour-faced composer and pianist whose dry wit made him a favorite on early game shows and talk shows as well as a popular comic relief in pictures.

Oscar Levant, seen here with Nanette Fabray, frequently flubbed his
lines and would blame somebody else, usually picking on Fabray,
until she told him to go to hell, which curbed his abusive behavior.

Fabray particularly shone in the film's novelty number "Triplets" (pictured below), alongside Fred Astaire and costar Jack Buchanan. The eye-catching feat of the threesome dancing on stunted "baby legs" was accomplished, amazingly, by the actors balancing on artificial legs strapped to their knees. Fabray remembered that they fell dozens of times and relied on painkillers before getting it right.

"We do everything alike, we look alike, we dress alike / We walk alike,
we talk alike and what is more / We hate each other very much."

Reflecting on the production, Fabray said, "Astaire was a tremendous taskmaster. He rehearsed us until I was sick of everything we were supposed to do. But he was right." Leonard Maltin called the movie a "sophisticated backstage musical" that "improves with each viewing." At the time of its release, The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther hailed "The Band Wagon" as "one of the best musical films ever made," gushing, "Everything in this motion picture...exemplifies its rousing theme song. That's entertainment, indeed!"

As alluded to earlier, Nanette Fabray's subsequent motion picture roles were few and far between. Among her sparse screen appearances was 1970's "Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County," a low-budget western comedy starring Dan Blocker - in an attempt to break free from his stereotypical characterization of the gentle giant Hoss Cartwright on TV's "Bonanza" - as a Old West town blacksmith jilted in a mail-order bride scam.

Writer-producer-director Ranald MacDougall cast his real-life wife, Nanette Fabray, as the new saloon hall girl hired by the townsfolk  to masquerade as the mail-order bride. The game supporting cast featured a number of familiar character actors and comedic players, including Jim Backus, Mickey Rooney, Wally Cox, Jack Cassidy, Jack Elam, Stubby Kaye, Noah Beery Jr., Hamilton Camp, Iron Eyes Cody, and Susan Saint James.

In 1978, Nanette Fabray costarred as Barbara Eden's best friend, beautician, and partner-in-pranks in "Harper Valley PTA," a dated comedy based on a then decade-old novelty hit song written by Tom T. Hall and recorded by country artist Jeannie C. Riley.

Playing like a made-for-television movie, "Harper Valley PTA" featured small-screen performances by Ronny Cox (the star of the family drama series "Apple's Way"), Louis Nye (a veteran performer on TV's "The Jack Benny Program" and "The Steve Allen Show"), "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour's" Pat Paulsen, commercial actor Ron Masak, John Fiedler (Mr. Peterson on "The Bob Newhart Show"), and Bob Hastings (Lt. Elroy Parker on "McHale's Navy"). Supposedly, Woody Harrelson made his film debut as an uncredited extra.

Actually, it was television that provided Nanette Fabray her breakout performances, as a comedic partner of Sid Caesar on his live sketch comedy program "Caesar's Hour," which debuted in 1954 as a follow-up to the popular 90-minute variety series "Your Show of Shows." "Caesar's Hour" employed most of the writers (among them Neil Simon and Mel Brooks) and cast (including Carl Reiner and Howard Morris) from "Your Show of Shows." Imogene Coca, Sid's stalwart comic foil on "Your Show of Shows" ill-advisedly stepped out on her own as the star of the short-lived "The Imogene Coca Show." As her replacement, Nanette Fabray, who had appeared as a guest on "Your Show of Shows" in 1950 and 1951, was vivacious, charming, and outright funny.

Sid Caesar clowns around with Imogene Coca and Nanette Fabray
at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House in 1952. 

In his 2005 memoir, Caesar's Hours: My Life in Comedy, with Love and Laughter, he praised Fabray, writing, "You can't compare Nanette and Imogene other than that they were both amazingly talented performers. Nanette was a different type of performer. She was what the French called a soubrette - she could sing, dance, act, and look beautiful. She had perfect timing and a sense of comedy and I knew she had scope."

Nanette Fabray gasps for air in the midst of commuters Sid
Caesar, Carl Reiner, and Howard Morris on "Caesar's Hour."

Incidentally, Nanette had billed herself with the family name "Fabares" until host Ed Sullivan, at a Madison Square Garden benefit, introduced her as "Miss Nanette Fa-bare-ass." She recalled, "I changed the spelling of my name the next day."

Fabray called Sid Caesar "a comic genius" who "encouraged me to try new avenues of funny." She noted, "The minute Sid and I worked together, it was as if we had worked together all our lives. It was like a theatrical marriage. I could almost read Sid's mind. It was magic."

In a show-stopping silent sketch set to Beethoven's 5th Symphony,
Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray flawlessly mime a bickering couple.

During a commercial break in the live broadcast of one episode, Fabray was struck in the head and knocked unconscious by a metal pipe that fell from the rafters. Caesar, who had been in his dressing room preparing for the next sketch, was initially informed that Nanette was dead. She was hospitalized with a severe concussion.

A week after the accident, Sid Caesar's hospital visit with Nanette
Fabray was televised. She said she had cotton behind the dark
sunglasses because she couldn't tolerate any bright lights.

Fabray garnered three Emmy Awards for her work on the show, however, she was abruptly dropped from the program after the second season. Unbeknownst to her, her business manager had a meeting in Caesar's office and issued demands for her contract for the third season. It wasn't until a couple of years later that Nanette and Sid found out what had happened and reconciled.

Nanette Fabray poses with Sid Caesar at a
belated celebration of his 80th birthday at the
Friars Club of Beverly Hills, October 10, 2002.

In a 2000 interview, Nanette Fabray said, "Sid Caesar was the highpoint of my life. Fred Astaire was wonderful. It was magical to work with him. But I had a rapport with Sid Caesar that comes once in a lifetime."

In 1961, Fabray was given her own sitcom, "Westinghouse Playhouse" (also known as "The Nanette Fabray Show"), portraying a Broadway star whose new husband is a widower living in Beverly Hills with two rude children. The series, created by Fabray's husband, Ranald McDougall, lasted a single season of 26 episodes.

Veteran character actor Wendell Corey plays
Nanette Fabray's husband in "Westinghouse
Playhouse."

Undaunted, Fabray made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1962 as the first lady, to Robert Ryan's president, in "Mr. President," the last musical written by the immortal Irving Berlin. The production ran for 265 performances and earned Fabray a Tony Award nomination.

It was often said of Robert Ryan, a more familiar
presence on the Hollywood screen than on the
Broadway stage, that he never gave a bad
performance in his life. 

From the 1970s into the '90s, Nanette Fabray moved into the daffy-wisecracking-intrusive motherhood phase of her career.  She played Mary's mother on two episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (pictured below), an experience she had eagerly anticipated which ultimately left her disappointed over the perceived lack of chemistry between the two comediennes.

Nanette Fabray was frustrated over not being asked back to repeat
her role as Dottie Richards on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."

Fabray had better luck as Bonnie Franklin's mother on the long-running sitcom "One Day at a Time"  (pictured below) costarring Mackenzie Phillips, Valerie Bertinelli, Richard Masur, and Pat Harrington Jr.

Nanette's niece, Shelley Fabaes, had a recurring role on"One Day at a Time" as Bonnie Franklin's work rival. As a singer, Shelley had a number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962 with "Johnny Angel." As an actress, following her costarring role in the popular late '50s-mid '60s sitcom "The Donna Reed Show," she was the only starlet to appear opposite Elvis Presley in three pictures, namely "Girl Happy," "Spinout," and "Clambake." She also played the love interest of lead singer Peter Noone in the Herman's Hermits feature film "Hold On!" and that of Hank Williams Jr. in "A Time to Sing."

From 1989 to 1997, Shelley Fabares enjoyed the role of a television news anchor who eventually becomes the wife of Craig T. Nelson's title character in the hit sitcom "Coach." The series, which was buoyed by supporting performances by Jerry Van Dyke and Bill Fagerbakke (the voice of Patrick Star on "SpongeBob SquarePants") as assistant football coaches, brought in Nanette Fabray in a handful of appearances as Shelley's mother (pictured below).

Nanette Fabray's last screen appearance was more or less a cameo in an eclectic ensemble cast trapped in a Quentin Tarantino-wannabe comedic crime caper-gone askew called "Teresa's Tattoo" (1995), directed by Julie Cypher, a fledgling filmmaker best known as the ex-wife of actor Lou Diamond Phillips and the former partner of singer Melissa Etheridge.

In 1995, Julie Cypher and Melissa Etheridge posed for a PETA poster.

Thanks to artificial insemination provided by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's David Crosby, Cypher gave birth to her and Melissa's daughter and son, in 1997 and 1998; in 1999, Cypher admitted in therapy that she wasn't gay, ending her relationship with Etheridge.

Somehow, Julie Cypher managed to corral such talent for the kitschy cast of "Teresa's Tattoo" as "Waitress'" Adrienne Shelly, "The Outsiders'" C. Thomas Howell, "The Facts of Life's" Nancy McKeon, "Young Guns'" Lou Diamond Phillips, "Young Guns'" Casey Siemaszko, "Weekend at Bernies'" Jonathan Silverman, "Office Space's" Diedrich Bader,"The Birds"-"Marnie" Hitchcock Blonde Tippi Hedren, alt-country crooner k.d. lang, "Midnight Run's" Joe Pantoliano, "The Big Chill's" Mary Kay Place, "St. Elmo's Fire's" Mare Winningham, "Star Trek's" Majel Barrett, Melissa Etheridge, Sean Astin, and Kiefer Sutherland.

Adrienne Shelly (right), seen here with Nancy McKeon in "Teresa's
Tattoo," met a sad end in a 2006 murder masked as a suicide. 

Nanette Fabray passed away in a nursing home on February 22, 2018. She was 97.


"Hello dere!" - Marty Allen

Turning the pages back to the era of vaudeville, the 1920s and '30s saw the rise of resorts and hotels in the Catskill Mountains of Sullivan, Orange, and Ulster counties in Upstate New York. These resorts became popular vacation spots for New York's Jewish families and, in their heyday, provided accommodations in more than 900 hotels.

Social media monitor Kristin McCracken wrote, "As audiences grew tired of vaudeville, and their tastes became more sophisticated, comedy had to adapt, and adapt it did." The resorts of the Catskills provided comedians (mostly Jewish) the opportunity to reinvent themselves without losing their roots in vaudeville and Yiddish theater.

The Catskills became known as the Borscht Belt, as well as the Jewish Alps and Sour Cream Sierra. Veteran comedians and aspiring jokesters honed their trade there in what has been referred to as a "boot camp for the greatest generation of comics," including Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Rodney Dangerfield, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Jonathan Winters, Lenny Bruce, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Mel Brooks, Shecky Greene, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, Alan King, Mort Sahl, Jackie Mason, Woody Allen, and on and on. In "When Comedy Went to School," a charming 2013 documentary about the Catskill resorts hosted by Robert Klein, Larry King called the Borscht Belt "the breeding ground for standup comics."

Among those who frequently performed in the Catskills in the late 1950s into the '60s was the comedy team of Allen & Rossi (pictured above), with Marty Allen as the comic foil for handsome singer Steve Rossi, a formula not unlike the earlier teaming of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.

Marty Allen died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 95 on February 12, 2018, with his wife and stage partner of the last three decades, Karon Kate Blackwell, at his side. Performing past his 94th birthday, he was a living link to a unique cadre of entertainers that included Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Lena Horne, and Elvis Presley.

Born in Pittsburgh to Jewish parents, Allen served in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II. Attaining the rank of sergeant, he was stationed in Italy when he earned a Soldier's Medal for valor after extinguishing a threatening fire in a plane that was being refueled. He drove the fuel truck away, then raced back on foot to the plane and smothered the blaze by rolling over the flames with his body. His heroism and disregard for personal safety also garnered a full-dress parade. Throughout his career, Allen toured military hospitals and performed for veterans and active military personnel.

In the early 1950s, Marty Allen, billed as "the Squirrel Hill comedian" (after his residential neighborhood in the East End of Pittsburgh), worked with a singer and emcee called Tiny Wolfe. For a stretch, Allen performed alongside Mitch DeWood, a relative of Danny Thomas who later became the entertainment director at the Las Vegas Flamingo Hotel.

$5.95? For a dinner, a drink, and a show?!!

In his own words, he was playing "all the little clubs around Pittsburgh" when he signed to open for jazz great Sarah Vaughn. Vaughn, in turn, hooked Allen up with Nat King Cole. And then it was Cole who suggested Allen team up with a singer at The Sands in Las Vegas named Steve Rossi.

The comedy of Allen & Rossi, decidedly unsophisticated but undeniably effective and as old as vaudeville itself, often took the form of an interview, with Rossi as the straight man and Allen as the befuddled, inept but lovable subject. Their chestnut material worked because of their individual personalities and their chemistry. Steve Rossi might have come across as the bland second banana, while Allen exhibited a childlike combination of innocence and insanity that seemed fresh, and audiences responded.

"We skyrocketed," Allen would recall. They toured nightclubs nationwide as headliners. "We played (New York City's) Copacabana, (Chicago's) The Chez Paree, (Vegas') The Sands," Allen remembered, "playing with Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Lena Horne, Paul Anka, and that was the thing." They released hit comedy albums and appeared regularly on "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" and "The Merv Griffin Show." Allen liked to joke that they had been on "The Ed Sullivan Show" more than Ed, including two appearances following The Beatles. Marty endeared himself to the audience when he introduced himself as Ringo Starr's mother.

Allen & Rossi meet the Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show."

Somewhere along the line, Marty Allen picked up what became his catchphrase: "Hello dere!" In a 1994 interview, Allen commented, "We were into the act and I just went blank...and I looked at Steve and said, 'Hello dere...' Then suddenly everyone in the club was saying it - hello dere."

Once asked how he achieved his distinctive hairsyle, Marty Allen
replied, "I'm the love child of Don King and Phyllis Diller!"

Comparisons to Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis came to the fore when the team was enlisted by Martin and Lewis' old studio, Paramount Pictures, to star in a spy spoof of the then popular James Bond pictures starring Sean Connery. By 1966, after four 007 films, theaters were inundated with espionage parodies, including "The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World," "The Spy with a Cold Nose," "Our Man Flint," with James Coburn, and "The Silencers," starring Dean Martin as Matt Helm, not to mention gimmick-laden TV series like "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Get Smart." Why not add one more to the pot? And so in 1966, Allen and Rossi were cast in their first and only movie, "The Last of the Secret Agents?"

Norman Abbott, who co-wrote and directed "The Last of the Secret Agents?" had directed several episodes of "The Jack Benny Program," "Leave It to Beaver," and "The Munsters," and would go on to direct a number of installments of "Sanford and Son" and "Welcome Back, Kotter."

Abbott, incidentally, was the nephew of Bud Abbott of the legendary comedy duo Abbott and Costello and was, in fact, raised by his mother and Uncle Bud. Norman had bit parts in two Abbott and Costello comedies from 1942, "Who Done It?" and "Rio Rita." In 1943, Norman Abbott costarred in the Dead End Kids (the precursors of the Bowery Boys) comedy "Keep 'Em Slugging" (pictured below).

Bobby Jordan, Norman Abbott, Gabriel Dell, and Huntz Hall
look like they've got the world by the tail in "Keep 'Em Slugging."

In the 1940s, Norman Abbott and Lou Costello's older brother, Pat Costello (pictured below), performed as a lesser-known Abbott and Costello comedy team, with Norman as the fall guy and Pat the straight man.

Pat Costello (center) appears with Gabriel Dell and Johnny Duncan
in the 1944 East End Kids (you guessed it - another incarnation of the
Bowery Boys) melodrama "Million Dollar Kid."

When Bud Abbott died in 1974, he left his nephew a treasure trove of burlesque material, consisting of written gags, props, sheet music, and posters, all of which inspired Norman to create the Broadway sensation "Sugar Babies," a modern Broadway musical that combined nostalgic elements of burlesque and vaudeville. Abbott crafted the project specifically for Mickey Rooney, who returned the favor by firing Abbott as the director two weeks into the show. Norman Abbott subsequently sued the producer for a six-figure settlement.

Norman Abbott (far left) stands behind his uncle, Bud Abbott, as
Lou Costello discusses a scene from 1948's "Abbott and Costello
Meet Frankenstein" with director Charles Barton.

But we digress. The threadbare plot concocted in "The Last of the Secret Agents?" by Norman Abbott and screenwriter Mel Tolkin (best known as head writer of "Your Show of Shows," a writer for "Caesar's Hour," and a story editor on "All in the Family") finds Marty Allen and Steve Rossi as American tourists in France (the backlot of Paramount Studios) duped into helping the GGI (Good Guys Institute) break up an art theft plot by evil espionage foes THEM.

Playing the distinguished head of GGI is dapper British
actor John Williams, noted for his Hitchcock roles as Chief
Inspector Hubbard in "Dial M for Murder," and insurance
representative H.H. Hughson in "To Catch a Thief"

Nancy Sinatra struggled with an unconvincing French accent as Michiline, a Gallic damsel who falls for the wooden Rossi.

Sinatra had made her screen debut in the 1964 beach party flick "For Those Who Think Young," starring James Darren and Pamela Tiffin, with Paul Lynde and future "Gilligan's Island" castaways Bob Denver and Tina Louise.

Hunky James Darren is flanked by Nancy Sinatra (left) and Dean
Martin's daughter, Claudia Martin, who also costars in "For Those
Who Think Young." Nancy and Claudia were paired up again in the
1966 beach movie "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini."

Nancy Sinatra had a hit single with the theme song "The Last of the Secret Agents," which was supposed to be composed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David until budget limitations forced the hiring of Sinatra's record producer, Lee Hazelwood, to hastily crank out a suitable tune. Hazelwood wrote several songs for Sinatra, including the smash hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," so it was no surprise that the movie's theme sounded a lot like "Boots." At the end of her performance of the song in the film, Nancy suffers a wardrobe malfunction...

...Which led to this eyebrow-raising publicity shot of Sinatra...

What would Daddy say? Nearly 30 years later, when Nancy
posed nude in Playboy, papa Frank claimed that when she
told him how much the magazine would be paying her,
drily said, "Double it."

The New York Times critic Vincent Canby, who dismissed "The Last of the Secret Agents?" as a "vehicle made of plywood and cheesecloth," said Allen and Rossi were "lacking in both wit and vitality." Seemingly, only the gifted comic actor Harvey Korman redeemed himself in the film in a scene-stealing - no, make that movie-stealing role as a German colonel.

Marty Allen poses in a gag publicity photo lampooning
an extended scene in "The Last of the Secret Agents?"
in a topless club where careful camera placement
prevents the audience from seeing anything naughty.

In the picture below, Nancy Sinatra appeared less than enthused to be attending the premiere of "The Last of the Secret Agents?" at New York City's Victoria Theatre alongside Ed Sullivan.

On a side note, Nancy Sinatra followed up her performance in "The Last of the Secret Agents?" with a guest appearance on "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." as the groovy, pink-booted daughter of an astro-scientist with the cuckoo Rat Pack-y name Coco Cool (pictured below).

In between "Secret Agents" and "U.N.C.L.E." Nancy matched her thespic mettle against another second-generation entertainer of equally wooden talent, Peter Fonda, in the seminal 1966 biker flick "The Wild Angels" (pictured below).

Nancy Sinatra plays "Monkey" to Peter Fonda's "Heavenly Blues"
in "The Wild Angels," produced and directed by Roger Corman.

Nancy Sinatra's final film was 1968's "Speedway" (pictured below), starring Elvis Presley, with Bill Bixby and a number of real-life NASCAR drivers, including Richard Petty and Cale Yarborough.

But again, we digress. Marty Allen and Steve Rossi broke up in 1968. It was an amicable split. Allen recalled, "We didn't part in a feud like Martin and Lewis. Very friendly." They reunited in 1983, then in 1984 and 1985 teamed for a series of shows in Atlantic City and a national tour. In 1990, the team signed a contract with the Vegas World hotel and casino, guaranteeing them $6000 a week (about $12,000 in today's money) for 30 nights a year, but four years later, their contract was terminated and they broke up for good. Early in 1995, Vegas World was remodeled and integrated into the Stratosphere hotel and casino, with a 1149-foot observation tower.

On his own, Marty Allen became a regular "square" on "The Hollywood Squares" (149 appearances) and popped up on so many other game shows and afternoon talk shows that he earned the nickname "The Darling of Daytime TV." He guest-starred on a half dozen series and appeared in a handful of TV movies.

In 1971, Marty Allen played Edgar Allan Poe in a vignette
titled "Quoth the Raven" on Rod Serling's "Night Gallery."

Among Allen's sparse acting assignments after "The Last of the Secret Agents?" was the 1980 made-for-television comedy "Murder Can Hurt You!" The director of the cop show parody, Roger Duchowny, had directed several episodes of "The Love Boat," so it was no surprise that the TV flick top-lined the Pacific Princess' captain, Gavin MacLeod, as an erzatz Kojak called Nojack. Like "The Love Boat," "Murder Can Hurt You!" was executive produced by Aaron Spelling.

The rest of the cast featured Victor Buono spoofing Raymond Burr's "Ironside" as Ironbottom, Tony Danza as Lambretta ("Baretta"), Jamie Farr and John Byner as Studsky and Hatch ("Starsky and Hutch"), Buck Owens as Sheriff MacSkye ("McCloud"), Connie Stevens as Salty Sanderson ("Police Woman's" Pepper Anderson), and Burt Young as Palumbo ("Columbo"). Marty Allen goofed on Kojak's rumpled subordinate Detective Stavros as Detective Starkos.

Basically "Murder Can Hurt You!" was a poor man's version of a successful 1976 motion picture titled "Murder by Death," scripted by Neil Simon and featuring an ensemble of American and British actors in send-ups of popular literary sleuths, including Hercule Poirot (James Coco), Miss Marple (Elsa Lanchester), Charlie Chan (Peter Sellers), Nick and Nora Charles (David Niven and Maggie Smith), and Sam Spade (Peter Falk).

As a tireless philanthropist, Marty Allen donated to the American Cancer Society, The Heart Fund, March of Dimes, Cerebral Palsy, and Fight for Sight, as well as serving on the board of the Epilepsy Foundation.

Allen's first wife, Lorraine "Frenchy" Trydelle, was the reservation and office manager at the Concord Resort Hotel in the Catskills, where Allen & Rossi performed regularly. They remained married until her death in 1978. In 1984, Allen married Karon Kate Blackwell, a piano-banging club singer who became Marty's stage partner in a 30-plus-year musical comedy act, performing in casinos, hotels, and cruise ships.

Allen described teaming with his wife as "the new George Burns and Gracie Allen, only I'm Gracie." He called her "a sensational singer...She plays the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. And playing straight with Marty Allen isn't easy, because I change things...She's like a female Dean Martin...With Karon and me, it's always very exciting. There are no more comedy duos - just us."

In a 2009 interview, Marty Allen reflected on his longevity as one of the last survivors of a generation of comedians, saying, "Let's see, it's me, Shecky Greene and Don Rickles. I'm the oldest one, the oldest working comedian, at 87." (Don Rickles passed away at the age of 90 in April 2017.) "I've worked with them all - Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., The Mills Brothers."

Marty and Karon perform for Allen's 94th birthday. "It's unbelievable
to be 94," he declared. "My wife says, 'What do you want for your
birthday?' I told her, 'An antique.' So she found my birth certificate...
Ninety-four years old and I've still got it. But nobody wants it."

"I just keep working," Allen commented. "I don't want to retire...I just want to keep doing it. I still feel like a kid!" Onstage, he would joke, "I work out every day. Just yesterday I was on the treadmill for an hour. Then some idiot turned it on."

A little more than a month before his 96th birthday, Marty Allen succumbed to pneumonia at his home in Las Vegas.

Following a state dinner, Marty Allen danced the bump with
First Lady Betty Ford in 1976.

Parting Shot

Only a handful of hotels in the Catskill Mountains remain. The resorts died when television came in and when children of the 1960s and '70s no longer wanted to vacation with their parents.

The lavish Concord Resort Hotel (pictured above) was once a favorite venue of Allen & Rossi. They could fill the 3000-seat Imperial Room with standing room-only audiences. Buddy Hackett was a frequent performer there, as were Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Tony Bennett, and Milton Berle. In 2008, the hotel was demolished.

This 2010 photograph shows the old main driveway with the
ruins of the razed Concord Hotel in the background.