The Dayton Allen Show (1960)

This syndicated lecture short is from The Dayton Allen Show. The following interview excerpt came from here. I might try post his obscure comedy LP (naturally titled Why Not!) in a couple weeks.

DAYTON ALLEN: My book "Why Not!" did even better! I got an advance of $2500 and never saw another penny.

GEO: The book came out about the same time you created your own little syndicated TV program -- in 1960. It was a five-minute drop-in of you giving some sort of nonsensical lecture. How many of them did you make?

DAYTON ALLEN: 130. I had two partners: Stan Burns who was a writer on Steve Allen and another guy named Allen Sandler who had a film library. We'd lock ourselves in a hotel room and write a bunch of them and then go shoot them over at KCOP, the public broadcasting studio in Hollywood.

GEO: It seems odd that you were working so much in LA, but you continued to live in New York.

DAYTON ALLEN: Yeah it was something about my head, I couldn't do anything about it. It was just pure stupidity that just festered and grew until it became enlarged stupidness.

GEO: How many stations picked up the Dayton Allen Show?

DAYTON ALLEN: We were in 26 markets in the US and it was a big hit on the Armed Forces television.