NEFSKY: Hi Mr. Allen. This is Art Nefsky speaking.

ALLEN: Good to talk to you.

NEFSKY: Thanks very much for phoning... and the book you sent me. It was very generous of you.

ALLEN: Oh, good . Hope it’s helpful.

NEFSKY: Yes, it’s very helpful. What I’ve been attempting to do with my book is show not just the “how” to get over stage fright but see if I can explore deeper and find out why people get it. I find that a lot of people are afraid of making mistakes, afraid of getting it wrong -- the fear of judgment, and I wanted to hear from celebrities and public figures who have been successful in their business. Is there a time, let’s say in live television or radio, when there was something you wanted to do, but came out as a mistake, and as a result turned into something better --or even a classic situation?

ALLEN: In my case I’m sure there must have been numerous instances over the last 50 years or so in TV where things went wrong either slightly or to an extended degree, but since I do comedy, all of those occasions were a big plus. Now that’s nice for me or any other comedians who have the gift of wit and can take advantage of some awkward or embarrassing situation. But of course, it’s not music to the ears of those who are running for congress or trying to affect public thought on significant social issues, because if their pants fall down, so to speak, they will be embarrassed. There’s just no way to disguise that reality by careful wording.

NEFSKY: Then for now let’s deal with the aspiring entertainers, the public speakers, school presentations, that sort of thing rather than the political figures. In my classes I teach students how to make mistakes -- how to allow themselves to make that mistake.

ALLEN: That’s a good idea. First of all they will anyway, so they may as well address that reality.

NEFSKY: Right, and it’s not so much the mistake itself, but how you cope with it.

ALLEN: Sure. There’s a section in my book ( I don’t know how relevant it is), it’s a sub-section of one of the late chapters called “When Things Go Wrong”. It describes one hysterically funny evening, when literally every single detail (and I mean specifically) did go wrong, and the audience reacted by still talking about it - those who were there that night -- and that’s over twenty-five years ago. It’s one of the funniest nights in their experience. That doesn’t mean that if something goes wrong with one individual’s speech at a Kiwanis luncheon it will be so fondly remembered.

There are quite a few points I make in my book that occur to me again as the years pass, where it’s just not as bad as a speaker thinks it is if he spills a glass of water, mispronounces a word or something of that sort. The audience, to tell the truth, really doesn’t give that much of a damn. In fact, as I’ve already suggested, sometimes something going wrong can be worked to your advantage.

Of course, one of the things that helps people to be effective speaking is to somehow learn to be articulate, even if you’ve never made a speech in your life; There are more poor speakers now than ever before, possibly because the simple ability to communicate coherently has been disastrously eroded.

One of my most effective comedy routines involves my doing a reading of the actual words of Lincoln’s Gettysberg address, but in between Mr. Lincoln’s immortal phrases (to show how stupid it sounds), I deliberately intrude the phrase “you know” after a good many of the phrases. There are so many young people today who can’t seem to say anything without constant "you knows" and "likes".

NEFSKY: In my book I include humor and prefer more inspiring stories rather than “the steps to take” route. I was wondering if there was another situation where something went disastrously wrong but turned out to be better. I remember a classic on a clip somewhere where you couldn’t stop laughing. 

ALLEN: Yes?

NEFSKY: It may not be related to stage fright but it may not have turned out the way you wanted. 

ALLEN: That’s right. I was intending to simply read the tele-prompter on which there was written a sketch we had rehearsed. The first part of it involved my doing a character I used to do on one of the old comedy shows. It was just called “Big Bill Allen” . It was a slight take off on a once popular sports announcer of the thirties and forties named Bill Stern. As, in the fifties I was making slight fun of him, I suddenly caught sight of myself on the monitor -- the TV set (that enabled me to keep track of what the people at home were seeing). I had rushed onto the set very quickly -- we were on the air live, of course.

I’m going to interrupt the story to make a point which might be relevant to your study -- and that is there is a safety net under all performers whose shows are taped , whereas we used to perform live. It’s function is obvious. If something just goes terribly wrong, if an actor says a line wrong and the other actor doesn’t know how to respond, the director simply yells “stop tape” and they do the scene over again. The studio audiences sometimes would watch the show at home and it appears to be a thirty minute show. The audience and the performers might literally have been in the studio from seven o’clock at night to ten o’clock.. They might have taken literally three hours , more or less, to do a thirty minute show. So there’s not much point in any of them being nervous wrecks because if they do make a mistake it will be tossed aside and they do it over (which is the movie technique too).

And now, to get back to my story. I took a look at the monitor and I discovered that my hair was hanging down underneath the fedora hat that I was wearing. I had not known it was hanging down like that and my mind flashed back in an instant to a film I’d seen when I was about twelve years old. It was the old Mark Twain classic “Tom Sawyer”, a very enjoyable picture and a big hit in the nineteen- thirties and there was a character in the original novel and then in the film called “Injun Joe”. Even throughout much of the century, and apparently in the last century as well , it was fairly common for native Americans to wear the white man’s fedora hat. Anyway this character was so attired. He had a fedora but his long black Indian hair went down the side of his face. Today he would look like he was from some Rock group, but in that day only Indians had hair that long (and women of course). So something about that look just started me laughing. And then I immediately became the victim of what psychologists call the “laughing in church” syndrome. We all laugh at different times. We all probably laugh several times a day, but sometimes, (and it’s always in context in which the laughter is inappropriate), the very fact that it should not be happening at all increases the emotional pressure on you so that you just literally lose control.

NEFSKY: Yes, it’s the suppression that makes it “explode” later. 

ALLEN: Yes. I think everyone has had that experience. It was my misfortune to have it happen to me with thirty million people watching me that night. In that day, by the way, the TV audiences were actually that large. They no longer are.

So that certainly was a plus. In fact I’ve been told that that clip is the single most commonly shown clip in the history of television -- simply because it’s so funny -- and so embarrassing.

NEFSKY: And now they have a whole series of “Blooper” shows. 

ALLEN: Oh, yes. Well, there have always been those, but apparently of all the clips shown, that one owns the dubious championship.

NEFSKY: That’s a great story. That’s exactly what I’m looking for - stories like that relating personal experiences. Did you ever have stage fright?

ALLEN: I did not. I never really had it seriously after an instance where I was in, I think it was the sixth grade, and as I look back I think, “What was I afraid of?”. I wasn’t being asked to fly over to Asia to deliver a speech. I simply had to walk across the hall but I was literally very frightened. My palms were wet and I was shaking a bit, just the standard physical manifestations of fear. And yet if you tried to say, “What were you so afraid of? Nobody’s going to get up and hit you, or spit on you, or laugh at you derisively or whatever", I would have answered no to all those questions, I’m sure they’re not going to do that, but I was still irrationally afraid -- and much fear, as you know, is irrational. All it took to get me over that phase was making the speech, and I discovered (I think the whole speech probably took three minutes, if that), by the time I was at the end of the first minute I began to calm down -- because it was going okay. Some people were smiling at me and I didn’t embarrass myself. I have no idea now what I talked about or what I said. But it went okay and I remembered thinking as I walked back to my room. “What the heck was I worried about? It was actually kind of fun.”

NEFSKY: I’ve talked to entertainers before and when they have that fear, it’s that fear, “Am I going to get the next job? Is this good enough, what I’m doing and how are people going to rate it - and will I work the next time?” 

ALLEN: Yes! I think some of that expression of opinion about their own condition is rationalization in which they try to “make sense” of something that really is senseless or irrational.

NEFSKY: Right! And what we agree on and what you talk about in your book is all that internal thinking - that monitoring of yourself - that you should stop focusing on yourself. 

ALLEN: Yeah. One of my dear friends, and one of, I think, the funniest men on earth, is a professional comedian, a very much appreciated one, especially by other comics, named Shecky Greene. To really appreciate him you have to see him performing alone in Vegas or anywhere else, having at you for a full hour. Most people have only seen him doing five minute stand-up spots on talk shows and that’s not his proper canvass.

NEFSKY: I believe he was featured on “Biography” not too long ago. 

ALLEN: Oh, good! I’m going to try to see that because I love Shecky. I’m glad you told me about this.

He recently went through a period lasting several years when he was just afraid to perform. Now in your professional capacity you can see how utterly senseless that was. If he were new in business there would be some justification for it. He wouldn’t know yet how good he was. But he is not only funny, he is at the genius level of funniness. He just has that mysterious gift which some performers do.

NEFSKY: Would you find that it comes from the perfectionism - that it’s never good enough? 

ALLEN: I don’t know. He finally got past that and now he is performing again. In fact, I was present the first night he came back He was performing in Atlantic City and he was brilliant, as always. But it’s very difficult to be fully rational, which is of course what makes the work of psychologists, psychiatrists and analysts so difficult. There are the books, there are the rules of the game, so to speak. If somebody has bulimia you can talk sense to them (in fact, there’s a great temptation to do that), but of course it would still not affect them whatever. You could say, “Look in the mirror, honey. You only weigh ninety-eight pounds and you look skinny as a stick.”, but they think that they’re still fat (or whatever their problem is).

NEFSKY:  So, you helped him.

ALLEN: Yeah! I tried to help, just by personal conversations with Shecky when I would run into him. One night we were at a dinner party at Sydney Sheldon’s house (he’s the novelist). Shecky was there and we sat side by side. He was funny as always. For some reason I almost always restrict my funniness to when I’m on stage or on television or something. I’m not a big “party” comic. But Shecky is, and it’s neither right nor wrong. It’s just his style and my style. And I love it when I’m present because I spent half my time that night laughing at him. I loved every minute of it.

That night he was funny as always, and there were about maybe twelve of us present - and we were all laughing. During a quieter moment I said, “Now Shecky, you do know that you’ve been hysterically funny the last twenty minutes or so, and all twelve of us have been laughing at you, right?” He said, “Yeah?” This is back before he came out of his problem period and I said, “Now, how do you think it would work if we added... oh... just three or four more. Could you make them laugh?” He said, “Sure!”. And I said, “Well, you see what I’m getting at here? At what point would it suddenly become a problem for you, thirty-seven, fifty-two, whatever?” I said, “As far as I can see, we could add ten thousand people and you’d still do as you have in the past. It would be just as much fun.”

We had this sort of conversation for some time. And then finally he was able to work his way through it. I’m not sure if he had some kind of therapy that did help. It’s difficult to tell the people when they’re in the midst of this peculiar condition - as you say, just telling them the nine rules for getting over it is not sufficient.

NEFSKY: And he’s performing now? 

ALLEN: Oh yes! Again, funny as ever -- hysterically funny.

NEFSKY: Let me ask you a question. You’ve worked with Don Knotts, and he performed, what I think is the quintessential character sufferig from  stage fright. Do you know if he actually had stage fright? 

ALLEN: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I could give you Don’s address. You could write to him. That would be a good idea because he was known (to this day sometimes people, if they’re not familiar with his name say, “Who was that nervous little guy", and they always use that phrase, "the nervous little guy".

On our old show we used to do a routine call “Man On The Street” and I had Don as a guest. I hosted the Tonight Show before I did my prime time comedy show and Don had been on doing a couple of brilliant routines which he had written himself. He was doing this nervous quivery little “rabbity” character. So we just wrote that character that he had developed for himself into some interview exchanges in the “Man On The Street”.

One night I just happenned to say to him ( we used to ad-lib a little bit beyond the script) I said to him, “Are you nervous?” and he said, (with his quick, breathy and nervous quality),“Noop!”. Who can explain these things, but it became a national “catch phrase” for about two years. Television does that. Every so often somebody says something on a comedy show and the whole nation is saying it for weeks after.

NEFSKY: I want to thank you very much. I appreciate all the help you’ve given me. 

ALLEN: Well, I think the Don Knotts thing should give you a worthwhile page or two. I’ll give you his address; just tell him that you were interviewing me a few days ago. I’ll be interested in reading your manuscript.