June 1964 – Hot Ticket! Perry Allen on KVI
ALLEN, Perry: KRLA, 1959-60; KHJ, 1962-63; KFI, 1976-77 and 1980. Perry died January 31, 2007. He was 75.
Born Perry Gerstein in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, Perry attended Denver University on a broadcasting scholarship and arrived at KRLA from an enormously successful stint on Buffalo powerhouse, WKBW. He was almost one of the original “11-10 Men.” Perry arrived two months into the new format in November 1959. KRLA ran a contest to “locate Perry Allen” with a $50,000 prize. KFWB knew that Perry hadn’t left WKBW yet and dispatched newsman Charlie Arlington to Buffalo where he “found Perry Allen” and KRLA had to pay their crosstown rivals $50,000.
While he was working at KTLK-Denver, Perry hosted a children’s program. “I brushed immortality by throwing up on camera.”
He stayed with KRLA until 1960 when there was a legendary switch of morning men with Wink Martindale, who did morning drive at KHJ. Perry worked the talk format on KFI and hosted a KHJ/Channel 9 kid’s show called Cartoonsville. He went to KCBQ-San Diego in 1979, then returned to KFI. If you were in San Diego in the 1970s and early 1980s, you should remember Perry Allen as one of the funniest, smartest, wittiest disc jockeys ever heard on local radio. First on KDEO in El Cajon, and later on KFMB, KSDO, KCBQ and KOGO, Allen entertained listeners with his infectiously irreverent spirit, off-the-cuff quips and bizarre stunts.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, Allen was on both KHJ radio and television. He also wrote scripts for The Danny Thomas Show and McHale’s Navy. “They were truly awful,” he said. He also wrote sketches for Laugh-In and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. “I also hosted a terrible kids cartoon show on Channel 9 that my own kid wouldn’t watch,” Allen said. Once, he recalled, he “told the kids to go down to Dad’s workshop and get a hammer and nail, and nail the dial in position” so the channel couldn’t be changed. “We got numerous protests, and I got off the show. There was a lot of anger in the air. Those people get so sensitive.” Fired from KHJ, Allen went to San Diego and then worked stints in Seattle, and Denver. Allen also set up his own company producing radio and television commercials. Allen made so many moves over so many years, their precise sequence eludes him today. “My resume,” he once said, “was written on change-of-address cards.”
Allen recounted his firing from KFI. “I was summoned into the office of the sales manager. He directed me out of his office and away from that facility. Painfully I schlepped down the hall toward my now ex-office to purge my desk of whatever remained to be exorcised. On my junket, the station manager stopped me just long enough to smile brightly and to solidly quip, ‘Perry, you’re sounding better than ever and I want to thank you for being with the station.’ There must be something profound about irony in this saga. But, I doubt it.” (LA Radio People)
