Why is it that we often love people only when they've been laid away? Arthur Honneger and King George VI seemed to emerge from a hazy, indiscriminate obscurity when the eulogists started talking about them. And so Fred Allen's death brought remorse to "Stop the Music" and the commercial sensationalism which he had fought all his life. It also brought new life to Fred Allen as a symbol of a dying age.

Fred Allen's Much Ado About Me, probably one of the most ironically untrue titles of recent years, will rate as a classic history of American vaudeville--which, when one considers its importance in the number of people involved, is a highly significant activity in our history. Fred Allen seemed to stand for all that was truly true and ambitious about the business. His sense of duty was religious, his loyalty unquestionable, his integrity never impugned. And he was funny, as this book reveals, not in the broad sense in which "Allen's Alley" made him famous, but in his love of people--examined, analyzed, and stitched back together again for the sake of human kindness.