Just found out that longtime Vegas comedian Bernie Allen died in mid-January at age 87. The man born Bernard Kleinberg had an amazing life. He was wounded in World War II, about three minutes after he first set foot in the field of battle. Back home in the states, he became a funny diner owner, but one who longed to perform. Once, on a bet from a customer, he went down and crashed the annual telethon that Jerry Lewis (and then-partner Dean Martin) were doing for Muscular Dystrophy. He actually got on the air, made a little speech, then went back and collected on the wager.
Later, after the diner went out of business, he became a funny cab driver. It was while plying this trade in New York that he was "discovered" by Rocky Graziano. He picked up the former prize fighter outside the Stage Deli one night and amused him so much that Graziano, who was becoming a kind of show biz entrepreneur, took him under his wing. Graziano changed Bernie's name and helped him develop an act and start getting booked in clubs. Before long, Bernie Allen became a favorite in night clubs, first in New York and then (at the recommendation of a Mr. Sinatra) in Vegas, though he never forgot his roots as a gate-crasher. He became notorious for showing up at events to which he was not invited and barging in, often as his German general character.
His German character got him a brief film role which he bragged about for the rest of his life. In The Producers, he was the auditioning Hitler who tried to sing "The Little Wooden Boy." Later, he had roles in a number of movies and TV shows, usually playing either a mobster or a Vegas comedian. He played the latter in a quick scene in Raging Bull.
Shortly after filming his role in The Producers, Allen gave up show business for a time and became a private detective. In 1972, after the team of Marty Allen and Steve Rossi broke up, Rossi offered him a partnership. Bernie chucked the detective biz and toured for several years in an act billed as "the real Allen and Rossi." By the time it broke up, he had moved permanently to Vegas and he thereafter became a fixture as a solo act, playing every casino in town, usually in the lounge but also opening for stars and appearing in revues. For the next three decades, Bernie was always playing somewhere in town…even, the last few years, doing "stand-up" from a wheelchair. Whenever I saw him, he always managed to make me laugh.