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Portland Hoffa, For other uses, see Hoffa (disambiguation).Portland Hoffa (25 January 1905, Portland, Oregon – 25 December 1990, Los Angeles, California) was an American comedienne, actor, and dancer. She is remembered best as the stage and radio partner of her first husband, Fred Allen.A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway-level stage productions, Portland Hoffa met Fred Allen while performing in The Passing Show in 1922 and joined him in his vaudeville routines (centered around his clever jokes spun off his weakness as a juggler); the couple married before Allen began his long-running radio work in 1932, with Hoffa taking instruction in the Roman Catholic Church prior to the marriage.[citation needed]Hoffa became familiar for her high-pitched voice, her brief routines involving jokes bounced off or from her mother, and, later, strolling Allens Alley with her husband, after asking him what his question of the week for the Alley denizens would be. Although Hoffa performed under her real name on her husbands show, the character she portrayed as Portland Hoffa in the radio broadcasts was not Allens wife; instead, she depicted an enthusiastic girl of indeterminate age, around thirteen years old. One of Allens sponsors loathed the character played by Hoffa, and kept urging Allen to drop her from the show. Allen ignored these requests for as long as he could, then finally — in an angry outburst at a sales meeting — told the executive that the broadcasts were bearable only due to Hoffas presence, and that if she were removed from the program then Allen would quit.[citation needed]Fred Allens declining health was the main reason why he ceased hosting his own show after 1949, but Hoffa often joined him as a semi-regular on Tallulah Bankheads radio variety show, The Big Show (1950–52). She also appeared as the mystery guest on one episode of televisions Whats My Line, on which Allen had become a panelist from 1954 until his death in early 1956. Hoffa and Allen had also appeared in such films as Is Everybody Listening? (1947) and the Jack Benny vehicle Buck Benny Rides Again (1940).Hoffa re-married in 1959, to bandleader Joe Rines, later an advertising executive. Hoffa and Rines lived long enough to celebrate a silver wedding anniversary, allowing Hoffa an unusual second such anniversary in one lifetime. In 1965, Hoffa rounded up a large volume of her first husbands correspondence to be edited into Fred Allens Letters. Rines died in the mid-1980s. One of three sisters, Hoffa died Christmas Day in 1990. Like her first husband, Portland Hoffa has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.[edit] Notes^ Laurie, Joe, Jr. Vaudeville: From the Honky-tonks to the Palace. New York: Henry Holt, 1953. p. 21.[edit] ReferencesFred Allen, Much Ado About Me (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956)Frank Buxton and Bill Owen, The Big Broadcast: 1920–1950 (New York: Flare Books/Avon, 1972).The New York Times, 30 December 1990.Portland Hoffa Obituary in the New York Times[edit] External linksPortland Hoffa Radio Career with Fred AllenPortland Hoffa at the Internet Movie DatabaseRetrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portland_HoffaCategories: 1905 births | 1990 deaths | Actors from Oregon | American comedians | American radio actors | Converts to Roman Catholicism | People from Portland, Oregon | People from the Greater Los Angeles Area | Vaudeville performersHidden categories: All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from December 2009Personal toolsLog in / create accountNamespacesArticleDiscussionVariantsViewsReadEditView historyActionsSearchNavigationMain pageContentsFeatured contentCurrent eventsRandom articleDonate to WikipediaInteractionHelpAbout WikipediaCommunity portalRecent changesContact WikipediaToolboxWhat links hereRelated changesUpload fileSpecial pagesPermanent linkCite this pagePrint/exportCreate a bookDownload as PDFPrintable versionLanguagesEspañolSuomi This page was last modified on 9 January 2011 at 05:02.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;additional terms may apply.See Terms of Use for details.Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.Contact usPrivacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersif ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.config.set({wgCanonicalNamespace: , wgCanonicalSpecialPageName: false, wgNamespaceNumber: 0, wgPageName: Portland_Hoffa, wgTitle: Portland Hoffa, wgAction: view, wgArticleId: 4383389, wgIsArticle: true, wgUserName: null, wgUserGroups: [*], wgCurRevisionId: 406818374, wgCategories: [All articles with unsourced statements, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2009, 1905 births, 1990 deaths, Actors from Oregon, American comedians, American radio actors, Converts to Roman Catholicism, People from Portland, Oregon, People from the Greater Los Angeles Area, Vaudeville performers], wgBreakFrames: false, wgRestrictionEdit: [], wgRestrictionMove: [], wgSearchNamespaces: [0], wgFlaggedRevsParams: {tags: {status: {levels: 1, quality: 2, pristine: 3}}}, wgStableRevisionId: null, wgRevContents: {error: Unable to get content., waiting: Waiting for content}, wgWikimediaMobileUrl: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki, wgCollapsibleNavBucketTest: false, wgCollapsibleNavForceNewVersion: false, wgArticleAssessmentJUIPath: http://bits.wikimedia.org/w/extensions-1.17/UsabilityInitiative/js/js2stopgap/jui.combined.min.js, Geo: {city: , country: }, wgNoticeProject: wikipedia});}if ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.loader.load([mediawiki.legacy.wikibits, mediawiki.util, mediawiki.legacy.ajax, mediawiki.legacy.mwsuggest, ext.vector.collapsibleNav, ext.vector.collapsibleTabs, ext.vector.editWarning, ext.vector.simpleSearch]);mediaWiki.loader.go();}if ( window.mediaWiki ) {mediaWiki.user.options.set({ccmeonemails:0,cols:80,contextchars:50,contextlines:5,date:default,diffonly:0,disablemail:0,disablesuggest:0,editfont:default,editondblclick:0,editsection:1,editsectiononrightclick:0,enotifminoredits:0,enotifrevealaddr:0,enotifusertalkpages:1,enotifwatchlistpages:0,extendwatchlist:0,externaldiff:0,externaleditor:0,fancysig:0,forceeditsummary:0,gender:unknown,hideminor:0,hidepatrolled:0,highlightbroken:1,imagesize:2,justify:0,math:1,minordefault:0,newpageshidepatrolled:0,nocache:0,noconvertlink:0,norollbackdiff:0,numberheadings:0,previewonfirst:0,previewontop:1,quickbar:1,rcdays:7,rclimit:50,rememberpassword:0,rows:25,searchlimit:20,showhiddencats:0,showjumplinks:1,shownumberswatching:1,showtoc:1,showtoolbar:1,skin:vector,stubthreshold:0,thumbsize:4,underline:2,uselivepreview:0,usenewrc:0,watchcreations:1,watchdefault:0,watchdeletion:0,watchlistdays:3,watchlisthideanons:0,watchlisthidebots:0,watchlisthideliu:0,watchlisthideminor:0,watchlisthideown:0,watchlisthidepatrolled:0,watchmoves:0,wllimit:250,flaggedrevssimpleui:1,flaggedrevsstable:false,flaggedrevseditdiffs:true,flaggedrevsviewdiffs:false,vector-simplesearch:1,useeditwarning:1,vector-collapsiblenav:1,usebetatoolbar:1,usebetatoolbar-cgd:1,variant:en,language:en,searchNs0:true,searchNs1:false,searchNs2:false,searchNs3:false,searchNs4:false,searchNs5:false,searchNs6:false,searchNs7:false,searchNs8:false,searchNs9:false,searchNs10:false,searchNs11:false,searchNs12:false,searchNs13:false,searchNs14:false,searchNs15:false,searchNs100:false,searchNs101:false,searchNs108:false,searchNs109:false});mediaWiki.loader.state({user.options:ready});/* cache key: enwiki:resourceloader:filter:minify-js:3:ae2156c08a06314b12473d37e57711e2 */} if ( window.isMSIE55 ) fixalpha();