Allen Funt

The name Allen Funt is synonymous with the long-running Candid Camera television franchise and its many incarnations. The basic premise of his program was to play gentle practical jokes upon innocent passersby and film their reactions. Classic Funt schemes include vending machines that talk back unexpectedly to customers, having pretty girls ask men for help with cars that do not have engines, and food that disappears from plates in restaurants and other bizarre bits of tomfoolery. At the end of a stunt, Funt and his camera crew or the actors involved would suddenly appear before the befuddled victims and say, "Smile, you're on Candid Camera!" Funt debuted the first edition of the show, Candid Microphone, on radio in 1948. Later that year, he turned to television and his show aired steadily with different hosts, including Arthur Godfrey and Durwood Kirby, through 1967. For all of the stunts he pulled, Funt's wry and easygoing victims were unusually good sports about having been made to look foolish and almost always signed release forms. He very seldom was accosted by angry victims. One of the highlights of Funt's career came when he was able to successfully smuggle himself and an entire camera crew and film into Soviet Moscow to pull a few stunts there. He then was able to return to the U.S. without his bags ever being checked. In 1974, Funt produced a syndicated version of the show that ran through 1978. He brought it back again as a series of specials from 1989 to 1990 with himself and his son Peter Funt as hosts and then turned it into a CBS series in 1991.