An American Original

0:28This episode is brought to you by Fox One. Study and play. Come together on a Windows 11 PC. And for a limited time, college students get the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Hi, it's Phoebe. Today an episode that we originally made for our other show, This Is Love.

1:09Sometimes a story will come along and we're not sure whether to make it for criminal or This Is Love, because it could kind of go both ways. This is one of those stories. We hope you like it. In 1963, Newsday published an article about an organization that thought animals should be wearing clothes. The headline was, Decency Counts. The article included a sewing pattern, boxer shorts for dog and horse. The pattern could also be used for cats, the writer noted, but with some minor adjustments. Quote, just ruffle the bottom and use a fancy print material. The New York Times wrote about this campaign, too, after people showed up and picketed in front of the White House.

1:57They wanted the First Lady, Jackie Kennedy, to put clothes on her horses. Jean Abel was one of the picketers. We called it CINAH, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. Jean says that during the protest, she held up a sign that said, Please put pants on macaroni. That was Caroline Kennedy's pony. He'd been a gift from Lyndon B. Johnson. Gene's husband, Alan Abel, was at the protest too. Picketing in D.C. had been Gene and Alan's idea. Actually, the whole thing had been their idea. CINNA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, was a prank that they'd been running for years. How did you and Alan meet?

2:47Well, I came to New York looking for an acting career. I had already done summer stock and studied speech and acting in college, and it was my time to try my luck. Jean saw a call for actresses in a newspaper. She answered the ad and ended up meeting Alan. He seemed very nice. At this point, I'd only spent maybe a month or so in New York. I'd met with various agents and they all seemed rather abrupt they didn't want to spend more than five minutes getting to know you but he took like 40 minutes and I'm trying to figure out why he was being so nice and kind to me Alan was spending so much time talking to her because he was stalling there was a man in the hallway waiting to talk to him about a prop tree he'd used for an off-Broadway play and never returned So he was being sued for that, a couple hundred bucks.

3:49So I didn't learn about, of course, the process for quite some time after. But meantime, we got, you know, very chummy. What can I say? Jean and Alan were married within the year. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love.

4:14I can't say I fell for him immediately, but he certainly grew on me, that's for sure. He just had this, I don't know, I think a lot of it emanated from his father, who had a small general store in Coshocton, Ohio. And Alan was that kind of guy. He would engage waiters and waitresses in conversation. He would step outside the norm to be kind and to find other people interesting. And I kind of liked that. I thought that was very, that was unlike many of the fellows you would meet, you know. When Gene met Allen, he already knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just didn't know how he was going to do it.

4:59I think the thing that started it all for him, when he went to Ohio State, he was giving the new freshmen some sort of pep talk or something. In the process, he fell off the stage, and he got laughs. They thought he was being funny. He actually fell off the stage without intent. But every time he rubbed his elbow or some other, you know, scratched his head or whatever, he got a laugh. And he liked laughter. He liked, he thought, huh. It was a few years after that when Alan came up with the idea that it would be funny to tell people to put clothes on animals. At the time, he was driving around the country performing music.

5:44He played the drums, and he spent hours on the road. He was in Texas, and all of a sudden, along a highway in Texas, traffic stopped. There were cattle crossing the highway, and two particular lady and male cows were having a romantic affair. and people were just, the various reactions as he saw them in the cars ahead and behind in his rearview mirror were so interesting to him. He started writing in his head, he started writing this story and it was about an association of people who were going to make animals wear clothes. Alan wrote to a couple newspapers pretending to be a spokesperson for the association.

6:31He wanted to see if they would take his letters seriously and publish them. They didn't. But he was still curious if he could get anyone else's attention. And so he started printing up pamphlets and leaving them along the way in motel drawers and restaurants and tables, you know, just trying to plant the idea. Allen wrote that the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals was founded by a man named G. Clifford Prout, who left his son, G. Clifford Prout Jr., $400 ,000 to run it. Apparently, the rest of the Prout family was contesting G. Clifford Prout's will, but his son was determined to carry out his wishes.

7:16Soon Allen decided that writing press releases and pamphlets about CINNA wasn't enough. He wanted people to be able to hear from G. Clifford Prout Jr. himself, so he convinced a friend, an aspiring actor, to play him. G. Clifford Prout ended up being Buck Henry our friend, who was at that point in his career not only an actor but a writer. Buck Henry would eventually go on to create a comedy show with Mel Brooks called Get Smart. Then he'd co-write The Graduate, direct Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty, and host Saturday Night Live ten times. But when Alan convinced him to play G. Clifford Prout Jr., Buck Henry was just starting out.

8:02So no one recognized him when he was interviewed about CINNA on The Today Show in May of 1959. Or again in June, when the show invited him back. NBC advertised that G. Clifford Prout Jr. would return to The Today Show to talk about, quote, his theories of nudism. Newspapers across the country started writing about CINNA. In The Austin American, one writer said, quote, If you hope, as we did, that these people are kidding, you're wrong. Now, this unusual device here is called a CINNA clothesmobile. A vehicle, a truck that we send into small communities with a driver and a CINNA member who can spot a naked animal at 50 feet.

8:48This is Alan Abel, describing one of the ways CINNA planned to get clothes to more animals. He did interviews about CINNA too, sometimes posing as CINNA's vice president. The clothes mobile never existed, but the Ables did make fake cinema membership cards and some sample outfits. For an interview with one TV show, Alan brought a bag of clothes with him, as well as some diagrams of animals appropriately covered up. At one point, he pulled a large pair of pants out of his bag. They were for an elephant. Tell me about the idea for D.C., picketing in D.C. What was the plan? The plan was, basically, Alan put out a lot of print material that alluded to, you know, thousands of people showing up to pick it.

9:41And we were going to be the forerunners. It was Alan, myself, and his doorman. And since Alan had made such a big deal of the plan, some reporters showed up, too. And people going by in the cars were, you know, pausing and asking for leaflets. And it builds, it builds, it builds. Even though there are only three of us, a few people joined in along the way just for the hell of it. But it was just three of us. But it made all the newspapers. In 1962, Alan Abel and Buck Henry visited the San Francisco Children's Zoo, which Buck Henry said they called, quote, the burlesque house of the animal world.

10:28Somehow, the Daily Herald in London picked up the story and wrote that, quote, crowds cheered as G. Clifford Prout Jr. attempted to put a pair of pants on a goat. Some reporters were much more skeptical about Sinna. When Buck Henry was interviewed by New York's Daily News, the writer said, quote, he's been on several TV shows, and thus far no one has discovered whether he has his tongue wedged in his cheek. Alan Abel and Buck Henry told the press that Sinna had tens of thousands of members, but they made it clear that Sinna never asked for money. Once, Jean Abel remembers they actually did get a check from a woman in Santa Barbara who wanted to support the cause.

11:16The woman sent it to Sinna's supposed office at 507 Fifth Avenue in New York City, which was actually a small closet Jean and Alan rented. They sent the check back. In one interview, Alan said Sinna wouldn't accept money because it had been founded with G. Clifford Prout Jr.'s inheritance from his father, $400 ,000. But then, Alan heard from the IRS. Eventually, IRS came looking for the taxes on that money. Gene says the IRS wanted to see Sinna's books. And he enjoyed the fracas one way or another. He would solve all kinds of problems as they came up. And I think he was, even when the IRS called him in for an audit, you know, He would be happy about it.

12:08I don't know why. I wouldn't be. But he always felt challenged, and he liked the challenge. To an IRS meeting, he would take a gift wrap tube and put a microphone in it in a shopping bag so he could record it. I never felt worried that he was— well, maybe I felt worried a few times that he might get arrested.

12:35Things started to fall apart after Buck Henry, playing G. Clifford Prout Jr., was interviewed by Walter Cronkite on CBS. It was a risky move because Buck Henry was about to start working at CBS as a writer for The Gary Moore Show. Well, it was found out that Buck was kind of right under their noses. He was right there writing for Gary Moore while he was still occasionally playing Buck, T. Clifford Proud. Gene says that eventually someone recognized him, and CBS realized they'd been pranked. Sinna wasn't real. Walter Cronkite was upset, and people started to realize that Alan Abel was the one behind it all.

13:20Well, I think CBS also was, for a period of time, was angry with him, wouldn't do anything. His picture was up on some billboard somewhere, you know, don't talk to this guy or whatever. In 1964, five years after Allen started CINNA, he admitted to a reporter for the Associated Press that it was all made up. He also said, quote, The Internal Revenue Service has no sense of humor. We'll be right back.

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15:11Sell your workout gear on Depop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit, and you get a payout for trying. Someone on Depop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Tell me the story about Yedda Bronstein. Oh, well, Yedda. Yedda, Yedda, where are you? This was something I invented. Alan once did a radio show from the Playboy Club. It was new at that time, and Hugh Hefner had seen him and put him in that role. And it was a call-in show, and people could respond, and I would call in as different characters. And yeah, there was one.

16:06Alan's live radio show for Playboy was called Table Talk. When Jean called into the show as Yedda Bronstein, she introduced herself as a housewife. Quote, Yedda lives in the Bronx. She has a boy named Marvin. He plays the drums badly. The show with the Playboy Club didn't last long, I think three months. But we thought, Yedda can't be hanging out there doing nothing. Yedda has to do something. The campaign was on. and Jonathan and, what was his name, Goldrich, took gold something. Barry Goldwater. So Alan decided that Yedda should run for president. Alan later said they wanted to find out if, quote, America was ready for a Jewish mother in the White House.

16:55Jean liked the idea, and they started thinking about Yedda's campaign. They decided that she would run as a write-in candidate for a party they called the Best Party. Yedda's platform would include national bingo and putting a suggestion box on the fence of the White House. She also opposed the Vietnam War. Jean and Alan printed posters for Yedda, which included an address for the best party headquarters, 507 Fifth Avenue, the same broom closet they'd used as the address for Sinna. Then, Jean and Alan contacted radio stations so Jean could give interviews as Yedda. She tried to stay away from TV.

17:38I never appeared because at the time I was still in my 20s and hardly a matron. And Yedda was obviously older. So we ended up using Alan's mother's picture when we had to produce something. Here's Jean as Yedda on WNBC in New York. There'll be a change, there'll be a change, there'll be a change in government. We'll get a guest to be First Lady and also President. When the Democratic National Convention happened in New Jersey that year, Alan and Jean got 20 people to march around the convention center holding signs that said, vote for Yetta, and also at least one sign with just the question, why not?

18:36In November 1964, the New York Times ran an article called The Third Party Mostly Extreme. The article read, There appears to be no national consensus for bingo, and Mrs. Bronstein may fail to carry a single precinct. That turned out to be true, since Yetta Bronstein wasn't even on the ballot. In 1972, Gene and Alan had a daughter, Jenny. By then, they'd spent about 13 years trying to pull off different pranks together. And Alan was still coming up with new ideas. Here's Jenny. He had just dressed up in bandages as Howard Hughes right before I was born. Alan, with his entire face covered in bandages and claiming to be Howard Hughes, announced at a press conference at the St.

19:29Regis Hotel in New York City that he planned to freeze himself. Through cryogenics until the stock market was higher. And because the billionaire Howard Hughes was usually very private, 36 reporters actually showed up. Jenny remembers that even as a toddler, Alan would sometimes bring her in on his pranks. I do remember going on to the Bill Boggs show and eating a hair sandwich, or refusing to eat a hair sandwich. This was when Alan pretended to be a doctor investigating the, quote, food properties of human hair. He said it had good protein. Jenny says even though they'd practiced together when the cameras were rolling, she refused to eat the fake sandwich.

20:14A little bit later, though, Jenny and Alan got away with something bigger. My dad somehow caught wind of the fact that there was a train car, an old caboose, It was like a 1916 Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific caboose that was down at the local train yard. Allen decided he wanted it. I mean, it was like, I don't know, 48, 50 feet long and 8 feet wide. This is no small thing. It had the cupola on top, the old classic looks of a caboose. The Ables lived in Connecticut, it. And the local planning and zoning commission wasn't so sure about the caboose. Of course, they said, no, no, no, you can't have a caboose, you know, blah, blah, blah.

21:00And my dad had taught me how to cry on cue. And nobody wants a crying kid in the room. So I think they just appeased my dad and said, okay, okay, okay, you got the permit. The Aples had a caboose christening party for their neighbors. And over the next few years, Jenny grew up playing with it, and Alan often used it as his office. The Ables eventually sold their house, but as of 2023, the caboose is still there. Jenny remembers seeing her parents pull off other pranks too, like in 1983 when Alan sent a fake referee into the Super Bowl. I just remember the costume. I remember my dad having a fake referee costume.

21:49I don't know if he bought tickets. I don't even know how, with security at the time in the 80s, they got through. But my dad had a fake referee and a fake police officer run onto the field. And I believe the fake referee called a few plays before they were pulled off the field. Someone realized it's a joke. They're not real. A few days after the game, the NFL confirmed that a fake referee had made it onto the field. The Iowa City Press also reported that Allen Abel had snuck onto the sidelines wearing a white medical jacket. One of Allen's most controversial hoaxes was in 1991. A few years before, David Duke, the former head of the KKK, had tried to run for president, initially as a Democrat.

22:38out. In 1990, he ran for the U.S. Senate, and in 1991, he was campaigning to be the governor of Louisiana. And he was actually, you know, taken seriously, and that was what bothered Allen. And then, during his gubernatorial campaign, reports started coming out that David Duke had founded a KKK symphony, reportedly to rival the New York Philharmonic. When a reporter called David Duke, he wrote he was, quote, irritated and said, there is no KKK symphony orchestra. The hoax was eventually traced back to Alan Abel, and he told that same reporter he thought the KKK should be laughed at. He always just wanted to get people engaged intellectually, to get them, to wake them up.

23:28A kick in the intellect is what he used to say. We'll be right back.

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24:49And Gene says there were conversations about making a movie about his life. When Alan went to meet with some producers about selling the rights to his life story, he ended up in an elevator with people who were talking about him. They didn't recognize who he was. And they're talking to each other about, well, if we wait around, you know, until he dies, we can talk to the Mudo, you know, and get it cheaper. It was basically that train of thinking. And that's what sparked him to figure, well, what if I die? Let's see what you do, you know. So Alan decided to fake his own death. He came up with a story that he died in Utah at a ski resort.

25:34He got in touch with some trusted friends to help him pull it off. There was a whole, like, really involved production. Like, he had a fake telephone number and his friend in Utah who would corroborate the story that he had skied and lost control and, like, landed in the woods and died of a heart attack somewhere in Utah. And they had a fake funeral home director. The funeral director would corroborate his story when the newspaper called. Allen submitted news of his death to the New York Times, which published its obituary on January 2, 1980, with the headline, Alan Abel, satirist, created Campaign to Clothe Animals.

26:21It read, He was 50 years old and lived in Manhattan and Westport, Connecticut. Mr. Abel made a point in his work of challenging the obvious and uttering the outrageous. In addition to his wife, he survived by a daughter, Jennifer. Alan hadn't told Gene about the plan to fake his own death. He didn't keep me waiting forever. I mean, knowing my husband as I did, I know he couldn't have been out skiing out in wherever it was supposed to be, some western state. So I figured I'd want more of those. Jenny was seven years old, and Alan didn't tell her either. The way that I remember it, I had gone to school that day, and everyone was looking at me with these sorrow-filled eyes and expressions.

27:18And then my teacher actually approached me and said, I'm so sorry, Jennifer. And I really didn't know what she was talking about, honestly. Like, I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, your dad died. And I was like, what? I just played basketball with my dad. I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't really phased because I think a part of me knew that it was another hoax. Jean says Alan eventually called to say he was alive, but she doesn't remember exactly when. Did you have to confirm to anyone? Did anyone call you up and say... Well, somebody left flowers, and we never knew who that was.

28:09and there were calls from some of his friends, but that took another day or so. So by that time I knew he wasn't, but I guess I kept his, you know, I kept it quiet. I didn't divulge. And some of them said, I was just writing you a note when I thought, wait a minute, this is Alan Abel. And they threw it in the garbage instead. Alan waited a couple of days, and then he organized a press conference to announce that he was alive. On January 4th, the New York Times ran another article, obituary disclosed as hoax. It was the first time in the newspaper's history that it had to retract an obituary.

29:03Alan and Jean Abel were married for almost 60 years. What do you think was the key to your long marriage? Well, I guess I was tolerant, for one thing. What was I going to do? I love the guy. It was hard sometimes. We went through a lot of different things, up and down. And, I mean, we lived sometimes on, you know, on the tip of a pin. And for lack of money or whatever, it's amazing how things happened. Their daughter Jenny says her parents were always talking to each other about ideas and writing them down. She remembers that one prank involved throwing real money out the window of a fancy hotel suite.

29:54It's almost like it's symbolic of their whole relationship where they weren't fixated on money. My mom and my dad loved each other, and the money didn't matter. They just wanted to do their art together. Sometime around 2001, Alan was recording an interview with a TV show that wanted to talk about his pranks over the years. And apparently my father saw that the camera operator was suppressing laughter. And after the interview was over, my dad said, hey, do you want to go out to dinner? The cameraman was named Jeff. Alan thought he might get along well with Jenny. And my dad was, he was relentless.

30:43He's like, did you call Jeff? Did you call Jeff? Did you call Jeff? Over, over. Just, he wouldn't stop. So I finally called Jeff. We went on a date. I don't know if I would say it was love at first sight, but by the end of the night, the deal was sealed. Like, I just, I can't believe that my dad set me up with him. Jenny and Jeff have been together for about 24 years. They have a son who, Jenny says, reminds her of her father. In September 14, 2018, my dad died for real. And we got more than one call from the New York Times to make sure he was really dead. It was, you know, my mom and I were still grieving.