Portland Hoffa

Portland Hoffa (January 25, 1905 – December 26, 1990) was an American comedian, actress, dancer, and radio performer whose career spanned Broadway, vaudeville, film, and network radio. Born in Portland, Oregon, she was the daughter of Frederick Hoffa, an itinerant optometrist of German descent and Jewish faith who was a native of Washington state, and Mary Hoffa (née Keesey), a Presbyterian from Pennsylvania. Following a family tradition of naming children after their birthplaces, she and several siblings received geographic names; her sister was named Lebanon, her brother Harlem, and she herself was named after Portland, Oregon. Two younger sisters, Lastone and Frederika, also known as Doctor Fredericka, completed the family. By the time Hoffa was fifteen, the family had relocated to Manhattan.

Her performing career began in New York, where she worked as a dancer in vaudeville and on Broadway throughout the 1920s. Her Broadway credits included the musical Marjorie, the musical Tell Me More, the revue Make It Snappy, the play Three's a Crowd, and the revue The Little Show, among other productions between 1921 and 1930. It was during a production of The Passing Show in 1922 that she first encountered comedian Fred Allen, whose vaudeville act centered on jokes built around his limited skill as a juggler. Hoffa joined Allen in his vaudeville routines following that meeting.

The two married in 1927 at St. Malachy's Church in Manhattan. Because Allen was a devout Roman Catholic, Hoffa converted to Catholicism before the wedding. When Allen launched his long-running radio career in 1932, Hoffa became a frequent presence on his broadcasts. Her on-air character, though performed under her real name, was not portrayed as Allen's wife but rather as an enthusiastic girl of indeterminate age, approximately thirteen years old. Audiences recognized her immediately by her distinctive high-pitched voice, which Allen himself described as resembling two slate pencils mating or a clarinet reed calling for help. Her routines frequently involved jokes exchanged with or about her mother, and she later participated in the Allen's Alley segments by asking Allen the question of the week before he posed it to the Alley's regular characters. One of Allen's sponsors repeatedly pressed him to remove Hoffa from the program; Allen resisted for as long as possible before finally declaring at a sales meeting that her presence was what made the broadcasts worthwhile, and that he would quit if she were dropped.

Allen hosted several highly successful network radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s. After his declining health led him to stop hosting his own show following 1949, Hoffa joined him as a semi-regular performer on Tallulah Bankhead's radio variety program The Big Show, which ran from 1950 to 1952. She also appeared as the mystery guest on an episode of the television program What's My Line, on which Allen served as a panelist from 1954 until his death in early 1956. The two additionally appeared together in the films Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), a Jack Benny vehicle, and Is Everybody Listening? (1947).

Allen died in 1956. In 1959, Hoffa married bandleader Joe Rines, who later transitioned to a career as an advertising executive. The two celebrated a silver wedding anniversary before Rines died in 1986. In 1965, Hoffa compiled a substantial collection of her first husband's correspondence, which was edited and published as Fred Allen's Letters. Hoffa has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1640 Vine Street. She died of natural causes in Los Angeles on December 26, 1990, at the age of 85, survived by her two younger sisters, Lastone Hershkowitz of New York and Los Angeles, and Frederika Bond of Bellingham, Washington. She is interred alongside Fred Allen at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.