Portland Hoffa

Hoffa was born January 25, 1905 in Portland, Oregon[4][5][lower-alpha 1] to Frederick and Mary Hoffa.[5][7] As with most of her other siblings, including sister Lebanon and brother Harlem, she was named after the city in which she was born.[6] Additionally, she had two younger sisters, Lastone and Fredericka.[7] Her father, an itinerant optometrist, was a native of Washington state of German descent,[7] while her mother was from Pennsylvania.[7] Her father was Jewish, while her mother was a Presbyterian.[8] By the time Hoffa was 15 years old, she and her family had relocated to New York City and were residing in Manhattan.[7]

Hoffa and Fred Allen in 1941

In New York, Hoffa performed as a dancer in vaudeville and Broadway stage productions, and met Fred Allen while performing in The Passing Show in 1922 and joined him in his vaudeville routines (centered on his clever jokes spun off his weakness as a juggler). The couple married in 1927 at St. Malachy's Church in Manhattan[9] before Allen began his long-running radio work in 1932. Because Allen was a devout Roman Catholic, Hoffa converted to Catholicism before the two married.[8]

A frequent performer opposite Allen, Hoffa became familiar for her distinctive high-pitched voice,[10] her brief routines involving jokes bounced off or from her mother, and, later, strolling Allen's Alley with her husband, after asking him what his question of the week for the Alley denizens would be. Allen himself likened Hoffa's voice to "two slate pencils mating or a clarinet reed calling for help."[11]

Although Hoffa performed under her real name on her husband's show, the character she portrayed as "Portland Hoffa" in the radio broadcasts was not Allen's wife; instead, she depicted an enthusiastic girl of indeterminate age, around thirteen years old. One of Allen's 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 Hoffa's presence, and that if she were removed from the program then Allen would quit.

Allen's declining health was the main reason he ceased hosting his own show after 1949, but Hoffa often joined him as a semi-regular on Tallulah Bankhead's radio variety show, The Big Show (1950–52). She also appeared as the "mystery guest" on one episode of television's What's 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).

Allen died in 1956. In 1959, Hoffa married bandleader Joe Rines, who later worked as 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, she compiled a large volume of her first husband's correspondence, which was edited into and published as Fred Allen's Letters. Rines died in 1986.