James Allen

James Allen was a children’s television host best known for his clown character Rusty Nails, who also served as the inspiration for Krusty the Clown on The Simpsons.

Allen began portraying Rusty Nails as “Rusty the Clown” in 1957, on Portland Oregon’s KOIN. Within a year he moved to KPTV, where he hosted his own weekend show, Rusty’s Hour, on he sang, accompanied himself on the piano and introduced cartoons. The program was short-lived, but Allen stayed on with KPTV as host of The Three Stooges Show weekday afternoons.

In 1962 Allen moved to KATU, where he hosted Rusty Nails’ Cartoonival. Five years later he returned to KPTV, where he remained until 1973, hosting children’s movies on Kids’ Comedy Theater the final year of his run. Some of the guests that appeared on his shows over the years included Phyllis Diller, Lawrence Welk, Mel Blanc, Danny Kaye, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Matt Groening, who grew up in Portland watching Allen's shows, loosely based the Simpsons character of Krusty the Clown on Rusty. However, Groening says Krusty’s irritable nature was nothing like Rusty Nails. Krusty, voiced by Dan Castellaneta, first made his appearance on January 15, 1989, in an animated short called “The Krusty the Clown Show” on an episode of The Tracey Ullman Show.

In Allen’s 1998 autobiography, Send in the Clowns, he explained how he started out traveling with his father doing a comedy magic act with hopes of becoming the next Houdini. But it was the laughs he got when performing that persuaded him to pursue a career in comedy. He began performing at supper clubs and on Portland radio wearing an orange wig, which gave birth to the name Rusty.

He was also an ordained Baptist minister and often taught at Sunday school, Bible school and church camps, often in clown costume. He performed his last show as Rusty during Christmas of 2006, at Portland's Alpenrose Dairy.

Allen died July 28, 2015, in Portland, Oregon. He was 87.