An American Original

In 1963, Jeanne and Alan Abel traveled to Washington, DC to picket in front of the White House. They said they were part of a campaign that wanted to put clothes on animals — including the first lady’s horse. Say hello on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Sign up for our occasional newsletter. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, invitations to virtual events, special merch deals, and more. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:38Speaker 01

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• 1:09Speaker 02

  Hi, it's Phoebe. Today, an episode that we originally made for our other show, This is Love. Sometimes 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.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  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. They wanted the first lady, Jackie Kennedy, to put clothes on her horses.

• 2:10Speaker 02

  Jean Abel was one of the picketers.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  We called it SINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals.

• 2:19Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:31Speaker 02

  Jean's husband, Alan Abel, was at the protest, too. Picketing in DC had been Jean and Alan's idea. Actually, the whole thing had been their idea. SINA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, was a prank that they'd been running for years.

• 2:50Speaker 02

  How did you and Alan meet?

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Well, I came to New York looking for an acting career. I'd already done summer stock and studied speech and acting in college, and it was my time to try my luck.

• 3:10Speaker 02

  Jean saw a call for actresses in a newspaper. She answered the ad and ended up meeting Alan.

• 3:16Speaker 03

  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.

• 3:39Speaker 02

  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.

• 3:52Speaker 03

  So he was being sued for that, a couple hundred bucks. So 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?

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Jean and Alan were married within the year. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is Love.

• 4:21Speaker 03

  I can't say, you know, 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 Koshokton, Ohio. And Alan was that kind of guy. He would engage waiters and waitresses in conversation. He would, he would step outside the norm to be kind and to be, 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.

• 4:59Speaker 02

  When Gene met Alan, he already knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just didn't know how he was going to do it.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  I think the thing that all 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. And, 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.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  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. He played the drums. And he spent hours on the road.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  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.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  Alan wrote to a couple newspapers pretending to be a spokesperson for the association. He 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.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  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.

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Alan wrote that the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals was founded by a man named G. Clifford Prouse, who left his son, G. Clifford Prouse Jr., $400,000 to run it. Apparently, the rest of the Prouse family was contesting G. Clifford Prouse's will, but his son was determined to carry out his wishes. Soon Alan decided that writing press releases and pamphlets about syna wasn't enough. He wanted people to be able to hear from G. Clifford Prouse Jr. himself, so he convinced a friend, an aspiring actor, to play him.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  G. Clifford Prouse ended up being Buck Henry, our friend, who was, at that point in his career, not only an actor but a writer.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  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 10 times. But when Alan convinced him to play G. Clifford Prouse Jr., Buck Henry was just starting out, so no one recognized him when he was interviewed about syna on The Today Show in May of 1959. Or again in June, when the show invited him back. NBC advertised that G. Clifford Prouse Jr. would return to The Today Show to talk about, quote, "his theories of nudism." Newspapers across the country started writing about syna.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  In the Austin American, one writer said, quote, "If you hope as we did that these people are kidding, you're wrong."

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Now, this unusual device here is called a Sina clothesmobile, a vehicle, a truck, that we send into small communities with a driver and a Sina member who can spot a naked animal at 50 feet.

• 8:55Speaker 02

  This is Alan Abel, describing one of the ways Sina planned to get clothes to more animals. He did interviews about Sina too, sometimes posing as Sina's vice president. The clothesmobile never existed, but the Abels did make fake Sina 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 DC picketing in DC. What was the plan?

• 9:37Speaker 03

  The plan was, basically, Alan put out a lot of print material that alluded to, you know, thousands of people showing up to picket. And we were going to be the forerunners. It was Alan, myself, and his doorman.

• 9:54Speaker 02

  And since Alan had made such a big deal of the plan, some reporters showed up too.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  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.

• 10:22Speaker 02

  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." Somehow, the Daily Herald in London picked up the story and wrote that, quote, "Crowds cheered as G. Clifford Prouse Jr. attempted to put a pair of pants on a goat."

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Some reporters were much more skeptical about Sina. 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." Allen Abel and Buck Henry told the press that Sina had tens of thousands of members, but they made it clear that Sina 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. The woman sent it to Sina's supposed office at 507 Fifth Avenue in New York City,

• 11:29Speaker 02

  which was actually a small closet Jean and Allen rented. They sent the check back. In one interview, Allen said Sina wouldn't accept money because it had been found with G. Clifford Proctor Jr.'s inheritance from his father, $400,000. But then, Allen heard from the IRS.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  Eventually, IRS came looking for the taxes on that money.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Jean says the IRS wanted to see Sina's books.

• 12:01Speaker 03

  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. I don't know why I wouldn't be. But he was 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.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Things started to fall apart after Buck Henry, playing G. Clifford Proust 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.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  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, uh, G. Clifford Proust.

• 13:12Speaker 02

  Gene says that eventually, someone recognized him, and CBS realized they'd been pranked. Cine wasn't real. Walter Cronkite was upset, and people started to realize that Allen Abel was the one behind it all.

• 13:27Speaker 03

  Well, 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.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  In 1964, five years after Allen started Cine, 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.

• 14:10Speaker 02

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• 15:10Speaker 02

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• 16:18Speaker 03

  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 Yedda was one.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Alan'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."

• 17:07Speaker 03

  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, Johnson and, what was his name, Goldrich, Gold something.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Barry Goldwater.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  So Alan decided that Yedda should run for president.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Allen later said they wanted to find out if, quote, "America was ready for a Jewish mother in the White House." Jean liked the idea, and they started thinking about Yeta's campaign. They decided that she would run as a write-in candidate for a party they called "The Best Party." Yeta'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 Allen printed posters for Yeta, which included an address for the Best Party headquarters, 507 Fifth Avenue, the same broom closet they'd used as the address for Sina.

• 18:13Speaker 02

  Then Jean and Allen contacted radio stations so Jean could give interviews as Yeta. She tried to stay away from TV.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  I never appeared because at the time, I was still in my twenties and hardly a matron. And Yeta was obviously older, so we ended up using Allen's mother's picture when we had to produce something.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Here's Jean as Yeta on WNBC in New York.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  When the Democratic National Convention happened in New Jersey that year, Allen and Jean got 20 people to march around the convention center, holding signs that said, "Vote for Yeta," and also at least one sign with just the question, "Why not?" In 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 Yeta Bronstein wasn't even on the ballot.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  In 1972, Jean 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.

• 19:58Speaker 05

  He had just dressed up in bandages as Howard Hughes right before I was born.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  Alan, with his entire face covered in bandages and claiming to be Howard Hughes, announced at a press conference at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City that he planned to freeze himself.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  Through cryogenics until the stock market was higher.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  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.

• 20:33Speaker 05

  I do remember going on to the Bill Boggs Show and eating a hair sandwich, or refusing to eat a hair sandwich.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  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. A little bit later, though, Jenny and Alan got away with something bigger.

• 21:01Speaker 05

  My dad somehow caught wind of the fact that there was a train car, an old caboose, like a 1916 Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific caboose, that was down at the local trainyard.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Alan decided he wanted it.

• 21:18Speaker 03

  I mean, it was like, I don't know, 48, 50 feet long and eight feet wide. This is no small thing. It had the cupula on top, and the old, classic looks of a caboose.

• 21:32Speaker 02

  The Aples lived in Connecticut, and the local planning and zoning commission wasn't so sure about the caboose.

• 21:38Speaker 05

  Of course, they said, "No, no, no, you can't have a caboose, you know, blah, blah, blah." And 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."

• 21:56Speaker 02

  The Abels had a caboose christening party for their neighbors. And over the next few years, Jenny grew up playing with it, and Allen often used it as his office. The Abels 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 Allen sent a fake referee into the Super Bowl.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  I just remember the costume. I remember my dad having a fake referee costume. I 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.

• 22:53Speaker 02

  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. In 1990, he ran for the US Senate. And in 1991, he was campaigning to be the governor of Louisiana.

• 23:29Speaker 03

  And he was actually, you know, taken seriously. And that was what bothered Allen.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  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 Allen Abel. And he told that same reporter he thought the KKK should be laughed at.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  He always just wanted to get people engaged intellectually, to get them, to wake them up. A kick in the intellect is what he used to say.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  We'll be right back.

• 24:28Speaker 02

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• 26:33Speaker 02

  By around 1980, Allen Abel's hoaxes had made him a little famous. And Jean says there were conversations about making a movie about his life. When Allen 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.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  And they're talking to each other about, "Well, if we wait around, you know, till he dies, we can talk to the muto, 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?

• 27:15Speaker 02

  So Allen decided to fake his own death. He came up with a story that he died in Utah at a ski resort. He got in touch with some trusted friends to help him pull it off.

• 27:27Speaker 05

  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.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  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, "Allen Abel, satirist, created campaign to clothe animals." It 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."

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Alan hadn't told Jean about the plan to fake his own death.

• 28:32Speaker 03

  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 just want more of those.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Jenny was seven years old, and Alan didn't tell her either.

• 28:51Speaker 05

  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. And 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."

• 29:33Speaker 05

  I wasn't really phased, because I think a part of me knew that it was another hoax.

• 29:41Speaker 02

  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?

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Well, somebody left flowers, and we never knew who that was. And 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.

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Alan waited a couple of days, and then he organized a press conference to announce that he was alive.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  On January 4th, The New York Times ran another article, "Obituary Disclosed as Hoax."

• 30:44Speaker 02

  It was the first time in the newspaper's history that it had to retract an obituary.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Alan and Jean Abel were married for almost 60 years. What do you think was the key to your long marriage?

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Well, I guess I was tolerant for wanting.

• 31:06Speaker 03

  What was I gonna do? I love the guy.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  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. For lack of money or whatever. We, it's amazing how things happened.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  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.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  It's almost like it's symbolic of their whole relationship where they weren't fixated on money. They just, my mom and my dad loved each other and the money didn't matter. They just wanted to do their art together.

• 32:00Speaker 02

  Sometime around 2001, Alan was recording an interview with a TV show that wanted to talk about his pranks over the years.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  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?

• 32:24Speaker 02

  The cameraman was named Jeff. Alan thought he might get along well with Jenny.

• 32:29Speaker 05

  And my dad was, he was relentless. He'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.

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Jenny and Jeff have been together for about 24 years. They have a son who Jenny says reminds her of her father.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  In September, September 14th, 2018, my dad died for real. And we got more than one call from the New York Times.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  To make sure he was really dead.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  It was, you know, my mom and I were still grieving. But that part I found to be so, it was almost like funny. You know, I feel like if he saw that obituary that the New York Times inevitably printed when he actually died, like, he wouldn't believe it. It was like almost a full page.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  It ran with the headline, "Allen Abel Hoaxer Extraordinaire Is (Parentheses) On Good Authority: Dead at 94." Quote, "He was, the news media conceded with a kind of irritated admiration, an American original." Criminal is created by Lauren Spoor and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajikko, Lily Clark, Lena Silasen, and Megan Kinnane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was mixed by Michael Rafio.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com/newsletter. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus. You can listen to Criminal, This is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spoor, talking about everything from how we make our episodes, to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com/criminal. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at Criminal underscore Podcast.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  We're also on YouTube at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple. Like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive. Or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply, say yes to simple.

• 36:08Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.