Imagine the guilt his mother laid on the author at the age of five, when she asked how he felt upon meeting Mickey Mantle, and he confessed to her that he wanted to be famous someday, like Mantle was. She replied, “Maybe you will,” spoken in her always calm, quiet voice, “but there are more important things in life than being famous. You should aspire to be a good person. Fame is fleeting. Character lasts.” 

It all began with puppets. As children, Allen Morris and his twin sister Myra entertained at other children’s birthday parties. At the age of fifteen, they performed on a local children’s TV show. That experience led the station manager to offer Allen a job. 

With mentoring from television professionals, the author learned to operate every piece of equipment needed to create television broadcasts. He studied for and passed the exam to obtain a First-Class FCC Broadcast Engineering license. By the time he graduated from college in 1975, he had four years of experience directing live newscasts, which helped him get a job at a major market television station. Within a year, he was given his first job as a producer. His work began winning awards, first a Clio for advertising, and eventually Emmy Awards, the highest honor in the television industry. Soon, the show he produced began to attract famous individuals as guests. At last, he was a peer among individuals who had achieved fame. 

Allen turned 71 in 2025. He spent his career perfecting his ability to direct. Beginning with live television, he ventured into creating live events, ranging from corporate theatre to concerts to working with live actors. He mastered the art of documentary filmmaking by traveling across the globe, capturing stories about war in the Middle East and interviewing world leaders. That led to documentaries. An early film documented the efforts to preserve the South American rainforest. Two of his most-honored films are One Man, Four Lives, about Holocaust survivor William J. Morgan who assumed four different identities to escape the Nazis in World War II, and An American Rhapsody, which is the history of the United States, from its founding to the election of Barack Obama as president, set to the music of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” performed by Leonard Bernstein. His work has been honored with every major award from the advertising industry and both regional and national Emmy Awards. 

He has published four books, under the pseudonym Robert Marlin, and contributed multiple articles to every issue of Tyler Today Magazine for the past twelve years. His extensive experience working with the famous and near-famous for more than fifty years qualifies him as an expert in the field of celebrity. He has worked directly with several hundred and has met hundreds more.