An American Original

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Earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Enjin customers save more than $300 million on travel, with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Enjin every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling. Enjin.com slash Vox. 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 Today, an episode that we originally made for our other show, This Is Love.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. In 1963, Newsday published, 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. Jean Abel was one of the picketers. We called it SINNA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals. 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. Jean's husband, Alan, was at the protest, too. Picketing in D.C. had been Jean and Alan's idea. Actually, the whole thing had been their idea. SINNA, the Society for Indecency to Naked Animals, was a prank that they'd been running for years. How did you and Alan meet? Well, I came to New York looking for an acting career. I'd already done Summer Stock, and so. I studied speech and acting in college, and it was my time to try my luck. Jean saw a call for actresses in a newspaper. She answered the ad and ended up meeting Alan. 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 he said, and I'm trying to figure out why he was being so nice and kind to me. 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. So he was being sued for that, a couple hundred bucks. So I didn't learn about, of course, the processor for quite some time after, but. Meantime, we got, you know, very chummy. What can I say? Jean and Alan were married within the year. I'm Phoebe Judge, and this is love. 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. from his father, who had a small general store in Coshocton, Ohio. And Alan was that kind of guy. He would engage waiters and waitresses in conversation. 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. When Jean met Alan, he already knew what he wanted to do with his life. He knew what he wanted to do with his life. He just didn't know how he was going to do it. I think the thing that started it all for him, when he went to Ohio State, he was giving the new freshman 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. 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. He was in Texas, and all of a sudden, along a highway in Texas, traffic stopped. People 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. 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. 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. Alan wrote that there's a lot of people in the society for indecency to naked animals was founded by a man named G. Clifford Prout, who left his son, G. Clifford Prout Jr., $400,000 to run it. Apparently, the rest of the Prout family was contesting G. Clifford Prout's will, but his son was determined to carry out his wishes. Soon Alan decided that writing press releases and pamphlets about Cinna wasn't enough. He wanted people to be able to hear from G. Clifford Prout Jr. Jr. himself. So he convinced a friend, an aspiring actor, to play him. G. Clifford Prout ended up being Buck Henry, our friend, who was, at that point in his career, not only an actor, but a writer. 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 ten times. But when Alan convinced him to play G. Clifford Prout Jr., Buck Henry was just starting out. So no one recognized him when he was interviewed about Cinna on The Today Show in May of 1959. Or again in June, when the show invited him back. NBC advertised that G. Clifford Prout Jr. would return to The Today Show to talk about, quote, his theories of nudism. Newspapers across the country started writing about Cinna. In the Austin American, one writer said, quote, if you hope, as we did, that these people are kidding, you're wrong. Now, this unusual device here is called a Cinna Clothemobile, a vehicle, a truck, that we send into small communities with a driver and a Cinna member who can spot a naked animal at 50 feet. This is Alan Abel describing one of the ways Cinna planned to get clothes to more animals. He did interviews about Cinna, too, sometimes posing as Cinna's vice president. The Clothesmobile never existed, but the Abels did make fake Cinna 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 picking in DC. What was the plan? 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. And since Alan had made such a big deal of the plan, some reporters showed up too. And people going by in the cars were, you know, pausing and asking for leaflets. And as it builds, it builds, it builds. Even though there were 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. 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 Prout Jr. attempted to put a pair of pants on a goat. Some reporters were much more skeptical about Cinna. 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. Alan Abel and Buck Henry told the press that Cinna had tens of thousands of members. But they made it clear that Cinna 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 Cinna's supposed office at 507 Fifth Avenue in New York City, which was actually a small closet Jean and Alan rented. They sent the check back. In one interview, Alan said Cinna wouldn't accept money because it had been founded with G. Clifford Prout Jr.'s inheritance from his father, $400,000. But then, Alan heard from the IRS. Eventually, the IRS came looking for the taxes on that money. Jean says the IRS wanted to see Cinna's books. And he enjoyed the. 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 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. Things started to fall apart after Buck Henry, playing G. Clifford Prout 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. Well, it was found out that Buck was kind of right under their. He was right there writing for Gary Moore while he was still occasionally playing G. Clifford Prout. Gene says that eventually someone recognized him and CBS realized they'd been pranked. Cinna wasn't real. Walter Cronkite was upset, and people started to realize that Alan Abel was the one behind it all. 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. In 1964, five years after Alan started Cinna, 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. 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I think three months. But we thought Yedda can't be hanging out there doing nothing. Yes, it has to do something. The campaign was on. Jonathan and what was his name? Goldrich. Gold something. Barry Goldwater. So Alan decided that Yedda should run for president. Alan 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 Yedda's campaign. They decided that she would run as a write-in candidate for a party they called The Best Party. Yedda'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 Alan printed posters for Yedda, which included an address for the Best Party headquarters, 507 Fifth Avenue, the same broom closet they'd used as the address for Sinna. Then Jean and Alan contacted radio stations so Jean could give interviews as Yedda. She tried to stay away from TV. I never appeared because at the time I was still in my 20s and hardly a matron. And Yedda was, you know, she was obviously older. So we ended up using Alan's mother's picture when we had to produce something. Here's Jean as Yedda on WNBC in New York. There'll be a change. There'll be a change in government. When Yedda gets to be first lady and also president. When the Democratic National Convention happened in New Jersey that year, Alan and Jean got 20 people to march around the convention center holding signs that said, vote for Yedda. 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 Yedda Bronstein wasn't even on the ballot. 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. He had just dressed up. dressed up in bandages as Howard Hughes right before was born. 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 through cryogenics until the stock market was higher. 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. I do remember going on to the Bill Boggs show and eating a hair sandwich, or refusing to eat a hair sandwich. 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. 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 train yard. Alan decided he wanted it. I mean, it was like, I don't know, 48, 50 feet long and 8 feet wide. This is no small thing. It had the cupola on top, you know, the old classic looks of a caboose. The Ables, lived in Connecticut, and the local planning and zoning commission wasn't so sure about the caboose. 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. The Ables had a caboose christening party for their neighbors. And over the next few years, Jenny grew up playing with it. And Alan often used it as his office. The Ables 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 Alan sent a fake referee into the Super Bowl. I just remember the costume. I remember my dad having a fake referee costume. And 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. 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 Alan Abel was a fake referee. Alan Abel had snuck onto the sidelines wearing a white medical jacket. One of Alan'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 U.S. Senate. And in 1991, he was campaigning to be the governor of Louisiana. And he was actually, you know, taken seriously. And that was what bothered Alan. 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 Alan Abel. And he told that same reporter he thought the KKK, should be laughed at. 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. We'll be right back. At T-Mobile, the new iPhone 18 Pro is here with a big leap in battery life. And you can get it for nothing up front with so many reasons to choose T-Mobile. You'll want to talk about it. Hired at T-Mobile, you can get iPhone 18 Pro for nothing up front and get $1,000 off. Pass it on. Pay nothing today. No taxes, no fees, nothing down. Pass it on. Hey, Mickey, pass it on. Pass it on. Pass it on. At T-Mobile, you can get $1,000 off the amazing iPhone 18 Pro with no trade-in needed. With 36 monthly bill credits when you switch to T-Mobile on a qualifying plan. If you cancel an entire account before receiving all bill credits, credit stop and balance on a required finance agreement is due. Example, $1,199.99 iPhone 18 Pro, 256 gigabytes. Bill credits in if you pay off device early. Qualifying credit, new line, port in, and service. $85 more per month with AutoPay Plus taxes and fees required. Visit T-Mobile.com. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. According to ConsumerAdvocate.org, you get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the U.S. and Canada with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. By around 1980, Alan Abel's hoaxes had made him a little famous. And Jean says there were conversations about making a movie about his life. When Alan 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. And they're talking to each other about, well, if we wait around, you know, until he dies, we can talk to the MUDO, 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. So Alan 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. 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. The funeral director would corroborate his story when the newspaper called. Alan submitted news of his death to the New York Times which published its obituary on January 2nd, 1980 with the headline Alan 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. Alan had a daughter, and told Jean about the plan to fake his own death. 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 wherever it was supposed to be, some western state. So, I figured I just want more of those. Jenny was seven years old and Alan didn't tell her either. The way that I remember it, I had gone to school that day and I was in the classroom and I was in the classroom 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 a game. I played basketball with my dad. I don't know what you're talking about. I wasn't really phased because I think a part of me knew that it it was another hoax. 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. Well, somebody 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 it 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. Alan waited a couple of days. And then he organized a press conference to announce that he was alive. On January 4th, the New York Times ran another article, Obituary Disclosed as Hoax. It was the first time in the newspaper's history that it had to retract an obituary. Allen and Jean Abel were married for almost 60 years. What do you think was the key to your long marriage? Well, I guess I was tolerant for one thing. What was I going to do? I love the guy. 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, it's amazing how things happened. 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. 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. Sometime around 2001, Allen was recording an interview with a TV show that wanted to talk about his pranks over the years. 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? The cameraman was named Jeff. Allen thought he might get along well with Jenny. 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. Jenny and Jeff have been together for about 24 years. They have a son who Jenny says reminds her. Of her father. It's September, September 14th, 2018. My dad died, for real. And we got more than one call from the New York Times. To make sure he was really dead. 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 there's. The New York Times inevitably printed when he actually died, like, he wouldn't believe it. It was like almost a full page. It ran with the headline, Alan 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. The New York Times. This is Criminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash 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 Spohr, 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. We're on Facebook at This is Criminal, and Instagram and TikTok at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. This is Criminal. 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