Actually, Allison was very good at drive shafts, the P-39 and P-63 being examples. They put a lot of time and resources into solving vibration problems, initially for airships. Unfortunately, these excellent drive shafts were a solution in search of a problem that never really arose.
WW1 designers used drive shafts and inboard engines because contemporary engines were not all that reliable over long ranges and over water. The idea was that you could work on an inboard engine in flight and keep it running. Unreliability in the drive train was accepted as a necessary trade off for engine reliability. But it was, indeed, not all that successful.