Robert Q. Lewis
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Robert Q. Lewis (born Robert Goldberg, 5 April 1921, New York City – 11 December 1991, Los Angeles) was an American radio and television personality, game show host, and actor.
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[edit] Radio
Lewis made his radio debut in 1932, at the age of 11, on a local radio show, "Dr. Posner's Kiddie Hour." Soon afterward, the precocious youngster became a regular on the program.
He enrolled in the University of Michigan in 1938. He left college for the U. S. Army in 1942 and gravitated toward his favorite interest: he was a radio operator in the Signal Corps.
After the war, Lewis returned to commercial radio as announcer and disc jockey. Among those who served as writers on Lewis's radio programs were famed playwright Neil Simon, renowned author and dramatist Paddy Chayevsky, and radio comedy legend Goodman Ace. Future talk-show host and producer Merv Griffin often sang on Lewis's show. Television would soon crowd Robert Q.'s calendar, but he continued his radio work, first for the CBS network and later as a disc jockey in Los Angeles. One of his radio series, Robert Q.'s Waxworks, was devoted to old records, setting the pattern that later radio personalities like Dr. Demento would follow.
[edit] Television
Lewis was an early arrival on network television, and often presided over more than one series at a time, making him one of the busiest entertainers of the period. (In 1950 he hosted three TV shows concurrently!) The Robert Q. Lewis Show had a six-month run on CBS's Sunday night television lineup from July 16, 1950 to January 7, 1951. At the same time he also hosted CBS's TV talent-search variety program The Show Goes On from January 19, 1950 to February 16, 1952. He also had two daytime TV variety shows on CBS. The first, Robert Q's Matinee was a 45-minute daily show, which lasted 14 weeks, from October 16, 1950 to January 19, 1951. The second, more successful Robert Q. Lewis Show ran on CBS-TV from January 11, 1954 to May 25, 1956. Lewis's distinctive horn-rimmed spectacles were ever-present in his television appearances. In fact, the blindfold he wore as a panelist on What's My Line had the outline of his glasses drawn into them.
Lewis was very often recruited to fill in for performers who were ill or otherwise unable to perform. He frequently sat in for Arthur Godfrey, and often performed and recorded with Godfrey's regular company of entertainers. He substituted for, and ultimately replaced, Merv Griffin as host of Play Your Hunch. Jackie Gleason invited "Robert Q. Lewis and His Gang" to take over his American Scene Magazine time slot while he was away. These emergency replacements became part of Lewis's comic monologue; he'd tell of how he phoned his mother to watch him on CBS, only to hear her say, "Oh? Who's sick?"
[edit] Game Shows
Robert Q. became a fixture on TV game and quiz shows in the 1950s and 1960s, as host, guest host, panelist, or guest panelist. In 1952 he settled into his most enduring role as host of ABC's The Name's the Same, in which guests with unusual names (e.g. "A. Harem") or famous names (e.g. "Marilyn Monroe") were asked yes-or-no questions by three (and later four) celebrity panelists seeking to determine the contestant's name. The panelists' innocent questions often bordered on the risque or ridiculous when applied to the contestant's name. Lewis's genial nature, his ability to make contestants comfortable, and his easy laugh helped to make this and other shows an enjoyable watch for many viewers. Lewis gave up The Name's the Same to devote more time to his variety program; his last appearance on The Name's the Same in 1954 featured a juvenile contestant whose famous name was... Robert Q. Lewis.
Lewis was a frequent participant in the 1950s panel show What's My Line?, including a spot as the "mystery guest." He was also a celebrity guest on the original The Match Game. In 1964, Lewis hosted the short-lived game show Get the Message on ABC.
[edit] Records
Robert Q. Lewis was always an enthusiast of vintage music. He frequently revived old Tin Pan Alley tunes on his radio and TV shows, and in his very popular nightclub act. From the 1940s he sang for Columbia Records, MGM Records, and Coral Records. He scored his biggest hit in 1951 with the dialect novelty song, "Where's-a Your House?", an answer record to the Rosemary Clooney hit "Come On-a My House". In 1967, Lewis recorded I'm Just Wild About Vaudeville for Atco—this collection of circa-1930 songs has Lewis cleverly imitating different singing styles of the day.
[edit] Movies, TV, and theater
Lewis's fondness for show-business nostalgia was well known within the industry, and in 1949 he was hired to narrate the "lighter side" segment of the feature-length March of Time documentary film The Golden Twenties. Robert Q. was just too busy to pursue a movie career at the time; his hectic radio, TV, and nightclub schedule didn't permit it.
Later in his career, Lewis acted in a few movies, notably An Affair to Remember (1957), Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Ski Party (1965), Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967) and the TV movie The Law (1974), in which he played a dinner speaker at a lawyers' convention. He also performed on a number of TV shows, appearing on Branded and Bewitched.
During the 1960s, Lewis became a familiar face on the live-theater circuit, starring in road-company versions of Broadway hits, including Bells Are Ringing and The Odd Couple. He continued to make sporadic acting appearances until a few years before his death from emphysema at the age of 70.
[edit] Other items of interest
A collection of Robert Q. Lewis's personal papers, notes, and scripts, covering roughly the years 1940 until 1960, now resides at Thousand Oaks Library in Thousand Oaks, California. He is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
In 1951 Lewis was briefly rumored to be romantically linked with Rosemary Clooney. Arthur Godfrey once alluded to his supposed homosexual tendencies when commenting "I wonder what the Q stands for." Actually, the "Q." did not stand for a middle name. Lewis stumbled on the initial while on the air in the 1940s when he followed a reference to radio comedian F. Chase Taylor's character "Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle" by saying, "And this is Robert Q. Lewis." The name stuck.
