Qomeback For Q

It’s hard to say where I saw Robert Q. Lewis first. I suspect it was as the host of Play Your Hunch after Merv Griffin left, but he seemed to be a panelist on all kinds of game shows. He tried to be amusing and urbane. That went over better at New York cocktail parties than on television so he never became a star on the level of Griffin. Still, he was pleasant enough, though off-camera he apparently could get pretty petulant. Arthur Godfrey, who changes “friends” like you and I change socks, employed him as his regular fill-in. He had a variety of network radio shows in the ‘40s and ‘50s, and ended up back in radio in the early ‘60s before a TV comeback.

Then, like many people in television, Lewis disappeared again. It’s jarring seeing him in colour; he belongs to the black-and-white ‘60s in my memory. In the early ‘70s, he was on radio again at KFI Los Angeles (long after its days as an NBC Red network affiliate) talking to celebrities of various stripes (“I am NOT a disc jockey,” he once snarked to the Los Angeles Times in an interview). Before the end of the decade, his radio career dried up and he was acting on stage, which is what he was doing in the latter half of the ‘60s.

Here’s Robert Q. in an Associated Press interview published January 13, 1963. His record-spinning days at KHJ Los Angeles (long after its days as an NBC Blue network affiliate) had ended.

Robert Q. Lewis Likes Familiar Surroundings
By Cynthia Lowry
AP Television-Radio Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — A funny thing happened to Robert Q. Lewis in the middle of a long and successful television career. Only it wasn't really funny: Suddenly, he couldn't get a job.
"I think it was a kind of over exposure," he reflected. "I don't think that audiences had gotten tired of seeing me around. But I do think I was overexposed to advertising agencies and network executives. Anyway, nobody would hire me."
Lewis, a native New Yorker who had entered show business at the age of 11 as a boy soprano on a radio kiddie's show, shrugged his shoulders philosophically and turned from broadcasting to the theater.
"Stock," he explained. "Most people think that stock companies today consist of summer stock in summer theatres. That's nonsense."
"There's fall stock, winter stock and spring stock, all over the country," Lewis said. "And if you've had television exposure, you can make good money playing in every contemporary American comedy written in the last 20 years and playing in them all over the country."
Three years ago, tall, slim, bespectacled Lewis did just that, appearing in such shows as "The Tender Trap," "The Gazebo," "Tunnel of Love," and "Seven Year Itch" in companies from Long Island to the Pacific Coast.
"It was great for me as a performer getting out all over the country, meeting people and getting the feel of an audience," he continued. "But the one drawback is that I'm a guy who likes his own home and to be in the middle of his own things. Hotel rooms are barren and dreadful."
Lewis, a dedicated bachelor, is a passionate art collector. He began as a child, when an uncle who was an art dealer took him to visit Pablo Picasso in the great painter's Paris studio. As they left, Picasso, who had taken a fancy to the boy, scribbled on a piece of paper, rolled it up and tucked it under his arm. It was a drawing, inscribed personally to Lewis. Today, worth many thousands of dollars, it is the keystone of a collection that includes paintings at well as sculpture.
"Obviously, you can't carry around paintings with you from hotel to hotel," Lewis said, "and, to be truthful, I get lonely without them."
Finally, he was fed up and asked his agent to find him a job in which he could settle down in one place.
"I'd spent years as a disc jockey," he said, "and decided to go back to it. There were many advantages. I decided I'd like to be in a place with a good, warm climate — either Florida or California."
His agent, fortunately for Lewis, found him an early morning spot on a local Los Angeles radio station where, in 1961, he resumed an earlier occupation, billing himself as "the world's worst disc jockey."
He promptly bought himself a house, complete with pool, took his collection out of packing boxes and within a few months became a rabid California booster. "It was a great life," he said, almost sadly. "I was up every morning at 4:45 to get to my show — it started at 6:30. I was finished by 10 and had the rest of the day to myself. That kind of a schedule meant I could accept television guest shots, wander through galleries and museums or just sit around the pool." Lewis first entered broadcasting as an announcer on a Troy, N.Y., station in 1941 — and was the only announcer at the station on that Sunday in December when the first bulletin on the attack on Pearl Harbor hit the news wires. It was a busy day.
After an Army hitch, he became an announcer on a New York City station, with a morning program, a daily hillbilly sing and still a third daily comedy show. He joined CBS radio in 1947 and first came to major public notice substituting for Arthur Godfrey. He was a hit.
In the earlier television days he had a number of shows of his own — "The Name's the Same," "The Show Goes On," and "The Robert Q. Lewis Little Show" among them.
Then, when host Merv Griffin wanted to quit "Play Your Hunch" for a daytime variety show of his own, Goodson and Todman asked Lewis to come East for a two week on-the-air audition for the permanent job. Lewis won the job.
Now — paintings and sculpture along with him — Lewis is back in his home town again. But has he cut his ties with beloved California?
"No," he said firmly. "And I won't sell my home. It's just leased to my agent. Even if it's only on vacations, I'll be going back from time to time."
The initial Q. in his name? It doesn't stand for anything — just in there to make his name different from all the other Robert Lewises.