What'll You Do, Robert Q.?

The world got way too much of Robert Q. Lewis.

At least, Lewis thought people thought so.

Lewis seemed to be everywhere in the 1950s. He had a couple of shows, he filled in for Arthur Godfrey, he made appearances on panels of game shows. Then it all dried up.

1960 saw Robert Q. touring the U.S. in “The Gazebo.” And complaining to J. Don Schlaerth of the Buffalo Evening News. This is part of a column published Aug. 24, 1960.

COMEDIAN Robert Q. Lewis admitted today that he is a victim of a television malady known as “overexposure.”
The star of the summer stock production, "The Gazebo,”' a comedy-mystery playing at the Garden Center Theater in Vineland, Ont., visited Bill and Mildred Miller on their WHEN-TV telecast this afternoon and stopped long enough to discuss his case.
"There are dozens of people in show business who are suffering from too much exposure," explained the candid entertainer, "and I'm one of those finding it tough going. Arthur Godfrey has suffered from it and so has Jack Paar. I think Steve Allen will have some difficulty this season."
Lewis stated that his TV outlook is "chilly" at the moment "because show producers and advertising agencies seem to feel that the public is tired of me."
• • •
LEWIS RECALLED that he was on both network radio and television steadily from 1946 to 1959. "At one time I had shows five days a week and once in the evening. It got to the point," he said, "where the average housewife saw more of me than she did of her husband."
Stating that he was far from starving, Lewis said the current period in his career gives him tme to concentrate on his art collection and enjoy summer stock.
"I plan to guest on a number or TV panel shows this season when the regular panel members vacation," he went on, "but I have to wait to be called."
• • •
IN THE MEANTIME, he said, there are plans for a TV series based on the Harold Lloyd movies. “We’re working on a shooting script and may be able to film the pilot in November. I’ll be working for a mythical Federal Bureau of Space."
The performer also said he would like to do a Broadway play soon. “It’s important when you're in the position that I'm in right now to watch your emotions. Some actors become very upset. You've got to plan and wait for your time to come around again. It usually does and then you’re better off than before."

Robert Q. was still complaining about “overexposure” more than 12 years later during a time he hadn’t been getting a lot of national exposure. He never seemed to accept the fact that everyone’s career goes up and down. Newcomers arrive and get attention. Old stars get shoved out along the way by the public. That’s how the entertainment business works.

In various interviews in 1960, he talked about buying a radio station on Long Island. Maybe he was going to move to Miami. The show about a Harold Lloyd-type character (with writer Howard Tichman) went nowhere. Instead, Lewis ended up on the West Coast at a radio station, starting Aug. 7, 1961. This wire service feature story was published on Aug. 19.

Robert Q. Moves West
By RICK DU BROW
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) — Robert Q. Lewis, accompanied by his white poodle and bolstered in morale by occasional glances at his Rolls-Royce, has come West to settle dawn as a Hollywood disc jockey.
"This is where the action is," said the bespectacled, nasal-voiced funnyman who once shared network radio and television eminence with Arthur Godfrey, Dave Garroway, Garry Moore and Jack Paar.
"This is Mr. Lewis' first Hollywood interview," said his press agent.
"And you couldn't have picked a bigger star," said Robert Q.
Looking "Hollywood" to the core—with a deep tan, sun-glasses and a wide-striped dark sports shirt open at the neck Lewis sat on the terrace of an outdoor cafe and explained why he left New York:
• • •
"I NEEDED A job. Arthur Goldberg and I decided there was too much unemployment. No. Seriously, this station out here (KHJ) wanted to be No. 1—not that they aren't now. My gosh, how do you say this? Well, anyway, I'm here. It's a good deal. I wanted to be a disc jockey again. I like doing a job five days a week.
"I haven't had my own show for two years, and I don't have the actor's temperament of being able to relax. My kind of show—the informal, anything goes daytime thing—is in disrepute since filmed syndication took over, and it's affected all of us—Godfrey, Moore.
"All of us are radio babies. We gripe, but we're never happier than when we're on the air every day projecting our own self-idolized images. Paar says he's going to quit, and he may well do it—but be in pain missing the outlet every day.
“Moore got his night-time show but begged CBS to put him on radio 10 minutes a day. Godfrey went through cancer but kept his radio show.
"I was on the air since 1945, and my problem is overexposure. The average American housewife saw more of me than her husband."
• • •
ROBERT Q. confessed that some people considered his move from network to a local show something of a comedown.
"I suppose people along this Sunset Strip or on Madison Ave. might consider it so," he said, "but I don't. I'm looking forward to it. I think there'll be a rebirth of my kind of show. The TV set once was an altar in the living room. Now it's become a pennance box. Hmmm —that's not a bad line."
What has he done for the past two years?
"Primarily griped," he said. "I did summer stock, winter stock, spring stock. Believe me, I know now why they call it stock. I've been in just about every contemporary American comedy."
Lewis, whom bigwigs believe will wind up network from here, said,
“Sure, I’ll miss New York. I’m a native and lived within a radius of 20 blocks all my life. But I always wanted to live here. I'm a sun-worshipper. I bought a house within two days, got a housekeeper the third and wallpaper the fourth.
"Wait'll I give out freeway instructions on the air: ‘This is Robert Q. Lewis and as for you on the freeway—I don't know where the heck you are.’ Did you ever hear those cheerful disc jockeys in the morning? Not me. Who's cheerful in the morning?
• • •
"FRANKLY, I haven't the slightest idea what I'm going to do on the show. But you'll hear such names as Jimmy Stewart, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis. Of course, Bette Davis may turn out to be a stenographer, and Stewart a worker from Lockheed. But some days, it might be the real thing.
“Awhile back, I had an idea for a wonderful show. It would be called ‘Breakfast with a Bachelor,’ and it would start out with me saying, ‘Today our special guest is—what's your name, honey?’ For heaven's sake, don't print that!" Lewis got up from the table and headed for the parking lot.
"I really wanted a compact limousine, but no American manufacturer was making one," he said. "By the way, do you know anybody who wants to buy a $65,000 duplex in New York?"
An elderly couple recognized him and said, "Hello, Mr. Lewis." He returned the greeting and said: "I hired them from Central Casting."

The love affair with morning radio and the West Coast didn’t last too long. On Nov. 19, 1962, he was back at NBC New York, with Johnny Olson introducing him as the host of Play Your Hunch. He replaced Merv Griffin, who had accepted an offer from the network to host an afternoon talk/variety show. When that didn’t pan out, Merv was back on a game show again on Sept. 30, 1963 hosting Word For Word, which replaced Robert Q.’s show.

The two men crossed paths a number of times, starting when Merv was hired to sing on Lewis’ daytime TV show in the mid-1950s. Griffin ended up marrying Q.’s secretary. Though Robert Q. came across to viewers as somewhat sophisticated and glib, Merv bluntly stated (after Lewis’ death) he was crazy. Behind the scenes, Lewis would throw furniture and fits.

Mark Goodson continued to put Lewis into a fill-in host or guest panellist slot until the host’s job at Get the Message came open on Sept. 28, 1964. There was no overexposure on that show. It was cancelled on Christmas Day.

There was more stage work, then another West Coast radio gig (at KFI) in the ‘70s. By the 1980s his name in print was associated with others who had worked with him in the Golden Age of Television. Robert Q. passed away December 11, 1991 at 71.

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.

You Can Marry Robert Q. Lewis

At first glance, the idea of Robert Q. Lewis advertising for a wife seems a little odd. Robert Q.’s reputation today is of a man who wasn’t all that interested in women, shall we say. But on closer observance, it’s evident Bob’s ad campaign was entirely satiric and he wasn’t interested in walking down the aisle at all. Bob was having a bit of fun with the stereotypical husband-wife relationship of the post-war years. “Fey wit,” as the New York Times described him in his obituary.

The wife-for-Lewis ads were developed after CBS tried yet again in 1949 to boost the former Bob Goldberg’s stardom, this time with a late Sunday afternoon radio show. The network couldn’t sell it, so Lewis and his writers cleverly filled the commercial time by advertising for a wife. Lewis took his wife-hunt to the pages of the Radio and Television Mirror in February 1949 in a self-penned article with a title that was borrowed from a show tune (it was a song in “Annie Get Your Gun”). The article will seem a little corny to today’s eyes but it shows you how unserious Robert Q. was in his quest for matrimony.

The Girl That I Marry
By ROBERT Q. LEWIS
WANTED . . . WIFE. By radio humourist just over draft age. Girl must be breathing, anywhere between ages of twenty and twenty-one. Should have poise, charm, ability, personality and oil well. If possible send picture of oil-well. Box Q.
THAT'S it! In a nutshell. . . . That's the ad I've been using on my commercial-less CBS program for the past couple of weeks.
Am I kidding? No . . . not really. Every day, people keep asking me why I'm still a bachelor. Actually, there's no good reason. I'd get married in a minute . . . only nobody's asked me. And frankly, I don't enjoy being a bachelor at all. I'm so dam helpless around the house. Especially when I iron my own shirts. I never seem to know when to turn the iron off. And while we're on that subject . . . does anybody know anybody who'd like to buy some open-toed shirts . . . cheap? I'm not much good at housecleaning either. I hate that darn dusting . . . and I look so silly with a red bandanna wrapped around my noggin. I'll never forget the day I really got ambitious. I scrubbed the floors, massaged the ceilings and washed the walls. And you know something? I discovered two rooms I never even knew I had! So I've given up thorough dusting ... I use the old rug system ... as a matter of fact, in the past six months I've swept so much dust under my carpet that I'm now listed at the Soviet Embassy as "Hill No. 137"!
A poor batch can get so weary! Like the other morning I read in the papers that "now is the time to clean out the refrigerator." It sounded logical, so I spent all morning doing just that. First the grapefruit, then the eggplant, then the milk, then the bologna, then the eggs, then the yogurt . . . honest, by the time I got through, I thought I'd burst. You need a wife to help you out with little things like that.
And gee ... if I had a wife, I wouldn't have to go through that awful business of shopping for my food. What prices! It's tough when you have to pay a dollar a pound for meat ... of course, I must admit that when you pay only forty cents a pound . . . it's even tougher! But meats aren't the only things that are high. Like the other day. . . . My bill from the fruit store had an extra charge of ten cents. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what it was for! Then I remembered that on my way out of the store I'd stepped on a grape. Honest.
And some of those clerks ask the dopiest questions. Take my butcher (and believe me, he's yours with my blessing). I asked him for a small chicken. . . .
"Tell me, Mr. Lewis," he asked, "do you wanna pullet?"
"Of course not," I told him, "I'll carry it."
Oh . . . and what I wouldn't give for a wife who could cook a delicious meal.
Not that I can't do a little cooking myself. The other evening I tried some eclairs. I have never seen eclairs so light. It was sensational. My secret is filling them with helium instead of whipped cream. Of course, I still haven't tasted my light eclairs. I can't get them down from the ceiling.
Lately, I've also been trying my hand at dinner dishes. I had my uncle over for dinner and decided to try a Welsh rarebit. I'll never forget what he said when he ate it. He said, "This is the best Welsh rarebit I've ever eaten!" Those were his last words.
It's not that I haven't tried to get a girl to marry me. I have. I think of wonderful things to say to a girl . . . and when I start, she giggles!
Maybe I just don't appeal to girls.
Maybe . . . and this is the thought that kills . . . maybe they're mad at me for conducting a radio show that doesn't give anything away. You see, I have no refrigerators, no washing machines, no B-29s. Not even a little six-week jaunt to Pago-Pago. All CBS allows me to offer is what we hope is entertainment. It's so embarrassing!
Yes, that may have something to do with it. I feel awful about the pretty girls who come to a broadcast, and all the girls tuned in. I feel as though I’m cheating them, being cruel and inhuman. The thing that hurts most is when I have to notify my studio audience just before a broadcast to go out to the street and dismiss those empty moving-vans they've got parked there. It hurts me!
THIS summer I really got a little desperate. So I decided to try my luck in Europe. I had a wonderful vacation in Paris and London. Paris was delightful. I saw all the sights . . . The Champs Elysees, The Folies Bergere, the Eiffel Tower, The Folies Bergere, the Arch of Triumph, The Folies Bergere . . . And then it happened. It was a lovely dimanche evening in Aout at about dix heures. (English translation: Sunday night in August at ten . . . I think.) Her name was Marie . . . and she was charmante! We had had a magnifique diner, followed by le cinéma. Walking along the Champs Elysées with the moon shining brightly on nous, I popped the question. ”Chérie, voulez-vous marier avec moi?” I'll never forget her ravissant reply. With a bright twinkle in her pretty yeux bleu she whispered: "What kinda jerk ya think I yam, ya shmo!" My conclusion: The only difference between French girls and American girls is . . . the Atlantic Ocean.
I haven't gotten many responses from the ad on my program. Ten percent of the replies I did get were from girls who were under-age . . . But the other ninety percent came from girls who were under observation.
I don't know. Maybe I made the requirements a little too tough. I asked for charm, poise, ability and personality and an oil well. "That is a little demanding of me. So, just forget about the charm, poise, ability and personality. And, the oil well doesn't have to be brand new. All I want, girls ... is a gushing bride.

Bob went on to a fairly steady career on television on game and panel shows into the early ‘60s before packing up his little poodle and relocating to California and a late-night show on KFI radio. He never really made the transition to colour TV; his career was mainly in the black-and-white era. I enjoyed watching him and it’s a shame he’s not better remembered today. Robert Q. Lewis died in 1991. He never did find a wife.

The Q Stands For Quick, Fill In

Imagine you’re 24 years old, have been doing a 15-minute local morning show for only a few months and suddenly you’re asked to make your network debut on a half-hour evening variety show.

That’s what happened to Robert Q. Lewis.

To me, at about age six, Robert Q. was the guy who suddenly replaced Merv Griffin as the host of the game show “Play Your Hunch.” What I didn’t know, being a kid and all, was that Lewis had probably gone through more shows than anyone else at the time. Radio and TV listings through the late ‘40s and into the ‘50s show a revolving door of time slots and programmes, none of them seeming to last very long.

Lewis first appeared on WEAF New York on November 20, 1944. Then C.E. Butterfield, veteran radio columnist of the Associated Press, reported the following April 7th:

New York. April 7—(AP)—A new comedy show which NBC believes offers possibilities, steps suddenly onto the network at 7:30 tonight. Assembled almost on the spur of the moment, it is being built around Robert “Q” Lewis, a 24-year-old broadcaster who has been displaying his talent in a local morning series six times a week, under the title “Listen to Lewis”. He is to have the help of Mae Questel, veteran mimic, with variety music coming from the Murphy Sisters and Dave Grupp’s orchestra. His humor, of the Zany Type, depends to a large extent on the use of contrasting voices. The program fills the time given up by the discontinued sponsored, series, The Saint. Lewis insists he inserted the initial “Q” in his name solely for identification purposes.

Actually, the “Lewis” was inserted as well. His real name was Robert Goldberg, born in New York and raised in the Bronx. You wouldn’t know it by his voice; Robert Q. always affected a bit of a cultured tone.

The story doesn’t explain why “The Saint” was suddenly pulled in favour of a non-sponsored show. But Robert Q. lasted until June 2 before his programme was replaced with a dramatic series. Mae Questel continued her career as the cartoon voice of Olive Oyl while Lewis moved back into local radio before another network shot, at CBS, in 1947. Despite what the New York Times declared was “fey humor” the show failed, though Neil Simon and Paddy Chayefsky were among the show’s writers.

CBS kept trying and trying with Lewis (he finally got out of his contract with the network in 1951). New York Herald Tribune radio columnist John Crosby decided Robert Q. was trying, too. This is from the Oakland Tribune, December 24, 1948.

Radio in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis, the strolling minstrel of the Columbia Broadcasting System, is back on a five-week schedule again (not broadcast in west), changing over from a once-a-week show (Sundays). At least that’s the way things sound as this is written. You never quite know where Lewis will be from hour to hour. Lewis has roamed all over CBS, from the Godfrey show to the late shift on the elevators or from Paley to breakfast, as the saying goes.
Either he's getting better or I’m getting less critical or the Christmas season has filled me with unwarranted benevolence. My current opinion, subject to change without notice, is that Robert Q. is a good-natured humorist whose efforts are certainly on the side of the angels.
A CBS press release refers to him as “honest, eager and thesauric” and after pausing briefly to look up “thesauric,” I feel inclined to agree with that description. The fact there’s no such word as “thesauric” either in Webster or Funk and Wagnalls hasn’t swayed me. There should be such an adjective, meaning encyclopedic, or full of largely useless information.
PLEASANT PIXIE
At any rate—to get this back into English—Lewis is a pleasant pixie who, I’ve always felt, worked a little too hard at being natural. He used to strain so widely at being casual he made me nervous which is hardly the idea. Lately he’s succeeded at informality, a difficult business, and the listeners can relax. His is a friendly, unassuming, largely satiric humor which ranges in quality from excellent to terrible—a wide range. Here’s Lewis concerning his Christmas show which took place last Sunday, the night of New York’s third largest snowfall. “Either it’s snowing outside or the Rinso people are overdoing it. This is our Christmas show and there’s no one in the studio except reindeer. I was hoping to have my favorite carol on it but Madeleine was busy.”
Lewis likes to poke gentle fun at Christmas customs, guest stars, announcers, capital gains deals, or anything else that happens to be on the back pages of the newspapers, leaving the front pages for the more eminent authorities like Gabriel Heatter.
GIRL PROBLEMS
He has a rather special attitude toward girls. Most of his girl friends seem to be homicidal maniacs of grotesque proportions. “We sat on George Washington Bridge and you dangled your feet in the water.”
For a long while there was a nasal girl named Ruthie who called him up every broadcast and confused him. This sort of routine: “Hello, Ruthie?” “Speaking.” “'What?” “What number you calling?” “You called me.”
He has no armor against puns, falling victim to almost any pun: “I dropped in to say hello to the High Lama. I said ‘Hi, Lama’. He has a cute girl—Lama Turner.” Lewis also suffers from self-deprecation, a weakness of all radio comedians. Many of their complaints sound too authentic to be funny. “I was practising my singing this morning. The canary threw himself to the cat.”
BURSTS INTO SONG
When he isn’t making jokes, he bursts into song, plays the slide whistle, heckles his announcer or does everything but turn somersaults in an effort to amuse—which indicates a nice generosity of spirit. As a singer, he is hard to define—falling somewhere between Helen Kane and Ted Lewis. In other words, cute, monotonous and vaguely ineffable.
His choice of songs is rather odd, too. He likes to sing some of the fact there’s a girl snail for every boy snail, a girl quail for every boy quail, a girl whale for every boy whale but there isn’t one for him.
Besides Lewis you’ll find Howard Smith’s orchestra, which sounds a little like 1922 Paul Whiteman, and the Ames Brothers, an excellent quartette, which spells the head man now and then but not often.

CBS hoped to move Robert Q. into television in May 1949 with a revue format but, instead, made him the summer replacement for Arthur Godfrey on the Chesterfield show. That began his career as the number one back-up host on TV. He finally got his own show on January 19, 1950, replacing “Film Theatre.” Here’s Crosby again, from February 20, 1950, saving his biggest dig for owners of nightclubs.

Television in Review
By JOHN CROSBY
Robert Q. Lewis claims his middle initial doesn’t stand for anything in particular. My own theory is that it stands for Quo as in “Quo Vadis.” “Whither Lewis?” people keep asking me. I snap back that I have no idea whither Lewis is headed or whither he’ll get there. (You can’t hang around Robert Q. Lewis very long without becoming afflicted with puns.)
Robert Quo has done about everything over at CBS except play Ma Perkins. His most recent venture is “The Show Goes On” which CBS rather too generously distributes both on television and on radio. On television, it’s an hour (not in West); on radio, the program is wisely pruned to half an hour (KCBS, 8:30 p.m., PST Fridays). If you don’t possess either a television set or a radio, drop in on CBS. He runs six of the elevators there. And in his spare time he took over all of Arthur Godfrey’s manifold duties while Godfrey was in Florida. There’s no money in it but he's getting lots of experience. (He hasn’t time to spend money, anyhow.)
BUYERS ON HAND
“The Show Must Go On,” to get down to it, is a switch on Godfrey’s Talent Scouts and on all the other amateur or semi-pro programs where the talent displays its wares in an effort to get jobs. Here, talent buyers, eager to give jobs away, are on hand. Lewis has rounded up the talent or what passes for talent. The talent does its stuff. The talent buyers shudder or smack their lips, depending on circumstances. Then they either buy the stuff or shrug it off.
To you, it probably sounds quite a lot like the other talent shows. To me, it sounds like a slave market. The buyers—booking agents, night club impressarios, a few Broadway producers—may hire the acrobats on the spot or take a 25-hour option on them. Or say no. No one, to my knowledge, ever says no. If worse comes to worst—and it frequently does—they take a 24-hour option, sneak out the side door and leave the country.
There are several dozen similar shows beating the bushes for talent. Lewis is last man to get a shot and the plumper quail have been brought down before he gets there. Consequently, you are likely to hear a good many, say, girl singers who under normal circumstances would never have got much farther than choir practice.
SEVERAL GOOD ACTS
You'll also hear a couple of good acts. One girl who looked and behaved quite a lot like Judy Garland was hastily snapped up by Ed Sullivan, an exercise of judgment of which I didn’t think him capable. A male comedy team made noises like a newsreel, an act as indescribable as Danny Kaye and almost as funny. For the rest—well, they got to beat those bushes harder.
On television, Robert Q. Lewis looks remarkably like Harold Lloyd, does quite a lot of muggling, double takes and Bob Hopeisms, and still has a lamentable habit of ruining good gags by running past them instead of stopping at the end. (On radio, he still resembles Robert Q. Lewis to a remarkable degree, though he is beginning to calm down a bit, a fortunate thing.)
There is nothing much the matter with “The Show Goes On” except it sounds like too many
other shows. Its greatest contribution, to my mind, is the intimate glimpses one gets of some of the night club owners, sharp-faced little ferrets in pin-striped suits, the sight of whom may keep some of the listeners out of night clubs for the rest of their lives.

“The Show Goes On” went on until December 29, 1951. Sponsor Gillette was unhappy CBS changed its time slot from Thursday to Saturday and cancelled. The show did accomplish something, but not for Robert Q. Billboard of March 25, 1950 reported Tony Bennett’s price tag jumped from about $125 to $750 on the basis of one shot on the show.

Lewis moved on, hosting his own shows or filling in. To show you how television changed, one of Lewis’ guest hosts in 1956 was a young man named Johnny Carson. Before doing “Play Your Hunch” in New York, he was hired in 1961 as a disc jockey by KHJ Los Angeles, arriving in a Rolls-Royce with his white poodle (the Rolls was part of his contract with the station). By 1972, Lewis had been hired by KFI and was opining to the Los Angeles Times that he couldn’t get work in television because he had overexposed himself and programmers thought he was too old. He was two months younger than Bill Cullen, 2½ years younger than Gene Rayburn and seven years younger than Garry Moore. By 1974, he was moved to the all-night show and was reviewing films for the station. He spent time acting in comedies on stage (Las Vegas was one of his venues) but he was a rare sight on television, and his name had become one from the past. It’s a little jarring seeing his face in anything but black and white.

Lewis effected an air of elegance on occasion. He was from an era where the elegant smoked. He sold Chesterfield cigarettes while filling in for Arthur Godfrey. He died of emphysema on December 11, 1991, age 72.

Here’s Robert Q. in one of his fill-in jobs, with a group of young men, a definitive panel and the best announcer in game show history, Johnny Olson. And a package of cigarettes.