The Robert Q. Lewis Centennial

Born 100 years ago today: radio and tv personality Robert Q. Lewis (Robert Goldberg, 1921-1991).

Fairly obscure and forgotten today, Lewis was just as ubiquitous in American pop culture from the ’40s through the ’60s. Those who remember him at all probably remember him as a tv game show host and panelist. He was on To Tell the Truth (as both a guest host and panelist) 85 times, What’s My Line?43 times, and Match Game about 3 dozen times. He hosted several forgotten game shows such as The Name’s the Same, Get the Message, Play Your Hunch, and others. In addition to this, he also hosted his own talk shows and variety programs and specials, however, for he wasn’t just an announcer but also a comedian. He also made appearances on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,Kraft Music Hall,The Ken Murray Show, The Arthur Murray Party,The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Jackie Gleason Show, among others.

Lewis’s background was not unlike that of better remembered figures of his generation like Steve Allen and Ernie Kovacs, who also came out of radio — it just so happens that his best opportunities in the TV era came in the form of game shows. He’d been in radio since he was 10, and hosted all kinds of shows in the medium. He was a disc jockey, he did interviews, he did comedy sketches. His early radio writers included Neil Simon, Goodman Ace, and Paddy Chayefsky, and a regular singer on his radio show was Merv Griffin (who later returned the favor by having him as a guest on his own talk show). The “Q” in his name seems to have come from an ad lib he made while interviewing F.Chase Taylor (Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle of Stoopnagle and Bud), although he gave many humorous explanations for the name over the years). Lewis thrived in radio well into the television era, as late as the early 1970s. He often hosted nostalgia shows where he played old records, like Joe Franklin.

Lewis also had a modest side hustle as an actor in film and television. He guest starred onThe Gale Storm Show, The Patty Duke Show,Bewitched,Love American Style, and Emergency!, and appeared in the movies Good Neighbor Sam (1964), Ski Party (1965), Ride with a Vengeance (1966), How to Success in Business Without Really Trying (1967), C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979) and My Chauffeur (1986). He played himself in the movies An Affair to Remember (1957), and Woody Allen’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972).

His last variety show appearance was on Metromedia’s short-lived show Vaudeville in 1976.

For more on show business history, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous. And please keep an eye out forVaudeville in Your Living Room: A Century of Radio and TV Variety, coming out from Bear Manor Media November, 2023.