The Straightest Straight Man

He seemed on the verge of big things. After two weeks as replacement for Jack Paar, Announcer Hugh Downs--heretofore a relatively obscure, $140,000-a-year television toiler--last week was making plans and sifting "offers." But first he was off to a TV acting job on the West Coast; he will soon narrate a World Wide 60 show on architecture, and thereafter lead a skindiving squad to the Caribbean in search of sunken treasure. All these projects would not be hurt by his sudden fame on the Paar show, nor would his forthcoming autobiography--Yours Truly, Hugh Downs, or I Look Younger in Person--suffer in sales.

But Hugh Downs may have reached his zenith the night that Paar took the powder. Before Hugh was through (looking straight into the camera, he implored: "Jack, come back"), not a viewer in 5,000,000 could doubt that he had watched a masterful high-wire artist solemnly treading his dangerous way between Paar and NBC. Taking over for Paar was another, even more demanding matter. In the past, affable Hugh served as an excellent, soothing contrast to Paar's suppressed frenzy and suavely spread oil on troubled waters. Without Paar, only the oil remained. Filling in for the boss, Hugh got his own Downs--a carbon copy of himself, Announcer Art James--and his delivery grew positively ebullient. Only when word came earlier that Paar would return to the show was Hugh visibly subdued.

The Reason Why. Son of a Lima, Ohio tire and battery dealer, 39-year-old Hugh has picked up most of his post-high-school education on his own. On the Paar show he has been the resident intellectual with a passion for explaining things. The night of the walkout, Paar displayed a toy that worked with magnets, and Downs followed up with a detailed revelation about the existence of positive and negative magnetic attractions. Once Paar told how he had almost tipped over on water skis, whereupon Downs took two minutes to discourse on the mechanics of water skiing. Paar: "Hugh, when you drown, you'll know the reason why."

At 19 Hugh Downs was program director at Lima's WLOK, moved on to WWJ in Detroit as an announcer before going into the Army in World War II. (He collapsed after a four-week basic training course and got a medical discharge.) During an eleven-year stretch with NBC in Chicago, he got into TV, announced for Kukla, Fran and Ollie, followed that with 894 hours on Arlene Francis' Home show in New York. In addition to his night work on the Paar show, he runs a daytime TV game called Concentration, also has a weekend post on radio's Monitor.

The Faceless Men. His air personality is 100% integrity. He is a master with a commercial; last week Actress Shelley Winters called him a "method announcer," explained: "You really internalize your material." Murmurs Hugh: "If it isn't right taste-wise, I change it." His appeal to women is vast. Although a critic has said that "he looks like everybody's son-in-law, very sincere and stunningly good at nothing," a typical fan letter from Utica, N.Y. said: "Hugh Downs is what we older women think of as the ideal American man."

Much of this evidently irritates Jack Paar, and the two men have had several brushes on the air. (Paar: "I never embarrass people, do I, Hugh?" Downs, softly: "Yes, Jack, you do.") Since Paar, in the words of a onetime buddy, "needs obeisance the way a diabetic needs insulin," Hugh Downs may not be able to go on serving the master indefinitely. But new horizons are beckoning. This week, turning to acting, Hugh Downs is in Hollywood taping an episode in NBC's Riverboat series. Title of the show: The Night of the Faceless Men.

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