Word: backus
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...voice is pure club-car American, rumbling through bourbon and cigar smoke, shaking with hoarse laughter. It sounds like a man imitating what he once feared he might become: a fat-ribbed salesman for his papa's turbine plant. Rumbles James Gilmore Backus: "I left Cleveland to get away from His and Her towels, people who call cocktail parties 'pours' and the guy who always breaks it up by wearing a lampshade on his head...
Today bushy-browed Comedian Jim (Mr. Magoo) Backus, 45, is one of TV's busiest players, appearing in everything from panel shows to serious drama. The part may be small-last week he was a relatively minor summer-camp counselor on Playhouse go's Free Weekend-but by Hollywood standards, Backus has arrived in a big way. Latest evidence: a lusty new (unghosted) autobiography, Rocks on the Roof (Putnam; $3.50), and a recent automated panegyric on This Is Your Life...
...befits a man who is just as funny offstage as on, Backus loves the irony that he now lives a far more lavish version of what he fled. Though his business manager gives him only $20 a week, Backus expects to earn $125,000 this year. The towels in his Hollywood house are embossed Senor and Senora, his party guests love the lampshade act, and year-round his wife keeps the swimming pool at a decadent 89°. "On cold winter nights," says he, "the steam rising from it causes the place to look like the set of Wuthering Heights...
...Alcatraz. To come full circle, Backus first had to get out of taut Kentucky Military Institute outside Louisville -"an Alcatraz with tuition," where his best pal was "Cadet Slob" Victor Mature. "I predict you'll wind up in the gutter," said the commandant...
...Backus hurtled off to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan, emerged in Depression-ridden 1933 when there were only six plays on Broadway. He ate one daily meal at an actors' soup kitchen, posed for sinister pictures in True Story Magazine. After several lean years, he got steady work in radio soap operas. He soon played in three shows a day at $30 apiece, often did 25 a week...