Word: backus
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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...
...include James Shurtleff, former City Manager of Medford; Frank E. Horack, Jr., professor of Law at Indiana University; Charles Ascher, professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College; C. McKim Norton, executive director of the New York Regional Plan Association; Blucher; and Tugwell. The series is in honor of Frank Backus Williams...
Weightman Pete Harpel turned in the finest performance for the Crimson, placing fourth among a star-studded 16-pound hammer field. American record-holder Harold Connolly unleashed a toss of 201 feet, 1 inch to lead a field which included former record-holder Bob Backus and Stew Thompson, ex-Yale star...