Louis Nye, 92, Comic Actor and Sidekick to Steve Allen, Dies
NY Times
Louis Nye, a ubiquitous comedian who became a fixture on early television for playing an unctuous advertising executive in a Steve Allen sendup of Madison Avenue, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.
The cause was lung cancer, said his son, Peter.
Mr. Nye appeared on everything from “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Love Boat” to the HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But he was best known for his work with Steve Allen, whom he met in an elevator and apparently never expected to hear from once he got off.
The call came, though, and soon Mr. Nye was playing Gordon Hathaway, an exuberantly boastful man in a suit and tie who always seemed to be standing on his toes, smiling so brightly that his teeth sparkled as if he were in a toothpaste commercial. Mr. Nye’s salutation - “Heigh-ho, Steverino” - became something of a national catchphrase in the 1950’s.
Mr. Nye appeared in what were billed as man-in-the-street interviews that Mr. Allen conducted with him and other regulars on the program, including Don Knotts, Bill Dana and Tom Poston.
Mr. Nye was so closely identified with his signature phrase that he recorded an album called “Heigh-Ho, Madison Avenue,” which skewered advertising agencies, market research and the post-World War II society made famous by Sloan Wilson’s novel “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit.” On the album, Mr. Nye appeared with a group called the Status Seekers in such songs as “The Gray Flannel Blues,” “The Ten Commandments of Madison Avenue (Plus Big Bonus Commandments)” and “The Conspicuous Consumption Cantata.” (Exactly how Mr. Nye’s shibboleth is spelled is something of a question. When it turned up in the title of one of Mr. Allen’s many books, it was “Hi-Ho Steverino!: My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of TV.”)
“He was the suave, pretentious, smug country club braggart, that, in spite of the pretentiousness, you had to like because democratic nations like America need people like that to make fun of,” said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. “Gordon Hathaway was to Steve Allen as Frasier was to Frasier’s dad. Frasier was always this guy we liked to dislike for looking down his nose at us.”
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