Up from Jabberjockey

'All I want to be," says dark young Robert Q. Lewis, blinking through a Dretzel-work of horn rims, "is me."

He has good reason: at 26, after only seven weeks on network air, Lewis has become one of the most buzzed-about young comics in radio. He is being shoved into the front rank of radio funnymen by the full fanfare of the Columbia Broad-asting System, which seriously needs more comedians on its program log.

And last week, at a cost of $1,800 a week Columbia handed Lewis costly evening time (Fri. 8:30-8:55 p.m.) for his Little Show plus the scriptwriting services of CBS's Goodman (Easy Aces) Ace. Looking like a stage-frightened "heavy" in a high-school play, young Mr. Lewis confronted his first studio audience. "I love to play an audience as on an instrument," he explains. "Oh, I'm a ham." Last week there was evidence that he still needed practice on his instrument. But there was also evidence that he had a real comic flair, and was profiting from some Ace assistance. Says Lewis: "Goody's scripts have caught the real me."

They also seem to have caught the real Henry Morgan. Last week the Little Show took Morganatic digs at radio's guest stars and soap operas. It also burlesqued a movie review and a lovey-dovey phone conversation, all in the Morgan manner. Protests Lewis: "What's Henry Morgan? He learned from pure radio comedians like Ransom Sherman and Ray Knight. So did I. Naturally we sound somewhat alike."

A Horrible Child. Manhattan-born Robert Lewis began to develop his mike-side manner at ten, when he acquired a record-player and a parlor mike, set up as a disc jockey in the family apartment. Says he: "I was a precocious, horrible child." After the University of Michigan and the Air Force (he was discharged with asthma in 1943), Lewis peddled his funny-bone to several independent New York stations, added the initial Q. "for distinction." In 1944, NBC hired him for a top-o'-the-morning comedy spot, fired him for a scoffing skit about radio's vice presidents.

"Then," says Lewis, absently stroking the absent lapels of his sports jacket, "I had an utter nervous collapse." Some five months later he bobbed up on Manhattan's WHN with a platter-&-patter show. When CBS heard his jabberjockey, he was in.

Robert Q. Lewis now lives in a flossy Manhattan penthouse with an apricot French poodle named Chevrolet. So far he has no sponsor to pay for this high living ("they're nibbling at me, though"), but he is certain that the Little Show will make him: "Someday I'll get so big in radio that some producer will come up to me and ask, 'Have you ever thought of doing a Broadway show?'"

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