Hugh Malcolm Downs was an American radio and television broadcaster, announcer and programmer; television host; news anchor; TV producer; author; game show host; talk show sidekick; and music composer.
30 Facts About Hugh Downs
2.
Hugh Downs started his career in radio in 1939 and began in live television in 1945 in Chicago, where he became a regular on several nationally broadcast programs over the next decade.
3.
Hugh Downs moved to New York City in 1954, when he was invited to do a program there.
4.
Hugh Downs was born in 1921 in Akron, Ohio, to Edith and Milton Howard Hugh Downs, who worked in business.
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Hugh Downs worked as a radio announcer and program director in 1939 at WLOK in Lima, Ohio, after his first year of college.
6.
Hugh Downs served in the United States Army during World War II in 1943 and then joined the NBC radio network at WMAQ as an announcer in Chicago, where he lived until 1954.
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Hugh Downs can be heard announcing the ground breaking radio show Destination Freedom which told stories of historical and current Black people.
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Hugh Downs then attended Columbia University in New York City from 1955 to 1956.
9.
Hugh Downs made his first television news broadcast in September 1945 from the still-experimental studio of WBKB-TV in Chicago, a station then owned by the Balaban and Katz theater subsidiary of Paramount Pictures.
10.
Hugh Downs later recalled that when he went for his first job, he had never seen a television before, and he was unsure whether television would last.
11.
Hugh Downs became a television regular in 1950, announcing for Hawkins Falls, the first successful television soap opera, which was sponsored by Lever Brothers' Surf detergent.
12.
Hugh Downs announced the Burr Tillstrom children's show Kukla, Fran and Ollie from the NBC studios at Chicago's Merchandise Mart after the network picked up the program from WBKB.
13.
In March 1954, Hugh Downs moved to New York City to accept a position as announcer for Pat Weaver's The Home Show starring Arlene Francis.
14.
Hugh Downs became a bona fide television "personality" as Jack Paar's announcer on The Tonight Show from mid 1957, when he replaced Franklin Pangborn, until Paar's departure in March 1962, and then continued to announce for The Tonight Show until the summer of 1962, when Ed Herlihy took the announcing reins.
15.
Hugh Downs earned a postgraduate degree in gerontology from Hunter College while he was hosting Over Easy, a PBS television program about aging that aired from 1977 to 1983.
16.
Hugh Downs made a cameo appearance on Family Guy in addition to other television shows.
17.
Hugh Downs was seen in infomercials for Bottom Line Publications, including its World's Greatest Treasury of Health Secrets, as well as one for a personal coach.
18.
Hugh Downs appeared in an infomercial for Where There's a Will There's an A in 2003.
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Hugh Downs appeared in regional public-service announcements in Arizona for the state's Motor Vehicles Division and for Hospice of the Valley, a Phoenix-area non-profit organization specializing in hospice care.
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Hugh Downs produced some public short-form programs in which he served as host of educational interstitials.
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On October 13,2007, Hugh Downs became one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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Hugh Downs was inducted as a Lincoln Laureate in the Lincoln Academy of Illinois and was awarded the Order of Lincoln by the governor of Illinois in 1967.
23.
Hugh Downs was a special consultant to the United Nations for refugee problems from 1961 to 1964, and served as chairman of the board of the United States Committee for UNICEF.
24.
Hugh Downs wrote a column for Science Digest during the 1960s.
25.
Hugh Downs was a science consultant for Westinghouse Laboratories and the Ford Foundation and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Hugh Downs served as chair of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society until 2019 and was a longtime president and chairman of the society's predecessor, the National Space Institute.
27.
Hugh Downs opposed the US war on drugs and appeared in several pieces about the war on drugs and hemp.
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Hugh Downs held a private pilot certificate, and was rated for multi-engine airplanes, single-engine seaplanes, hot air balloons, and glider aerotow.
29.
On July 1,2020, at the age of 99, Hugh Downs died from heart failure at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona.
30.
Hugh Downs was interred at the Christ Church of the Ascension Memory Garden in Paradise Valley, Arizona.