Veteran Comic Louis Nye Dies at 92

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RIP Louis Nye

LOS ANGELES // Comedian Louis Nye, who created a national catchphrase belting out "Hi ho, Steverino!" as one of the players on Steve Allen's groundbreaking 1950s TV show, died Sunday at his home in Los Angeles after a long battle with lung cancer. He was 92.


Mr. Nye had worked regularly in nightclubs and on television until just a couple of years ago, his son said. He had a recurring role from 2000 to 2002 in the HBO comedy series Curb Your Enthusiasm.
When he joined Allen's show in 1956, Mr. Nye was already well established as one the era's hippest comics, appearing regularly on radio, in clubs and on early TV shows. A master of voices and accents, he could go from being droll one moment to prissy the next. He could also switch effortlessly from comically evil Nazis to bumbling Russians.

"He has a great business card from that time that lists something like 15 accents that he could do," his son Peter Nye recalled with a chuckle.
On The Steve Allen Show, which ran until 1961 under various names, he quickly endeared himself to audiences as Gordon Hathaway, the effete, country-club snob who would welcome Allen's arrival with the "Hi ho, Steverino!" salutation. Other regulars on the landmark show included comedians Don Knotts, Tom Poston and Bill Dana.

After the show's run ended, Mr. Nye appeared often on TV game shows, in films and as a regular on The Ann Sothern Show. He appeared as Sonny Drysdale in the debut 1960-1961 season of The Beverly Hillbillies. He returned as Sonny for the 1993 TV movie The Legend of the Beverly Hillbillies.
Mr. Nye teamed with Allen again in 1967, on The Steve Allen Comedy Hour, a CBS show in which he also portrayed Gordon Hathaway. In the summer of 1970 he hosted the variety show Happy Days on CBS and three years later co-starred with Norman Fell in the New York garment industry sitcom Needles and Pins. He played Kirby Baker in the 1978 TV show Harper Valley PTA.
Over the years, he also had film roles and made guest appearances on numerous TV shows.

Mr. Nye was born in Hartford, Conn., where he began his career in theater before moving to New York City to enter radio.
The elder Nye once told the Associated Press that when he began his career he had aspirations of being a serious actor. "I still think of myself as an actor," he said in that 1970 interview. "In the radio days, I was busy playing rotten Nazis, rich uncles and emotional juveniles - the whole span - and the only time I tried to be funny was at parties."
 
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