Jim Backus Collection

Jim Backus
(1913 – 1989)

A great comic actor needs to develop an instinctive sense of comedic timing. There are countless everyday acts which would normally be unremarkable, but do them at just the right time, with just the right amount of flair, and they are hilarious.

When his father sent Jim Backus to become a cadet at the Kentucky Military Institute, the future actor was less than amused by the situation. About the only thing worthwhile he got at KMI was a lifelong friendship with another future actor, Victor Mature, so Jim decided to ride a horse through the cadet mess hall at lunch. He was expelled, of course, but the look on the Commandant's face was hilarious.

Some years later, while filming Androcles and the Lion (1952) Mature remembered that he had to get to downtown Los Angeles so he could sign some legal papers before the close of business. In desperation, he told his friend Jim, who was also in the picture, about the situation. Backus and Mature roared out of the studio parking lot and made it to the attorney's office with just moments to spare. Having accomplished their mission, still in makeup and costume as Roman Legionnaires, they retired to a local watering hole. When the staff tried their best to ignore the strange looking pair, Mature roared: "What's the matter? Don't you serve servicemen in here?"

Jim Backus was born in the exclusive Bratenahl district of Cleveland, Ohio, 1913. His father was a mechanical engineer who didn't quite know what to make of his son's acting aspirations. Those aspirations may have been nurtured by his kindergarten teacher, Ms. Margaret Hamilton, who would go on to play "the Wicked Witch of the West" in MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939). When Jim went out to Hollywood to try his luck in pictures, his father wrote: "Son, go with RKO. That fellow Howard Hughes (the industrial billionaire who then owned the studio) is a great engineer and if anything goes wrong with his pictures you can always work in his plant."

After parting ways with the Kentucky Military Academy, Backus attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, graduating in 1933. He served a short apprenticeship in various stock companies, but life was difficult for a struggling actor in the depths of the Great Depression. He said, "I decided to try radio as a source of livelihood because I like to eat regularly." He began working as a freelance player on the New York Radio Row while still auditioning for Broadway acting jobs. He appeared on a few soap operas, The Kate Smith Hour, CBS Workshop, Great Plays, along with other programs, and got stage work in Hitch Your Wagon, a comedy, and Too Many Heroes, a drama, both in 1937.

Around the turn of the decade, Backus made his way to Hollywood to try his luck in movies. He did not get his first credited movie role until 1949 in Easy Living, supporting Lucille Ball and his friend Victor Mature. In the meantime, he found plenty of work in the Los Angeles radio scene, his most important role being a recurring character on The Alan Young Show, Hubert Updike III. Updike was a comically rich snob with a tenuous grasp of the world the rest of lives in. He insisted that his family had landed at "Cadillac Rock" and threatened to respond to an offensive remark by washing the antagonist's mouth out with domestic champagne. The rich snob would be a troupe that Backus would return to many times during his career.

He expanded his voice acting into animated shorts in the Bugs Bunny film, A-Lad-In His Lamp (1948) as Smokey the Genie, opposite Mel Blanc's Bugs and Caliph Hassan Pfeiffer. The next year he appeared in A Ragtime Bear for UPA animation studios, voicing myopic curmudgeon named Quincy Magoo. Mr. Magoo was eventually be recognized at number 29 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest Cartoon Characters of All Time". As famous as Magoo became, Backus claimed that he hurt his career. "I'd like to bury the old creep and get some good dramatic roles in movies," Backus related. "Every time I start to be a serious actor I lose out because someone--usually a producer--says I'm Magoo."

Backus is best remembered in popular culture for another rich snob character, Thurston Howell III from TV's Gilligan's Island, whom he played in the original series from 1964 to 1967, and in numerous TV movie revivals. His last time in the part was a cameo appearance in The Harlem Globetrotters On Gilligan's Island (1981, poor health kept him from taking a bigger role). He also appeared with Natalie Schafer ("Lovie" Howell, his wife from the series) in an ad for Orville Redenbacher's Popcorn, it would be the last TV appearance for both of them.

By the end of the Seventies, Backus began feeling the effects of Parkinson's Disease. He passed away in 1989 from complications due to pneumonia, he was 76.

A Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1735 Vine St honors contributions to Television by Jim Backus. The Star lies in front of the AVALON Hollywood nightclub.