Durward Kirby

Homer Durward Kirby was born on August 24, 1911, in Covington, Kentucky, to Homer C. Kirby and Alma Haglage. His family relocated to Indianapolis, Indiana, when he was fifteen years old. He completed his secondary education at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis before enrolling at Purdue University to study engineering, a course of study he left to pursue a career as a radio announcer.

Kirby began his broadcasting career in radio, working as an announcer for WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1936. The following year, an Associated Press news story noted that he distinguished himself through his coverage of the Ohio River flood of 1937. He also held positions at radio stations in Chicago and Indianapolis. During World War II, Kirby served in the U.S. Navy. After the war, he co-hosted Club Matinee in Chicago alongside Garry Moore on the NBC Blue radio network and also appeared on the network radio programs Meet Your Navy and Honeymoon in New York.

Kirby transitioned to television in 1949 as an announcer and became a regular presence on Garry Moore's television programs from 1950 to 1968, with the Associated Press identifying his specific periods of work on Moore's show as 1950–1951, 1958–1964, and 1966–1967. In the summer of 1951, he served as host of G.E. Guest House on CBS, stepping into the role after Oscar Levant departed following the third episode. He is particularly remembered for his work on The Garry Moore Show during the 1950s and for co-hosting Candid Camera with Allen Funt from 1961 through 1966. He also served as one of NBC Radio's Monitor "Communicators." In 1967, Carol Burnett recognized Kirby and his wife, Pax, in the live studio audience during the fourth episode of the first season of The Carol Burnett Show, leaving the stage to greet them before returning to complete her monologue.

Kirby's stage work included appearances in summer stock theater, among them three years of productions at the Cherry County Playhouse in Michigan. His Broadway career included the 1965 production Me and Thee.

A versatile performer, Kirby acted in sketches, sang, and danced, and critic John Crosby described him as "one of the most versatile muggers and comedians on the air." One widely noted incident occurred during a live Polaroid commercial in which Kirby forgot to pull the tab after photographing Garry Moore holding his Christmas list. After nearly a minute of prompting from a Polaroid representative in the audience, Kirby pulled so forcefully that he extracted all seven remaining pictures from the camera, bursting the developer pods and tearing through the film pack's stops in the process.

Kirby authored three books: My Life, Those Wonderful Years; Bits and Pieces of This and That; and a children's book titled Dooley Wilson. His name entered popular culture in several forms. The animated series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show featured a fictional hat called the "Kirward Derby," a deliberate misspelling of his name. Jay Ward, the show's producer, offered to pay Kirby to sue him over the reference, but Kirby did not pursue legal action, in part because his business manager noted that a lawsuit would only draw more attention to the program. A button reading "Durward Kirby for President in '64" appeared in the January 1964 edition of Mad magazine. The title track of NRBQ's 1972 album Scraps references him by name, and a season five episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show alluded to his Polaroid commercial mishap. In the 1994 film Pulp Fiction, the character Mia Wallace orders a "Durward Kirby" burger.

On June 15, 1941, Kirby married Mary Paxton Young in Chicago, Illinois. Paxton was a singer and actress in radio. They had two sons: Durward Randall, known as Randy Kirby, an actor born December 5, 1942, and Dennis Paxton, born June 11, 1949. Mary Paxton Kirby died in 1994. Kirby died of congestive heart failure in Fort Myers, Florida, on March 15, 2000, at the age of eighty-eight. He was buried beside his wife in Coburn Cemetery in Fairfield County, Connecticut, where the couple had maintained a summer home.