Needles And Pins aired from Sseptember until December 1973 on NBC.
New York City's famous gourmet district was the setting for this situation comedy about Nathan Davidson ( Norman Fell), a manufacturer of women's clothing. Also prominent were Nathan's brother and partner, Harry ( Louis Nye), and his new designer , Wendy ( Deirdre Lenihan), a Nebraska girl adjusting both to life in the big city and the hectic pace of the fashion industry. Featured in the series were Sonia ( Sandra Deel), the bookkeeper and secretary; Charlie ( Bernie Kopell), the firm's salesman; Max ( Larry Gelman), the fabric cutter; Myron ( Alex Henteloff), the pattern maker; and Singer ( Milton Selzer), Nathan's principal competitor.
Louis Nye's Obituary from The New York Times
Louis Nye, 92, Comic Actor and Sidekick to Steve Allen, Dies
By JAMES BARRON
Published: October 11, 2005
Louis Nye, a ubiquitous comedian who became a fixture on early television for playing an unctuous advertising executive in a Steve Allen sendup of Madison Avenue, died on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 92.
Mr. Nye appeared on everything from "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "The Love Boat" to the HBO series "Curb Your Enthusiasm." But he was best known for his work with Steve Allen, whom he met in an elevator and apparently never expected to hear from once he got off.
The call came, though, and soon Mr. Nye was playing Gordon Hathaway, an exuberantly boastful man in a suit and tie who always seemed to be standing on his toes, smiling so brightly that his teeth sparkled as if he were in a toothpaste commercial. Mr. Nye's salutation - "Heigh-ho, Steverino" - became something of a national catchphrase in the 1950's.
Mr. Nye appeared in what were billed as man-in-the-street interviews that Mr. Allen conducted with him and other regulars on the program, including Don Knotts, Bill Dana and Tom Poston.
Mr. Nye was so closely identified with his signature phrase that he recorded an album called "Heigh-Ho, Madison Avenue," which skewered advertising agencies, market research and the post-World War II society made famous by Sloan Wilson's novel "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." On the album, Mr. Nye appeared with a group called the Status Seekers in such songs as "The Gray Flannel Blues," "The Ten Commandments of Madison Avenue (Plus Big Bonus Commandments)" and "The Conspicuous Consumption Cantata." (Exactly how Mr. Nye's shibboleth is spelled is something of a question. When it turned up in the title of one of Mr. Allen's many books, it was "Hi-Ho Steverino!: My Adventures in the Wonderful Wacky World of TV.")
"He was the suave, pretentious, smug country club braggart, that, in spite of the pretentiousness, you had to like because democratic nations like America need people like that to make fun of," said Robert J. Thompson, a professor of media and popular culture at Syracuse University. "Gordon Hathaway was to Steve Allen as Frasier was to Frasier's dad. Frasier was always this guy we liked to dislike for looking down his nose at us."
Mr. Nye was born in Hartford on May 1, 1913, and had, he recalled in a 1995 interview, a mediocre career in school. "I couldn't make the Dramatic Club because my algebra was so bad," he said. After a stint with a troupe called the Hartford Players, he moved to New York, where he was cast in Moss Hart's revue "Winged Victory" during World War II. He also appeared in such shows as "Flahooley" in 1951 and a revival of "Charley's Aunt" that ran for a week in July 1970.
He followed Mr. Allen to California in the late 1950's, appearing in such films as "Sex Kittens Go to College," a 1960 comedy that Leonard Maltin called "shockingly unfunny."
Some of his later roles summoned up the essential elements of the Hathaway character. On "The Beverly Hillbillies," he played Sonny Drysdale, a banker's son. On "The Ann Sothern Show," playing a dentist.
In addition to his son, who lives in San Francisco, he is survived by his wife, Anita.
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