Johnny Downs

Downs became a fixture of the "college musical" movie cycle of the late 1930s, usually cast as a team captain or a cheerleader. His movie career declined just after he returned to Hal Roach to star in a 45-minute streamliner feature, All-American Co-Ed. From then on he mainly walked the boards in vaudeville, summer stock, and one solid Broadway hit ("Are You With It"). One of his outstanding cameo appearances is his performance in Rhapsody in Blue where he dances to Robert Alda's piano playing of "Swanee". Downs made a short comeback in doing bit parts in the early 1950s. Despite never making it big, he has almost 100 movie credits to his name.

In the 1950s and early 1960s he hosted a local, after-school kids' television show, The Johnny Downs Show on Channel 10 "KOGO" (call letters) in San Diego, California (KOGO was KFSD prior to 1961). The theme started out as an airport hangar with Downs playing a former World War II, "Johnny Jet". In between reruns of The Little Rascals, Downs entertained and informed his studio audiences and his viewers. After that, it was trains, and he could be seen getting off or on a locomotive at the start and end of a show. As the show changed to feature more Popeye cartoons, his theme changed from being a train engineer to being a boat captain at the San Diego harbor. Read Less