Honesty Is Collins’ Success Secret

Gary Collins’ afternoon television talk show lacks the gimmicks and hype of some of his competitors, but his audience keeps coming back.

The soft-spoken, easygoing Collins says the secret of his success as a talk-show host is just being himself--riding with the flow.

“I find that there’s a truth that will prevail,” he said, “if you are able to just go with it. By that, I mean you acknowledge what is going on” without trying to control the discussion.

Collins has been successfully acknowledging what is going on for nearly 10 years now, first as host of “Hour Magazine” and now as interlocutor of ABC’s “The Home Show.”

“You see a lot of people on the air who continue to hold an attitude while all hell is breaking loose,” he says. “What I’ve always done is I say, ‘Hey, I’m in trouble here. I might as well let the folks at home know about it.’ ”

One of those tight moments came when he found himself with 12 minutes to fill when the ballots at the “Miss America Pageant” failed to materialize on cue. Instead of vamping for that time, Collins marched to the judges (cameras in tow) and gasped, “What do you mean you don’t have the ballots? How about giving me the runner-up and let me talk to her for 12 minutes?”

The 51-year-old Collins didn’t start out to be Mr. Congeniality. He got into the business on a fluke.

He was performing in some plays in the Army when someone asked if he’d like to audition for radio. He auditioned in France on a Friday. And on Monday, he was winging his way to Frankfurt, West Germany, with the Armed Forces Network.

After the service, Collins tried to find work in radio in Los Angeles. But the competition was unrelenting, and Collins had not really developed a style unique enough for that buyers’ market.

“So I quickly abandoned that and went to work at the May Co.,” he said. There, Collins sold preppy clothes to college freshmen until his acting career got under way.

He tried hosting a couple of daytime TV game shows, but it was his stints on telethons across the U.S. with his wife (former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley) that really taught him his hosting techniques, he says.

The couple have three children, a son, 26, and two daughters, 25 and 21. Of those three, it’s the youngest daughter who wants to be in show business.

That doesn’t bother him, he says. But he has his fingers crossed that she’ll choose a behind-the-camera job.