Durward Kirby; Versatile TV Entertainer

Durward Kirby, a versatile TV funny man who for years was a regular on “The Garry Moore Show” and for a time was co-host of “Candid Camera,” has died at age 88.

Kirby died of congestive heart failure Wednesday at Shell Pointe Village Pavilion, a nursing home in Fort Myers in southwest Florida, his son Randall Kirby said Thursday.

Starting out in radio in the Midwest, the tall, blond Kirby teamed up with Moore off and on for 30 years, serving as announcer and performer on Moore’s early, live “Garry Moore Show” on CBS-TV in 1950-51 and on the highly successful variety series of the same name that ran from 1958 to 1964 and in 1966-67.

The Moore show was known for making a star of Carol Burnett and for its nostalgia segments, called “That Wonderful Year.”

From 1961 to 1966, Kirby was co-host of “Candid Camera,” the show created by Allen Funt that secretly filmed unsuspecting people in amusing situations. That show at one point had been a segment of “The Garry Moore Show.” Kirby occasionally took part in the pranks.

Kirby could be a sketch actor, singer or dancer, and switched easily from slapstick to suave sales pitches for sponsors’ products. He became so well known that the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons spoofed him in a plot line about the search for the “Kurward Derby,” a hat that could make its wearer the smartest man in the world.

Called “one of the most versatile muggers and comedians on the air” by critic John Crosby, Kirby said he deliberately sought a wide range of roles.

“I like it this way,” he told The Times in 1963, when he was hosting “Candid Camera” on Sunday nights, serving as Moore’s sidekick on Tuesday nights, and performing in a daily 10-minute radio show, also with Moore. “Ever since I started in broadcasting [in 1934], I’ve tried to avoid being typed. I didn’t want people to say, ‘All he can do is news, or special events, or commercials.’ I like to keep my finger in a variety of things.”

Born in Covington, Ky., Kirby began his broadcast career by chance when he was a student at Purdue University studying to be an aeronautical engineer. He walked by the campus radio station one day and was waylaid to pinch-hit as an announcer.

His college stint led to radio jobs in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Chicago, covering news as well as announcing.

It was in Chicago that he teamed up for the first time with Moore as co-host of a 60-minute daily variety show, “Club Matinee.” In 1950 they began hosting the “Morning Show” on CBS. In 1958 Kirby joined the cast of “The Garry Moore Show.”

Years after retiring as a performer, he told an interviewer that he lamented the passing of live television and the advent of the canned laugh track. “When we did the Moore show, it was taped on Friday night and would be seen the following Tuesday,” he said. “But we did it in front of a live audience and we never went back to correct anything, ever. Nor did we use phony laughs; all the laughs we got, we earned.”

He relished telling about his biggest blooper. He had to announce a new sponsor, the Bond Bread Bakers, an account his station had long sought.

“I said, ‘The Blond Bed Breakers are on the air,’ ” Kirby said. “It’s taken me a long time to live that one down.”

Kirby wrote three books: “My Life, Those Wonderful Years,” “Bits and Pieces of This and That” and the children’s book “Dooley Wilson.”

In addition to Randall, of Studio City, his survivors include son Dennis, of Ossining, N.Y., and three grandsons. His wife, Mary Paxton, died in 1994.