Trademarks
When appearing "in character" on camera as Gary Owens, the announcer, Owens holds his right hand up to his right ear while speaking into a gimbaled boom microphone. This is done in imitation of the announcers in the early days of radio, who had to rely upon the acoustic feedback of their cupped hand to hear how they sounded to the audience. However, on his KMPC radio show in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he claimed that this was because a piece of shrapnel took off his ear during the war; sometimes he said it would come loose and he had to hold it on; at other times he said that he was given a wooden ear, and was keeping the termites warm.
Owens coined the phrase "Beautiful downtown Burbank" which was later used on Laugh-In and The Tonight Show.
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