Born in Cooper, Texas, Hornsby attended Hardin Junior College in Wichita Falls for a short time before joining the Marines.
Originally a straightforward pianist, eventually Hornsby's nightclub act, which Life described as "a five-hour marathon of surrealist madness", incorporated rubber alligators, magic tricks, acrobatics, dry ice and a live donkey.
[1] Hornsby's performance, a continuous set during which he was served meals onstage, also featured custom-made props, including a "tickle-tickle" machine, which a United Press article called "a Buck Rogers contraption with red lights, blue dials and green knobs" that fired "a bombardment of tiny rubber cones", which Hornsby would then scoop up with a butterfly net.
On the strength of his act—and an endorsement from Bob Hope—Hornsby was signed to a five-year contract with NBC and was set to host the program that would become Broadway Open House, but he was diagnosed with polio the week before the series was originally scheduled to debut.
Hornsby contracted spinal meningitis while in service, and as Dorothy told The American Weekly, during her frequent visits during his ten-month convalescence in a naval hospital, "we more or less grew to accept the fact that we would be married."