FILE - In this May 8, 1978 file photo, Richard Dawson, foreground, is
in his familiar role as host of "Family Feud" when the casts of ABC's
comedy series "Eight is Enough," "The Love Boat," "Soap," and "Three's
Company" compete to benefit charity. Dawson, the wisecracking British
entertainer who was among the schemers in the 1960s sitcom "Hogan's
Heroes" and a decade later began kissing thousands of female contestants
as host of the game show "Family Feud" has died. He was 79.
Photo: AP
/ AP
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Dawson,
the wisecracking British entertainer who was among the schemers in the
1960s TV comedy "Hogan's Heroes" and a decade later began kissing
thousands of female contestants as host of the game show "Family Feud"
has died. He was 79.
Dawson, also known to TV fans as the Cockney prisoner-of-war Cpl. Peter Newkirk on "Hogan's Heroes," died Saturday night from complications related to esophageal cancer at Ronald Reagan Memorial Hospital, his son Gary said.
The
game show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted families who
tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What
do people give up when they go on a diet?"
Dawson won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best TV game show host. Tom Shales of The Washington Post
called him "the fastest, brightest and most beguilingly caustic
interlocutor since the late great Groucho bantered and parried on 'You
Bet Your Life.'" The show was so popular it was released as both daytime
and syndicated evening versions.
He was known for kissing each woman contestant, and at the time the show bowed out in 1985, executive producer Howard Felsher estimated that Dawson had kissed "somewhere in the vicinity of 20,000."
"I kissed them for luck and love, that's all," Dawson said at the time.
He reprised his game show character in a much darker mood in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger
film "The Running Man," playing the host of a deadly TV show set in a
totalitarian future, where convicts try to escape as their executioners
stalk them. "Saturday Night Live" mocked him in the 1970s, with Bill Murray portraying him as leering and nasty, even slapping one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.
The
British-born actor already had gained fame as the fast-talking Newkirk
in "Hogan's Heroes," the CBS comedy about prisoners in a Nazi POW camp
who hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves.
Despite its unlikely premise, the show made the ratings top 10 in its first season, 1965-66, and ran until 1971.
Both
"Hogan's Heroes" and "Family Feud" have had a second life in recent
years, the former on DVD reissues and the latter on cable television's
GSN, formerly known as the Game Show Network.
On
Dawson's last "Family Feud" in 1985, the studio audience honored him
with a standing ovation, and he responded: "Please sit down. I have to
do at least 30 minutes of fun and laughter and you make me want to cry."
"I've had the most incredible luck in my career," he told viewers.
"I
never dreamed I would have a job in which so many people could touch me
and I could touch them," he said. That triggered an unexpected laugh.
Producers brought out "The New Family Feud," starring comedian Ray Combs, in 1988. Six years later, Dawson replaced Combs at the helm, but that lasted only one season.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Dawson was born Colin Lionel Emm in 1932 in Gosport, England. His first wife was actress Diana Dors, the blond bombshell who was Britain's answer to Marilyn Monroe.
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