Greatest Hosts of All Time

[TLEberle]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'131864\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 06:08 PM\']Chuck Woolery, perhaps?

What's Tomarken's background?

Jim Perry?
[/quote]Tomarken I think was a magazine writer/editor of some sort, as well as working at an advertising agency.

Perry was a straight man and overnight radio talent before the game show gig.

[Don Howard]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'131864\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 09:08 PM\']
What's Tomarken's background?
Jim Perry?
[/quote]
Peter Tomarken was an actor. The first time I remember seeing him was on an episode of Medical Center.
As for Jim Perry, I believe he was a nightclub singer for a good while, even while hosting Card Sharks, $ale of the Century and Definition.

[Matt Ottinger]

I think it would be impossible to name anybody whose entire career has been exclusively as a game show host.  So what we're really talking about is degrees, and we're all going to draw the line somewhere different.  Chris is right, though, that Barker's career has probably been the most...uh..."gamey".

[chris319]

When you think about it, some of these guys have been extremely lucky in landing shows that have been so long-lived and lucrative (from the emcee's standpoint) that they don't need any other work, save for the occasional endorsement (which requires one day of filming every now and then). They've got their annuities, they've got their mansions in Beverly Hills (or on Outpost Drive) and oodles of leisure time to drive one's pickup truck into a ditch on the way to one's ranch, or to practice karate in case one is attacked by a former disgruntled employee. If some of these guys hadn't been lucky enough to be cast on these shows, they might join other emcees in the limbo land of involuntary retirement and being permanently "between shows".

[cweaver]

[quote name=\'chris319\' post=\'131862\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 07:44 PM\']
He worked in radio management, for WCBS I believe.
[/quote]

As late as 1978 I also heard him doing five-minute features on the CBS radio network, mostly cooking tips and other stuff aimed at women at the time.

[cweaver]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' post=\'131867\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 08:22 PM\']
As for Jim Perry, I believe he was a nightclub singer for a good while, even while hosting Card Sharks, $ale of the Century and Definition.
[/quote]

I'm struck by how many game show hosts had backgrounds that involved music/singing.  This would include Merv Griffin, Groucho Marx ("Captain Spaulding" not to mention vaudeville), Chuck Woolery, Wink Martindale, Peter Marshall, Bobby Van and Monty Hall, just to name a precious few.  I just saw Monty on a couple of old Video Village episodes recently and was surprised at how much singing he did on that show, at one point even doing a duet of "People Will Say We're in Love" from "Oklahoma" with a contestant who was in community theatre.  (And he did the whole song, too, not just a couple of bars.)

The more we discuss this, the more we can see a lot of these hosts are very well-rounded entertainers, perhaps for career survival reasons more than anything.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'chris319\' post=\'131876\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 10:21 PM\']
When you think about it, some of these guys have been extremely lucky in landing shows that have been so long-lived and lucrative (from the emcee's standpoint) that they don't need any other work, save for the occasional endorsement (which requires one day of filming every now and then). [/quote]
You're so right.  I'm always reminded that when Goodson originally re-launched The Price Is Right, the big deal was going to be the weekly syndicated version, and Dennis James, the much bigger star, would be the host of that high-profile gig.  The daytime show would just be a way of drawing more attention to the evening one.

There were doubters when Trebek -- whose previous track record was spotty at best -- signed on to host AND produce the new version of Jeopardy, and there were doubters when Wheel -- an average daytime performer -- went into syndication. Now all three are institutions, and many people here don't remember a TV landscape without them.

Luck is huge.

[chris319]

There were doubters when Trebek -- whose previous track record was spotty at best -- signed on to host AND produce the new version of Jeopardy, and there were doubters when Wheel -- an average daytime performer -- went into syndication. Now all three are institutions, and many people here don't remember a TV landscape without them.

Luck is huge.

Turns out that Merv is the luckiest of all.

[Ian Wallis]

As for Jim Perry, I believe he was a nightclub singer for a good while, even while hosting Card Sharks, $ale of the Century and Definition.

Perry also pulled a Barker and hosted the annual Miss Canada Pageant for several years in the mid '70s.

[Neumms]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' post=\'131861\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 07:35 PM\']
[quote name=\'JasonA1\' post=\'131850\' date=\'Sep 17 2006, 06:13 PM\']
Am I forgetting some major out-of-game-show work he did, or would Allen Ludden fit this bill?
[/quote]
Didn't he work for CBS News in some capacity for a while?
[/quote]

The capacity I've read about is that he advised CBS News on-air personnel on wardrobe. Really.

[Mike Tennant]

I just submitted my list.

I found this one easier to compile in that there were fewer good candidates for the list and that the relative shortness of the list forced me to think more carefully about who should be on it.  Ranking them, as always, is the hard part.

I'm even more interested in seeing the results of this poll than I was in seeing the results of the show poll.  I think there will be more surprises, both in terms of who makes or doesn't make the list and where each one ranks.

[cweaver]

[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' post=\'131928\' date=\'Sep 18 2006, 10:17 AM\']
I just submitted my list.

I found this one easier to compile in that there were fewer good candidates for the list and that the relative shortness of the list forced me to think more carefully about who should be on it.  Ranking them, as always, is the hard part.
[/quote]

I actually found this one harder to compile.  It hurt me to leave off so many deserving hosts,  and when it comes time to reveal our own submissions I'm going to have a long list of "honorable mentions."  But every time I would think of another person I didn't mention before I couldn't find a place to put him/her on the list so I must've really submitted the ones I thought were best.

I even had to leave off my rather obvious choice of "funniest host of all time" because I was judging them as hosts, not as comedians.

[Matt Ottinger]

[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' post=\'131928\' date=\'Sep 18 2006, 11:17 AM\']I found this one easier to compile in that there were fewer good candidates for the list and that the relative shortness of the list forced me to think more carefully about who should be on it.  Ranking them, as always, is the hard part.[/quote]
Comments I've gotten have been divided between yours and other, equally valid comments that say limiting the list to only 20 is too difficult, and it should have been expanded.  While I respect that thought, I think leaving it at twenty sort of forces our hands and makes us select from only the cream of the crop.  

There's no question that when you pick fifty shows, your last few are hardly classics.  However, when you only pick twenty hosts, there are definitely going to be some bigger names that you can't include.  Still, I personally think that overall, limiting the list makes it better. It certainly makes it easier to compile, though that wasn't my reason for doing it.

Not that this has stopped some people.  I just got one of my more unusual entries (no, not Mike's).  Without going into detail, let's just say that there is no longer any host that appears on every list.  And I didn't even recognize two of the names.

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'131931\' date=\'Sep 18 2006, 10:27 AM\']
And I didn't even recognize two of the names.
[/quote]
Oh, do share.

[cmjb13]

So I take it, the next list is best announcers?