Ahoy, squirts! Quint here to introduce a very nice obit by regular talkbacker Grammaton Cleric Binks for Mr. Richard Dawson.
As a quasi-GSN addict myself I was saddened to hear of Dawson’s passing. The man was hardly ever sober when making his guest appearances on shows like Match Game or while hosting Family Feud, but goddamn it if he wasn’t having a blast and that laid back fun was incredibly infectious.
My mom actually got to watch a taping of Family Feud back in the day and got the famous Dawson smoocheroo. The man kissed anything without a penis and had no shame about it. Even children. I remember Peter Billingsley telling me a story about doing a kind of celebrity Family Feud (or was it another game show?) with other child actors and how even back then he thought it was creepy that Dawson was kissing the little girls on the mouth.
Kinda creepy, sure, but he was an equal opportunity kisser… old, young, skinny, fat, ugly or pretty… if you were a lady you got a kiss. There’s something kind of awesome about that.
Anyway, he was a unique presence and I’ll miss him, but let’s get to the full obit, shall we?
Top Hundred Answers Are on the Board. Name A Smooth Operator Game Show Host Who Passed Away This Week. Survey Says Richard Dawson.
A tribute by Grammaton Cleric Binks
As most everyone knows by now retired game show host and actor Richard Dawson passed away this weekend at the age of 79. According to published reports he died from a heart attack just three weeks after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer.
The question of who was Richard Dawson really depends on when you were born. I am fortunate to be a child of the seventies, and a teen of the eighties. This means that I saw Star Wars on the big screen the first time around, and I was witness to the glory days of modern action movies.
It also means that to me, at first, Richard Dawson was just some guy who was a panelist on Match Game.
As a kid I actually remember the episode of Match Game where host Gene Rayburn mentions that Richard Dawson will be leaving to host his own game show. Little did he know it would become a nine-year gig of kissing the ladies as The Family Feud ran for nine years with Dawson at the helm.
This was the Richard Dawson I grew up with. He was a smooth operator, and a ladies man. Apparently one day one of the female contestants was nervous, he asked for a kiss for good luck, and the tradition was born.
Dawson was no cad however. He got letters about the kissing, asked the fans if he should stop or not, and with their blessing continued to kiss untold amounts of ladies both young and old throughout the years.
This was parodied countless times, most notably on Saturday Night Live, and on the big screen by John Astin in National Lampoon’s European Vacation. Dawson gave Wilt Chamberlain a run for his money.
How smooth was he? Well Dawson is survived by his wife Gretchen whom he met in 1981 when she was a 27-year-old contestant on his show, and he was a distinguished 49 years old.
Although the show ended in 1985 it was brought back several times in syndication with hosts including Ray Combs, Louie Anderson, and Steve Harvey, but none could ever match the success of Dawson who himself came out of retirement for the 1994 season.
It wasn’t until sometime well into the Feud years that I learned Dawson was more than a game show host. Thanks to the advent of cable television I learned there was a whole other history of Dawson who played cockney Corporal Peter Newkirk for the six-season run on Hogan’s Heroes from 1965 – 1971.
Growing up in a pre-politically correct society I loved to see Dawson and his fellow POWs escape the escape proof Stalag 13 every week, while tormenting bumbling Nazis Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz.
But, for those who grew up in the golden age of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies Dawson is best know for playing totalitarian society game show host Damon Killian in The Running Man.
This was during Arnold’s prime, and it can be argued that this was Jesse Ventura’s best movie with the governator. Yet it was the smooth stylings, and subtle sadism of Dawson that sent this movie over the top.
I wouldn’t even call Killian a parody of Dawson, but more of an extension of what he would be like if he really did host a game show in the future. When you watch The Running Man I would argue that in hindsight it is impossible to imagine anyone else but Dawson, who went out on a high note as this was his last acting role.
But Dawson was not just a man with a microphone, even though he had guest hosted for Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show, and was rumored as a possible replacement. While Hogan’s Heroes was the comedy version of fighting the Nazis, Dawson played one of the Canuck badasses in The Devil’s Brigade alongside the likes of Claude Akins and Cliff Robertson.
Don’t let the kilt or the tighty whitey flash fool you. When the Yanks, and the Canucks join forces at the bar all hell breaks loose.
According to IMDB his career as an actor only spanned 25 years, but what a wonderful quarter of a century it was. Survey says RIP Mr. Dawson.
