Richard Dawson remembered for personal touch hosting TV's 'Family Feud'

Richard Dawson was an actor, comedian, and television game show panelist. But at least for one generation of fans, Richard Dawson will be revered for being the host of TV's 'Family Feud.'

By Frazier Moore, Associated Press / June 4, 2012NEW YORK

Richard Dawson brought a saucy, unabashedly touchy-feely style to TV game shows as host of "Family Feud."The British-born entertainer, who died Saturday in Los Angeles, earlier had made his mark in the unlikely 1960s sitcom hit "Hogan's Heroes," which mined laughs from a Nazi POW camp whose prisoners hoodwink their captors and run the place themselves.

But it is as the kissing, wisecracking quizmaster of "Feud" that he will be remembered.

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The show, which initially ran from 1976 to 1985, pitted a pair of families against each other as they tried to guess the most popular answers to poll questions such as "What do people give up when they go on a diet?"

Dawson made his hearty, soaring pronouncement of the phrase "Survey says..." a national catchphrase among the show's fans.

He won a daytime Emmy Award in 1978 as best 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.

And it was quickly validated by "Saturday Night Live," with Bill Murray in a satirical homage to Dawson as a leering, nasty figure who even slapped one contestant (John Belushi) for getting too fresh.

Not that everyone approved.

In his classic 1981 cultural analysis "Within the Context of No Context," George W.S. Trowidentified "the important moment in the history of television" as the moment when Dawson asked his contestants "to guess what a poll of 100 people had guessed would be the height of the average American woman.

"Guess what they've guessed," sniffed Trow, harping on the meaninglessness of such an enterprise. "Guess what they've guessed the AVERAGE is."

Obviously, "Feud" fans would have feuded with Trow's dismissive attitude.

For one thing, Dawson played the show, and his duties presiding over it, for laughs.

On one episode, he posed this question to a contestant: "During what month of pregnancy does a woman begin to look pregnant?"

She blurted out "September," then, too late, realized this was a ridiculous response.

All the better for Dawson, who couldn't stop laughing — or milking the moment for continued laughs from the audience.

His swaggering, randy manner (and working-bloke's British accent) set him apart from other TV quizmasters, who, more often than not, tempered any boisterous inclinations with defiant smoothness. Not Dawson, who was overtly physical, prone to invading his contestants' personal space — and especially the women, each of whom he kissed without exception.

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.

One of them he kissed was Gretchen Johnson, an attractive young contestant who came on with members of her family in 1981. She and Dawson began dating, and, after a decade together, they wed in 1991. (Dawson is survived by Gretchen and their daughter Shannon, as well as two sons, Mark and Gary, from his first marriage, and four grandchildren.)

"Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak said Dawson's greatest role was playing a game show host.

Richard Dawson dies at 79; host of TV's 'Family Feud'

Dawson was a British actor who appeared in 'Hogan's Heroes.' He went on to host the game show 'Family Feud,' charming female contestants by kissing them on the lips.By Greg Braxton, Los Angeles Times

June 3, 2012, 7:58 p.m.

Richard Dawson, the British actor who went from comedy co-star in the popular TV series "Hogan's Heroes" to his best-known role as the charming host of the TV game show"Family Feud" with his trademark of kissing the female contestants on the lips, has died. He was 79.

Dawson died Saturday at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center from complications related to esophageal cancer. The actor, who had been living in Beverly Hills, was diagnosed with the disease about three weeks ago, said his son Gary.

"The way he was on the game show was the way he was in real life," Gary Dawson said Sunday. "He was always rooting for people — he not only wanted people to win, but to have a comfortable, great experience."

Dawson's easy-going style topped with a Cockney accent were evident in his early films in the 1960s such as "King Rat," "Munster Go Home" and "The Devil's Brigade," while his quick wit distinguished him both as a game show contestant in the 1970s on "Match Game" and "I've Got A Secret," and as a performer on "The New Dick Van Dyke Show" and "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," where he was a regular cast member for two years.

The actor gained much of his popularity with American audiences from "Hogan's Heroes," the CBS series about aWorld War II prisoner-of-war camp that ran from 1965 to 1971. Dawson played Cpl. Peter Newkirk, an expert safecracker who was also adept at picking pockets.

The series was a big hit. "'Hogan's Heroes' lasted longer than the war," Dawson said in a 2009 interview with The Times.

But it was as the original host of "Family Feud," the game show that pits two families against each other in a trivia quiz, that Dawson made his biggest impression. Displaying a smooth and upbeat demeanor, Dawson hosted the ABC daytime version and the first syndicated version from 1976 to 1985. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for his performance in 1978.

Dawson's key gimmick on "Family Feud" was something that had never been done by a game show host, and is seldom seen today — he kissed all the women players on the lips.

His son said the tradition started almost by accident; "There was a girl on the show who was very nervous, and my dad was trying to calm her down. So he said he would give her a kiss for luck, and he did. Then when he went to the next female player, she said, "Well, don't I get a kiss?' That's how it started and it just became this thing."

The kissing also sparked complaints from viewers who said that Dawson was getting a bit too familiar. He finally asked viewers to write in and tell him whether he should discontinue the kissing. "The mail flowed in, and it was overwhelmingly positive that he keep kissing the women," said Gary Dawson.

Dawson later parodied his game-show image in "The Running Man," a 1987 action movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger about a game show in which contestants are forced to fight for their lives. Dawson played Damon Killian, the show's Machiavellian host and creator, and rewrote almost all of his lines in the script.

Wrote film critic Michael Wilmington in a review of "The Running Man": "Dawson makes … a great, howling caricature of vanity and duplicity — and he dominates both show and movie, unctuously strutting, preening, smirking and roaring at the TV studio crowd."

Dawson was born Nov. 20, 1932, in Gosport, England, and joined the merchant marine as a teenager. He began his career as a standup comic in London clubs.

He is survived by his wife, Gretchen, whom he met when she was a contestant on "Family Feud"; their daughter, Shannon; his sons Mark and Gary from his first marriage to actress Diana Dors that ended in divorce; and four grandchildren.