In Your Opinion, Who Is The Best Game Show Host Ever?

Bob Barker

Thread closed. Have your pets spayed or neutered.

R1 oh shit I forgot about him.

No one blinked a eye when she said Fag.

R3 I caught that too!

I once read a story on-line about someone going to use an airplane toilet after Gene Rayburn had just exited and the smell was absolutely deadly--I could never, ever see him again without thinking of that story.

Now, neither can you.

R5 yikes

I loved how intense Dick Clark could get on "$10,000 Pyramid." He always got the best and most focused performance possible out of his contestants.

R7 I hated Donny Osmond hosting pyramid

Bob Barker was the best at handling contestants.

Well I'll tell you who would NEVER get my vote: Richard Dawson.

Keep your lips to yourself, Mr. Grabby.

Regis

Sweet

Hot Allen Ludden

Horse hung Peter Tomarken, RIP.

The actor/game show host Burt Convey

R15, you managed to butcher both of your favorite's names. It was Bert Convy.

R16 Damn it I was too lazy to look them up.

Why was the 1973 Cass Elliott doing game shows so soon after her success with the Mamas and Papas?!

If reality programming can be considered game shows, my vote goes to Jeff Probst. He's really good at what he does.

Bob Eubanks.

Monty Hall

Chuck Barris

Peter Marshall

R19 everything counts.

John Charles Daley

Richard Dawson thought he ran everything.

RIP - although he sucked as a host.

R23, did you know that John Charles Daly's FIL was Chief Justice Earl Warren?

Wink Martindale

they brought back Richard Dawson the same time as AIDS and he wasn't allowed to kiss anybody anymore. Which is good because he got fat and ugly.

R28 I read his wife wouldn’t let him. But was that a lie?

R28, on its Reel America broadcast, CSPAN aired last week an industrial film from 1967 that depicted what the typical American home would look like in 1999. Wink Martindale played the father. I believe he was credited with a different first name, maybe Wick. Of course, it bore little resemblance to the reality.

R27, not R28.

R29 I was wrong again.

Every game show host has a signature. For Bob Barker on The Price is Right, it was that skinny microphone. For Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!, it was his iconic mustache. For Richard Dawson on Family Feud, it was kissing nearly every female contestant, either on the mouth or on the cheek. Dawson started doing it in one of the first weeks the show started taping in 1976 to help soothe a nervous contestant. "Here was the rather darling lady about 50 or so and she was so nervous, she was a basket case," he explained. "She didn't want to let her family down but she had no idea at all what to say." And so he did what he said his "mom would do to me whenever I had a problem of any kind. I kissed her on the cheek, and I said, 'that's for luck.' " The woman provided an answer, her family went on to win the game, and kissing became a Dawson tradition.

Executives, however, found it unseemly and tried to get him to stop. According to Dawson's goodbye speech in his final episode of Feud in 1985, they'd apparently received a handful of especially pointed complaints from people who didn't like him kissing women of color. So Dawson asked Feud viewers to write to say if they thought he should drop the smooching. A few hundred wanted him to stop—thousands told him they loved it. However, when Dawson returned to host Family Feud in the 1990s, there was no more kissing of the female contestants. He'd made a promise to his young daughter that he wouldn't kiss anyone other than her mother.

The best current game show host is Family's Feud's Grant Denyer. He is a tiny, hilarious, manic ball of energy. I watch the show just for him.

Aussies know what I'm talking about.

Siblings Jack Narz and Tom Kennedy.

ORIGINAL Jeopardy host Art Fleming

Bud Collyer

Garry Moore

ORIGINAL Price is Right host Bill Cullen

R34, adorable! Like a nice Truman Capote.

- John Daly's private school erudition as host of "What's My Line?"

- Tom Kennedy's smooth direction of the very fast "Split Second"

- Gene Rayburn's cocktail-party host elan of "Match Game"

- Anne Robinson's S&M schoolmarm persona of the original "The Weakest LinK"

I dated a guy who idolized Bill Cullen. He said he fantasized that he was his dad.

R38 oh dear!

I thought Peter Marshall did a great job setting up questions that allowed the panelists on Hollywood Squares to really shine.

Chuck Barris and The Unknown Comic -

R18) I was wondering the same thing.

Most underrated: Jim Perry (the original Cardsharks, Sale of the Century).

He had a good presence without being overly slick and cheesy. And damn how was he able to talk so lightening fast without tripping in that Sale of the Century speed round.

Richard Dawson.

Regis NOT!

Lets not talk about the hosts only, whonwas the favorite model or sidekick?

R46 ok