Richard Dawson

Dawson began his career in England as a stand-up comedian known as Dickie Dawson.[1] Possibly his first television appearance occurred on 21 June 1954, when he was 21 and was featured on the Benny Hill Showcase, an early BBC Television program focused on "introducing artists and acts new to television." He also had at least four BBC Radio program appearances during 1954, including two bookings on the Midday Music Hall on BBC Home Service and two spots on How Do You Do, a BBC Light Entertainment broadcast billed as "a friendly get-together of Commonwealth artists." In 1958, he appeared alongside his future wife, Diana Dors, on BBC TV's A to Z: D, a program featuring entertainers with names beginning with the letter D. In 1959, he made four appearances on BBC TV's Juke Box Jury, three of them alongside Dors, to whom he was by then married.[9]

On 8 January 1963, Dawson appeared on The Jack Benny Program, season 13, episode 15 as an audience member seated next to Jack, barely recognizable in glasses and false moustache.[10] In the same year Dawson made a guest appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show (season 2, episode 27) playing "Racy" Tracy Rattigan,[11] a lecherous flirt who was the summer replacement host for the Alan Brady Show. He was credited as Dick Dawson. [12]

In 1965, Dawson had a small role at the end of the film King Rat, starring George Segal, playing 1st Recon paratrooper Captain Weaver, sent to liberate allied POWs in a Japanese prison. Dawson had by then moved to Los Angeles. He gained fame in the television show Hogan's Heroes as Cpl. Peter Newkirk from 1965 to 1971.[13] He had a minor role in Universal's Munster, Go Home!. A year later, Dawson released a psychedelic 45 rpm single including the songs "His Children's Parade" and "Apples & Oranges" on Carnation Records. In 1968, Dawson was in the film The Devil's Brigade as Private Hugh McDonald.

Following the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes, Dawson was a regular joke-telling panelist on the short-lived syndicated revival of the game show Can You Top This? in 1970 and joined the cast of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In that same year.

After Laugh-In was cancelled in 1973, game show pioneer Mark Goodson signed Dawson to appear as a regular on Match Game '73, alongside Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly and host Gene Rayburn. Dawson, who had already served a year as panelist for Goodson's revival of I've Got a Secret, proved to be a solid and funny player, and was the frequent choice of contestants to participate in the Head-To-Head Match portion of the show's "Super-Match" bonus round, in which the contestant and a panelist of the contestant's choice had to obtain an exact match to the requested fill-in-the-blank. During Dawson's time on Match Game, he most often occupied the bottom center seat of the panel (he played one week of shows in the top center seat early on in the show's run).

Richard Dawson (host) and contestants on the pilot episode of Family Feud

Due to this popularity on Match Game, Dawson expressed to Goodson his desire to host a show of his own. In 1975, during Dawson's tenure as one of Match Game's regular panelists, Goodson began development on a spin-off game show, Family Feud. Dawson's agent practically demanded that Dawson be considered as host, even threatening that he would instruct Dawson not to display his characteristic wit on Match Game if he was overlooked. Goodson capitulated, and once seeing Dawson's talents as a host, hired Dawson to host Feud, which debuted on 12 July 1976 on ABC's daytime schedule. Family Feud was a break-out hit, eventually surpassing the ratings of Match Game in late 1977. In 1978, Dawson left Match Game due to a combination of the recent introduction of the "Star Wheel", which affected his being selected for the "Head-To-Head Match" portion of the show's "Super Match" bonus round, and of burnout from appearing on both Match Game and Family Feud regularly; and he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Game Show Host for his work on Family Feud.[8] After he left Match Game, his spot on the panel was filled with many other stars, most notably his best friend Bob Barker, who was then the host of The Price is Right.

One of Dawson's trademarks on Family Feud, kissing the female contestants, earned him the nickname "The Kissing Bandit". Television executives repeatedly tried to get him to stop the kissing.[14] After receiving criticism for the practice, he asked viewers to write in and vote on the matter. The mail response resulted in about 200,000 responses, the wide majority of whom were in favor of the kissing.[15] On the 1985 finale, Dawson explained that he kissed contestants for love and luck, something his mother did with Dawson himself as a child.[1][16]

Dawson was a frequent guest host for Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, hosting 14 times during 1979[17] and 1980.[18] Before it was known how much longer Carson's tenure would last (Carson would host the show until 1992), Dawson was a contender for the role of Tonight Show host in the event that Carson left the show, a move that he was seriously considering during 1979–80.[19] Of the few Tonight Show episodes during Carson's time as host that did not air on the night that they were intended, Dawson was a guest host on two of them. During one of these, actress Della Reese suffered a near-fatal aneurysm mid-interview during one taping, and the remainder of the episode was cancelled (Reese later recovered). Another episode featured an untimely monologue regarding the danger of flying on airplanes, so it was replaced with a rerun due to the fact that it would have aired the same night as the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in Chicago, which killed all 273 people aboard. (The episode aired several weeks later.)

Dawson parodied his TV persona in 1987's The Running Man opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger, portraying the evil, egotistical game-show host Damon Killian. He received rave reviews for his performance. Film critic Roger Ebert (who gave the film a thumbs down) wrote, "Playing a character who always seems three-quarters drunk, he chain-smokes his way through backstage planning sessions and then pops up in front of the cameras as a cauldron of false jollity. Working the audience, milking the laughs and the tears, he is not really much different than most genuine game show hosts—and that's the film's private joke."[20]

Dawson hosted an unsold pilot for a revival of the classic game show You Bet Your Life that was to air on NBC in 1988, but the network declined to pick up the show. In 1990, he auditioned to host the syndicated game show Trump Card, but that role went to Jimmy Cefalo.

On 12 September 1994, Dawson returned to the syndicated edition of Family Feud, replacing and succeeding Ray Combs, who had been fired because the show's ratings were spiraling downward. Dawson finished out what became the final season of the show's official second run (1988–95). Ratings for the show were not in good standing, and Family Feud was out of production for the next four years. During the revival, he did not kiss the female contestants because of a promise he had made to his young daughter to kiss only her mother. The final episode aired on 26 May 1995, and then Dawson officially retired. In 1999, he was asked to make a special appearance on the first episode of the current version of Family Feud, but decided to turn down the offer and have no further involvement with the show.[21]

In 2000, Dawson narrated TV's Funniest Game Shows on the Fox network.