LOS ANGELES — Peter Marshall, the actor and singer turned game show host who played straight to stardom for 16 years on “The Hollywood Squares,” has died. He is 98 years old.
He died Thursday of kidney failure at his home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, reporter Harlan Boll said.
Marshall helped define the smooth, professional, but not-so-serious modern game show host in more than 5,000 episodes of the series that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1981.
But they often approach talk show hosts, and the tic-tac-toe game the contestants play is, in reality, all reason for a good time. The questions Marshall posed to regulars like Paul Lynde, George Gobel and Joan Rivers were designed to be set-ups for joke answers before the real ones followed.
“It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business,” Marshall said in a 2010 interview for the Archives of American Television. “I went in, said ‘Hello star,’ I read the question and laughed. And it paid off a lot.”
“The Hollywood Squares” would become an American cultural institution and make Marshall a household name. It would win four Daytime Emmys for outstanding game show during its run and spawn dozens of international versions and several US reboots. Not only was it a forum for character actors like Charlie Weaver (stage name Cliff Arquette) and Wally Cox, but the show attracted top stars as guests, including Aretha Franklin, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ed Asner. and Janet Leigh.
Marshall has a warm relationship with Weaver, Lynde and others, but says that Gobel, a comedian, actor and variety show host, holds a special place, tweeting in 2021 that “it’s no secret that he is my closest friend in Hollywood Squares and my friend.” Favorite Square of all time!”
Marshall had lived almost all of his life in show business before taking the “Squares” podium at the age of 40.
He has toured with big bands since he was young, has been part of two comedy teams that have appeared in nightclubs and on television, appeared in films as a contract performer for Twentieth Century Fox, and has sung in several Broadway musicals when the opportunity arose. up after Bert Parks, who hosted the pilot, bowed out.
“I’m a singer first, I’m not a game show host,” Marshall told his hometown paper, the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia in 2013, “it’s just a freak accident. I’ve been on Broadway with Julie Harris and I’m going back to Broadway when I auditioned, and I thought it was a few weeks but it turned out to be 16 years.
“The Hollywood Squares” was more strait-laced when it began, but early in the run the producers suggested they write jokes for Lynde, the ever-snarky comic actor who occupied the central square and would become known as Marshall with the show.
The first joke would set the template for years to come:
Marshall: “Paul, why are motorcyclists wearing leather?”
Lynde: “Because the chiffon wrinkle.”
“It changed everything,” Marshall told the TV archive. “I’ve been a straight guy. So, working on comics is easy for me.
Born Ralph Pierre LaCock in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Marshall would move around the country as a child, living in Wheeling and Huntington.
His father died when Marshall was 10, and he would live with his grandfather as his mother and sister, actress Joanne Dru, moved to New York to pursue a career in show business. Marshall would soon join them.
At age 15, he toured as a singer with the Bob Chester Orchestra. He also worked as an NBC Radio pageant and an usher at the Paramount Theatre. He was drafted during World War II and stationed in Italy, where he went on the air as a DJ for Armed Forces Radio. In 1949 he formed a comedy duo with Tommy Noonan, performing in nightclubs, in theaters and on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
He was a film contract player in the 1950s at Twentieth Century Fox, appearing in films including 1959’s “The Rookie” and 1961’s “Swingin’ Along.”
The main role starring him is not in Hollywood, but he will find it in the musical theater.
She starred opposite Chita Rivera in “Bye Bye Birdie” in London’s West End in 1962 – Lynde played the title role in the Broadway version that would be reprized in the film – and played her first Broadway role in “Skyscraper” with Julie. Harris in 1965.
He will also appear in Broadway versions of “High Button Shoes,” “The Music Man” and “42nd Street.”
After “The Hollywood Squares,” Marshall would host several other short-lived game shows, but mostly continued his career as a singing actor, starring in more than 800 performances of “La Cage Aux Folles” on Broadway and on tour, and singing. in the 1983 film version of “Annie.”
He was married three times, the last to Laurie Stewart in 1989.
The couple survived COVID-19 in early 2021. They were hospitalized for several weeks.
Their four children include son Pete LaCock, a professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals. Marshall was also preceded in death by daughters Suzanne and Jaime, son David, 12 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren.