Game shows hosts have one of the cushiest jobs in television.
In addition to offering great pay, the high-profile gig allows hosts to be the face of a potentially
huge TV franchise.
However, it turns out there's a dark side to this glitzy world.
Dick Clark helped millions celebrate each December 31st with the annual Dick Clark's
New Year's Rockin' Eve special.
He also used his friendly, approachable charm to help regular people win big bucks playing
word association games on The $25,000 Pyramid.
All of that sprang from his work hosting the venerable American Bandstand from the 1950s
to the 1980s.
Under Clark's guidance, the Philadelphia show became a national showcase for major musical
acts and rising stars.
However, some booking practices on American Bandstand could have derailed Clark's career
not long after it began.
In 1960, the House Committee on Legislative Oversight looked into the "payola" scandal,
a sleazy moment in music history in which it was discovered that broadcasters received
kickbacks and other illegal incentives for giving airtime to preferred singers and bands.
Investigators discovered that Clark had a stake in 33 different music companies, many
of whom got their acts a coveted performance slot on American Bandstand.
That, in turn, drove record sales, leading Clark to secretly and greatly profit.
During his testimony on the "payola" scandal, a defiant Clark told Congress,
"I think the crime I have committed, if any, is that I made a great deal of money in a
short time on little investment."
By the time of his non-apology to the government, Clark had sold off his record label stock,
because American Bandstand's network, ABC, suggested he do so.
He was not punished for his financial misdeeds.
The 1956–58 show Twenty One featured two brainy contestants competing to correctly
answer the toughest questions.
Whoever got to a score of 21 first won.
That's a loose format without a guaranteed winner — on the first episode, both contestants
went on a 17-question losing streak.
Representatives from sponsor Geritol were so upset and ashamed that producer Dan Enright
and host-slash-producer Jack Barry conspired to rig the show to make it more exciting.
Not only did they see to it that contestants were coached, but they also convinced a contestant
to take a fall.
Enright and Barry promised Herbert Stempel a spot on a new quiz show if he'd lose on
purpose to the handsome, TV-friendly college professor Charles Van Doren.
After Stempel attempted to blackmail Enright, the New York State District Attorney's office
discovered the whole charade, busting Twenty One and leading to a series of fairness-minded
rules and regulations TV game shows still adhere to today.
After a period out of the spotlight, Barry returned to producing and hosting game shows,
first in Canada and then in America, on '70s-era hits The Joker's Wild and Break the Bank.
Richard Dawson is one of the most memorable game show hosts of all time because of his
blatant and utter refusal to perform the basic duties required of a game show host.
An expert master of ceremonies is supposed to keep the game moving along, but not Dawson,
who'd wile away large chunks of a Family Feud episode's 30 minutes, chatting up contestants,
telling long stories about his acting days, delivering jokes, and flirting with female
Feud-ers.
And by flirting, we mean kissing.
It was a habit if not ritual for Dawson to deliver a full, on-the-mouth kiss to every
adult woman who just wanted to play the Feud with her relatives.
There's no way that could happen on TV anytime past the 1970s and 1980s — when Dawson hosted
Family Feud.
What audiences didn't see was that Dawson was apparently not so easy-going and carefree.
According to David Baber's Television Game Show Hosts, Dawson was a prickly individual,
arguing with producers over the validity of contestant responses, and his penchant for
stories and jokes were a nightmare for editors because the episodes would routinely run five
minutes too long.
Dawson would also get fired up over minor on-set glitches, like burned-out lightbulbs,
and at one point replaced a Family Feud producer with his own daughter-in-law.
Even if you didn't count his other programs, hosting The Price is Right alone puts Bob
Barker in the leagues of legendary game show hosts.
He started helping excitable people come on down, guess the price of a vacuum cleaner,
play Plinko, or even potentially win a brand new car.
Barker's run as host of The Price is Right began in 1972 and continued all the way to
2007.
His daily sign-off also implored viewers to:
"Help control the pet population, have your pet spayed or neutered."
Barker's love of animals was just one of the ways the host helped signify to viewers that
he was a good guy with a big heart.
However, multiple women who appeared as "Barker's Beauties," the models who presented and showed
off prizes on The Price is Right, would disagree with that statement.
In 1994, longtime cast member Dian ["Diane"] Parkinson filed a sexual harassment lawsuit
against Barker.
According to Time, Barker admitted to having a physical relationship with Parkinson, but
attested that it was consensual.
Barker and his lawyers set out to publicly discredit Parkinson and call her lawsuit into
question, which she dropped, claiming it adversely affected her health.
Fellow Price is Right model Holly Hallstrom reached a settlement on her suit with Barker,
which alleged that she was treated terribly by the host for refusing to criticize Parkinson
in the media, and also that she was fired from the show for gaining weight.
After ABC made primetime game shows hot with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, NBC answered
in 2001 with Weakest Link.
After each round, contestants would vote out one of their own they considered to be the
weakest player, or link, in the chain.
That moment would prompt host Anne Robinson, a stern, stoic British lady, to bark,
"You are the weakest link, goodbye!"
Robinson ended each episode with a playful grin to viewers at home, to show that maybe
she wasn't such a harsh person in real life.
But in October 2017, Robinson, not in character as a game show host, demonstrated a distinct
lack of empathy.
The #MeToo movement had just launched, with proponents seeking to put an end to sexual
harassment and sexually aggressive behavior, particularly in places of employment.
Robinson wasn't impressed.
When she was a younger woman, decades ago, as she told BBC Radio 4, society, quote, "had
a much more robust attitude" to appropriate actions.
Robinson went on to tell the British radio network,
"In my day we gave them a slap, and told them to grow up."
In other words, Robinson publicly engaged in a bit of eye-rolling and victim-blaming.
Chuck Woolery had everything a guy needed to be a successful game show host in the 1980s:
an affable demeanor, a strong but soothing voice, and the ability to fill out a suit.
Woolery was all over daytime TV at the time, as the original host of Wheel of Fortune,
the only host of Scrabble, and the curious cupid at the heart of the confessional video
dating service that called itself Love Connection.
Fully entrenched in the collective American psyche as a friendly, inoffensive guy, it
was a little surprising regardless of one's personal politics when, in the 21st century,
Woolery started telling the world how he really felt about things.
His beliefs fell hard to the right on the conservative side of the spectrum, with some
not entirely aligned with the mainstream Republican philosophy.
According to HuffPost, Woolery appeared on a radio show with former Republican Congressional
representative Michele Bachmann and explained that he didn't think minorities needed civil
rights protections, because all people, regardless of marginalization, already had certain guaranteed
rights.
He also said that everyone experiences bias — even him.
Woolery went on to add,
"I'm discriminated against all the time because I'm old.
I'm too old to get a job as a game show host."
After making a go of it as a matinee idol in '90s big-screen action movies like The
Hunt for Red October and The Shadow, Alec Baldwin reinvented himself as a TV comedy
actor, winning multiple Emmys for his work on 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live.
His latest laughs-oriented small-screen role: hosting the rollicking ABC primetime revival
of Match Game.
While he's a funny guy on television, off-screen, Baldwin has had his moments of intensity.
In 2013, a paparazzo tried to take a photo of Baldwin, prompting the actor to chase them
down and utter a profane, homophobic slur.
In 2014, Baldwin unleashed similar anti-gay profanity in a tweet directed at a former
aide to politician Mitt Romney.
And back in 2007, Baldwin levied his nastiest vitriol at his own daughter.
A voicemail he left for then-11-year-old daughter Ireland Baldwin leaked to the media via TMZ.
She'd missed a phone call from her father, and that got him very upset.
Baldwin screamed at Ireland in the voice message, and even went so far as to call his daughter
a, quote, "thoughtless little pig."
Eager for programming that could be produced from participants' homes during 2020's coronavirus
lockdowns, E! ordered Celebrity Game Face, a game show produced and hosted by Kevin Hart.
According to The Wrap, the show replicates a couples' game night with video conferencing
technology.
There were no same-sex pairings on Celebrity Game Face, which makes sense considering Hart's
history of comments and jokes that could be considered homophobic.
In a 2016 interview with New York radio station Power 105.1, he discussed turning down a role
in the movie Tropic Thunder because the character was gay.
A couple of years later, Hart landed the plum gig of hosting the 2019 Academy Awards, but
then lost it days later when some tweets dating back a few years resurfaced.
In one posting, Hart said that if he ever caught his son playing with his daughter's
dollhouse, he would, quote, "break it over his head."
The Guardian also reminded the world of a part in Hart's 2010 special Seriously Funny,
wherein he mentioned that one of his "biggest fears" is having a gay son.
Family Feud was a smash hit in the '70s and floated along in the decades since with various
hosts.
The show enjoyed a boost in popularity when Steve Harvey — an actor, talk show host,
author, suit aficionado, and Original King of Comedy — began headlining the game in
2010.
It's often the most-watched show in syndication, with Harvey doing his usual schtick of cracking
wise, gently teasing contestants, and holding court.
Behind the scenes, however, Harvey doesn't come across as that welcoming of a guy as
he does on TV.
In 2017, a memo that Harvey emailed to the crew of his daytime talk show leaked to media
outlets, including Robert Feder's Chicago media blog.
In it, Harvey laid out the rules for how underlings were to treat him, writing,
"Do not come to my dressing room unless invited.
[...] Do not approach me while I'm in the makeup chair unless I ask to speak with you
directly."
All of this, Harvey unnecessarily explained, was for the benefit of his, quote, "personal
life and enjoyment."
Harvey later confirmed and defended the memo to ET, telling the program,
"I could not find a way to walk from the stage to my dressing room, to sit in my makeup chair,
to walk from my dressing room to the stage or to just sit and have lunch without somebody
just walking in."
Nick Cannon did what so many of his fellow teen stars couldn't: successfully transition
to a career in the entertainment industry as an adult.
After finding fame on Nickelodeon's kid sketch comedy show All That, Cannon settled into
a career as a comedian and as a host of unconventional game shows, such as MTV's improv comedy standoff
showcase Wild 'n Out and the bizarre Fox mega-hit The Masked Singer.
Of Cannon's many gigs, he lost all of them that fell under the corporate purview of ViacomCBS,
including Wild 'n Out, in 2020 after he delivered anti-Semitic commentary on an episode of his
podcast, Cannon's Class.
According to a statement released through Variety, ViacomCBS personnel thought Cannon's
remarks about how Black people are the, quote, "true Hebrews" and spreading anti-Jewish conspiracy
theories, quote, "promoted hateful speech."
After his expulsion from ViacomCBS, Cannon apologized to his, quote, "Jewish Brothers
and Sisters" via Facebook but then requested the company apologize to him and make things
right.
Cannon wrote on the social media platform,
"I demand full ownership of my billion dollar Wild 'N Out brand that I created, and they
will continue to misuse and destroy without my leadership!
I demand that the hate and back door bullying cease and while we are at it, now that the
truth is out, I demand the Apology!"
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