Thank You Richard Dawson

Richard Dawson died today. Of all the television figures of the late '70s, he was my most favorite. I returned to Canada from Europe in 1977. For five years I don't remember watching anything but a few hours of bad German TV with the occasion English language show like Space Ghost and Birdman and the Galaxy Trio sprinkled in. Most popular entertainment for me came from armed forces radio or the movies.

So coming back to 13 English channels at a time when that was ALL THE CHANNELS YOU COULD GET, was heaven for a kid like me. I soaked up the syndicated history of television while devouring new shows and old movies from the local Late Late Late Show. There weren't even infomercials yet so the late night hours always had classic movies that ran until dawn. I knew every program that was on every network channel for every day of the week. I was serious about finding only the best entertainment to confuse, occupy and distract MY brain.

Early in his career Richard Dawson was on the show Hogan's Heroes, a WWII prison of war comedy that was very popular in syndication. I watched that show everyday during summer vacation. Right afterwards played the Family Feud, the morning game show that Dawson hosted.



Family Feud pitted ordinary folk against other ordinary folk. Dawson was the master at herding them and prodding answers out of them and making them, frankly, feel like celebrities for a moment. He was infamous for kissing every female contestant on the lips, no matter how unattractive and old they may have been.  These were the days before AIDS and Purel.

Dawson really had a way with the senior ladies. I am sure for the rest of his life he just had to get within ten feet of a nursing home and the girls would be putting on their Sunday best for a ride in his convertible. (I have no idea what that means.)

If all that Richard wasn't enough, he also was a permanent panelist on the most awesome nighttime game show ever - Match Game. Now that program was even better than Hollywood Squares and I LOVED Hollywood Squares.

The premise of Match Game gave Dawson and the other wits on the panel time to show off their shtick. Dawson was the ladies man, of course, but he also had a brilliant way of anticipating the best answers for the phrases host Gene Rayburn began and relished in his genius. I dug his confidence and how entertaining a party guest he must have been in real life. This clip of him losing it during a taping of the show is how I like to remember him, spunky and grouchy. He had every right to be surly, he had been on TV since early morning!



Smart, charming but never smarmy or condescending he entertained me as only a manly European with his fancy turtleneck sweaters and cockney accent can. I am glad I got to search through these clips today because it was fun to remember those times when you could watch TV all day long because the rain or snow kept you from doing anything else. Richard Dawson was a huge part of the fun of that for me.