NOTABLE DEATHS . . . . SURVEY SAYS . . . .
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| . . . . British Actor and Game Show Host Richard Dawson died in 2012. |
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| From spoofing WWII and Nazis (the first form of mass enterainment ever to do so) in Hogans Heroes to revolutionizing game shows with double entendres on Family Feud to satirizing game shows and TV in Running Man, we grew up with him. |
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| "This is Killian. Get me the Justice Department, Entertainment Division." |
Richard Dawson as Damon Killian in Running Man (1987):
- "This is television, that's all it is. It has nothing to do with people, it's to do with ratings! For fifty years, we've told them what to eat, what to drink, what to wear... for Christ's sake, Ben, don't you understand? Americans love television. They wean their kids on it. Listen. They love game shows, they love wrestling, they love sports and violence. So what do we do? We give 'em *what they want*! We're number one, Ben, that's all that counts, believe me. I've been in the business for thirty years.
- Tony: "The Justice Department's calling every ten minutes."
Damon Killian: "Just give them an evasive answer. Tell them to go fuck themselves."
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| Richard Dawson as Damon Killian (slyly mocking his Family Feud persona): "I want a kiss, now, a big kiss, but remember... no tongues." |
| Richard Dawson as Damon Killian: "It's all part of life's rich pattern, Brenda, and you better fucking get used to it." |
Don't buy my take on Richard Dawson? Here's a New York Times article I found AFTER I wrote the above homage to Richard Dawson.
June 4, 2012, 2:26 pm11 Comments
The Many Masks of Richard Dawson
By NEIL GENZLINGER
Viacom“Hogan’s Heroes” — with, from left, Richard Dawson, Bob Crane, Robert Clary, John Banner and Werner Klemperer — was an early example of the classic group-effort sitcom.
When Richard Dawson first turned up as host of “Family Feud” in 1976, some people might well have done a double-take. “What is this?” they might have asked. “An actor disguised as a game show host?”
Mr. Dawson was a perfect fit for what was in essence an early ensemble-cast sitcom. Though the show had a lead character — Crane’s acerbic Col. Robert E. Hogan — it was a classic group effort, each player a cog so essential that to remove one would be to wreck the machine. It was a template later followed by “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Seinfeld” and others, the seemingly contradictory ensemble comedy with a star.
On the show, which ran six seasons, Mr. Dawson played a specialist in picking pockets, forging documents and so on. But perhaps it’s fitting that his later career on “Family Feud” made fans wonder if he was an actor disguised as a game-show host, because on “Hogan” it was not uncommon to find him trying to create the impression that he was someone else.
In the Season 2 episode “The Swing Shift,” while posing as a German worker for an undercover operation, he is conscripted into the German army and almost ends up as a guard in his own P.O.W. camp. In a Season 5 episode, “Is There a Traitor in the House?,” he has to persuade the Germans that he has decided to become a traitor to the Allied cause. And in “That’s No Lady, That’s My Spy,” from Season 6, he dons a dress and passes for a woman — a decidedly unattractive woman — in a ruse to get hold of desperately needed penicillin.
On “Hogan,” Mr. Dawson was fluid and natural in the ensemble: he never called attention to himself or seemed schticky the way that, say, Jerry Lewis always did when he shifted from stand-up to acting. So that made it all the more surprising when he turned up as “Family Feud” host and was instantly a master of schlock, with the kissing and all. Before long, viewers who stumbled on him doing a guest spot on, say, “The Love Boat” might have flipped the earlier question on its head: “What is this, a game-show host masquerading as an actor?”
Also worth noting is that Mr. Dawson in a sense made “Family Feud” into a “Hogan’s Heroes” of game shows. It had a star — himself, as host — but it was also a game-show version of an ensemble comedy, with the guests as the vital supporting players. Many of its predecessors were dry and inorganic compared with “Feud” — think “What’s My Line?” or “Password.” Mr. Dawson — who knows? maybe drawing on his “Hogan” experiences — seemed to understand that a much more engaging type of game show could be made by turning the host into a ringmaster who readily shared the spotlight.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE . . . .
24 Frames
Movies: Past, present and future
Richard Dawson's movie moment in 'Running Man'
June 3, 2012 | 9:57am
"Family Feud" host and "Match Game" panelist Richard Dawson, who passed away Saturday at 79, put his wry game-show prowess to use on the big screen in the 1987 hit "The Running Man." He played Damon Killian, evil mastermind/host of a 2017 reality survivalist game show called "The Running Man" in which criminals could win their freedom -- if they defeat the heavily armed killers who are guest "stars" on the show.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course, played an innocent man wrongly convicted of a crime who must choose "hard time or prime time." He chooses the latter, obviously, and becomes a contestant who must literally run for his life.
The sci-fi film satirized American entertainment, game shows, law-and-order reality programming and pro wrestling (Jesse Ventura made an appearance in the movie, too -- perhaps one of the few films to star not one but two future governors). In the movie, "The Running Man" show was not just on TV but beamed onto screens the size of billboards to the desperate millions too poor to live inside. (If you're a contemporary fan of "The Hunger Games" and are thinking this all sounds a bit familiar, well, you'd be correct.)
Reviews for the film were mixed to slightly positive, but Dawson drew consistent praise.
Roger Ebert said: "Playing himself, [Dawson] has at last found the role he was born to play. ... Playing a character who always seems three-quarters drunk, Dawson 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 movie's private joke."
TV Guide's reviewer opined: "The sets are fairly simple, the effects are kept to a minimum, the crowd scenes are laughably sparse, the action scenes are repetitive and wholly unimaginative, and director Paul Michael Glaser simply lets his actors flounder. Only Richard Dawson -- brilliantly cast -- redeems this mess with a superior performance."
Click here for a link to the scene in which Dawson sends Schwarzenegger off on his prime-time run for his life.
You'll notice Schwarzenegger reprises his "Terminator" catch-phrase, telling Dawson:
"I'll be back." Dawson, who doesn't expect Schwarzenegger's character to survive the show, quips, "Only in a rerun."
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