Richard Dawson

**Richard Dawson** (born Colin Lionel Emm, 20 November 1932 – 2 June 2012) was a British-American actor, comedian, and game show host and panelist.

He was a regular panelist in *Match Game (1973)*.

## Early Life

Colin Lionel Emm was born in Gosport, Hampshire, England, to Arthur Emm (born 1897) and Josephine Lucy (née Lindsay) Emm (born 1903). His father drove a moving van and his mother worked in a munitions factory. He and his brother, John Leslie Emm, who was five years older, were evacuated as children during World War II to escape the bombing of England's major port cities in the south. In a radio interview with *Hogan's Heroes* co-star Bob Crane, Dawson recounted how this experience severely limited his school attendance, stating that he attended school regularly for only two years.

At age fourteen, he ran away from home to join the British Merchant Navy where he pursued a career in boxing. During 1950 and 1951, he made several passages on the RMS *Mauretania* from Southampton to ports of call including Nassau, The Bahamas, Havana, and New York. Following his discharge from the merchant service, Emm began pursuing a comedy career utilizing the stage name Dickie Dawson; when he reached adulthood, he revised his alias to Richard Dawson, the name which he later legally adopted.

## Career

### Acting

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. In the same year Dawson made a guest appearance in *The Dick Van Dyke Show* Season 2, Episode 27, playing "Racy" Tracy Rattigan, a lecherous flirt who was the summer replacement host for the *Alan Brady Show*.

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, California. He gained fame in the television show *Hogan's Heroes* as Cpl. Peter Newkirk from 1965 to 1971. 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.

### Tonight Show

Dawson was a frequent guest host for Tonight Show host Johnny Carson during the late 1970s. 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. 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 the same night as the crash of American Airlines Flight 191 in Chicago, which killed all 273 people aboard, so it was replaced with a repeat and aired several weeks later.

## Game Shows

Following the cancellation of *Hogan's Heroes*, he 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 in the show's run.

Due to this popularity on *Match Game*, Dawson expressed to Goodson his desire to host a show of his own. In 1975, 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 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* after the 1978–79 season's first week of episodes; and he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Best Game Show Host for his work on *Family Feud*.

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. 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. On the 1985 finale, Dawson explained that he kissed contestants for love and luck, something his mother did with Dawson himself as a child.

## Later Years

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."

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.

Upon Dawson's return, he received a standing ovation after he walked on the set. Afterwards he said, "If you do too much of that, I won't be able to do a show for you because I'll cry." 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 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.

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

## Personal Life

With his first wife, British actress Diana Dors, Dawson had two sons, Mark (born 1960) and Gary (born 27 June 1962). The marriage ended in divorce, and Dawson gained custody of both sons. He had four grandchildren.

Upon retiring, Dawson remained in Beverly Hills, California, where he had lived since 1964. He met his second wife, Gretchen Johnson (born 22 September 1955), when she was a contestant on *Family Feud* in May 1981; they married in 1991. A daughter, Shannon Nicole Dawson, was born in 1990. Dawson announced the birth and showed a picture of his daughter during his inaugural episode of *Feud* in 1994 as he was greeting a contestant who had been a contestant on *Match Game* when he was a panelist. The episode was featured on the 25th anniversary of *Family Feud* as no. 2 on the Game Show Network's top 25 Feud Moments.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Dawson participated in various liberal movements, including the Selma to Montgomery marches and participated in a campaign for George McGovern before the 1972 presidential election.

Dawson used to smoke almost four packs of cigarettes per day, and he could even be seen smoking on some episodes of Match Game and Family Feud. His daughter Shannon got him to stop smoking by 1994, when he was aged 61.

Dawson died aged 79 from complications of esophageal cancer in Los Angeles, California, on 2 June 2012 at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He was interred in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles.