[Deathwatch] Jack Narz, game-show host, 85

[Deathwatch Central]

Many thanks to a long time reader for the heads-up on this one...

Host of 'Concentration,' Jack Narz dead at 85

Valerie J. Nelson

Friday, October 17, 2008

Jack Narz lost his job during the quiz show scandals when...

Los Angeles -- Jack Narz, the host on "Dotto" when it became one of the
first television programs ensnared in the quiz-show scandals of the
1950s and who went on to emcee "Concentration" and other game shows,
died Wednesday. He was 85.

Mr. Narz, brother of veteran game-show host Tom Kennedy, died of
complications of a stroke at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a family
spokesman said.

While waiting in line to get tickets for a Broadway show on a Friday
night in 1958, Mr. Narz was paged to a telephone. On the line was a
spokesman for "Dotto" sponsor Colgate-Palmolive, who told him that CBS
had determined that the daytime show was rigged and that it would not
air the next Monday. The version that aired nights on NBC also was
pulled.

Mr. Narz was as surprised as anybody by the show's sudden cancellation,
Steve Beverly, a game-show expert and professor of broadcasting at
Union University in Tennessee, said Wednesday.

"Jack was called to give a deposition before the grand jury
investigating. He passed the polygraph test and was completely
exonerated," said Beverly, who became a close friend with Mr. Narz.
Before he testified, Mr. Narz was unaware of the cheating, the
quiz-show host told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview.

"While we were on the air, one of the future contestants on the show
went through a woman's purse in the contestants' dressing room," Mr.
Narz said. "While going through the purse, he discovered someone had
given her some answers."

The cancellation of "Dotto" in August 1958 helped trigger an
investigation of the game-show industry that revealed rigging to be
rampant. Almost all prime-time quiz shows were taken off the air.
Congress held hearings in 1959, and federal regulation of quiz shows
was instituted.

Game-show hosts from that era - including Mr. Narz - were little more
than hired guns who showed up about half an hour before the live
broadcast and ran through the material, Beverly said.

Mr. Narz might have been best known for hosting the mid-1970s remake of
"Concentration," which filmed 195 shows - a season's worth - in nine
weeks.

Among the other game shows Mr. Narz hosted were "Video Village," "Seven
Keys" and a syndicated version of "Beat the Clock" that premiered in
1969.

Mr. Narz was born Nov. 13, 1922, in Louisville, Ky. He served as a
military pilot during World War II.

After military service, he broke in to radio at a station in El Centro
(Imperial County) and worked for several stations before landing a job
as an announcer on television's "Queen for a Day," which led to a spot
on the popular 1950s children's science-fiction program "Space Patrol."


"Narz is fondly remembered by many Baby Boomers as the announcer who
got us to scarf down cereal that tasted like cardboard so we could get
box-top premiums for '25 cents in coin,' " Jean-Noel Bassior, author of
the 2005 book "Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early
Television," said in an e-mail.

Many thanks to Deathwatch Central for posting this obituary