Art Linkletter, television host and author of “Kids Say the Darndest Things” has died at the age of 97. Story here.
Childhood Memories…Kids say the Darndest Things…
Rest in peace…
That. 97! I used to watch Art with my grandma when I was a child. Good times. RIP.
Wow. I didn’t even know he was still alive. (But then, I didn’t know David Hedison was still alive either.)
^^
Well, the first part, anyway. I have no idea who David Hedison is, but I guess technically I didn’t know he was still alive.
his smile always made me smile.
Wow…I could’ve sworn he was at least 20 years in the grave.
Kids Say the Darndest Things was probably the first hardcover book I ever read. I still remember the illustrations by Charles Schulz.
And looking at his page on Wikipedia, I see that he shared a July 17 birthday with kaylasmom and Disneyland.
He was in one decent movie I can recommend: Champagne for Caesar, as the MC of a trivia show that Ronald Colman’s proto-doper character defeats in retribution for being dissed by show sponsor Vincent Price.
(Bonus feature: Colman gives Celeste Holm a spanking…off camera, dammit.)
Just yesterday I put on my DVD of the televised opening of Disneyland, hosted by Art. I hoped he would have made it to 100.
My grandfather worked with Art for a little while as his announcer while he hosted a radio show in San Francisco. They got along fine, but Granddad said nobody really liked Art. However, my mom always liked him, and he even got her a Christmas gift, which apparently was a rare thing.
Glad I’m not the only one.
RIP, Art.
Wow…I remember coming home from school and my grandmother would have his "House Party’ on while doing the laundry.
I remember him being on a Tom Snyder show several years ago. He talked about how he, his wife and the Walt Disney’s would vacation together in Europe. Before Disney built Disneyland, he would check out various amusement parks to see what worked and what didn’t. When Disney opened his, he had a prime-time TV show to promote it and asked Linkletter to host. Disney said he couldn’t pay more than scale. Linkletter said he’d do it but since he understood Disney didn’t have someone to run the photography concessionary business at Disneyland, he wanted a 10 year contract to do it. Disney smiled and said “Yes. Now I know why you don’t have an agent. You don’t heed one”.
I knew Linkletter got a concession contract, but I had forgotten what it was for. During the opening show, Linkletter specifically points out the photography shop and gives a little plug for it. Now I know why.
My family used to have a board game called “Life” with a picture of Linkletter on the box and the caption “I heartily endorse this game!” His picture was also on some of the play money included in the game. I wonder how many kids thought he was a former U.S. president.
I have hated that SOB since 1969 and don’t think I can ever forgive his behavior.
In 1969 his 20 year old daughter jumped off a 6 story building to her death and he came out saying it was because of LSD and spent the rest of his life crusading against LSD and other drugs.
But the truth is that there was absolutely no trace of LSD in her system and I remember my friends and I always figured her suicided may have had something to do with the way she was treated by her father.
But no one ever came out and publicly blamed him for her death.
It was a complete lie that she jumped off that buidling due to LSD and here is a link to back that up:
I certainly don’t favor drug use. But at the time, an entire generation were looking for ways to bring more peace and love to the world. They may have been misguided. But it was selfish and pathetic for Linkletter to lie about the cause of her death in an attempt to deflect possible criticism from himself.
To Hell with Linkletter. If there is such a thing as Hell, I hope he enjoys it.
Do you believe in Karma? After his daughter’s suicide, he had two sons who also died.
To be specific about his two sons who died:
“A son, Robert, died in a car accident in 1980. Another son, Jack Linkletter, was 70 when he died of lymphoma in 2007.”
While I wasn’t born until Sept. 1969, I too heard the rumor about his daughter and her death due to LSD when I was a kid.
That said, I am not sure that LSD could actually be found in a post-mortem drug test, as the amount usually ingested is so very miniscule.
Are you certain she wasn’t high when she jumped off the building?
It seems like it is as good of an explanation as her trying to escape an abusive father via suicide, when instead she could have just run off to Haight-Ashbury like several million other kids her age did during that era…
I remember him from watching House Party and the segments with the kids. When I was six, my grandparents sent me a set of Art Linkletter’s Encyclopedias For Kids for Christmas. I think he was the first “famous Canadian” I ever really knew of.
Several years later he did a PSA saying he said some harsh things about his daughter’s death and wanted everyone to lower their voices and urged parents and kids to talk to each other more.
What evidence is there that Diane was abused somehow by her father? And just because they didn’t find any drugs in her doesn’t mean she didn’t have an LSD flashback. And what was so wrong with grief-stricken Art crusading against drugs? Maybe it did some good. I don’t think frying your brain with LSD is a good thing, do you?