Sorry, but this is the SD. Rayburn started in radio, then was an actor, an announcer, then a game show panelist before he became a host.
Now if you’d said Allen Ludden or Bill Cullen, I would have remained silent. 
So did Sajak, for that matter. Started out as a DJ, got into TV news doing voice-overs, and later as the weather man, before Merv Griffin offered him host of Wheel.
[quote=“kenobi_65, post:95, topic:985401”](…Alex Trebek, Gene Rayburn, Bob Barker, among many others) or retired (Wink Martindale).
[/quote]
Anyone remember Jack Narz??
Tom Kennedy, Jim Perry, Bob Eubanks, there were a lot of game show hosts back in the day.
I remember Chuck Woolery hosting Wheel of Fortune. Anybody else remember who used to turn the letters back then?
Susan Stafford
Of course! The host of (non-classic) Concentration when I watched in the 70s.
He is the brother of the last Password+ hose Tom Kennedy. Just watched an episode yesterday where jack was the celebrity guest, and he and Tom switched roles on a whim.
My favorite was Bert Convy on Super Password. Dumb as a box of hammers. Several times he read the answer on his card out loud even though the match was still in play. I’m surprised the producers didn’t take them away.
He was a celebrity player on Password+ several times. He did OK.
Couple times he plugged his new movie, coming out that year, which he called Cannonball. Either the producers realized after filming that there was already a movie about the same coast-to-coast race called Cannonball, or Burt forgot 50% of the title.
One 70s game show host I liked was this dude, Joe Garagiola. I thought he was a good host. It wasn’t until years later I found he had another previous job that he was also quite good at.
When I was a kid in the '70s, it seemed like NBC used Garagiola for everything. Announcing baseball, hosting Today, guest-hosting the Tonight Show, hosting game shows, etc.
I remember that; I wasn’t really aware of his baseball career.
Joe Garagiola got name-checked in Peanuts quite a few times, probably because Charles Schulz found his name amusing.
Since we’re on Garagiola for a while, he had the best seat for Willie Mays’ “The Catch”.
That’s Garagiola looking out the clubhouse window. He had been traded to the Giants so late in the season that he wasn’t allowed to dress and sit on the bench, he watched the entire Series from the clubhouse.
I never realized he was a real person until now! I wonder if Schulz got his permission to name-check him so often.
(On the other hand, as a professional baseball player he was a public figure, and he was always portrayed in a positive light, so it might not have been necessary.)
Not to be confused with Charlie Brown’s favorite baseball player, Joe Shlabotnik, who is an invention of Schulz.
Joe Gariagiagiaola lived in Scottsdale AZ and often would come down to Diamondbacks games and visit in the booth almost until he died at 90. I was happy to see he wasn’t some old fossil they patronizingly brought in, but he was pretty sharp.
He certainly was more interesting than Randy Johnson, who never met an anecdote that he couldn’t stretch for three or more innings.
As for this thread, don’t forget Pat Sajak was in Airplane! AHHHHHHHHH!
Not to be confused is right…I totally conflated the two.