Richard Dawson passed away on Saturday from cancer.
He played Newkirk, the RAF corporal and trickster of the merry band of German POWs known as Hogan’s Heroes. Here he is, in a classic scene where the boys concoct a fake radio broadcast with Newkirk doing an impression of Hitler:
He was also a regular on the game show Match Game (love the wah-wah guitar on that show’s theme song!), where he sat beside Betty White:
He made his mark on game shows as the heavy-on-kissing-the-guests host of Family Feud. Here’s one match from the all-star edition of Family Feud, in which the cast of The Waltons compete against the cast of The Dukes of Hazzard:
That run as one of the biggest game show hosts of the 1980s set him up to be the quintessential 80s “nothing personal, it’s just business” movie villain, Damon Killian, the host of the game show The Running Man. Only Dawson could deliver the only successful comeback to Arnie’s classic threat, “I’ll be back”: he paused for a moment and quietly said “Only in a rerun.”
Requiescat in pace, Mr. Dawson.
In his memory, I’m going to totally kill your productivity today with this — The Running Man, in its entirety. Enjoy, at least until YouTube has to take it down:
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