 |
|
 |  | |
|
JACK NARZ 2005 Recipient of the Game Show Congress Award for Career Achievement  Jack Narz, whose game show career on network and syndicated television spanned three decades, was born Nov. 13, 1922, in Louisville, Ky.A pilot during World War II, Narz eventually met a publicist who offered to introduce him around Los Angeles. After the war, he migrated to the West Coast and entered a broadcasting school. In an appearance at Game Show Congress 3 in Burbank, Narz said, “I had to work extra hard to get rid of the Southern accent.” In the late 1940s, he began a radio career which incorporated news, commercials, music, and -- as many of his eventual peers in television used as a training ground -- playing games with his audience. In the early 1950s, he earned notoriety in Los Angeles television as “Jack Narz -- the man from Barr’s.” As the on-camera spokesperson for Barr’s Manufacturing, a men’s clothier, Narz appeared three nights a week on KECA. Two popular children’s shows were in Narz’s future. Selected as the announcer for ABC’s live Space Patrol, he awakened at 2 a.m. for the live 4:30 a.m. broadcast to the East Coast. The same show was restaged at 7:30 a.m. for Pacific viewers. In 1951, Narz wrote an indelible piece of history when he narrated the premiere episode of TV’s Superman, detailing how the Man of Steel came to Earth. “My agent called and told me about it. I went over to Glen Glenn Sound and recorded it. I was paid $150. I still get a check every now and then in the mail for $1.98 for the reruns,” Narz said in an interview with Game Show Annual 2000. Throughout the 1950s, Narz was one of television’s most prolific announcer/sidekicks. He was the offscreen narrator of Betty White’s first sitcom, Life with Elizabeth. Bandleader Kay Kyser tapped Narz as his announcer on the TV version of his Kollege of Musical Knowledge, a role Narz repeated in 1954 when Tennessee Ernie Ford took over as host. He also introduced NBC’s The Gisele MacKenzie Show, on which he had a brief stint as a dancer. His most noted role with viewers was in daytime television, where he spent four years as the commercial spokesman and sidekick on The Bob Crosby Show, featuring the popular bandleader, on CBS. He did commercials for Betty Crocker products and occasionally delivered a song in a rich bass voice. In prime time, Narz was the pitchman for Prom home permanents on Ralph Edwards’ Place the Face. When Bill Cullen took over as host, Narz was not only a sidekick. He introduced Cullen to his future wife Ann. The same advertising agency that represented Betty Crocker also had the account for Colgate-Palmolive. The executives liked Narz’s work and tapped him for a daytime quiz show the agency was developing for CBS.   In early 1958, Narz became host of Dotto, a connect-the-dots game of celebrity identification, which quickly became the highest-rated show in the history of daytime television. The show would soon become one of the most historically-significant in the quiz show scandals which rocked television in the late fifties. Dotto was abruptly canceled in August 1958. Narz would quickly be cleared in the subsequent New York grand jury investigation into the scandals and his value as an emcee was not dampened at CBS. The next twenty years brought a variety of game shows to Narz. In 1959, he presided over a daytime version of Top Dollar, a variation of today’s Wheel of Fortune. The following year, he launched one of the best-remembered games of children and young adults of the 1960s, Heatter-Quigley’s first series, Video Village. Employing a living board game inside a fictional city with a town crier (Kenny Williams) and a chuck-a-luck dice cage to move the players, Narz became the show’s first “mayor.” For the remainder of the 1960s, Narz presided over three different styles of game shows. Seven Keys, a prize game, enjoyed a four-year run on ABC and KTLA in Los Angeles. I’ll Bet, a celebrity variation on the Newlywed Game theme, entered the midday lineup on NBC at mid-decade. In 1969, Narz was chosen by Goodson-Todman to revive one of the company’s longest-running favorites, Beat the Clock.In the fall of 1973, Narz became host of the only game show Goodson-Todman produced but did not create -- the television classic, Concentration. The syndicated version would be Narz’s longest-running game, continuing for five years. “We used to do seven shows a day, three days a week, and we’d finish the entire season in nine weeks,” Narz said in a 2000 interview. In 1974, Narz returned to CBS in a variation of the newspaper word search, Now You See It. During its year-long run, he appeared as a celebrity player on the network’s Match Game and Tattletales, the latter on which he substituted as host when emcee Bert Convy played the game with his wife. Narz would also play the Tattletales with his wife Doe. Over the years, his professional path would cross with his brother Jim, better known to viewers as Tom Kennedy. Narz played Kennedy’s You Don’t Say! and Password Plus while Tom enjoyed stints as a player on Jack’s Beat the Clock and I’ll Bet (along with sister-in-law Betty). His final network game show appearance was as the celebrity opponent of soap opera actor Steven Ford on a 1982 edition of Password Plus, during which Narz swapped places with his brother and briefly emceed the game. In a television career which spanned more than 30 years, Narz left an indelible mark with viewers. Once described as “the Perry Como of game shows,” Narz’s smooth style and his ability to adapt to a variety of formats made him one of the most versatile of emcees and a fitting choice to receive the Bill Cullen Career Achievement Award. Jack Narz died October 15, 2008, at the age of 85. Other biography pages 
 
Back to home | ||
 |  |