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TOM KENNEDY 2005 Recipient of the Game Show Congress Award for Career Achievement Tom Kennedy, who presided over 16 game shows in a thirty-year network television career, was born Jim Narz Feb. 26, 1927, in Louisville, Ky. Before following his popular brother Jack into a career in radio and television, Jim took a drafting course in high school which appealed to him. “When I first entered the University of Louisville, they said, ‘Down the line, what do you want to do?,’” remembers Kennedy. “They had a School of Engineering and I said I’d be a mechanical engineer. The only reason I said that was because I loved working with triangles and curves in my drafting class. I had no idea what I wanted to do.” Succumbing ultimately to his brother’s overtures to come to California and enter broadcasting school, the young Jim had no thoughts but to finish the course and return to Louisville. He planned to be an announcer/engineer, which made him more marketable to local radio stations. Soon, he realized announcing had more appeal than checking out circuits. Working back in Kentucky, he began to involve the audience on his morning show. “Think about people like Art Linkletter and Ralph Edwards,” he said in an interview. “Wherever they went, they did things to involve the audience. So, I would devise little quiz shows.” After a short stint at KRFU in Columbia, Mo., he returned to Kentucky -- only in Lexington at WKLX. “I was doing a little remote outside of town. I’d cup my hand over my ear and say, ‘From Joyland, in Richmond, Ky., it’s the music of Elliott Lawrence and his orchestra,” he recalls. At the remote, he spotted a young woman dancing with her beau. He called her for a blind date and she turned him down. Eventually Betty Gevedon relented. After a year-long courtship, they were married. An accomplished pianist in a string quartet, Betty had a much more difficult job -- convincing her parents Jimmy Narz was not off his rocker. “They asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘We’re going to go to Hollywood.’ They said, “Give me a break!’” Eventually, Jim saved $200 and with a 1947 Chevrolet he bought from his father, Jim and Betty trekked to California, spending half of their nest egg in the process. Jack provided their first month’s apartment rent as a wedding gift. Jim Narz hooked on as summer relief at KTIL in the San Fernando Valley and eventually subbed for his brother on a series of TV clothing commercials. “For that one shot on TV, I got either $55 or $65 and I’m telling you, I was thrilled to death,” he said. While working with KPOL, a local polka station, he moonlighted as commercial spokesperson for Honey Crust bread and Farmer John. “People would ask me how the old farmer was doing,” Kennedy remembers. “I’d walk down the street and people would yell, ‘There’s the Honey Crust Man!’ Before long, I was a known entity in this town, Jim Narz. It was all because of commercials.” So, how did Jim Narz become Tom Kennedy? All because of a friendly conflict with his brother. Jim earned the contract as the spokesman for the L.A.-area Plymouth dealers at the same time Jack was doing commercials for a rival carmaker. The Plymouth advertising agency executives sensed a confusion with consumers if two Narzes were working for different automakers. Jim was asked if he would consider a professional name change. “For what you’re prepared to pay me,” said Jim, “I’d be happy to consider that.” Several names were tossed around the table and Jim took a liking to the last name Kennedy. At one point, he almost became Rick Kennedy. “Somebody at the table said, ‘Rick could be too confused with Rock and we don’t want to have Rock Kennedy doing our commercials,’” he said. “Eventually, somebody just said, ‘What about Tom Kennedy?’ I said, ‘Fine with me.’ From that day on, I became Tom Kennedy.” The Plymouth deal led to Tom Kennedy becoming the announcer for Plymouth on Betty White’s Date with the Angels sitcom. The job led to a lifelong friendship with White, would play most of Kennedy’s future game shows. In June 1958, a major turning point came for Kennedy. NBC chose him for a summer game show which was an African safari variation on the game of Battleships. The title: Big Game. Opposite The Lawrence Welk Show, Kennedy is convinced few people ever saw the game. “I can’t tell you how bad it was,” he recalled after seeing a rare tape of Big Game. “I don’t know how we even got on the air with that. And I was absolutely pitiful.” A year later, he migrated to ABC for a game which is still one of his favorites. Doctor IQ dated back to network radio and Kennedy would become the last “doctor” on the final television version. With the limited number of ABC affiliates available, Doctor IQ only lasted four months. Kennedy would become announcer for Ralph Edwards’ About Faces and host a local talk show, Sundown. Yet, lasting success was eluding him and he even considered giving up show business until a fateful call in early 1963. A game produced by Ralph Andrews and Bill Yagemann, You Don’t Say!, was already on the air on KTLA and NBC was taking a long look at the show for its afternoon lineup. The game was an improvisational extension of Password, employing sentence clues to identify famous names. “I auditioned and got the job and we got the word we were going on NBC April Fool’s Day in 1963,” he said. “We were going on opposite The Edge of Night (on CBS), which was one of the most popular soaps on television, so even though we had a good game, we didn’t get too optimistic.” By the end of the fifth week, You Don’t Say! scored a 40 percent share of the audience and paved the way for a run of nearly seven years. In 1967, Kennedy and Gene Rayburn became the first two daytime game show emcees ever nominated for an Emmy. Tom Kennedy gave up all thoughts of leaving the business. At the point of his retirement from television in the late 1980s, Kennedy had emceed or served as an announcer on 16 game shows. In the 1970s, he was tapped for two other series which cemented his career as a game show legend. In the spring of 1972, Stefan Hatos and Monty Hall hired him to preside over their Split Second, which was called by one major publication “one of the five great quiz shows of all time.” With its rapid-fire question-and-answer format, its thrilling Countdown Round finish and the end game in which a contestant had to choose from among five cars to find the “hot” one which started, Split Second was a huge midday favorite. Prematurely canceled because of a major purge of ABC’s daytime lineup in 1975, Split Second also remains one of Hall’s personal favorites from his company. In 1974, Kennedy went to work for his former employer, Ralph Edwards. The show, Name That Tune, was a revival of one of television’s biggest favorites of the 1950s. Bill Cullen was one of the show’s three emcees in the original version created by orchestra leader Harry Salter. Its catchphrase, “I can name that tune in __ notes,” became part of Americana. In 1976, renamed The $100,000 Name That Tune, the musical game briefly became television’s biggest single-night money show. “When contestants went into an isolation booth in an attempt to name one tune for $100,000, you saw a master at work,” says Tvgameshows.net webmaster Steve Beverly. “Few emcees have ever been as successful as Tom at both making a contestant going for that much money feel at ease and, yet, build intense drama for the home viewer. That was Tom at his best.” Name That Tune was a stalwart in weekly prime time syndication for seven years, eventually expanding to twice a week. “That show gave me an identity that continues to this day,” said Kennedy in an interview five years ago. “Even today, people will see me and yell, ‘Hey, Tom! I can name that tune in seven notes.’ It’s still fun to hear.” One of Tom’s highlights in the twilight of his network career was when Lucille Ball played Body Language twice during the show’s run. “My mother adored Tom Kennedy,” Lucie Arnaz said at the 50th Anniversary Loving Lucy convention in 2001. Lucy’s Desilu Productions co-owned the original You Don’t Say!. Of the legendary emcee for whom the Game Show Congress Career Achievement Award is named, Kennedy said in an interview with Inside Edition several years ago, “Bill Cullen was my idol. He did it all and he could do any kind of show you asked him to do.” As one of the Narz Boys of Louisville who captivated television viewers over four decades, Tom Kennedy became a good friend and drop-in visitor to millions of viewers who welcomed him daily into their homes. As the co-recipient of the Bill Cullen Lifetime Achievement Award, Kennedy embodied the qualities and sensitivity to people as demonstrated in a textbook fashion by the award’s namesake. Other biography pages Back to home