LOS ANGELES — Wink Martindale, the genial host of such hit recreation reveals as “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough” who additionally did one of many first recorded tv interviews with a younger Elvis Presley, has died. He was 91.
Martindale died Tuesday at Eisenhower Well being in Rancho Mirage, Calif., based on his publicist Brian Mayes. Martindale had been battling lymphoma for a 12 months.
“He was doing pretty well up until a couple weeks ago,” Mayes mentioned by cellphone from Nashville.
“Gambit” debuted on the identical day in September 1972 as “The Price is Right” with Bob Barker and “The Joker’s Wild” with Jack Barry.
“From the day it hit the air, ‘Gambit’ spelled winner, and it taught me a basic tenant of any truly successful game show: KISS! Keep It Simple Stupid,” Martindale wrote in his 2000 memoir “Winking at Life.” “Like playing Old Maids as a kid, everybody knows how to play 21, i.e. blackjack.”
“Gambit” had been beating its competitors on NBC and ABC for over two years. However a brand new present debuted in 1975 on NBC known as “Wheel of Fortune.” By December 1976, “Gambit” was off the air and “Wheel of Fortune” turned an establishment that’s nonetheless going sturdy in the present day.
Martindale bounced again in 1978 with “Tic-Tac-Dough,” the basic X’s and O’s recreation on CBS that ran till 1985.
“Overnight I had gone from the outhouse to the penthouse,” he wrote.
He presided over the 88-game successful streak of Navy Lt. Thom McKee, who earned over $300,000 in money and prizes that included eight vehicles, three sailboats and 16 trip journeys. On the time, McKee’s winnings had been a file for a recreation present contestant.
“I love working with contestants, interacting with the audience and to a degree, watching lives change,” Martindale wrote. “Winning a lot of cash can cause that to happen.”
Martindale wrote that producer Dan Enright as soon as informed him that within the seven years he hosted “Tic-Tac-Dough” he gave away over $7 million in money and prizes.
Martindale mentioned his a few years as a radio DJ had been useful to him as a recreation present host as a result of radio requires fixed ad-libs and he realized to deal with virtually any scenario within the spur of the second. He estimated that he hosted almost two dozen recreation reveals throughout his profession.
