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 1922-2008 How do you say goodbye to an idol? I've pondered this countless hours in the days since I learned our beloved Jack Narz was about to leave us. Jack, who died Wednesday morning at Cedars-Sinai Hospital of complications from two massive strokes, will probably not go down in entertainment history on the absolute A-list of game show hosts. I don't care. He's an A-list to me and forever will be. Few people remember the first personality whose image stuck with them on a television screen. I vividly do. I was a three-year-old in Columbus, Ga., creating consistent mischief for my mother. At 11:30 every morning, WRBL-TV served up "Dotto." Kids liked it because it was a connect-the-dots game and the electronic sketches of famous personalities were revealed in the same technique as Magic Drawing Board on "Captain Kangaroo." While the heroes for kids my age in that era were usually The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, Sergeant Preston or Wild Bill Hickok, mine was a 35-year-old fellow who didn't fire a six-gun, didn't save damsels in distress and didn't wear a coonskin cap. My hero just gave away money, told me about Colgate Dental Cream and Florient Air Deodorant and often wore white coats. Jack Narz was responsible for getting me in huge trouble 50 years ago. As kids will do, I began mimicking Jack's mannerisms and memorizing his commercial copy. One morning during a "Dotto" break, Jack told us all how Fab was a detergent that would solve all of our washday problems. He promptly poured a box of Fab into a washer. An hour later, shortly after lunch, my mother caught me in front of our garage. I was using a stick for a pretend microphone. I was dressed in the brand new white Easter suit she had just bought me, happily pouring the contents of a box of Fab right onto the concrete driveway. Folks, let me tell you, mothers are patient when their children skin a knee, when they come home with a torn shirt, or when they accidentally break a prized flower. They are anything but patient when their entire box of washing detergent disappears. When she quickly confronted me about my exploits, she demanded to know why I disposed of her Fab. I said, "Jack Narz did it today on 'Dotto.'" She said, "I don't care what Jack Narz did. He needs to be careful about what he's doing if you're going to copy him." Jack was leading me down a road of juvenile delinquency. A few months later, on an August morning, Jack's announcer Ralph Paul appeared on camera at 11:30. We saw no magic celebrity pictures, no Dottograph, no Jack. Said Ralph: "The program, 'Dotto,' normally shown at this time, will no longer be seen. Instead, we bring you 'Top Dollar!'" I was furious. I was even mad at Ralph. My mother used the term "heartbroken." No "Dotto?" Certainly, someone was breaking the law by not bringing me my favorite game show. I didn't want to see this fellow Warren Hull either. He wasn't even the host of the nighttime "Top Dollar," so why were they bringing him on here now? I wouldn't truly comprehend, even when my father read the news in The Columbus Enquirer, that some shenanigans were going on behind the scenes of "Dotto." "It was rigged," my father said one afternoon. "So were a lot of other shows." I didn't know what rigged meant. I would a few years later. When one is three years old, a week can be an eternity, much less 13 weeks. I thought I would never see Jack again. Thirteen weeks after "Dotto" was snatched under the rug from me, here he was again. He came walking out on a big stage as the host of "The New Top Dollar," or at least that was what Ralph Paul called it. That show didn't last very long, either. Pretty soon, I would start kindergarten and be denied the joy of seeing game shows in the morning five days a week. Stupid Johnson School, didn't the people there understand game shows were my priority? Come the summer of 1960, here came my old idol in a white coat and bowtie. Strolling over a bridge, he was cavorting along what looked like a town square. A fellow named Kenny Williams announced him as the "mayor" of the new town of "Video Village." I was mesmerized. So was just about every kid on my block and in my school. This was the perfect show for Jack Narz. He interacted with his daily contestants and guided them through a series of stunts and strategy on the way through three city streets and a finish line. I loved that game. Only a few months later, just before I began a new school year in the second grade, Jack was said to be on vacation from the Village. Another guy named Monty Hall was introduced as the vice mayor. I didn't like this Monty fellow. I would a few years later. Here, he just wasn't Jack. A couple of months later, school was out because of an ice storm. With great anticipation, I turned on our 21-inch Philco black-and-white set at 10:30. The primitive graphics proclaimed VIDEO VILLAGE with MAYOR MONTY HALL. To say the least, I was crestfallen. Jack was gone and I didn't know why. We never saw "Seven Keys" where I lived, so I had to wait four years to see Jack again. When my TV Guide arrived one afternoon in 1964, I saw where Jack was substituting for his brother on "You Don't Say!" Frankly, I had no idea Tom Kennedy was his brother (what are you supposed to think about a guy named Kennedy and another guy named Narz?). Tom was going to play the game with three other celebrities to raise money for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library. That week turned out to be one of the funnniest in the show's rich history. Pat Carroll, Peter Lawford, Abby Dalton and Tom. The hoi polloi of game show panelists. When the name was John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith, all four stood up and, in time, to Rex Koury's marimba-driven band, sang the entire song. Where else do you get that spontaneity on network television today? That was a fleeting glimpse for me of Jack for several years. My town did not receive "I'll Bet" or "The New Beat the Clock." I caught up with him again when I was a sophomore at Valdosta State College. WXIA in Atlanta opted to jettison "What's My Line?" and pick up Jack's new version of "Concentration." That became appointment TV for me, regardless of how tall my study load was on a given night. I re-connected with Jack. He didn't know it. But he was as good as he ever was. My good friend Norm Blumenthal may not have liked the graphic design of the puzzles on this remake of his baby.....but Jack did the show justice. My best friend in life, Jim Blalock, and I celebrated when Jack returned to CBS with "Now You See It." Every time Jim and I would see each other, invariably, we'd say, "Let's Bring on the BIG BOARD!" I'm glad at least some of the younger generation can see Jack's work on "Now You See It" on the GSN reruns. His agent Fred Wostbrock said he had a Dean Martin-like quality to his presentation. He did. He was always so relaxed, almost to the point that he made every action effortless. Pat Carroll, his good friend, said, "Jack was a producer while he was on the set of every show he did. He made everybody feel right at home." Jack told me an amusing story about the day "Now You See It," which was in a dead heat tie with "High Rollers" on NBC, was canceled. His wife Doe was in the control room when she learned of the ax falling. Doe asked, "Who canceled this show?" An associate producer looked at Doe and whispered in capital letters: "FRED SILVERMAN!" Freddy was over nighttime at CBS but he was notorious for superseding his daytime chief Bud Grant when he didn't like a show. For whatever reason, Fred didn't like "Now You See It." So off it went. In the ultimate irony, Jack's longest-running show was his last, "Concentration." I loved the story he told me about how the show was taped. "We went in on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays and taped seven shows a day, 21 a week. One of the reasons we didn't have returning champions was there was a worry that we wouldn't remember who was on what show when," Jack said. "We did the whole season (195 shows) in nine weeks. The last week, we went in a fourth day and did six more. Twenty-seven that week. Try doing that some time. I was ready to hit the golf course when that was over. But you did it all in a little more than two months and the rest of your year was free. As long as the paycheck was steady, that was okay by me." I didn't see Jack again until the closing weeks of "Password Plus," which his brother had ably taken over after Allen Ludden passed away in 1980. The show had already been given its cancellation notice, so Bobby Sherman decided to have a little fun with the last episodes. Jack came on with Steven Ford, son of the former President. Ford was trying his hand as a soap actor and Jack appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself. On the Thursday episode, he did the very thing most of us were hoping he would. He goaded Tom in a bit of pre-arranged hijinks and ended up taking over the show. Tom became the playing partner of Jack's contestant. Once an emcee, always an emcee. Jack slid right back into the role, if just for a day, just as a slipper spoon helps a foot into a tight shoe. For those of you who have never seen it, GSN will run it during the usual "Password Plus" slot (2:30 Eastern/Pacific) next week. It's a keeper. That turned out to be Jack's last network television appearance, save his two interviews on PBS documentaries in the last 16 years. He could still have outhosted many of the younger aspirants combined. Network executives were becoming younger and wanted younger faces fronting their shows. He popped up again in 1992 on PBS's "American Experience" documentary on the quiz scandals. I still show that to my students every year when we examine media ethics. If you go back and study that piece, you'll see an honest, straightforward Jack Narz talking about how the house of cards fell on "Dotto" and many of its big-money brethren. On a trip to Oxnard, Cal., once, Jack told me a lot of what unfolded. "I was in line for tickets to a Broadway show and I was paged to the phone," he told me. On the other end was an executive with the "Dotto" sponsor Colgate-Palmolive. "I was told, 'Don't come in Monday. The show is off the air.' He proceeded to tell me all that had been going on in the past few weeks, the network investigation, and the contestant whose notebook was found on the set with the answers. It didn't take a genius to figure this one out. I had no idea what had been going on because in those days, you did a show live every day, not five in a day on tape. You came in about 45 minutes early, went over the questions for pronunciations, rehearsed the commercials and did the show. When it was over, you went over a few production notes for the next day and then you left. The rest of the day, you were off doing auditions or commercial voiceovers, anything you could. The money wasn't what it is today, so you picked up any additional work you could." I asked Jack if he wondered even for a moment if he'd ever work again in television. "Oh, you better know I did. My whole career flashed before me," he said. "I could envision every producer saying, 'Oh we better not take a chance on him, he was on that show.' Eventually, I had to give a deposition to the grand jury investigators and I had to take a polygraph test. Don't let anybody ever tell you that's not a nerve-wracking experience. I passed the lie detector and I was totally exonerated. But you think I didn't know what this might mean? You bet I did." He was fortunate. Colgate-Palmolive stayed in his corner. "I was told, 'We think you need to lay low for a little while until this blows over. We're going to put in a substitute show, Top Dollar, which was already on at night," he told me. Warren Hull, a show business veteran who had hosted Colgate-Palmolive's "Strike It Rich," agreed to do the show for 13 weeks. "After that time, they reformatted the show as 'The New Top Dollar' and brought me back as the host," Jack said. "I was a little nervous about what the reaction would be but the minute I walked out on the stage, there was a huge roar from the audience and I knew everything was okay." TVgameshows.net started in 1996 as a predominantly nostalgic website devoted to game shows of the past because we had so few on the air at the time. I created a page devoted to "Video Village" and was astounded at the reaction. Seemingly every human being who was between five and 10 years old in 1960 remembered the show and they remembered Jack as the mayor. A couple of years later, after I created a "Name That Tune" historical page, I heard from Jack's son David, one of the great people you'll ever meet. Through David's efforts, I found myself about a week later receiving e-mails from both Jack and Tom, two days apart. Initially, I thought the e-mails were hoaxes. They both demonstrated they were for real. That launched a relationship that has lasted for more than a decade. We grew from e-mail correspondents to acquaintances to friends. Eventually, our communications left behind a lot about game shows and dealt with more personal exchanges. In 2001, I was in Burbank for the 50th anniversary "Loving Lucy" convention. Tom called my hotel room and invited me up to see him and his wife Betty the day after the convention. His big surprise: Jack was picking me up and would be my chauffeur. I almost had to pick myself up off the floor. This old south Georgia boy who grew up idolizing game show hosts was going to spend a day with two of his heroes. Life was truly good. Our day in Oxnard was a joy but I have a lifetime of memories of three hours in the car with Jack that day. We had tons of laughs and he roared at my stories of being a rookie reporter in Columbus, Georgia, covering the Carter family in Plains, including the incomparable Billy. The whole experience was surreal. Three years later, Paul Bailey and Game Show Congress decided to take the organization to Burbank and develop an annual legends event to honor the greats of the genre. Our decision was to establish two awards in the names of Bill Cullen and Ralph Edwards. Tom and Jack had worked for and with both. They graciously came to deliver testimonials on behalf of their former colleagues. Little did they know a conspiracy was in the works. The following year, the event moved to Glendale. I contacted Tom and Jack about an hour apart. The subject: they had been selected as joint recipients of the Cullen Award in 2005. We were not going to take no for an answer. Said Tom: "You are bound and determined to give us a day in our honor. I've never even had so much as a testimonial snack but I'm going to say yes." Said Jack: "Are you sure you know what you're doing? You really want to do this? Well, if you say so, I'll be there." The day turned out to be a Narz family reunion. Nearly 40 members of the Narz clan shared in the day to honor their two patriarchs. I watched with joy as their gathering reminded me of the many Thanksgiving Day reunions my mother's family used to have in Florida. Jack had forgotten his hearing aids, so when the testimonial video ran, he couldn't hear a lot of the narrative. He did laugh at almost every sequence and he could hear enough to know when a group of about 20 of his fans in the rear of the ballroom yelled right along with Johnny Olsen: "NOW.....YOU.....SEE......IT!" Shelley Berman lampooned the admittedly long video and broke the house up and down. Yet, with Jack, Tom and Monty Hall as our three honorees, a choice to cut any more time out would have made a blip out of some of their greatest accomplishments. The picture above, taken about five minutes after GSC4, will be forever one of my cherished keepsakes. The last time I saw Jack was at the next year's GSC when Peter Marshall was honored. He participated in a panel discussion of classic hosts and announcers the day before. He told Stu Shostak, who produced the panel: "I didn't think anybody would have a minute's interest in anything I had to say. I was amazed." Earlier in the day, he stopped in on my annual "State of the Games" address. He told me afterward, "You can talk for 25 minutes about absolutely nothing and make it interesting and make sense." I knew he meant that as the highest of compliments. At the time we were at that 2006 Game Show Congress, we were only three weeks away from losing Jim Blalock. One of the stories I've never told is how Jack lifted Jim's spirits. I had shared with Jack a year earlier that Jim had contracted melanoma and the diagnosis was not good. Jack called Jim not once but twice to encourage him. After each call, Blalock phoned me and he had a new spring in his voice. The fact that one of his boyhood idols would take time to tell him, "Hang in there," meant everything to Jim. Last year, Jack did his final interview: two hours with Stu on his Shokus Internet Radio. Jack was again reluctant. He'd had some health problems and still felt few people would remember him or be interested. He was overwhelmed when the phone lines nearly blew out. When it was over, Jack almost had tears in his eyes at the response people had given him primarily to say thanks for a lifetime of memories. I was aware his health was deteriorating but up until about two months ago, I received at least one or two e-mails a week from him. Some of them were very brief. Others were reacting to some things I'd written with some introspective comments based on his years of experience. He read the early weeks of our new venture, The Daily Game Show Fix. The last e-mail I ever received from him was after the first week's Fix was finished. "You never cease to amaze me," he wrote. It was signed "J." I will never delete that one. The reason Jack Narz probably won't be classified as one of the A-list emcees is he never latched onto a long-running game until the twilight of his career. "Dotto" was snuffed out by a scandal. "Video Village," which may well have been his best performance, was cut short for personal reasons. "Seven Keys" was a good game but ABC had so few affiliates in those days, the game never received widespread exposure. Not until "Concentration," which had a brand name and a grade-A host to carry it on into a second incarnation, did Jack enjoy that long run. By that time, the game was just about over. One of my favorite conversations with Jack was a time when he told me his basic philosophy: "I never took myself very seriously. The minute you do that, you lose all perspective of the importance of other people. I hope that came across. Maybe it did." I will disagree with my idol. No maybes about it, Jack, it did come across. We knew Monday Jack was probably not going to make it but a few days longer. I told my daughter, who had heard my stories about Jack. She said, "I wish I could have met him." I wish she could have, too. Jack Tribute, Part 1 Jack Tribute, Part 2 Jack Tribute, Part 3 Jack Tribute, Part 4 Jack Tribute, Part 5 Jack Tribute, Part 6 TheGameShowFix.com is a non-incorporated news website. The material used is the creation of the webmaster, unless otherwise noted. Use of stillframes from broadcasts is part of fair use news arrangements. Any reproduction or other use of the accounts published here without the expressed written consent of TheGameShowFix.com is strictly prohibited. At no time has TheGameShowFix.com, nor its predecessor, TVgameshows.net ever been offered for public sale, such as in a stock offering or any financial transaction. Any attempt to engage in such practice without the written consent of the website owner is illegal and strictly forbidden. (c) 2008 TVgameshows.net. All Rights Reserved. |