April 18, 2025 • 12 mins
Dr. Bob Thompson has the latest entertainment news including remembering the legacy of Wink Martindale who passed away at the age 91
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Glad you are listening on the Legacy Retirement Group dot
(00:02):
com phone line. It is our usual Friday guest at
this time, doctor Bob Thompson from Syracuse University, Professor of
pop culture, Doctor Bob. We lost a Wink Martindale this way.
It was Monday this week, ninety one years old. Just
a great kind of one of those old school traditional
game show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh yeah, he was about his old school as you
could get right down to that name. You know. An
interesting little coincidence. The day before he died, the Game
Show Network had rebooted Tic Tech Doe, which of course
was Wig Martindale's most successful game show of the twenty
that he did. Wig martin Dale obviously wasn't the host,
(00:44):
but his most famous show had just rebooted the day before,
and then he died. Yeah, but yeah, this guy, he
was a broadcaster, I mean, born in nineteen thirty three,
and at the age of seventeen he went into rapdo
which he kept doing throughout his life. Some of the
(01:04):
latest work he did was that syndicated Rock and Roll
weekly kind of compendium that he did right into twenty
twenty one. He had done that The Music of Your
Life syndicated thing in twenty ten. So he was a
radio guy. He was one of your of the family
and that's how he got started. But most known for
(01:27):
his game shows, which he did twenty of A lot
of them didn't do very well, but Tictac Dough, high Rollers, Gambit.
If you were around during the seventies and eighties, it
was impossible not to have encountered them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I remember tic Tac Dough very well, Gambit a
little bit, and then into the eighties high Rollers and debt.
I think I was probably too cool to watch game
shows at that age.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But yet debt was well into the nineties, as it
really went to ninety eight with an interesting premise. People
would bring like their credit card bills and they'd bring
actual debt and you'd compete to get it paid. Author
was like queen for a day.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Back at the one of my favorite Wink Martindale stories
I read about this. He was a DJ in Memphis
and sort of it in the fifties at WHBQ, and
they were playing one of Elvis' is maybe his very
first record. It was, and they were getting such great
demand and they kept playing it and playing it, playing,
and finally Wink called Elvis's mom and said, hey, is
(02:26):
Elvis there, can he come down to the radio station,
And sure enough, twenty minutes later, here comes Elvis and
it was his very first radio interview.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, that's then. Apparently Elvis didn't know they were on
the air when they did it, and they stayed friends
also in Memphis, Wink with then he did a children
show on TV which was just kind of emerging down there,
called Mars Patrol. And then he did something called Teenage
Dance Party or Teenage Dance Twist or something like that,
(02:56):
and that was in nineteen fifty sixth and he brought
Elvis onto that, which was not Elvis's very first TV appearance,
I don't think, but it was a very early one.
By the way, if you're really interested, Wink Martindale wrote
his memoir in two thousand called Winking at Life, and
if you get the later edition it has new unpublished
Elvis photos in it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Ooh, that could be good. I think you get some
good reading there. You know, you mentioned the Teenage Dance
Party that was kind of like an early version of
American Bandstand with Dick.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Clark, right, and which was almost simultaneously I don't think
Dick Clark started his in fifty seven. Yeah, mistaken, Dick
Clark's and alumni alumnus of Syracuse, I should know that
by exact date. But I think he started in fifty seven.
And yeah, wink, Martindale was doing it in fifty six.
(03:47):
There were a lot of local places doing shows like
that popping up in the late nineteen fifties. They were
cheap and they were it was easy to get local
people to come and be on TV and dance in
the studio.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
By the way, I got in trouble once in radio.
A former boss yelled at me because I put Dick
Clark on hold. He had he had called in to
the radio station to do an interview. They were opening
up a Dick Clark's restaurant here in Columbus, and he
called in and my boss was all nervous about that interview,
and I said, I got it, don't worry about it.
(04:20):
And he came. He wanted They wanted to put him
on immediately, and I told mister Clark, hang on, the
song's about to end. You need to hang on for
about two and a half more minutes. And Dick was
very gracious and said sure, my boss lost his mind.
You don't put Dick Clark on hold you hear me?
What am I supposed to do? Cut the song off?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
No? What I'd really like to know is what song
was playing that was so important that you.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Need to be That's a that's a great trivia question, Bob.
I don't have the answer to that, but it must
not have been anything very good because I speaking with
Bob Thomson, Professor of Pop Cultures, Syracuse. You know, I'm
looking at some of these these classic, these classic game
show hosts. As you know, we think about Wink Martindale,
you know, Chuck Woolery who we lost last year. Of course,
(05:03):
Alex Trebek and Pat say Jack, you know, Bob Barker,
Jean Rayburn. I mean a lot of these guys and
they all a lot of them started in radio too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They did. And I think part of that is that
one of the major job descriptions. This isn't so much
the case now now most game show hosts are coming
from comedians and people that were that kind of thing.
But back then, you you need to have a good voice.
That was kind of what it was. You had to
have those sort of chiseled classic good looks. You had
(05:35):
to be kind of a hail fellow, nice guy. But
the idea was you had to have a good voice.
So they were people coming from radio. Of course their
voice was all that they had to work with, so
that was the that was the thing. It is interesting
though you mentioned, and every one of those you mentioned
we all think of as a classic game show host.
(05:55):
And even though those a lot of those people did
other things. Wing Martindale for example, had done done some
music recording and sold over a million records in a
voice story recording. So a lot of those people have
done some other things. But you don't think of Alan
Ludden or Gene Rayburn or any of those types Bill
(06:17):
Colin as anything but game show hosts. Now, there is
no such thing as coming from you kind of aspiring
to be a game show host and moving up the ladder.
If you want to be a game show host, your
best bet is to get on its sitcom and do it.
But there were so many, and of course they're all
from that era that we've lost most of them now.
(06:39):
But I'm thinking of Bob you Banks, and you know,
you can't imagine him doing much else but hosting a
game like that. Oh, speaking of which, Chuck Barris the
most surrealistic of the whole bunch. Week Martindale did to
Chuck bears shows. He of course did the Gong Show,
(07:00):
Barris did Newly Woold Game, Dating Game, those crazy shows,
and Week Martindale did How's Your Mother in Law? And
Dream Girl of sixty seven, also very weird, surrealistic Barris production.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I love Chuck Barris and the Gong Show. I loved
that and the Unknown Comic and you know Dance Machine.
That's a great song too, that's the theme whatever. I
don't know what song that is that he came out
and danced to and.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Duck would put hats on. I mean that when you
go back and watch that, that was a really really
weird show.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
What I want to know how much they had to
drink or whatever else they did backstage before those shows,
because they couldn't have gone out there and with the
straight I mean some of the celebrities they came out there,
they had to have been partying before that.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
JP Morgan and you know some of we think of
that as JP Morgan and a couple of others. But
David Letterman sat in that judge's chair at one point.
I think Steve Martin might have been. I may be
wrong about that. I know Letterman did. So that show
rotated some interesting people. And then of course there was
the Gong Show movie. And then Barris wrote that bizarre
(08:11):
fictional autobiography which they then did a movie about which
got some critical ACCLAIMA was that called Confessions of a Dangerous.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Mind where he's like a spy or something.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, it was an assassin in the first book he's
and I had no I was just I was a
student of television. I was in grad school. So I
was reading all these things and here was this memoir
of this important game show guy. So I was reading it,
you know, professionally, and he's early chapter, he's discussing, you know,
how he's selling the dating game to the executives at ABC,
(08:43):
all this kind of stuff, and then all of a
sudden he goes to Europe and assassinate a political operative.
Totally It's written, totally straight. It was vintage Chuck Barris.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I might need to go back and watch that. Who
is that? Who is that? Who started that? Sam? Oh? Yeah,
his name escapes me.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Wow that this is the disadvantages.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Of being That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Confession right, but yeah, and he did a he was
really good at it as well.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Absolutely, I'm gonna go out to rewatch that one. The
other one I wanted to touch on. YouTube is turning
twenty years old next week. YouTube. You know, it used
to be just you know, people with their home movies,
and now it's been it's way different. It's totally commercialized now.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, now there's YouTube channels. By the way, Wink Martindale
had a YouTube channel, Wink's Vault. I think, so now
there's the channels, there's advertising, right, all that stuff. But
people who were around remember when that first came out,
it was pretty much these you know, user generated viral videos,
(09:57):
and it was kind of exciting because you know, everything
else looked at half hour comedies and hour long dramas
and even when cable come along comes along, we get
the same stuff. But those first years was that evolution
of dance. Remember that that was one of the first biggies.
That guy terribly terrible lighting. It's in some auditorium somewhere.
(10:19):
It goes through every dance style in like seven minutes.
Charlie bit my finger, stay alone, Rebecca Sam Rockwell, that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Was Sam Rockwell, that's it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It just came to me as I was talking all
of those crazy sorts of things that maybe you wouldn't
even see them on America's Funniest Home Videos because some
of them were just so peculiar, and it was kind
of it was kind of fun. It was the sort
of kind of like radio was before the networks took
(10:53):
over in nineteen twenty six or so. You just had
these people on the radio, you know, Ham operators and
that kind of thing. And now, of course YouTube is
they've still got all that user generated stuff, but they're
now what the second most searched, I think, second to Google,
and they're the biggest way people watch television. You did
(11:14):
never guessed when that first video. It was called Me
at the Zoo April twenty third, two thousand and five,
so that'll be the twentieth anniversary. It was like any
typical YouTube. It had a kind of naughty joke about
the elephant's trunk, It had an animal, which so much
of YouTube was cats playing pianos and dogs on skateboards,
(11:35):
and it was really really short. You did never guessed
that in three years YouTube would be cooperating with both
the Democratic and the Republican Party with CNN and doing
their primary YouTube starts in two thousand and five with
that stupid elephant video and in three years later is
doing both parties CNN presidential debates and of course now
(11:59):
is ormous, bohemous
Glad you are listening on the Legacy Retirement Group dot
(00:02):
com phone line. It is our usual Friday guest at
this time, doctor Bob Thompson from Syracuse University, Professor of
pop culture, Doctor Bob. We lost a Wink Martindale this way.
It was Monday this week, ninety one years old. Just
a great kind of one of those old school traditional
game show hosts.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Oh yeah, he was about his old school as you
could get right down to that name. You know. An
interesting little coincidence. The day before he died, the Game
Show Network had rebooted Tic Tech Doe, which of course
was Wig Martindale's most successful game show of the twenty
that he did. Wig martin Dale obviously wasn't the host,
(00:44):
but his most famous show had just rebooted the day before,
and then he died. Yeah, but yeah, this guy, he
was a broadcaster, I mean, born in nineteen thirty three,
and at the age of seventeen he went into rapdo
which he kept doing throughout his life. Some of the
(01:04):
latest work he did was that syndicated Rock and Roll
weekly kind of compendium that he did right into twenty
twenty one. He had done that The Music of Your
Life syndicated thing in twenty ten. So he was a
radio guy. He was one of your of the family
and that's how he got started. But most known for
(01:27):
his game shows, which he did twenty of A lot
of them didn't do very well, but Tictac Dough, high Rollers, Gambit.
If you were around during the seventies and eighties, it
was impossible not to have encountered them.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah, I remember tic Tac Dough very well, Gambit a
little bit, and then into the eighties high Rollers and debt.
I think I was probably too cool to watch game
shows at that age.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
But yet debt was well into the nineties, as it
really went to ninety eight with an interesting premise. People
would bring like their credit card bills and they'd bring
actual debt and you'd compete to get it paid. Author
was like queen for a day.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Back at the one of my favorite Wink Martindale stories
I read about this. He was a DJ in Memphis
and sort of it in the fifties at WHBQ, and
they were playing one of Elvis' is maybe his very
first record. It was, and they were getting such great
demand and they kept playing it and playing it, playing,
and finally Wink called Elvis's mom and said, hey, is
(02:26):
Elvis there, can he come down to the radio station,
And sure enough, twenty minutes later, here comes Elvis and
it was his very first radio interview.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, that's then. Apparently Elvis didn't know they were on
the air when they did it, and they stayed friends
also in Memphis, Wink with then he did a children
show on TV which was just kind of emerging down there,
called Mars Patrol. And then he did something called Teenage
Dance Party or Teenage Dance Twist or something like that,
(02:56):
and that was in nineteen fifty sixth and he brought
Elvis onto that, which was not Elvis's very first TV appearance,
I don't think, but it was a very early one.
By the way, if you're really interested, Wink Martindale wrote
his memoir in two thousand called Winking at Life, and
if you get the later edition it has new unpublished
Elvis photos in it.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Ooh, that could be good. I think you get some
good reading there. You know, you mentioned the Teenage Dance
Party that was kind of like an early version of
American Bandstand with Dick.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Clark, right, and which was almost simultaneously I don't think
Dick Clark started his in fifty seven. Yeah, mistaken, Dick
Clark's and alumni alumnus of Syracuse, I should know that
by exact date. But I think he started in fifty seven.
And yeah, wink, Martindale was doing it in fifty six.
(03:47):
There were a lot of local places doing shows like
that popping up in the late nineteen fifties. They were
cheap and they were it was easy to get local
people to come and be on TV and dance in
the studio.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
By the way, I got in trouble once in radio.
A former boss yelled at me because I put Dick
Clark on hold. He had he had called in to
the radio station to do an interview. They were opening
up a Dick Clark's restaurant here in Columbus, and he
called in and my boss was all nervous about that interview,
and I said, I got it, don't worry about it.
(04:20):
And he came. He wanted They wanted to put him
on immediately, and I told mister Clark, hang on, the
song's about to end. You need to hang on for
about two and a half more minutes. And Dick was
very gracious and said sure, my boss lost his mind.
You don't put Dick Clark on hold you hear me?
What am I supposed to do? Cut the song off?
Speaker 2 (04:37):
No? What I'd really like to know is what song
was playing that was so important that you.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Need to be That's a that's a great trivia question, Bob.
I don't have the answer to that, but it must
not have been anything very good because I speaking with
Bob Thomson, Professor of Pop Cultures, Syracuse. You know, I'm
looking at some of these these classic, these classic game
show hosts. As you know, we think about Wink Martindale,
you know, Chuck Woolery who we lost last year. Of course,
(05:03):
Alex Trebek and Pat say Jack, you know, Bob Barker,
Jean Rayburn. I mean a lot of these guys and
they all a lot of them started in radio too, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They did. And I think part of that is that
one of the major job descriptions. This isn't so much
the case now now most game show hosts are coming
from comedians and people that were that kind of thing.
But back then, you you need to have a good voice.
That was kind of what it was. You had to
have those sort of chiseled classic good looks. You had
(05:35):
to be kind of a hail fellow, nice guy. But
the idea was you had to have a good voice.
So they were people coming from radio. Of course their
voice was all that they had to work with, so
that was the that was the thing. It is interesting
though you mentioned, and every one of those you mentioned
we all think of as a classic game show host.
(05:55):
And even though those a lot of those people did
other things. Wing Martindale for example, had done done some
music recording and sold over a million records in a
voice story recording. So a lot of those people have
done some other things. But you don't think of Alan
Ludden or Gene Rayburn or any of those types Bill
(06:17):
Colin as anything but game show hosts. Now, there is
no such thing as coming from you kind of aspiring
to be a game show host and moving up the ladder.
If you want to be a game show host, your
best bet is to get on its sitcom and do it.
But there were so many, and of course they're all
from that era that we've lost most of them now.
(06:39):
But I'm thinking of Bob you Banks, and you know,
you can't imagine him doing much else but hosting a
game like that. Oh, speaking of which, Chuck Barris the
most surrealistic of the whole bunch. Week Martindale did to
Chuck bears shows. He of course did the Gong Show,
(07:00):
Barris did Newly Woold Game, Dating Game, those crazy shows,
and Week Martindale did How's Your Mother in Law? And
Dream Girl of sixty seven, also very weird, surrealistic Barris production.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I love Chuck Barris and the Gong Show. I loved
that and the Unknown Comic and you know Dance Machine.
That's a great song too, that's the theme whatever. I
don't know what song that is that he came out
and danced to and.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Duck would put hats on. I mean that when you
go back and watch that, that was a really really
weird show.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
What I want to know how much they had to
drink or whatever else they did backstage before those shows,
because they couldn't have gone out there and with the
straight I mean some of the celebrities they came out there,
they had to have been partying before that.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
JP Morgan and you know some of we think of
that as JP Morgan and a couple of others. But
David Letterman sat in that judge's chair at one point.
I think Steve Martin might have been. I may be
wrong about that. I know Letterman did. So that show
rotated some interesting people. And then of course there was
the Gong Show movie. And then Barris wrote that bizarre
(08:11):
fictional autobiography which they then did a movie about which
got some critical ACCLAIMA was that called Confessions of a Dangerous.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Mind where he's like a spy or something.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, it was an assassin in the first book he's
and I had no I was just I was a
student of television. I was in grad school. So I
was reading all these things and here was this memoir
of this important game show guy. So I was reading it,
you know, professionally, and he's early chapter, he's discussing, you know,
how he's selling the dating game to the executives at ABC,
(08:43):
all this kind of stuff, and then all of a
sudden he goes to Europe and assassinate a political operative.
Totally It's written, totally straight. It was vintage Chuck Barris.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
I might need to go back and watch that. Who
is that? Who is that? Who started that? Sam? Oh? Yeah,
his name escapes me.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Wow that this is the disadvantages.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Of being That's right.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Confession right, but yeah, and he did a he was
really good at it as well.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Absolutely, I'm gonna go out to rewatch that one. The
other one I wanted to touch on. YouTube is turning
twenty years old next week. YouTube. You know, it used
to be just you know, people with their home movies,
and now it's been it's way different. It's totally commercialized now.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Yeah, now there's YouTube channels. By the way, Wink Martindale
had a YouTube channel, Wink's Vault. I think, so now
there's the channels, there's advertising, right, all that stuff. But
people who were around remember when that first came out,
it was pretty much these you know, user generated viral videos,
(09:57):
and it was kind of exciting because you know, everything
else looked at half hour comedies and hour long dramas
and even when cable come along comes along, we get
the same stuff. But those first years was that evolution
of dance. Remember that that was one of the first biggies.
That guy terribly terrible lighting. It's in some auditorium somewhere.
(10:19):
It goes through every dance style in like seven minutes.
Charlie bit my finger, stay alone, Rebecca Sam Rockwell, that.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Was Sam Rockwell, that's it.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It just came to me as I was talking all
of those crazy sorts of things that maybe you wouldn't
even see them on America's Funniest Home Videos because some
of them were just so peculiar, and it was kind
of it was kind of fun. It was the sort
of kind of like radio was before the networks took
(10:53):
over in nineteen twenty six or so. You just had
these people on the radio, you know, Ham operators and
that kind of thing. And now, of course YouTube is
they've still got all that user generated stuff, but they're
now what the second most searched, I think, second to Google,
and they're the biggest way people watch television. You did
(11:14):
never guessed when that first video. It was called Me
at the Zoo April twenty third, two thousand and five,
so that'll be the twentieth anniversary. It was like any
typical YouTube. It had a kind of naughty joke about
the elephant's trunk, It had an animal, which so much
of YouTube was cats playing pianos and dogs on skateboards,
(11:35):
and it was really really short. You did never guessed
that in three years YouTube would be cooperating with both
the Democratic and the Republican Party with CNN and doing
their primary YouTube starts in two thousand and five with
that stupid elephant video and in three years later is
doing both parties CNN presidential debates and of course now
(11:59):
is ormous, bohemous
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.