A Master. And Definitely Not A Square.

When someone manages to cheat death for more than 98 years, when they pass it’s often seen as more of a celebration of life than a tragic event.  In the case of Peter Marshall, it still seems like we were left a little shortchanged.

This was not an unexpected passing; besides his advanced age, Marshall had been battling numerous health issues in recent years, including a nearly-fatal bout with COVID-19 that far more tragically claimed his son David at 68 three years ago.  I know this because while my personal dealings with him were infrequent, I can count literally dozens of friends and social media connections who knew him much, much better, including his adoring wife Laurie, with whom he spent his last 35 years in what can only be described as one of the most loving and caring couplings I’ve ever encountered anywhere.

There was a lot being written about the longtime host of the original HOLLYWOOD SQUARES  yesterday, including this succinct capsulization from the ASSOCIATED PRESS’ Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton:

Marshall helped define the form of the smooth, professional, but never-too-serious modern game show host on more than 5,000 episodes of the series that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1981.  “The Hollywood Squares” would become an American cultural institution and make Marshall a household name. It would win four Daytime Emmys for outstanding game show during his run and spawned dozens of international versions and several U.S. reboots. Not only was it a forum for such character actors as Charlie Weaver (the stage name of Cliff Arquette) and Wally Cox, but the show attracted a range of top stars as occasional guests, including Aretha Franklin, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ed Asner and Janet Leigh.

Indeed, his background as a straight man in the comedy-variety duet he and his partner Tommy Noonan parlayed into stage and screen success in the 1950s made him ideally suited for a role he thought would be a quick 13-weeks-and-out gig in between Broadway opportunities.  It was never more exemplified, nor so frequently hilarious, when he would tee it up for the show’s longtime center square and king of zingers Paul Lynde, as Dalton explained:

“The Hollywood Squares” was more strait-laced when it began, but early in its run a producer suggested they write jokes for Lynde, the ever-snarky comic actor who occupied the center square and would become as identified as Marshall with the show. 

The first joke would set the template for the years that followed:

Marshall: “Paul, why do motorcyclists wear leather?”

Lynde: “Because chiffon wrinkles.”

For all the success and accolade Marshall had helming this classic, he never took himself or the gig either for granted or overly seriously.  He’d frequently show up to weekend tapings in tennis shorts after a morning match, the set’s multi-desk design allowing him to wear a jacket and tie, sometimes even a tuxedo, to hide that fact from the TV audience.  And as the LOS ANGELES TIMES’ Nardine Saad related, he took it in stride:

“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business,” Marshall said in a 2010 interview for the Archive of American Television. “I walked in, said ‘Hello stars,’ I read questions and laughed. And it paid very well.”

Yet despite the level of success both show and emcee achieved, unlike many others of the era who would attempt revivals SQUARES and Marshall never were paired up again, save for a memorable week in 2002 when he seamlessly helmed an episode during a week-long tribute to classic game shows and, without cue cards, from memory spewed out the show’s set-up:  “Object for the players is to get three stars in a row, either across, up and down, or diagonally.  It is up to them to determine if the star is giving a correct answer or making one up; THAT’S how they get the square!”.  Marshall would host a few other unsuccessful game shows, and the show would be rebooted several times without him, but none of those projects were ever as long-running or as profitable.

What SQUARES’ run did allow him to do was to reconnect with and pursue his other passions, as Saad shared:

As a movie contract player at 20th Century Fox, Marshall appeared in 1959’s “The Rookie” and 1961’s “Swingin’ Along.” He also starred opposite Chita Rivera in a 1962 West End production of “Bye Bye Birdie” in London and first starred on Broadway in the 1965 production of “Skyscraper” with Julie Harris.When “Hollywood Squares” was canceled and his other television projects had short runs, Marshall turned to other types of live performance, particularly musical theater, and became a regular in touring productions of “La Cage aux Folles” and “42nd Street.”

And it also afforded him time to be far more than just a performer, a point he drove home in another Dalton retelling:

“I am a singer first I am not a game show host,” Marshall told his hometown paper, the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia in 2013, “that was just a freak opportunity. I had been on Broadway with Julie Harris and was going back to Broadway when I did the audition, and I thought it was a few weeks but that turned into 16 years”.

He had few enemies, though when he was crossed he would not easily forgive nor forget.  In his autobiography Marshall told that his motivation for taking the gig to host SQUARES was driven by the fact that if he had turned it down Plan B was a pre-LAUGH-IN Dan Rowan, who refused to see his one time friend Noonan as he was dying of brain cancer.  But save for something as egregious as that he was seen as accessible, genial and grounded.  This was no better exemplified by a story a mutual friend shared on his social media feed yesterday:

About 10 years ago, I had the good fortune to eat lunch with Peter Marshall…At one point, I brought up the word “legacy” and Peter Marshall smirked at the sound of it. He must have noticed that I noticed that, so he explained it to me, and I’m sure this lengthy quote is off by a few words, but the gist of it went right to my heart:

“’Legacy’ is just a funny word to me. You know, there was a time 40 years ago when I wouldn’t have set foot in this place because people would have swarmed me and taken photos of me and asked for autographs, and I couldn’t have eaten a meal in peace. We’ve been talking for…how long, two hours? Has anybody taken a photo of me? Has anybody asked me for an autograph? No. Nobody here has any idea who I am. And do you want to know something? I am absolutely fine with that.

“I didn’t go into show business to have a legacy or to have people revere me. I did it because I liked to sing, and singing for money sounded like a fun way to make a living. It just happened that I got famous along the way. As far as I’m concerned, my legacy is that I had some wonderful children, and those children had some wonderful children of their own.”

In a twist of irony, yet another reboot of the series will begin taping today for a mid-season run on CBS, nearly 60 years after the network commissioned the pilot which was itself a reworking of a middling summer format called THE CELEBRITY GAME.  There’s modest optimism for this effort, to be hosted by its rising star Nate Burleson and featuring Drew Barrymore in the Lynde position.  Time will tell if there’s even a smattering of the chemistry that  straight man Marshall and the quipster Lynde achieved.  John Davidson and Joan Rivers never approached it, nor did Tom Bergeron and Whoopi Goldberg.  Despite the fact that he was disapppointed for not being asked to host by those versions’ producers, that didn’t stop Marshall from being their friend and occasional advisor, a point both men shared on their respective  social media acknowledgements yesterday.

It’s not likely that Burleson had similar coaching given Marshall’s recent illnesses.  But I’d advise him to simply just read a few of the many heartfelt personal accolades that I did paying tribute to the man who relished being a husband, father, grandfater, great-grandfather and friend first and foremost.   For an ex-NFL star like he is, following a playbook is second nature.  Follow his lead as a person first and foremost, and you’ll come out golden no matter what audiences think of your work.  Perhaps even take a lead from the quip that was slipped into Saad’s story by request:

Marshall died Thursday morning of kidney failure surrounded by loved ones at his home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, his family said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times provided by his publicist Harlan Boll.

“Although as Peter remarked, his cause of death should officially be of boredom,” the family said in the statement.

Thanks to the thousands of hours of his work readily available on YouTube, we won’t have that problem.  And if we can live as long and as honorably as Peter Marshall did, we’ll be all the more better for it.

Until next time…