LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peter Marshall, the actor and singer turned sport present host who performed straight man to the celebrities for 16 years on “The Hollywood Squares,” has died. He was 98.

He died Thursday of kidney failure at his residence within the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll mentioned.

Marshall helped outline the type of the graceful, skilled, however never-too-serious trendy sport present host on greater than 5,000 episodes of the sequence that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1981.

However he was usually nearer to a chat present host, and the tic-tac-toe sport the contestants performed, whereas actual, was all an excuse for a superb time. The questions Marshall posed to regulars like Paul Lynde, George Gobel and Joan Rivers have been designed to be set-ups for joke solutions earlier than the actual ones adopted.

“It was the best factor I’ve ever completed in present enterprise,” Marshall mentioned in a 2010 interview for the Archive of American Tv. “I walked in, mentioned ‘Hiya stars,’ I learn questions and laughed. And it paid very properly.”

“The Hollywood Squares” would turn into an American cultural establishment and make Marshall a family identify. It will win 4 Daytime Emmys for excellent sport present throughout his run and spawned dozens of worldwide variations and several other U.S. reboots. Not solely was it a discussion board for such character actors as Charlie Weaver (the stage identify of Cliff Arquette) and Wally Cox, however the present attracted a spread of high stars as occasional friends, together with Aretha Franklin, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ed Asner and Janet Leigh.

Marshall had a heat rapport with Weaver, Lynde and others, however mentioned that Gobel, the wry comic, actor and selection present host, held a particular place, tweeting in 2021 that it’s “no secret he was my closest good friend on Hollywood Squares and my absolute all-time favourite Sq.!”

Marshall had lived practically a complete present enterprise life earlier than he took the “Squares” podium at age 40.

He had toured with large bands beginning as an adolescent, had been part of two comedy groups that appeared in nightclubs and on tv, appeared in motion pictures as a contract participant for Twentieth Century Fox, and had sung in a number of Broadway musicals when the chance got here up after Bert Parks, who hosted the pilot, bowed out.

“I’m a singer first I’m not a sport present host,” Marshall informed his hometown paper, the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia in 2013, “that was only a freak alternative. I had been on Broadway with Julie Harris and was going again to Broadway once I did the audition, and I believed it was just a few weeks however that became 16 years.”

“The Hollywood Squares” was extra strait-laced when it started, however early in its run a producer prompt they write jokes for Lynde, the ever-snarky comedian actor who occupied the middle sq. and would turn into as recognized as Marshall with the present.

The primary joke would set the template for the years that adopted:

Marshall: “Paul, why do motorcyclists put on leather-based?”

Lynde: “As a result of chiffon wrinkles.”

“That modified the entire thing,” Marshall informed the TV archive. “I had been a straight man. So working with comics was simple for me.”

Born Ralph Pierre LaCock in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Marshall would transfer across the state as a baby, residing in Wheeling and Huntington.

His father died when Marshall was 10, and he would stay together with his grandparents as his mom and sister, the actress Joanne Dru, moved to New York to pursue her profession in present enterprise. Marshall would quickly be part of them.

At 15, he toured as a singer with the Bob Chester Orchestra. He additionally labored as an NBC Radio web page and an usher on the Paramount Theater. He was drafted throughout World Conflict II and stationed in Italy, the place he made his first forays onto the airways as a DJ for Armed Forces Radio. In 1949 he fashioned a comedy duo with Tommy Noonan, showing in nightclubs, in theaters and on “The Ed Sullivan Present.”

He turned a film contract participant within the Fifties at Twentieth Century Fox, showing in movies together with 1959’s “The Rookie” and 1961’s “Swingin’ Alongside.”

Main starring roles eluded him in Hollywood, however he would discover them in musical theater.

He starred reverse Chita Rivera in “Bye Bye Birdie” in London’s West Finish in 1962 — Lynde had performed a significant function within the Broadway model that he would reprise within the movie — and performed his first starring function on Broadway in “Skyscraper” with Julie Harris in 1965.

He would additionally seem in Broadway variations of “Excessive Button Footwear,” “The Music Man” and “forty second Avenue.”

After “The Hollywood Squares,” Marshall would host just a few different short-lived sport reveals, however largely resumed his profession as a singing actor, starring in additional than 800 performances of “La Cage Aux Folles” on Broadway and on tour, and singing within the 1983 movie model of “Annie.”

He was married thrice, the final to Laurie Stewart in 1989.

The couple survived a bout with COVID-19 early in 2021. He was hospitalized for a number of weeks.

His 4 children embody son Pete LaCock, an expert baseball participant for the Chicago Cubs and Kansas Metropolis Royals. Marshall can also be survived by daughters Suzanne and Jaime, son David, 12 grandchildren, and 9 great-great grandchildren.