Charles Dawson “Daws” Butler (November 16, 1916—May 18, 1988) was a voice actor originally from Toledo, Ohio. He worked mostly for theHanna-Barbera animation production company and originated the voices of many familiar animated cartoon characters, including Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound.

Daws Butler was born on November 16, 1916 in Toledo, Ohio, the only child of Ruth Butler and Charles Allen Butler. The family later moved from Ohio to Oak Park, Chicago, where Butler got interested in impersonating people.^[1]

In 1934, the future voice master started as an impressionist, entering multiple amateur contests and winning most of them. He had entered them, not with the intention of showing his talent but as a personal challenge to overcome his shyness, with success. Nonetheless, Butler won professional engagements at vaudeville theaters. Later he teamed up with fellow performers, Jack Lavin and Willard Ovitz to form the comedy trio The Three Short Waves. The team played in theaters, radio and nightclubs, generating positive reviews from regional critics and audiences. They dissolved when in 1941, Daws Butler joined the U.S. Navy as America entered World War Two. Some time after, he met his wife Myrtis during a wartime function atNorth Carolina.

His first voice work for an animated character came in 1948 in the animated short Short Snorts on Sports, which was produced by Screen Gems. That same year at MGM, Tex Avery hired Butler to provide the voice of a British wolf on Little Rural Riding Hood and also narrate several of his cartoons. Throughout the decade, he had roles in many Avery-directed cartoons; The Fox in Out-Foxed, The Narrator in The Cuckoo Clock, The Cobbler in The Peachy Cobbler, Mr. Theeves in Droopy’s “Double Trouble”, Mysto the Magician in Magical Maestro, John the Cab and John the B-29 Bomber in One Cab’s Family and Little Johnny Jet and Maxie in The Legend of Rockabye Point.

Starting with The Three Little Pups, Butler provided the voice for a nameless wolf that spoke in a Southern accent and whistled all the time. This character also appeared in Sheep Wrecked, Billy Boy and many more cartoons. While at MGM, Avery wanted Butler to try to do the voice of Droopy, at a time when Bill Thompson had been unavailable due to radio engagements. Instead Butler then told Avery about Don Messick, another voice actor and Butler’s lifelong friend, who could imitate Thompson. Thus Messick voiced Droopy on several shorts.^[2]

In 1949, Butler landed a role in a televised puppet show created by former Warner Bros. cartoon director Bob Clampett called Time for Beany. Butler was teamed up with Stan Freberg, and together they did all the voices of the puppets. Butler voiced Beany Boy and Captain Huffenpuff. Freberg voiced Cecil and Dishonest John. An entire stable of recurring characters were seen. The show’s writers were Charles Shows and Lloyd Turner, whose dependably funny dialog was still always at the mercy of Butler’s and Freberg’s ad libs. Time for Beany ran from 1949 to 1954 and won several Emmy Awards. It was the basis for the cartoon Beany and Cecil.

In Mr. Magoo, the UPA theatrical animated short series for Columbia Pictures, Butler voiced the part of Magoo’s nephew Waldo (also voiced by Jerry Hausner at various times).

Butler briefly turned his attention to TV commercials, although he quickly moved to providing the voice to many nameless Walter Lantz characters for theatrical shorts later seen on the Woody Woodpecker program. His notable character was the penguin “Chilly Willy” and his sidekick, the southern-speaking dog Smedley (the same voice used for Tex Avery’s laid-back wolf character).

Also in the 1950s, Stan Freberg asked Butler to help him write comedy skits for his Capitol Records albums. Their first collaboration, “St. George and the Dragon-Net” (based on Dragnet), was the first comedy record to sell over one million copies. Freberg was more of a satirist who did song parodies, but the bulk of his “talking” routines were co-written by, and co-starred, Daws Butler. Butler also teamed up again with Freberg and cartoon actress June Foray in a CBS radio series, The Stan Freberg Show, which ran from July to October 1957 as a summer replacement for Jack Benny’s program. Freberg’s box-set, Tip of the Freberg (Rhino Entertainment, 1999) chronicles every aspect of Freberg’s career except the cartoon voice-over work, and it showcases his career with Daws Butler.

In 1957, when MGM closed down their animation division, producers William Hanna and Joseph Barbera quickly formed their own company, and Daws Butler and Don Messick were on-hand to provide voices. The first, The Ruff & Reddy Show where Butler voiced Reddy, set the formula for the rest of the series of cartoons that the two would helm until the mid-1960s.

Bill Macy (born Wolf Marvin Garber; May 18, 1922) is an American television, film and stage actor, born in Revere, Massachusetts, to Mollie (née Friedopfer) and Michael Garber, a manufacturer.^[1]

Macy is best-known for playing Walter Findlay, the long-suffering husband of the title character on the 1970s television sitcom Maude. He was also an original cast member of the long-running theatrical revue Oh! Calcutta! He has made more than 70 appearances on film and television, including a memorable role as the co-inventor of the ‘Opti-grab’ in the 1979 Steve Martin comedy The Jerk, and as the head television writer in My Favorite Year (1982).

He appeared occasionally on Seinfeld as one of the residents of the Florida retirement community in which Jerry Seinfeld‘s parents lived. He also appeared on the short-lived sitcom Back to You.^[2] He made a guest appearance as a patient on Chicago Hope and an aging gambler on the series Las Vegas. In 2006 he made an appearance on My Name is Earl in the second season episode, “Van Hickey“, as an elderly patient in a nursing home who claims he “once tongue-kissed a Jamaican woman”.

Elizabeth Victoria Montgomery (April 15, 1933 – May 18, 1995)^[1] was an American film and television actress whose career spanned five decades.

The daughter of Robert Montgomery, she began her career in the 1950s with a role on her father’s television series Robert Montgomery Presents. In the 1960s, she rose to fame as Samantha Stephens on the ABC sitcom Bewitched. Her work on the series earned her five Primetime Emmy Awardnominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations. After Bewitched ended its run in 1972, Montgomery continued her career with roles in numerous television films. In 1974, she portrayed Ellen Harrod in A Case of Rape and Lizzie Borden in the 1975 television film The Legend of Lizzie Borden. Both roles earned her additional Emmy Award nominations.

Montgomery was married four times, most notably to actor Gig Young and producer/director William Asher with whom she had three children. Her fourth and final marriage was to actor Robert Foxworth, with whom she lived for twenty years before marrying in 1993. Montgomery died of colorectal cancer in May 1995, eight weeks after being diagnosed with the disease.

Dwayne Bernard Hickman (born May 18, 1934) is a former American actor and television executive at CBS.

Hickman is known primarily for his “teenager” roles on television sitcoms. The naturally brown-headed Hickman portrayed Chuck MacDonald, Bob Collins’s (played by Bob Cummings) crazy teenaged nephew, on the popular 1950s NBC series The Bob Cummings Show (a.k.a. Love That Bob in reruns), and then the blond title character in CBS‘s The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.

Born in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, Hickman is the younger brother of child actor Darryl Hickman. One of his earliest screen appearances was in the 1942 Our Gang comedy Melodies Old and New. He and Darryl co-starred in an early episode of the syndicated military drama Men of Annapolis, filmed at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. As a teenager, he and Darryl also guest-starred in the same episode of The Lone Ranger.^[1]

Hickman gained wide notice as the character Chuck on The Bob Cummings Show from 1955 to 1959. At the time, he was a student at Loyola University (now known as Loyola Marymount University) in Los Angeles. Hickman became one of the first stars ever to have a breakout character in the series.

Hickman considered Bob Cummings a childhood television hero, having once said that Cummings taught him all that he knew about acting.^[1] He worked with and was friends with Cummings throughout the show’s five seasons.^[1][2] The role as Chuck MacDonald probably led to Hickman’s being cast in the lead of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Frank Faylen and Florida Friebus played his opposite-minded parents. Although at the show’s debut the Dobie character was still a teenager in high school, Hickman was already twenty-five years old.

After playing Dobie for four years (with fellow former Loyola student Bob Denver as his sidekick, Maynard G. Krebs), Hickman found himself stereotyped as a “youngster” just at the time of his life when he was really too old for such roles. He appeared in some minor beach films and made an unsuccessful television pilot for a program in which he would have portrayed a schoolteacher. James Franciscus was thereafter cast as Mr. Novak, a high school English teacher on another NBC series.

On June 23, 1960, Hickman appeared on NBC’s The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. He and Annette Funicello appeared thereafter together in an episode of ABC‘s circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth, starring Jack Palance. In 1965, Hickman appeared in the comedy film Cat Ballou along with Jane Fonda and Lee Marvin. During the 1965-1966 television season, he appeared as a guest star on the episode “Run Sheep Run” on ABC’s drama Combat! as a soldier who froze during an attack by a German machine gun nest which resulted in the death of a fellow GI.

Hickman thereafter found his future in entertainment behind the scenes, having become involved in production roles. He became a programming executive at CBS, a role which he has since spoofed in several on-camera roles. He also worked as a director on various television series, includingDesigning Women and Head of the Class.

He reprised his signature role of Dobie in two television reunion broadcasts, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis and Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis. His autobiography is entitled Forever Dobie.

Tony Randall (February 26, 1920 – May 17, 2004) was an American actor, comic, producer and director, known for his role as Felix Unger in the television adaptation of Neil Simon‘s play, The Odd Couple.

Randall was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and often spoke of his love of opera, saying it was due in no small part to the salaciousness of many of the plotlines. He also admitted to sneaking tape recorders into operas to make his own private recordings. He chided Johnny Carson for his chain-smoking, and was generally fastidious. At the time of his death, Randall had appeared as a guest on The Tonight Show 105 times, more often than any other celebrity.

Randall appeared frequently on What’s My Line?, Password, The Hollywood Squares, and the $10,000 and $20,000 Pyramids. He also parodied his pompous image with an appearance as a “contestant” on The Gong Show in 1977.

First aired on October 11 of 1980, Randall was a guest star on the 5th and final season of The Muppet Show. This was the 100th episode of the show.

Randall, along with John Goodman and Drew Barrymore was one of the first guests on the debut episode of Late Night with Conan O’Brien on 13 September 1993. He would also appear in Conan’s 5th Anniversary Special with the character PimpBot 5000. Randall was also a frequent guest on both of David Letterman‘s late-night shows Late Night with David Letterman and the Late Show with David Letterman, making 70 appearances, according to his obituary in the Washington Post; Letterman said that Randall was one of his favorite guests, along with Regis Philbin.

On November 7, 1994, Randall appeared on the game show Jeopardy!, as part of a Special Edition Celebrity Jeopardy! episode, playing on behalf of the National Actors Theatre. He came in second place after General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. and before Actress Stefanie Powers, with a final score of $9,900.^[8]

In 1999, Randall was featured in the Simpsons episode “Maximum Homerdrive” (season 10, episode 17). A picture of Randall is seen on a wall of fame in a steakhouse, displaying the only two persons who have finished a 16-lb. steak called “Sir Loinalot”.

Harmon Clayton Killebrew (pron.: /ˈkɪlɨbruː/; June 29, 1936 – May 17, 2011), nicknamed “Killer” and “Hammerin’ Harmon“, was an American professional baseball first baseman, third baseman, and left fielder. During his 22-year career in Major League Baseball (MLB), he played for the Washington Senators who later became the Minnesota Twins, and for the final season of his career, the Kansas City Royals. When he retired, he was second only to Babe Ruth in American League (AL) home runs and was the AL career leader in home runs by a right-handed batter (since broken by Alex Rodriguez).^[1] He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984.

Killebrew was a stocky 6-foot tall, 195-pound^[2] hitter with a compact swing that generated tremendous power. He became one of the AL’s most feared power hitters of the 1960s, hitting 40 home runs in a season eight times. In 1965, he played in the World Series with the Minnesota Twins, who lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers. His finest season was 1969, when he hit 49 home runs, recorded 140 runs batted in (RBI), and won the AL Most Valuable Player Award. Killebrew led the league six times in home runs and three times in RBIs, and was named to eleven All-Star teams.

With quick hands and exceptional upper-body strength, Killebrew was known not just for the frequency of his home runs but also for their distance. He hit the longest measured home runs at Minnesota’s Metropolitan Stadium, 520 ft (160 m), and Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, 471 ft (144 m), and was the first of just four batters to hit a baseball over the left field roof at Detroit’s Tiger Stadium. Despite his nicknames and his powerful style of play, Killebrew was considered by his colleagues to be a quiet, kind man. Asked once what hobbies he had, Killebrew replied, “Just washing the dishes, I guess.”^[3]

After retiring from baseball, Killebrew became a television broadcaster for several baseball teams from 1976 to 1988, and also served as a hitting instructor for the Oakland Athletics. He also divorced and remarried during this time, moving to Arizona in 1990 and chairing the Harmon Killebrew Foundation. Killebrew was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in December 2010, and died five months later.

Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American musician, accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted The Lawrence Welk Show from 1955 to 1982. His style came to be known to his large number of radio, television, and live-performance fans (and critics) as “champagne music”.

After retiring from his show and from the road in 1982, Welk continued to air reruns of his shows, which were repackaged first for syndication and, starting in 1986, for public television. He also starred in and produced a pair of Christmas specials in 1984 and 1985.

Welk died from pneumonia in Santa Monica, California, in 1992 at age 89 and was buried in Culver City‘s Holy Cross Cemetery.

In 1996, Welk was ranked #43 on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.^[1]

Frank John Gorshin, Jr. (April 5, 1933 – May 17, 2005) was an American actor and comedian. He was perhaps best known as an impressionist, with many guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and Tonight Starring Steve Allen. His most famous acting role was as The Riddler in the Batman live-action television series.

Gorshin’s last television appearance was in “Grave Danger“, an episode of the CBS series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation which aired two days after his death; the episode, which was directed by Quentin Tarantino, was dedicated to his memory. While he was known for his impressions, his role on CSI was as himself.

Gorshin’s final live appearance was a Memphis performance of Say Goodnight, Gracie. He finished his performance and boarded a plane for Los Angeles on April 25. After he experienced severe breathing difficulty during the flight, the attendants gave him an emergency oxygen mask. Upon landing, Gorshin was met by an ambulance which took him to the hospital, where he later died on May 17, 2005, at the age of 72 from lung cancer, emphysema, and pneumonia. Gorshin had been a heavy smoker for most of his adult life, consuming up to five packs of cigarettes a day. Adam West claimed that “Frank could reduce a cigarette to ash with one draw.” When he did nightclub performances or live shows, audiences were warned not to attend if they disliked smoking.

He is interred at the Roman Catholic Calvary Cemetery in the Hazelwood section of Pittsburgh.

The show began as a black-and-white pilot episode filmed for CBS on April 21, 1965. That pilot was hosted by Bert Parks with the squares occupied by Cliff Arquette (in his “Charlie Weaver” comic persona), Wally Cox, Rose Marie, Morey Amsterdam, Abby Dalton, Jim Backus, Gisele MacKenzie,Robert Q. Lewis and Vera Miles. The first five of the initial panelists were to later appear on the first broadcast week (October 17–21, 1966) and become the five initial regulars on NBC-TV. CBS shot a second pilot hosted by Sandy Baron, but chose not to pick up the program with either host. A year later, NBC acquired the rights to the show and chose Peter Marshall as host, a job he held for 15 years until 1981. Hollywood Squares was the final touch to a short-lived game show powerhouse on NBC, which also included Concentration, Jeopardy!, You Don’t Say!, Let’s Make a Deal, The Match Game, and others. During most of its daytime run, NBC broadcast Hollywood Squares at 11:30 a.m. Eastern/10:30 a.m. Central time; it dominated the ratings until 1976, when it moved to the first of a succession of different time slots. The original title of the show was The Hollywood Squares. Over time, the title became simply Hollywood Squares. The show also ran at night, first on NBC from January 12 to September 13, 1968 as a mid-season replacement for the short-lived sitcom Accidental Family. A nighttime syndicated program ran weekly from November 1, 1971 until 1972, twice a week until 1980 and five days per week in its final season. It ended on September 11, 1981.

The show celebrates the start of its ninth year on the air in 1974. Pictured are Paul Lynde, Rose Marie, host Peter Marshall, and Cliff Arquette as Charley Weaver.

Paul Lynde, in addition to his recurring role as “Uncle Arthur” on Bewitched, had his greatest fame as the featured (and, in tic-tac-toe, tactically important) “center square” throughout most of the original show’s run. On October 14, 1968, after two years on the show, Lynde became the regular center square. Lynde’s outrageous jokes helped him win two daytime Emmy Awards, in 1974 and 1978. Some regulars were frequently asked questions pertaining to a certain topic or category. For instance, Cliff Arquette (“Charlie Weaver”), a history buff, excelled at American history questions. Rich Little almost always received questions about other celebrities, which gave him an opportunity to do an impression of that individual. Roddy McDowall usually gave correct answers about the plays of Shakespeare. Rose Marieoften received questions on dating and relationships, playing off her lovelorn comic persona. Demond Wilson often responded with mock anger to questions that were carefully worded to play upon African American stereotypes. Other regulars and semi-regulars over the years included Nanette Fabray, Kaye Ballard, Wally Cox, Morey Amsterdam, Florence Henderson, Buddy Hackett, Marty Allen, Wayland Flowers and Madame, Barbara Eden, George Gobel, Vincent Price, Charo, Sandy Duncan, Carol Wayne, Jonathan Winters, Karen Valentine, and Joan Rivers. Lynde left the series after taping the August 20–24, 1979, week of shows, but returned when the series relocated to Las Vegas in the 1980–1981 season. The daytime series was played as a best two-out-of-three match between a returning champion and an opponent, with each individual game worth $200 and a match worth $400 (originally $100 for each game and $300 for the match). A five-match champion retired with $2,000, any Secret Square prizes won up to that point, and a new car. Beginning in 1977 on this version, this was increased to include additional cash ($5,000 or $10,000) and a luxury vacation. Early in 1976, an endgame was added after each match, with the champion simply selecting a star, each of whom held an envelope with a prize; the top prize was $5,000. Both the syndicated and NBC prime time versions featured the same two contestants playing for the entire half-hour with each completed game worth $300 (NBC prime time) or $250 (syndicated). On the syndicated version, if time ran out with a game still in progress (interrupted by what the host called the “tacky buzzer,” a loud horn), each X or O on the board at that point was worth an additional $50 to the contestants, with each contestant guaranteed at least $100 in total winnings. The contestant with the most money at the end of the show won a bonus prize, which for the first seven years of the syndicated series was a car. From 1978–1980, the “endgame” described above was utilized, with the car and $5,000 (later $10,000) as the two top prizes. On the daily syndicated series, each game awarded its victor a prize, and contestants who won the most games competed in a $100,000 tournament. If the match ended in a tie, one final question was played with the star of one contestant’s choosing; if the contestant agreed or disagreed correctly, he/she won the match, otherwise the match went to the opponent.

The first theme song used from 1966 to 1970 was an orchestration of “The Silly Song” by Jimmie Haskell; however, the version used on the show is not the same one released on the LP (Jimmie Haskell’s French Horns, Vol. 2). The track found on the LP is a version with vocals and has a different instrumentation than the version used on the program.

The second and most famous theme was composed by William Loose. Called “Bob & Merrill’s Theme,” it was named for Bob Quigley and Merrill Heatter, the show’s creators and original co-executive producers. This version of the theme song, in an edited format, is available on The Best of TV Quiz and Game Show Themes.

A third theme song was used from 1979 to 1981. Stan Worth re-recorded a new version of “Bob & Merrill’s Theme” with quasi-disco styling and renamed it as “The Hollywood Bowl.” Three versions of “The Hollywood Bowl” were created for the show: one for the opening music, one for the secret square prize descriptions and one for the main theme.

The theme to The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was “Lottery,” composed by Edd Kalehoff for Score Productions. Even as the show ended its run in 1984, the theme is still heard as a car prize cue on The Price Is Right and was used for similar purposes on the late-1980s revival of Card Sharks.

The theme to the 1986–1989 edition and its cues were composed by Stormy Sacks (who also performed live music during the show itself, as required for certain questions or celebrity intros). This music package was re-arranged/recorded for the show’s final season.

The 1998–2004 edition had two themes. The first theme, “I Love Hollywood,” and its accompanying music cues were composed by Jennifer May Mauldaur & Paul David Weinberg, with the main theme vocals by series regular/co-producer Whoopi Goldberg and was used from 1998 to 2002, with a remixed version used for the 2001–02 season. The second theme, “Hollywood Square Biz,” was a re-recording of the Teena Marie song “Square Biz,” originally written, composed, and released in 1981, and it was used from 2002 to 2004.