If a reader could look up the term “game show host” in an illustrated dictionary, that reader almost certainly would find a picture of Winston Conrad “Wink” Martindale nearby. From the 1960s through the 1990s, Martindale, who died at age 91 on April 15, helmed several popular game shows, making him a fixture in viewers’ lives for decades.
Nearly two years ago, on the death of The Price Is Right host Bob Barker, I noted in these pages that the 1980s electronic game “Mr. Game Show Host” featured a character that “echoed a mash-up of Barker and Wink Martindale.” With his toothy grin, immaculate three-piece suits, and perfect coiffure, Martindale personified a “look” that defined the game show genre for much of the postwar era.
Innovative Yet Classic Show
Martindale began his career in entertainment as a 1950s disc jockey in Memphis, where he befriended Elvis Presley as Presley’s career began to explode. In the 1960s, he shifted from radio to television and began hosting game shows with the musically themed What’s This Song? on NBC.
The shows Martindale hosted ran the gamut, from What’s This Song? in the 1960s, to Gambit in the 1970s, Bumper Stumpers (a Canadian game show Martindale created) in the 1980s, and Debt, a show he hosted on Lifetime in the 1990s. But he achieved his most enduring notoriety by hosting a remake of a show that had its roots in the era of the game show scandals of the 1950s.
From 1978 through 1985, Wink Martindale emceed Tic-Tac-Dough, first as a CBS production in the summer of 1978, and in first-run syndication thereafter. The game, with a premise so simple that parents and children alike could identify it from countless games of tic-tac-toe played on long car trips, proved immensely popular. In fact, his stint on Tic-Tac-Dough came to an end not because the show got canceled but because Martindale decided to leave so he could host a game he created, Headline Chasers, which received little acclaim and was promptly canceled.
Despite its simple premise, Tic-Tac-Dough represented an important milestone in game show history. Its game board of nine Apple II systems, linked to a centralized computer, set a new standard. Five years before Press Your Luck introduced a massive, interactive game board for players to conquer, and six years before the remake of Jeopardy! debuted a wall of 30 television screens featuring game clues, Tic-Tac-Dough became the first game show with computerized graphics. The graphics, animated dragon incorporated into the bonus game, and catchy synthesized theme song (titled “Crazy Fun”) gave Tic-Tac-Dough a futuristic feel.
Beyond being futuristic, Tic-Tac-Dough featured a lot of it — dough, that is. In 1980, Thom McKee won $312,700 on the program, then a record for American game shows. (To give a sense of how much that amount could buy at the time, McKee won no fewer than eight cars, plus over $200,000 in cash.) Because the pots from tie games rolled over to the next match, and because champions faced no limits on the number of times they could defend their title, a number of players won over $100,000 on the show, making it one of the most lucrative game shows since the scandals of the 1950s.
Tic-Tac-Dough had such an enduring legacy — one that went beyond Martindale’s tradition of signing off each Friday show by wearing a funny hat — that the Game Show Network launched another remake. Ironically and sadly, the remake’s first episode, hosted by Brooke Burns, aired on April 14, the day before Martindale’s death.
‘Uncle Wink’ Stays Relevant
Somewhat surprisingly for someone born during Franklin Roosevelt’s first term in office, Martindale adapted well to the Information Age. He created a YouTube channel, titled “Wink’s Vault,” in 2014, where he would post long-lost episodes of game shows, such as the ABC pilot for Deal or No Deal.
When Alex Trebek announced his cancer diagnosis over six years ago, I noted in these pages a series of professional game show hosts, of which Trebek was the last actively working in television. Now, with Trebek passing along with Chuck Woolery and Martindale, only Bob Eubanks of the original Newlywed Game remains with us. Thankfully, however, their legacies live on — both in archival footage of the shows they emceed and in the noteworthy games, such as Tic-Tac-Dough, that they have bequeathed to a new generation of game show hosts.
Jesus Christ is King
