Before working on the game show, the Emmy winner was a singer, a straight man in a popul
Peter Marshall, the velvety-voiced host who presided over NBC’s celebrity-filled game show The Hollywood Squares for 16 years, died Thursday. He was 98.
Marshall, an accomplished singer who also was a leading man on Broadway and one-half of a popular comedy team before embarking on his game-show gig, died of kidney failure at his Encino home, his family announced.
The pride of West Virginia hosted some 6,000 episodes of The Hollywood Squares from 1966 through 1981, winning four Daytime Emmy Awards. Marshall often worked just one day a week, when he taped five shows. “It was the easiest job I ever had, and I never rehearsed,” he said.
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Soon after starring in the Tony-nominated Broadway musical comedy Skyscraper opposite Julie Harris, Marshall was offered the job as host of The Hollywood Squares, created by Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley. An earlier version of the show, hosted by Bert Parks, had been turned down.
Marshall wasn’t really interested until he learned that if he didn’t take the job, it would go to comedian Dan Rowan. “I’ve only disliked two people in my life; Dan Rowan was one of them,” he said in a 2010 interview with the Archive of American Television.
Marshall’s former comedy partner, Tommy Noonan, had introduced Rowan, then a used-car salesman, to Dick Martin, a bartender, and wrote material for their act that would lead to the pair hosting the 1960s comedy show Laugh-in. Marshall said he was angry that Rowan never visited Noonan at the Motion Picture & Television Home while he was slowly dying of brain cancer.
Also, producer Abe Burrows wanted Marshall to star opposite Mary Tyler Moore in a production of Breakfast at Tiffany’s aiming for Broadway. Marshall assured him that The Hollywood Squares would last just 13 weeks and he would be available after that. But when the show was renewed for another 13 weeks, Burrows informed him that he was going with Richard Chamberlain.
“Well, I ran 16 years [on Hollywood Squares] and Breakfast at Tiffany’s closed in Boston,” Marshall said. “You never know.”
With Marshall as its handsome host, The Hollywood Squares debuted on Oct. 17, 1966, out of a studio in Burbank, with nine celebrities seating in a huge tic-tac-toe board. Two contestants (one representing X, the other O) would try to win collect three squares in a row by correctly agreeing or disagreeing with a celebrity’s answer to a question posed by Marshall.
Paul Lynde, Rose Marie, Cliff Arquette (Charley Weaver), George Gobel (his favorite on the show) and Wally Cox (as in Marshall second-guessing a contestant, “I might have gone with Wally Cox to block”) were among the entertainers who made easy-money, second careers out of appearing on the show.
For a week in 2002, Marshall returned as the center square in a new version hosted by Tom Bergeron, and he got to host an episode.
After The Hollywood Squares, Marshall hosted the game shows Fantasy (with Leslie Uggams), All-Star Blitz, Yahtzee and Reel to Reel. He was inducted into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in 2007.
Marshall’s older sister was actress Joanne Dru, who starred in such films as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and All the King’s Men and was married to singer Dick Haymes and, later, actor John Ireland.
Marshall was born Ralph Pierre LaCock on March 30, 1926, in Clarksburg, West Virginia. His dad was a pharmacist (he died when Marshall was 10) and his mother a costume designer. He was raised in Huntington, West Virginia, by his grandmother.
Marshall moved to New York to join his mother, who had moved there to help further his sister’s career as a model, and at age 14 he worked as an usher at the famed Paramount Theater after Al Jolson got him the job. At 15, he sang with the Bob Chester Band and earned $50 a week.
“I always wanted to be a singer from the get-go. I can always remember music being important in my life,” he said in the TV Archive interview.
Marshall landed a job as an NBC page though he wasn’t yet 18 (the chairman of the board at the network, whom he knew through a friend, got him in). As a page, he helped out on Truth or Consequences, hosted by Ralph Edwards, and on a show that had Mayor Fiorello La Guardia reading to children.
He came to California in 1943 and lived with his sister and Haymes in their guest house but was soon drafted into the U.S. Army. He worked as an Armed Forces disc jockey and program director at a 50,000-watt station in Naples, Italy, then was a DJ and a singer in Florida after the service.
In 1949, Marshall was introduced to Noonan, a struggling comedian who was the half-brother of Ireland, now Dru’s husband. They formed the comedy act Noonan & Marshall (Marshall was the straight man) and sold out nightclubs all over L.A.; soon, they were booked for 16 solid weeks at the legendary La Martinique club in New York.
Marshall and his partner then appeared in small roles in the films Jesse James (1950), Holiday Rhythm (1950), FBI Girl (1951) and the musical Starlift (1951).
“Time magazine came out and said maybe one of the worst movies of the year is called Starlift, but it’s worth the price of admission to see Noonan & Marshall,” he said.
The pair were signed to appear opposite Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in the film adaptation of the Broadway hit Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, but Marshall was replaced by another actor, Elliott Reed, as Noonan stayed on.
“[Noonan] got so hot after that, he couldn’t afford to do our act,” Marshall said.
Marshall teamed with comic Tommy Farrell for three years (they had their own ABC variety series, Two of the Most) and worked again with Noonan on stage and in the films The Rookie (1959) and Swingin‘ Along (1961). He split with Noonan for good when he left for London to star with Chita Rivera in Bye Bye Birdie, a move he said transformed his career.
Marshall appeared on the Squares set in Rabbit Test (1978), directed by Joan Rivers, and played a radio personality in the 1982 film version of Annie. In the original Broadway production of La Cage Aux Folles in the 1980s, he portrayed Georges for more than 800 performances.
Marshall showed off his singing chops on such albums as Boy Singer and No Happy Ending, a Billie Holiday tribute. In 2002, he published his autobiography, Backstage With the Original Hollywood Square, and for years hosted a radio show, Music of Your Life, spinning 1930s and ’40s tunes.
Survivors include his wife of 35 years, Laurie; children Suzanne, Jaime and Pete LaCock, a former first baseman with the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals; sons-in-law David and Steve; 12 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His son David, 68, died in 2021 from COVID complications.
Donations in his memory can be made to Actors & Others for Animals, the Lange Foundation or the Mercy Kids Therapy and Development Center.
ar comedy act and a leading man on Broadway.
