Peter Marshall dead at 98: Legendary Hollywood Squares host and Broadway star passes away from kidney failure
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Host and actor Peter Marshall has died aged 98 from kidney failure.
The former Hollywood Squares host passed away Thursday at his home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said.
He was the beloved game show host on more than 5,000 episodes of the iconic NBC show from 1966 to 1981.
'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.'
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.
Host and actor Peter Marshall has died aged 98 from kidney failure - pictured 2018
The former Hollywood Squares host passed away Thursday at his home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles , publicist Harlan Boll said
The show attracted a range of top stars as occasional guests, including Aretha Franklin, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ed Asner and Janet Leigh.
He was married three times, the last to Laurie Stewart in 1989. The couple survived a bout with COVID-19 early in 2021. He was hospitalized for several weeks.
His four kids include son Pete LaCock, a professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals. Marshall is also survived by daughters Suzanne and Jaime, son David, 12 grandchildren, and nine great-great grandchildren.
He had toured with big bands starting as a teenager, had been a part of two comedy teams that appeared in nightclubs and on television, appeared in movies as a contract player for Twentieth Century Fox, and had sung in several Broadway musicals when the opportunity came up after Bert Parks, who hosted the pilot, bowed out.
Marshall told his hometown paper, the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia in 2013: 'I am a singer first I am not a game show host... 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.
Born Ralph Pierre LaCock in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Marshall would move around the state as a child, living in Wheeling and Huntington.
His father died when Marshall was 10, and he would live with his grandparents as his mother and sister, the actress Joanne Dru, moved to New York to pursue her career in show business. Marshall would soon join them.
He is seen with Betty White in 1978 on The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast
Born Ralph Pierre LaCock in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Marshall would move around the state as a child, living in Wheeling and Huntington
At 15, he toured as a singer with the Bob Chester Orchestra. He also worked as an NBC Radio page and an usher at the Paramount Theater. He was drafted during World War II and stationed in Italy, where he made his first forays onto the airways as a DJ for Armed Forces Radio. In 1949 he formed a comedy duo with Tommy Noonan, appearing in nightclubs, in theaters and on The Ed Sullivan Show.
He became a movie contract player in the 1950s at Twentieth Century Fox, appearing in films including 1959's "The Rookie" and 1961's "Swingin´ Along."
Major starring roles eluded him in Hollywood, but he would find them in musical theater.
Monty Hall, Wink Martindale joined Marshall onstage at the 2006 TV Land Awards
He was married three times, the last to Laurie Stewart in 1989. The couple survived a bout with COVID-19 early in 2021. He was hospitalized for several weeks - pictured 2016
He starred opposite Chita Rivera in Bye Bye Birdie in London´s West End in 1962 - Lynde had played a major role in the Broadway version that he would reprise in the film - and played his first starring role on Broadway in "Skyscraper" with Julie Harris in 1965.
He would also appear in Broadway versions of "High Button Shoes," "The Music Man" and 42nd Street.
After The Hollywood Squares" Marshall would host a few other short-lived game shows, but mostly resumed his career as a singing actor, starring in more than 800 performances of La Cage Aux Folles on Broadway and on tour, and singing in the 1983 film version of Annie.
