Let’s Make a Deal TV show host, co-creator Monty Hall dies at 96
LOS ANGELES — If not for the prejudice of the times, Monte Halperin, the Jewish butcher’s kid from Winnipeg’s north end, might have entered medical school and Monty Hall would never have been born.
Hall, the engaging, smooth-talking host of “Let’s Make a Deal” for 23 years on all three U.S. TV networks, died Saturday. He was 96. But in 2002, the Order of Canada member recalled that it had been his dream to become a doctor, not an actor.
“Every poor kid wants to get into some kind of profession and, in my case, I wanted to get into medicine to become a doctor,” said Hall, a grad of the same north-end Winnipeg schools that produced Guess Who frontman Burton Cummings and comedian David Steinberg.
“I applied at the end of my premed and I applied the following year. (He wasn’t accepted.) My dreams of medicine evaporated.”
At the time, there was a secret quota system in place designed to severely restrict access to medical school for Jewish students. It ended shortly after he gave up his dream. Instead, Hall turned to his other talent, performing. He had been active in student theatre at the University of Manitoba and worked at a radio station in Winnipeg. After a short stint at the Canadian Wheat Board, he moved to Toronto and continued to work in radio.
While there, he developed and hosted the quiz show “Who Am I” for CFRB and hosted a CBC Television dance program.
Hall moved to the U.S. in 1955, where he worked for NBC on radio and TV and later CBS, hosting various programs.
He hosted the game show “Keep Talking” in 1958, but his career path was sealed for certain when, with partner Stefan Hatos, he cocreated “Let’s Make a Deal” and in 1963 started offering contestants “Door No. 1, door No. 2 or door No.3.”
Contestants were chosen from the studio audience — outlandishly dressed as animals, clowns or cartoon characters to attract the host’s attention — and would start the game by trading an item of their own for a prize. After that, it was matter of swapping the prize in hand for others hidden behind doors, curtains or in boxes,
Hatos and Hall created other shows — “Split Second,” “Chain Letter,” “3 for the Money,” “Anybody’s Guess.”
Outside the studio, Hall became a major fundraiser for Variety Clubs International and other charitable causes, raising $1 billion, estimated his daughter Sharon Hall.
Born in Winnipeg, he later became a U.S. citizen where he raised his family, but said: “You can take the boy out of Canada, but you can’t take Canada out of the boy.