Game show host played a ‘very likable con man’ to perfection
Winnipeg-born star hosted more than 5,000 episodes of popular Let’s Make a Deal
Monty Hall, the Canadian-born host and co-creator of the game show Let’s Make a Deal, died at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., on Saturday. He was 96.
His daughter, Joanna Gleason, confirmed his death. She said the cause was heart failure.
Let’s Make a Deal, in which contestants in outlandish costumes shriek and leap at the chance to see if they will win the big prize behind door No. 3, had its premiere in 1963 and, with some interruptions, has been a television phenomenon ever since.
When Hall first roamed among the audience members who filled an NBC studio in Burbank, Calif., there was nothing zany about them.
“They came to the show in the first week in suits and dresses,” Hall told the Los Angeles Times in 2013. Within weeks, however, things had changed.
The game-changer, he said in 2013, was a woman carrying a sign that said, “Roses are red, violets are blue, I came here to deal with you.”
That opened the floodgates; wouldbe deal makers were soon showing up wearing live-bird hats, Tom Sawyer costumes or boxes resembling refrigerators. Some simply waved signs pleading, “Pick Me.”
It was all for the chance to barter their way to a big prize.
A woman might sell Hall the contents of her handbag for $150, and then agree to trade that $150 for whatever was behind a curtain, or in a big box, in the hope that it was something valuable — say, a $759 refrigerator-freezer stocked with $25 worth of cottage cheese and a $479 sewing machine.
She could then compound her glee by being smart enough not to trade it all back for the old purse and whatever amount of cash Hall had slipped into it — maybe a hefty amount or maybe a measly $27. If she went for the deal that turned out to be a loser, she was, in the language of the show, zonked.
At the end of the show, the two biggest winners were given a shot at the Big Deal. They could trade their winnings for whatever was behind one of three doors: a new car, perhaps, or $15,000 (U.S.) in cash, or, if they were not so lucky, something worth less than what they had traded. All the while, the affable, smooth- talking Hall gave no hint of where the treasure might lie.
“Monty had to be a very likable con man; he had to convince people to give up a bird in the hand for what’s in the box,” said David Schwartz, the author, with Fred Wostbrock and Steve Ryan, of The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows.
Hall kept Let’s Make a Deal moving for most of almost 5,000 broadcasts on NBC, on ABC and in syndication. The show ended its original daytime run in 1976 on ABC. A concurrent syndicated nighttime version lasted until the next year. It occasionally resurfaced over the next decades and, after being off the air for a while, was revived in October 2009 on CBS, with Wayne Brady as host. That version is still on the air.
The show could give rise to the unexpected. He recalled the day that a contestant was zonked when he chose a curtain behind which he had hoped was a car.
“It was an elephant. It freaked — ran backstage, down a ramp and out into the streets of LA. That’s probably the wildest moment.”
Hall received accolades on both sides of the border.
In 1973, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1988, Hall was named to the Order of Canada in recognition of the millions he had raised for a host of charities. In 2013, he was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys.
Born in Winnipeg on Aug. 25, 1921, as Monte Halparin, he was one of two sons of Maurice Halparin, a butcher, and the former Rose Rusen, a teacher.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and zoology from the University of Manitoba, after which he moved first to Toronto and then to New York City in 1955 to work at NBC radio. Five years later he moved to Hollywood to host a CBS TV show before teaming with Stefan Hatos to create Let’s Make a Deal in 1963.
Hall is survived by two daughters, Gleason, a Tony Award-winning actress, and Sharon Hall, a television executive; a son, Richard, a producer who won an Emmy for The Amazing Race; a brother, Robert Hall, a lawyer; and five grandchildren. His wife of almost 70 years, the former Marilyn Plottel, an Emmy Award-winning television producer, died in June.