MONTY HALL, 1921–2017
The popular host and co-creator of the long-running TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal” dies of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 96.
Jayme Deerwester
Iconic game-show host Monty Hall has died at 96.
His agent, Mark Measures, confirmed to USA TODAY that Hall, who co-created and presided over Let’s Make a Deal from 1963 to 1986, died Saturday of heart failure.
Hall, who was born in Winnipeg in 1921 and graduated from the University of Manitoba, worked as an entertainer and sportscaster in Toronto before heading south to New York in 1955 to host the NBC radio show Monitor. His next gig, the CBS TV game-show Video Village, led him west to Los Angeles, where he would create Deal with Stefan Hatos.
Together, they turned bartering and kitsch into a TV franchise that has seen four hosts and three networks. Deal, which originally aired on NBC until 1976, also ran on ABC and in syndication before returning to network TV 2009 on CBS with host Wayne Brady.
Contestants came dressed in goofy costumes in hoping of catching Hall’s eye and a chance to trade prizes for better ones, prompting Hall to ask, “Do you want Door No. 1, No. 2 or No. 3?”
Hall was nonchalant about dealing with the litany of loony types who paraded across his stage.
“I’m a people person,” he said on the PBS documentary series Pioneers of Television. “And so I don’t care if they jump on me, and I don’t care if they yell and they fainted — those are my people.”
One of the first inductees to the Game Show Hall of Fame, he also received a lifetime-achievement Emmy in 2013.
Contributing: Associated Press