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LOS ANGELES (AP) – Wink Martindale, a kind host of hit game shows such as “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough,” has also passed away after giving one of his first recorded television interviews with young Elvis Presley. He was 91 years old.
According to his spokesman Brian Mays, Martindale passed away Tuesday at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California. Martindale was battling lymphoma for a year.
“He was doing pretty well up until a few weeks ago,” Mays said on a Nashville phone call.
“Gambit” debuted on the same day in September 1972 with Bob Barker, “The Price Is Right,” “The Joker’s Wild,” and Jack Barry.
Wink Martindale arrives at the International Myeloma Foundation’s 7th Annual Comedy Celebration, held at the Wilshire Ebell Theater in Los Angeles on November 9, 2013. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, file)
“From the day it hit the air, ‘Gambit’ spelled out the winner and taught me the basic tenants of a truly successful game show: Kiss! Keep It Simple Stuack” “Everyone knows how to play 21, or Blackjack, just like playing an old maid from his childhood.”
“Gambit” has beaten the competition between NBC and ABC for over two years. However, in 1975, a new show called “Wheel of Fortune” debuted on NBC. By December 1976, “Gambit” was aired, and “Wheel of Fortune” became the institution that is still strong today.
Martindale bounced back in 1978 with “Tic-Tac-Dough,” a classic X and O game on CBS that ran until 1985.
“One night I went from the outhouse to the penthouse,” he wrote.
He hosted a 88-game winning streak for Navy Lieutenant Colonel Tom McKee, who won more than $300,000 in cash and prizes, including 88 cars, three yachts and 16 vacation trips. At the time, Mackey’s prize money was a record of game show contestants.
“I love working with competitors, interacting with audiences, and watching life change to some extent,” Martindale writes. “If you get a lot of cash, that can happen.”
Martindale writes that producer Dan Enlight once hosted “Tic-Tac-dough” in seven years, giving him more than $7 million in cash and prizes.
Martindale said his years as a radio DJ will serve him as a game show host. He estimated he hosted almost 20 game shows in his career.
In his memoirs, Martindale wrote that the question he asked most frequently was “Is your real name?” The second was “How did you get into the game show?”
He got his nickname from his childhood friend. Martindale has no connection to University of Michigan defensive coordinator Don Martindale.
Born on December 4th, 1933 in Jackson, Tennessee, Winston Conrad Martindale, he loved radio since childhood and at the age of six he read aloud the contents of Life Magazine ads aloud.
He began his career as a disc jockey at the age of 17 at his hometown of WPLI, earning $25 a week.
After moving to WTJS, he was hired for double his salary by WDXI, Jackson’s only other station. He then held the mornings at WHBQ in Memphis while attending Memphis. He married when he graduated in 1957 and was the father of two girls.
Martindale was in the studio, but was not working on the broadcast that night when his first Presley record, “That’s All Right,” was performed on WHBQ on July 8, 1954.
Martindale approached fellow DJ Dewey Phillips, who gave Presley an early break by playing his song and asked him and Presley to co-interview for Martindale’s 1956 television show, “Top 10 Dance Party.”
Martindale and Presley have been in contact for many occasions, and in 1959 he made a telephone interview with Presley, who was in the German Army, on the transatlantic. Martindale’s second wife, Sandy, went on a brief date with Presley after meeting him on the set of “Gi Blues” in 1960.
In 1959, Martindale moved to Los Angeles and held a morning show at KHJ. That same year, he reached number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with over a million cover versions of “Deck of Cards” sold. He played a spoken wartime story with religious overtones in “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
“Wow, this is easy! I want to go out here, go on radio and on TV, make records, everyone buys it!” he wrote. “Even if I entertained those thoughts, they quickly dissipated. I eventually learned that what happened to me was far from normal.”
A year later, he moved to a morning show at KRLA and KFWB in 1962. Among his many other radio gigs were two separate stints from KMPC, owned by actor Jean Autry.
His first network hosting job was NBC’s “What is this song?” He was praised as Winmartindale from 1964 to 65.
He later hosted two shows produced by Chuck Barris on ABC: “Dream Girl ’67” and “How about your stepmother?” The latter lasted just 13 weeks of being cancelled.
“I jokingly said it left so quickly. It seemed like 13 minutes!” Martindale wrote, describing it as the worst show of his career.
Martindale held a revival of Las Vegas-based Gambit from 1980 to 1981.
He founded his own production company, Wink Martindale Enterprises, and developed and produced his own game shows. His first venture was “Headline Chaser.” This is a collaboration with Merv Griffin, who debuted in 1985 and was cancelled after a season. His next show, “Bumper Stamper,” ran with us on Canadian television from 1987 to 1990.
He hosted “debt” on Cable for lifetimes from 1996 to 98, and in 2010 he hosted “Instant Recall” on GSN.
Martindale returned to radio roots in 2012 as the host of the “best Christmas hit of all time” nationally syndicated. In 2021, he hosted the syndicated program “The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”
In 2017, Martindale appeared in a KFC advertising campaign with actor Rob Lowe.
He is survived by his second wife, Sandy, at 49, and Lisa, Madeline Ad Laura, and numerous grandchildren. He was preceded in the deaths of his son Wink Jr.’s children. Martindale’s children came from his first marriage, divorced in 1972.
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