Peter Marshall

He was heralded as part of the second coming of Martin and Lewis. About the only thing Peter Marshall had in common with them is he and his nightclub partner split up.

Neither Dean or Jerry starred in La Cage Aux Folles, but Marshall did. He appeared on stage in Vancouver as part of a touring company, though he missed a performance to fly to Los Angeles to tape a TV commercial.

Comedian. Actor. Singer. Those labels will likely never be applied to Peter Marshall. He’s known to just about everyone as the “master” of Hollywood Squares.

Like just about everyone in show biz, it was a slow rise to fame for Marshall. His first appearance on television I can find is on September 21, 1949 on KBNH’s “Hollywood Premiere Theater.” Wrote columnist Zuma Palmer: “A top act was that in which Tom Noonan and Peter Marshall took off various types of radio programs, among them man-in-the-street interviews and Mr. Anthonys.”

Noonan and Marshall puttered around nightclubs, including La Martinique in New York in 1950. They were booked into the New Golden Hotel-Bank Club starting June 11, 1952. “The meteoric rise of the Noonan-Marshall comedy duo has been nothing short of phenomenal,” wrote the Reno Gazette, “meteoric” evidently meaning three years. “Disciples of wholesome, family-style comedy, they climax each performance with their now famous “Television Chef” routine. Their performance was one of the highlights of the Warner Brothers’ recent movie production, ‘Starlift.’ In addition to their wholesome comedy as a team, Peter Marshall departs from his ‘straight-man’ role to sing several of his recent recording vocal renditions.”

After Martin and Lewis split, Twentieth-Century Fox figured the world was ready for a replacement, so in 1959 it cast Noonan and Marshall in the feature The Rookie directed by someone no one thinks of as a film director—the voice of George Jetson, George O’Hanlon. In 1961, they made one motion picture—Swingin’ Along, written by former animation director Jerry Brewer. The same year, Marshall and Paul Gilbert shot a failed pilot for NBC called Shore Leave.

Then came Hollywood Squares.

Marshall admitted in his autobiography he took the job because he didn’t want Dan Rowan to get it. Noonan was suffering from a brain tumour (he died in 1968) and Marshall felt Rowan was being a Dick Martin (subtract the word “Martin”) to his former partner. The game show was a huge success and Marshall was now a name.

Here’s a piece from the Associated Press that appeared in papers in October 1969.

A DAYTIME HOLLYWOOD SQUARE
By CYNTHIA LOWRY
AP Television Writer
Peter Marshall has an identity problem. He is not related to the late chaplain of the U.S. Senate whose name was the same. Nor is he related to Russell Nype or to Gene Rayburn, with whom he is sometimes confused.
This Peter Marshall is the man who has been serving for four years as host on one of NBC's more popular daytime game shows, Hollywood Squares, and is, as a consequence, better known to the distaff side of the audience.
• • •
MARSHALL WAS born Pierre LaCock and grew up with his sister Joanne in New York City. When Joanne got into modeling, her agent renamed her Joanne Marshall. When Pierre decided to get into show business, he simply translated his first name into English and adopted his sister's modeling surname. Then, just to make everything good and mixed up, Joanne moved on to Hollywood where director Howard Hawks renamed her Joanne Dru, under which name she became a star.
Although no one has, as yet, developed an adequate tag for that small band of television performers who ride herd on game and panel shows—"host" or "M.C." are commonly used and neither really fits—the ones who are assigned to successful network ventures of the genre are in clover.
The compensation is excellent, the hours are superb—Marshall and his troupe tape a week's worth of shows in one day—and the exposure to the public is subtly beneficial. Marshall has the other four days of the normal work week to pursue other interests, including acting, singing—he just cut an album—and business.
Perhaps the greatest of these is business, because Peter Marshall's most lucrative a vocation involves commercials. As a matter of fact, it was the commercials that got him into television, Hollywood brand.
• • •
"I WAS DOING a show in New York—playing with Julie Harris in 'Skyscraper,' " Marshall recalled. "My agent asked me if I'd like to do some television commercials."

Marshall drew himself to his full height and announced he would not like—"I am an actor."
The agent, however, was persuasive, and the reluctant Marshall did one commercial spot for a cereal company. The result was a three-year, exclusive deal.
Before Hollywood Squares, Marshall packed in a lot of show business experience. After serving as an NBC page, he teamed up with comedian Tommy Noonan and, as a straight man for 13 years, played clubs all over the country.
"I think those years as a straight man were the most valuable asset I had when Hollywood Squares came along," Marshall said. "In one sense, the host on a game show is a straight man."
After Noonan died, Marshall had the male lead in the London company of "Bye, Bye Birdie" and continued in musical comedy with the Julie Harris vehicie. In between, he was appearing in minimusicals in Las Vegas—as far back as the 1950s—with occasional excursions into stock.
• • •
MARSHALL ENJOYS working with the regulars on Hollywood Squares who include Cliff Arquette, Wally Cox, Abby Dalton, Rose Marie, Paul Lynde and Jan Murray.
The game, physically based on tic-tac-toe, has the stars answering questions, in comedy style, with members of the studio audience winning small prizes by deciding whether the answers are true or false.
There was a small rhubarb when it was learned that some of the stars received "help" on the answers to the questions, but since the help had nothing to do with the winning or losing by the audience contestants, the producers had not announced it on the show. Now there is a printed notice to that effect.
Marshall says most of the stars do receive what he calls "hokes" to leaven their answers.
He, his wife, and their four children live in the San Fernando Valley.
Marshall, in some of that dandy spare time, has written one film play, “Mary Jane,” and recently has collaborated with Dick Gautier on another, “God Bless You, Uncle Sam,” a black comedy which will soon go into production.
"In a way," he said, "it all really started with those commercials I didn't want to do. That's where the producers of the game show first saw me. I'm glad I was persuaded to sell cereal."

Marshall talked a bit more about the show in this Dec. 1971 feature story from the TV Key syndicate.

Peter Marshall, the handsome host of NBC's long-running game show "The Hollywood Squares," was a juvenile until he turned 40. "I had to go around the track once before I matured," he said. "Something like an actor I know who was refused a role because he was too pretty. The producer said he had the kind of face that needed a scar. I guess that was my problem. And now that I've aged properly, I'm straight man for a game show board of screwballs, but I'm good at it."
Marshall's appraisal of his performance on "Squares" is an honest one. He claims he has seen himself turn in some terrible acting jobs, but when he watches "Squares," he is convinced they got the right man for the job.
"To my way of thinking," he said, "all game show hosts should be compared to Bill Cullen and Monty Hall. They're the top, and you grade down from there. But on 'Squares,' I'm in a slightly different arena. I have no way of knowing what kind of line the stars are going to throw at me — even if it's a prepared gag, I'm not told — and I have to be ready to react or counter with an appropriate straight line. I was a working comedian for many years — all to prepare me for 'Squares.' "

NBC is so pleased with Peter, Charlie Weaver, Paul Lynde, Wally Cox and the semi-regulars who fill out the board, that people over there renewed the show for five years and ordered extra editions to be syndicated nationally for nighttime viewing. The deal is such a lucrative one that Peter has gone into the game show business on his own hoping to make a nice profit by reinvesting his extra cash.
"I have a children's show idea at NBC which looks pretty good," he said. "It's based on a process I have taken an option on which makes drawings seem to talk. I used it for a children's quiz."
If Marshall occasionally looks over his shoulder, it's because he expects to be arrested for stealing. He still considers doing "Squares" great fun and the "work" schedule is ridiculous.
"I meet a few friends one afternoon a week, and we throw a few jokes back and forth while NBC tapes two episodes," Marshall said. "Then we go out for dinner, laugh like crazy, come back and tape three more. Naturally, by now we've worked so hard that we go out, drink and have a party. And we're being paid?"
Prior to "Squares," Pete was a successful comedian and actor. He appeared in musicals on Broadway, and the experience is now paying off in unexpected dividends. When the summer stock season rolls around, everybody in the business knows that Paul Lynde is big box-office in middle-America, but Marshall proudly reports that he is closing in.
"I did tremendous business in 'The Music Man' last summer in St. Louis," said Marshall, "and I'm looking around for something to try this season. Suzanne Pleshette and I are thinking of teaming up to tour in Frank Gilroy's play 'Only Game in Town.'"
Unlike may people who've been doing the same thing professionally for some years (I'll discuss Monty Hall in the near future), Pete Marshall hopes "Squares" runs forever. He paid his dues on the nightclub circuit, stock companies and just knocking around, although he proudly asserts that his handsome, juvenile face was rarely unemployed.
With "Squares" requiring only one day a week, he busies himself writing (an original story of his is being made into a film), packaging TV shows and doing guest shots.
Born in West Virginia but raised in New York, Marshall now lives with his wife and four children in California. His eldest son, Peter Leacock Jr. [sic] (apparently Peter Marshall and his sister, actress Joanne Dru, were originally named Leacock) is a highly touted outfielder in the Chicago Cubs' farm system, and Pete expects to be seeing the boy in the major leagues very soon.

NBC cancelled Hollywood Squares in 1980 and the show's syndicated run ended a year later. Marshall got a chance to sing on television on his own syndicated variety show while Squares was still in production. I don't recall if he ever sang a bar or two on the game show, but he recorded its original theme song (Bill Loose was asked to write a similar tune, which replaced "The Silly Song").