Game show host, singer, actor, and conservative commentator Chuck Woolery passed away over the weekend. He was 83 years old. Woolery’s podcast partner Mark Young announced his passing on Saturday.
It is with a broken heart that I tell you that my dear brother @chuckwoolery has just passed away. Life will not be the same without him,RIP brother pic.twitter.com/OVPgG195RX
— Dr. Mark Young (@MarkYoungTruth) November 24, 2024
Boomers and Gen Xers will remember Woolery best from two ‘80s shows: the dating show “Love Connection” and the game show “Scrabble.” Both were fun cultural touchstones, particularly for a game show-obsessed ‘70s and ‘80s kid like me. For the uninitiated, “Scrabble” was a riff on the classic board game, while “Love Connection” had a person pick a date from audition tapes and tell Woolery how the date went. The audience would vote on a winning couple, and the show would pay for a second date.
Here's a sample:
According to the Associated Press, “Woolery told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2003 that his favorite set of lovebirds was a man aged 91 and a woman aged 87. ‘She had so much eye makeup on, she looked like a stolen Corvette. He was so old he said, “I remember wagon trains.” The poor guy. She took him on a balloon ride.’”
But Woolery had even more interesting career moments. After a stint in the Navy, he tried to make it as a singer, forming the duo The Avant-Garde, which had a minor hit in 1968 called “Naturally Stoned.” AllMusic’s Jason Ankeny calls it a “minor classic”; feel free to judge for yourself from the clip below:
RIP Chuck Woolery, the Love Connection host from my youth (back in 2 and 2). Before game show fame, he was in The Avant-Garde, whose 1968 single 'Naturally Stoned' hit #40 on Billboard. Here he is performing it on Hugh Hefner’s After Dark in 1969. Trippy song. Interesting life. pic.twitter.com/glzqaRqXAo
— Adam Waller (@adamdigital) November 25, 2024
Woolery went on to write at least one song for Tammy Wynette and released a few singles on the country charts throughout the ‘70s, and he even did some acting. But his big break came when he met the legendary Merv Griffin in 1974.
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The AP reports:
Woolery began his TV career at a show that has become a mainstay. Although most associated with Pat Sajak and Vanna White, “Wheel of Fortune” debuted Jan. 6, 1975, on NBC with Woolery welcoming contestants and the audience. Woolery, then 33, was trying to make it in Nashville as a singer.
“Wheel of Fortune” started life as “Shopper’s Bazaar,” incorporating Hangman-style puzzles and a roulette wheel. After Woolery appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” singing “Delta Dawn,” Merv Griffin asked him to host the new show with Susan Stafford.
“I had an interview that stretched to 15, 20 minutes,” Woolery told The New York Times in 2003. “After the show, when Merv asked if I wanted to do a game show, I thought, ‘Great, a guy with a bad jacket and an equally bad mustache who doesn’t care what you have to say — that’s the guy I want to be.’”
Woolery hosted “Wheel of Fortune” for the first six years of its run, snagging an Emmy nomination in 1978. Griffin replaced Woolery with Pat Sajak in 1981. After “Love Connection” and “Scrabble” ended, Woolery hosted a handful of short-lived game shows as well as a reality show that had a brief run.
Woolery was a longtime conservative, and he maintained a presence for years on X. He began the podcast “Blunt Force Truth” with Young in 2014. He said a few controversial things on that podcast, and, of course, that’s what the AP went out of its way to point out. Reporter Mark Kennedy let his bias slip out when he said that Woolery “became a right-wing podcaster, skewering liberals and accusing the government of lying about COVID-19” and accused Woolery of “arguing minorities don’t need civil rights.”
His fifth wife and his five children survive him. Rest in peace, Chuck. We’ll see you in “2 and 2.”
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