{"id":6999,"date":"2025-04-16T00:36:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T00:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=6999"},"modified":"2025-04-16T00:36:30","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T00:36:30","slug":"wink-martindale-the-genial-game-show-host-and-an-early-tv-interviewer-of-elvis-presley-dies-at-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/?p=6999","title":{"rendered":"Wink Martindale, the genial game-show host and an early TV interviewer of Elvis Presley, dies at 91"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LOS ANGELES — <\/span>Wink Martindale, the genial host of such hit game shows as \u201cGambit\u201d and \u201cTic-Tac-Dough\u201d who also did one of the first recorded television<\/a> interviews with a young Elvis Presley, has died. He was 91.<\/p>\n

Martindale died Tuesday at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California, according to his publicist Brian Mayes. Martindale had been battling lymphoma for a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was doing pretty well up until a couple weeks ago,\u201d Mayes said by phone from Nashville.<\/p>\n

\u201cGambit\u201d debuted on the same day in September 1972 as \u201cThe Price is Right\u201d with Bob Barker and \u201cThe Joker\u2019s Wild\u201d with Jack Barry.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the day it hit the air, \u2018Gambit\u2019 spelled winner, and it taught me a basic tenant of any truly successful game show: KISS! Keep It Simple Stupid,\u201d Martindale wrote in his 2000 memoir \u201cWinking at Life.\u201d \u201cLike playing Old Maids as a kid, everybody knows how to play 21, i.e. blackjack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGambit\u201d had been beating its competition on NBC and ABC for over two years. But a new show debuted in 1975 on NBC called \u201cWheel of Fortune.\u201d By December 1976, \u201cGambit\u201d was off the air and \u201cWheel of Fortune\u201d became an institution that is still going strong today.<\/p>\n

Martindale bounced back in 1978 with \u201cTic-Tac-Dough,\u201d the classic X\u2019s and O\u2019s game on CBS that ran until 1985.<\/p>\n

\u201cOvernight I had gone from the outhouse to the penthouse,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

He presided over the 88-game winning streak of Navy Lt. Thom McKee, who earned over $300,000 in cash and prizes that included eight cars, three sailboats and 16 vacation trips. At the time, McKee\u2019s winnings were a record for a game show contestant.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love working with contestants, interacting with the audience and to a degree, watching lives change,\u201d Martindale wrote. \u201cWinning a lot of cash can cause that to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martindale wrote that producer Dan Enright once told him that in the seven years he hosted \u201cTic-Tac-Dough\u201d he gave away over $7 million in cash and prizes.<\/p>\n

Martindale said his many years as a radio DJ were helpful to him as a game show host because radio calls for constant ad-libs and he learned to handle almost any situation in the spur of the moment. He estimated that he hosted nearly two dozen game shows during his career.<\/p>\n

Martindale wrote in his memoir that the question he got asked most often was \u201cIs Wink your real name?\u201d The second was \u201cHow did you get into game shows?\u201d<\/p>\n

He got his nickname from a childhood friend. Martindale is no relation to University of Michigan defensive coordinator Don Martindale, whose college teammates nicknamed him Wink because of their shared last name.<\/p>\n

Born Winston Conrad Martindale on Dec. 4, 1933, in Jackson, Tennessee, he loved radio since childhood and at age 6 would read aloud the contents of advertisements in Life magazine.<\/p>\n

He began his career as a disc jockey at age 17 at WPLI in his hometown, earning $25 a week.<\/p>\n

After moving to WTJS, he was hired away for double the salary by Jackson\u2019s only other station, WDXI. He next hosted mornings at WHBQ in Memphis while attending Memphis State. He was married and the father of two girls when he graduated in 1957.<\/p>\n

Martindale was in the studio, although not working on-air that night, when the first Presley record \u201cThat\u2019s All Right\u201d was played on WHBQ on July 8, 1954.<\/p>\n

Martindale approached fellow DJ Dewey Phillips, who had given Presley an early break by playing his song, to ask him and Presley to do a joint interview on Martindale\u2019s TV show \u201cTop Ten Dance Party\u201d in 1956. By then, Presley had become a major star and agreed to the appearance.<\/p>\n

Martindale and Presley stayed in touch on occasion through the years, and in 1959 he did a trans-Atlantic telephone interview with Presley, who was in the Army in Germany. Martindale\u2019s second wife, Sandy, briefly dated Presley after meeting him on the set of \u201cG.I. Blues\u201d in 1960.<\/p>\n

In 1959, Martindale moved to Los Angeles to host a morning show on KHJ. That same year he reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with a cover version of \u201cDeck of Cards,\u201d which sold over 1 million copies. He performed the spoken word wartime story with religious overtones on \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI could easily have thought, \u2019Wow, this is easy! I come out here, go on radio and TV, make a record and everybody wants to buy it!\u201d he wrote. \u201cEven if I entertained such thoughts, they soon dissipated. I learned in due time that what had happened to me was far from the ordinary.\u201d<\/p>\n

A year later he moved to the morning show at KRLA and to KFWB in 1962. Among his many other radio gigs were two separate stints at KMPC, owned by actor Gene Autry.<\/p>\n

His first network hosting job was on NBC\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s This Song?\u201d where he was credited as Win Martindale from 1964-65.<\/p>\n

He later hosted two Chuck Barris-produced shows on ABC: \u201cDream Girl \u201967\u201d and \u201cHow\u2019s Your Mother-in-Law?\u201d The latter lasted just 13 weeks before being canceled.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve jokingly said it came and went so fast, it seemed more like 13 minutes!\u201d Martindale wrote, explaining that it was the worst show of his career.<\/p>\n

Martindale later hosted a Las Vegas-based revival of \u201cGambit\u201d from 1980-81.<\/p>\n

He formed his own production company, Wink Martindale Enterprises, to develop and produce his own game shows. His first venture was \u201cHeadline Chasers,\u201d a coproduction with Merv Griffin that debuted in 1985 and was canceled after one season. His next show, \u201cBumper Stumpers,\u201d ran on U.S. and Canadian television from 1987-1990.<\/p>\n

He hosted \u201cDebt\u201d from 1996-98 on Lifetime cable and \u201cInstant Recall\u201d on GSN in 2010.<\/p>\n

Martindale returned to his radio roots in 2012 as host of the nationally syndicated \u201cThe 100 Greatest Christmas Hits of All Time.\u201d In 2021, he hosted syndicated program \u201cThe History of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2017, Martindale appeared in a KFC ad campaign with actor Rob Lowe.<\/p>\n

He is survived by Sandy, his second wife of 49 years, and children Lisa, Madelyn ad Laura and numerous grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son, Wink Jr. Martindale’s children are from his first marriage which ended in divorce in 1972.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LOS ANGELES — Wink Martindale, the genial host of such hit game shows as \u201cGambit\u201d and \u201cTic-Tac-Dough\u201d who also did one of the first recorded television interviews with a young Elvis Presley, has died. He was 91. Martindale died Tuesday at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California, according to his publicist Brian Mayes. Martindale had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7001,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6999\/revisions\/7001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firearmman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}