Remembering 2024’s Losses: Peter Marshall

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What a great time I had with my friends from Chicago last night! And, while we were at dinner, I realized that it was the ten-year anniversary of my broken ankle! (He was the one who helped me get to the Greyhound station and pick my brother up so my brother could drive me home.) I’ll discuss that more later. Right now, here’s another star who left us in 2024. Peter Marshall The ringmaster of the nine-ring circus known as The Hollywood Squares. (I saw that they’re rebooting that on TV this week. Sorry, it ain’t gonna work without Paul Lynde.) Back in the 60s and 70s we had a different world in daytime television: game shows in the morning, soap operas in the afternoon. One of the most enduring game shows was The Hollywood Squares, a trivia game meets tic-tac-toe. The regulars made it a show worth watching. As I mentioned when he passed, Peter Marshall did have a life other than game show host. He was a singer, although his albums flopped massively. (I think my local friends in the band Velvet Elvis sold more copies of their album than HE did. ) In 2021 he was thought to be terminally ill with COVID-19 (understandable, he was 95 at the time), but he recovered. It may have been some of those long-term complications that eventually took his life, as he passed from kidney failure in August. A little trivia: his son, Pete LaCock, is a retired MLB baseball player. No Hall of Fame stats, unlike his dad’s multiple Emmy-winning legacy. Peter Marshall Born Ralph Pierre LaCock, March 30, 1926, Clarksburg, West Virginia Died August 15, 2024, Los Angeles, California (kidney failure) (age 98) HALLS OF FAME: American TV Game Show, West Virginia Music A brief clip of Marshall describing the origins of The Hollywood Squares: