Sad to hear that he died through NPR this morning but his passing on Friday wasn’t released until today.
Growing up, he was just a fixture on game shows and Lidsville. He and Richard Dawson were usually the smart money when it came to the big prizes at the end. When we moved to Houston and got our TV working (as soon as the movers brought it in), my brother and I saw him appearing on a sitcom called The Ghost & Mrs. Muir. Don’t know why that surprised me then, I guess I didn’t know the position of game show panelist being a sign of a “failed” career. Writers on The Simpsons always gave him credit for the gesture of “we’ll, we’re dead now” by tugging at your collar and making a dorky noise; the whole town of Springfield does it when the missile for the comet destroys the only bridge out of town. At least he did live on with a new generation of people through Spongebob Squarepants as the voice of Mermaid Man’s enemy, the Dirty Bubble, and Alec Baldwin’s imitation on SNL.