Profile of Geoff Edwards on Famous Like Me

Geoff Edwards is an American television actor and radio personality born on February 13, 1931 in Westfield, New Jersey.

Edwards began his career while in college, working for a radio station in Albany, New York. By the late 1950s, Edwards headed west to Southern California, landing his first true job at station KFMB. As a news reporter, Edwards was present in the basement of the Dallas Police Department when Jack Ruby shot suspected John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963. He was one of the witnesses interviewed by NBC Television Correspondent Tom Pettit after the murder.

After a few short stints at other stations, Edwards was hired at KMPC in Los Angeles, occupying the 9 AM-noon slot for several years beginning in 1968.

During that time, Edwards tried his hand at acting, appearing on I Dream of Jeannie and Petticoat Junction; the latter of which he met and maintained a very close friendship with Meredith MacRae for more than three decades.

In the early-1970s, Edwards appeared on The Bobby Darin Show as the straight man to singer Bobby Darin. After that series ended, Edwards decided to go into game shows.

His first game show effort was in 1973 on Jack Barry's Hollywood's Talking, which is a remake of an earlier game show, Everyone's Talking and the Canadian hit Eye Bet, in which contestants watched a clip of a celebrity talking about a subject, and the contestants' job was to guess what the celebrity was talking about. That series did not fare well and was discontinued by CBS. Six months later, Edwards was hired by NBC to host the New York-based Jackpot. That series proved to be a modest success for Edwards, lasting nearly two years, and eventually Chuck Barris hired Edwards to host the weekly game show Treasure Hunt, which he did for four years (1973-77) and again for one year (1981-82) on a five-days-a-week basis. On Treasure Hunt, Edwards was required to memorize 29 skits (65 in the 1981-82 revival) due to security reasons, which was a natural for Edwards who had prior acting experience.

Other game shows Edwards hosted over the years included the New York-based Shoot For The Stars in 1977, Chain Reaction (as a sub host in 1980 and a regular host from 1986-91), Starcade, Play The Percentages and a revival of Jackpot from 1989-90.

Edwards holds the distinction of being among an elite group of very few game show hosts to commute between Los Angeles and New York to host at least one game show on both sides of the country at the same time. Edwards, Alex Trebek and Jim Perry have also hosted a game show in the United States and a game show in Canada concurrently, and are the only three hosts to accomplish this. Edwards, unlike Perry and Trebek, had no Canadian ties, so he was required to have a co-host for Chain Reaction when the series was produced in Toronto.

Edwards was also co-host of the popular Los Angeles news program Mid Morning L.A., replacing Bob Hilton in the early-1980s and paired with co-host Meredith MacRae. Edwards and MacRae won a Emmy Award for best host and best hostess respectively for a news magazine series.

In 1986, Geoff became host of Big Spin, a California Lottery series (replacing original host Chuck Woolery, who left to concentrate solely on his other game show projects). Edwards remained host until around 1997.

In later years, Edwards traveled extensively, hosting traveling programs on both radio and television. He is now semi-retired and living in California, and continues to write extensively about travel.

Geoff Edwards can also refer to a Canadian voice actor of the same name who is the voice of animator James Farr's Xombie character named Dirge. He was a music journalist and CBC Radio host for nearly ten years. He lives in the community of Chilliwack near Vancouver BC, Canada.

This article about an American actor or actress is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Geoff Edwards