After twelve years with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, I had a desire to spread my wings and look south of the border and see if there was something available in America. I had been in touch with Roone Arledge, head of ABC News and Sports, and he had expressed some interest in hiring me. I was waiting to schedule an audition with his office, but then one day—it was a Wednesday, I remember—I got a call from Alan Thicke.
Alan was also from Ontario and had been a popular game show and talk show host in Canada before moving to Los Angeles to work in American show business. I first met him at the start of his career when I was the host of an afternoon variety show called, logically enough, After Noon. It aired from 1:15 to 2:00 p.m., live at the Colonnade Theater in Toronto, in front of an audience. My cohost was Juliette, one of Canada’s big singing stars. Our announcer was Bruce Marsh, Canada’s top commercial announcer. The format was similar to a late-night talk show. We had a band that played music. I’d come out and do a monologue, then interview guests. Alan was part of a singing duo that appeared on the show.
“I’m writing a new game show for NBC,” he said over the phone. The show was called The Wizard of Odds. It was to be filmed in the round, so there was no place for cue cards. They needed a host with experience who could think on his feet, and they were looking for a new face.
“We’ve kind of exhausted our list of potential hosts here in the U.S.,” Alan said. “Would you be interested?”
“Sure.”
“Okay. I’m going to come up to Toronto and we’ll talk.”
He didn’t waste any time. He flew in the next day. He picked me up in a car and drove us to his parents’ house outside of Toronto. There he explained the game to me, and we did some run-throughs. Then Friday we did more rehearsal games with members of his family—his brother, his sister, his mom and dad. And then Saturday morning we flew to New York.
I went to the Hilton hotel and met with Marty Pasetta, who was going to be the director. He had me rehearse all day. At six o’clock we had some contestants come into our rehearsal hall—they pulled them off the street in front of the Hilton—and we ran the game. We were cruising along beautifully. We had a really good game going. Then we got to the bonus round. I had rehearsed the bonus round for about two hours. There were three doors, with a prize behind each. If you picked door #1 and it didn’t contain a big X, you could then select from door #2 or #3. The idea was that hopefully you could pick two doors that had prizes and avoid the one that didn’t.
Unfortunately, the contestant who was in the bonus round picked the X door first. So I said, “Well, there goes two hours of rehearsal. It’s over. The game is over. Thank you very much. Goodbye!”
This was about six thirty. I went to my room, got my bags, and went directly to LaGuardia Airport. I took a plane back to Toronto and got home in time to watch the second period of a hockey game, which made me feel good. Around eleven o’clock that night I got a phone call from Alan.
“We’d like you to come to Los Angeles to do a pilot,” he said.
“When?” I asked.
He gave me the dates.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll free up some time,” which was not going to be a problem.
I had accumulated twelve or thirteen weeks of annual leave, so I was sitting pretty. I was one of the few bachelors on the announcer staff at the CBC, and whenever we had statutory holidays and I was scheduled to be off, I knew that some of the married guys would like to have time to spend with their families. So I would volunteer. I would go to our scheduling guy and say, “Look, why don’t you talk to so-and-so, and if he wants the day off I’ll take his shift.”
I flew to Los Angeles and did the pilot. And before the day was out they said, “You got the job.”
They were going to start taping the series immediately. I thought, I have twelve weeks of leave coming. I’m not going to resign from the CBC because we’re just being picked up for thirteen weeks. We’ll see how it goes.
Only after we were picked up for the second thirteen weeks did I resign. I put my house up for sale and moved all my furniture to LA. It was a bitch getting into the country with the work permits. Immigration was rough even back then. U.S. unions didn’t want any more Canadians coming in and stealing jobs from Americans. I managed to get my green card application approved because my new employer said I had a specific skill that no other American hosts had, which was being able to work in the round without cue cards. My employers also said I had a photographic memory, which was a lie.