Other Game Shows/television Appearances
During and between his Match Game years, Rayburn served as guest panelist on two other Goodson-Todman shows, What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth. Also during the run of the 1970s Match Game, Gene and wife Helen appeared on the game show Tattletales, hosted by Bert Convy. Three years after the original Match Game was cancelled, Rayburn hosted the short-lived Heatter-Quigley Productions show, The Amateur's Guide to Love. In 1983 he hosted a pilot for Reg Grundy Productions called Party Line, which later became Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak.
Rayburn appeared as a contestant during a tournament of game show hosts on the original version of Card Sharks in 1980 and was a celebrity guest on Password Plus several times between 1980 and 1982.
Rayburn appeared on Fantasy Island as a game-show host — he and another host were game show rivals who vied to win the woman they both loved by creating the ultimate game show, with life-or-death consequences.
Rayburn once hosted a local New York City-based show on WNEW-TV (now WNYW), Helluva Town, and between game show stints in 1982-83 he returned to WNEW as host of a weekly local talk/lifestyles show called Saturday Morning Live. He ended his brief tenure to return as co-host of The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour.
Rayburn's last game show hosting duties were on 1985's Break the Bank (he was replaced by Joe Farago after 13 weeks), and The Movie Masters, an AMC cable game show that ran from 1989 to 1990.
Just before production was to begin on a new Rayburn-emceed Match Game revival in 1985, an Entertainment Tonight reporter publicly disclosed that Rayburn was much older than many believed. Rayburn had trouble finding jobs after that, blaming the reporter for revealing his age and subjecting him to age discrimination.
Rayburn portrayed himself on a Saturday Night Live sketch in 1990, which featured Susan Lucci (as her character from All My Children, Erica Kane). He returned as one of Kane's many previous husbands, to stop another marriage (officiated by his old "Choose Up Sides" co-star Don Pardo) with the host of a game show portrayed by Phil Hartman. He also continued to make appearances on talk shows throughout the late 1980s and 90s, usually to discuss classic game shows, including appearances on Vicki! and The Maury Povich Show and The Late Show with Ross Shafer. Coincidentally, Shafer would host the 1990 Match Game revival.
Read more about this topic: Gene Rayburn
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