Geoff Edwards - Game Shows

Game Shows

His first full-time game show hosting stint took place from March through June 1973 on Jack Barry's Hollywood's Talking, a remake of a late 1960s ABC game Everybody's Talking and the Canadian hit Eye Bet. The program featured contestants watching a video clip of a celebrity talking about a subject; their job was to guess the subject in question. The series, which aired afternoons on CBS, did not fare well and the network cancelled it in favor of the phenomenally popular Match Game remake.

Six months later, in January 1974, NBC and Bob Stewart Productions hired Edwards to host the New York-based Jackpot. That series proved to be a modest success for Edwards, lasting nearly two years. The previous fall, Chuck Barris hired Edwards to host the weekly revival of the 1950s game show Treasure Hunt, entitled The New Treasure Hunt. He did the weekly version for four years (1973–77) and helmed a daily Treasure Hunt for one year (1981–82).

Other game shows Edwards hosted over the years included the New York-based Shoot For the Stars in 1977, Chain Reaction (as a substitute host for Bill Cullen in 1980 and a regular host from 1986–91, having taken over from Blake Emmons), Starcade, Play the Percentages and a revival of Jackpot from 1989-90. Also, Edwards was a substitute host in the spring of 1985 on Let's Make a Deal, filling in for a week when Monty Hall had become ill with laryngitis.

Edwards is also one of four game show hosts to have emceed a game show in the United States and another in Canada concurrently (the other three were Howie Mandel, Alex Trebek and Jim Perry). Edwards, like Perry, commuted back and forth between California and Canada between 1986 and 1991, hosting The Big Spin and the 1989 revival of Jackpot! in Sacramento and Glendale and the USA Network version of Chain Reaction in Montreal. However, Edwards was required to have a Canadian co-host on Chain Reaction, due to the fact that he had no ties to the country, unlike Trebek, Mandel and Perry (Trebek and Mandel are native Canadians; Perry had blood ties to Canada and lived in Toronto during the first several years of Definition). His commuting days ended after Chain Reaction left the air in 1991.

Edwards is famous for his catch phrase — "Right you are!" — which he frequently exclaimed after a correct answer.