Wink Martindale, a radio persona who turned a tv star as a dapper and affable host of recreation exhibits like “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough” within the Seventies and ’80s and “Debt” within the ’90s, died on Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 91.
Nashville Publicity Group, which represented him, introduced his demise in a press release.
A veteran of the sport present circuit, Mr. Martindale was concerned in additional than 20 exhibits, both as a producer or host.
His first recreation present, in 1964, was “What’s This Tune,” wherein contestants paired with celebrities to determine tunes for money prizes. The present was short-lived, as had been many others he experimented with.
“Gambit” was primarily based on the cardboard recreation blackjack, and “Tic-Tac-Dough” mixed trivia with the traditional puzzle recreation tic-tac-toe. In “Debt,” the prize was the principle focus: Contestants would arrive with payments for bank cards, automotive funds or scholar loans, which might be paid off in the event that they answered a sequence of questions accurately.
As a vocalist, Mr. Martindale recorded about 20 single data and 7 albums. His 1959 spoken-voice narrative recording, “Deck of Playing cards,” bought greater than one million copies, incomes him a gold file, a designation by the Recording Trade Affiliation of America for data that bought 500,000 copies or extra. “Deck of Playing cards” additionally introduced him an look on the Ed Sullivan selection present, the place he instructed the story of a younger American soldier in North Africa who’s arrested and charged with enjoying playing cards throughout a church service.
Mr. Martindale acquired a star on the Hollywood Stroll of Fame in 2006 and was one of many first inductees into the American TV Sport Present Corridor of Fame in 2007.
He credited a few of his success to his distinctive nickname.
“Once I was a child in Jackson, Tenn., one among my playmates, Jimmy McCord, couldn’t say ‘Winston,’ which is my given identify, and he had a speech obstacle, and it got here out sounding like ‘Winky,’” Mr. Martindale instructed ABC Information in 2014. “So Winston became Winky, after which I acquired into the enterprise and Wink! It served me nicely, and I simply stored Wink all these years.”
Winston Conrad Martindale was born in Jackson on Dec. 4, 1933, to James A. and Frances M. (Mitchell) Martindale. After graduating from highschool in 1951, he attended Memphis State School (now the College of Memphis), the place he landed his first disc jockey gig at a neighborhood station, incomes $25 per week. He graduated with a level in speech and drama.
“I feel that I used to be born with a need to be a radio announcer,” he was quoted as saying. “I all the time had that nice need to take a seat behind a microphone. My first ‘mic’ was two paper cups connected to a string. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than I used to be sitting behind the actual factor.”
He later ascended to WHBQ in Memphis, a powerhouse station within the South, the place in 1954 he notably secured an on-air interview with Elvis Presley — by calling his mom — after the discharge of Presley’s first file, “That’s All Proper.”
Mr. Martindale moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and was featured on a number of radio stations in and round that metropolis, together with KMPC, which was identified then because the “Station of the Stars,” owned by the “singing cowboy” and actor Gene Autry. Even after discovering his calling in tv as a recreation present host, Mr. Martindale was the station’s noon persona for 12 years beginning in 1971.
His marriage in 1954 to Madelyn Leech resulted in divorce in 1971. That they had 4 kids, Lisa, Lyn, Laura and Wink Jr. He married Sandra Ferra, who survives him, in 1975. Mr. Martindale additionally had quite a lot of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Full data on survivors was not instantly obtainable.
