Double or Nothing (radio show)
| Bert Parks | |
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Parks in 1956.
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| Born |
Bertram Jacobson December 30, 1914 Atlanta, Georgia |
| Died | February 2, 1992 (aged 77) La Jolla, California |
Bert Parks (born Bertram Jacobson; December 30, 1914 – February 2, 1992) was an American actor, singer, and radio and television announcer, best known for hosting the annual Miss America telecast from 1955 to 1979.
Parks was born in Atlanta, Georgia, to Aaron Jacobson, a Jewish merchant who had immigrated to the United States in 1900 from Latvia (then part of the Russian Empire), and his wife Hattie (Spiegel) Jacobson, the daughter of immigrants from Austria-Hungary. He had one older brother, Allen Jacobson.
Parks' had his first experience in amateur theatre when he was four years old. He graduated from Marist College.
Parks entered radio broadcasting at age 16, for Atlanta's WGST. Three years later, he moved to New York City and was hired as a singer and on The Eddie Cantor Show, then becoming a CBS Radio staff announcer. Parks was the host of Break the Bank, which premiered on radio in 1945 and was telecast from 1948 to 1957, as well as Stop the Music on radio in 1948 and television from 1949 to 1952. The success of Stop the Music took a toll on the ratings of the popular radio show hosted by satrist Fred Allen, who began spoofing Parks's program with skits mocking the premise of the show, one called Cease The Melody.
With other celebrities, he hosted NBC radio's Monitor during the 1960s.
Parks' first game show was Party Line on NBC (broadcast from New York City NBC flagship station WNBT), which involved viewers calling in to answer questions and win $5 prizes; Party Line ran from June 8 to August 31, 1947, making its one surviving episode the oldest known game show and one of the oldest surviving television shows to have been recorded. Commercial kinescopes did not come out until fall 1947 (co-sponsored by NBC, DuMont, and Kodak), and the only kinescopes known to predate Party Line are a few episodes of Kraft Television Theater from February and June 1947.
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