Jack Narz

Jack Narz, the genial announcer and game-show host whose easy manner carried Dotto, Beat the Clock and Concentration into American living rooms, died at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles on October 15, 2008. He was eighty-five. He was born John Lawrence Narz Jr. on November 13, 1922, in Louisville, Kentucky, to a family of Lithuanian descent. His younger brother, James, would also become a well-known host under the name Tom Kennedy. During the Second World War Narz flew as a fighter pilot in the China-Burma theater and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he studied at the Don Martin School of Radio Arts in Hollywood, graduating in 1947, and worked as an announcer at stations in El Centro, Burbank, Glendale and Los Angeles. He found early television work as a commercial pitchman, as one of the narrators of Adventures of Superman, and as announcer for the children's science-fiction series Space Patrol. In 1952 he became the on-camera announcer and narrator of Life with Elizabeth, starring Betty White, and later announced for Bob Crosby's daytime show and the game show Place the Face. In January 1958 he began hosting his own program, Dotto, on CBS, and it quickly became a daytime and prime-time hit. When the quiz-show scandals broke later that year, Dotto was the first popular quiz show cancelled; Narz had no part in the deception and was quickly cleared. He went on to host Top Dollar, Video Village and Seven Keys, among others. In 1969 he began a long association with Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, hosting the syndicated revival of Beat the Clock until 1972. From 1973 to 1978 he hosted the syndicated Concentration, his longest run as a host, and he emceed Now You See It on CBS. He later announced and helped produce a revival of Beat the Clock and filled in as an announcer on Card Sharks. His final hosting work was a local Southern California show in 1987 and 1988. He and his brother occasionally appeared on each other's programs, a rare pair of siblings who both became fixtures of the American game show. He died after two strokes and complications of kidney failure.