Peter Marshall, the Emmy Award-winning host of “Hollywood Squares,” has died. He was 98.
Marshall died Thursday of kidney failure at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Harlan Boll said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.
Marshall hosted “The Hollywood Squares” for 15 years, from 1966 to 1981.
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Peter Marshall hosted “The Hollywood Squares” for 15 years. (Getty Images)
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business,” Marshall said in a 2010 interview for the Archive of American Television, according to The Associated Press. “I walked in, said ‘Hello, stars,’ I read questions and laughed. And it paid very well.”
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business.”
Born in Huntington, West Virginia, on March 30, 1926, Marshall kick-started his career in show business as a teenager, landing a job as an NBC Radio page and an usher at Paramount Theater in New York City. After his high school graduation, Marshall was drafted into the Army in 1944 and began work as a disc jockey for Armed Forces Radio.
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By the late 1940s, Marshall and comedian and film producer Tommy Noonan began performing regularly in major nightclubs and theaters throughout the country. After starring in multiple films in the ’60s, Marshall’s first starring role on Broadway was in “Skyscraper” alongside Julie Harris in 1965.
Marshall died Thursday of kidney failure. (Getty Images)
In 2021, Marshall opened up to Fox News Digital about the show’s abrupt ending.
“[Fred Silverman], he turned down ‘Hollywood Squares’ when he was the head of CBS,” he said. “He always hated the show! And then he came over to NBC and he kept changing our time, trying to get us off. And finally, he brought David Letterman for an hour and a half. And that’s when he…