Sorry to hear of the passing of Geoff Edwards, a stalwart voice of Los Angeles radio for many years…and a very nice man. Most of you who knew of him probably knew him as a game show host but that was just a small part of what he did. He died yesterday at the age of 83 due to complications from pneumonia.
This obit will tell you a lot about Geoff, including the story of how he quit his radio show on KFI here in L.A. when a fellow broadcaster at the station conducted the equivalent of a book-burning, destroying the records of singer Cat Stevens. Before that, Edwards was on KMPC where he did what he did so well. He played records and said very funny things between them, and just made you feel comfy when you were listening.
One thing that's not in there: Edwards, like most guys in radio, hopped about from town to town and job to job for much of his early career. In one of those positions, he was a newsman in the Dallas Police Garage in November of '63 when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald and he witnessed to the shooting. You can see him interviewed by other reporters in much of the news footage shot that day.
His career as a game show host began in the early seventies on local TV and then national. There was a lady named Lin Bolen in charge of Daytime Programming at NBC. In what was a controversial decision in some circles, she decided that too many of their game shows were hosted by "old men" and that housewives would rather look at younger, handsome hosts. So she scouted the country and for the new game shows she introduced, she did not hire the likes of Dennis James, Bill Cullen, Jack Narz or others who were then in that talent pool. She found "young studs" (that was the term used) and brought us Chuck Woolery, Alex Trebek…and Geoff Edwards.
Edwards hosted a pretty good new show called Jackpot! and because it was taped in New York, he had to fly back there every other week and tape two weeks of programs. The show didn't last but the experience gave him some pretty funny stories of air travel and bad taxi drivers which he told on his L.A. radio show.
Later, he hosted (and sadly, became best known for) The New Treasure Hunt, a Chuck Barris show that reveled in torturing female contestants before it told them if they'd won a "klunk" (i.e., nothing) or $25,000 or something in-between. Geoff was a much better person than that. He was also a much wittier, interesting man who could have easily — and should have — hosted a talk show or interview program. He was very well-read and able to converse on any topic.
I spoke with him a few times when I was starting out, writing jokes for Gary Owens who was also on KMPC then, and gave Edwards a few as well. I liked him on the radio and I liked him in person, so it doesn't matter much that I didn't like him on The New Treasure Hunt. That wasn't the real guy we just lost.