Lung cancer has taken Fred Wostbrock, aka "Mr. Game Show." Fred was an agent for actors and TV personalities with a special emphasis on those who were either game show hosts and announcers, older performers who maybe were not appreciated/promoted at other agencies, or actors who'd appeared on the sixties Batman TV show. The last decade or so, along with all else he was doing booking his clients for TV, movies and commercials, he'd been arranging convention appearances for Adam West, Burt Ward, Julie Newmar and others from that series.
I just reminded myself of a convention in Columbus, Ohio (I think) years ago where he was representing Adam West and Frank Gorshin. A good agent has to do a certain amount of personal maintenance work for his clients and Fred was very busy because the convention facility had No Smoking signs. Gorshin was a very fine, talented man but his attitude about No Smoking signs was that they didn't apply to him and he'd smoke anywhere he goddamn wanted to. Fred more than earned whatever he made that weekend by not letting one of the con's featured guests be kicked out of the facility. How he achieved this, I couldn't fathom but it obviously involved a lot of personal tact and charm.
Fred loved most of his clients for non-monetary reasons — especially the game show ones like Tom Kennedy and Jack Narz. That was because he loved game shows and knew every damned thing you could know about them. The first time I met him, he asked me who I thought was the all-time best game show host and I named Bill Cullen. Fred broke into a big grin and said, "You and I are going to get along just fine."
Whenever I ran into the man, that's what we talked about: Game shows. Game shows, game shows and more game shows. He knew them all and was the co-author of several books about the form…but he was not geeky or silly about it. He appreciated those programs for what they were and understood their appeal so well that I never understood why he wasn't producing one.
Most of his clients were probably very happy he wasn't since he revitalized many careers and kept them working. When you're an agent, that's all you really have to do…keep your clients working. Fred did that well and he was one of the good guys. Here he is on a cable show years ago, sharing only a smidgen of what he knew about longtime game show producer Mark Goodson…
