He was anything but boring. Tony Award-winning actor and 95-time(!) guest on the Tonight Show, Charles Nelson Reilly has passed away at age 76. Quite by coincidence, I’ve spent a lot of this past week watching old episodes of Match Game on the Game Show Network. (This is what happens when Justin goes travelling for a week and leaves me alone to tend the kitties.)
A few months ago, our TiVo happened to capture an episode of Match Game as a “Suggestion” and we watched it and nearly wet ourselves laughing. I remember watching the show as a kid and found it funny then, but now it’s so much funnier.
We’ve set up a Season Pass for it, we always have about 25 episodes queued up and I watch them while cooking or just to pass the time. I would recommend that you try catching a few old shows yourself. It’s worth the effort!
The show is such an amazing artifact; an incredible snapshot of culture from the mid 1970s through the 1980s, from clothing to the who’s who of B-list and C-list stars, to the sometimes bizarre “matches” drawn from the cultural awareness of the day. And to see Charles Nelson Reilly, so obviously gay and yet so incredibly loved by his fellow panelists and the audience so many years ago, he was quite a force for change… and humor.
Goodbye, Charles!
Here’s some YouTube clips for your entertainment.
Back to my usual Tuesday night, here are tonight’s items from