Art Linkletter

He touched generations of children

Art Linkletter is gone at 97. I had the honor or meeting him here in Boulder City as he promoted solar energy. Linkletter joked that he was the only man to open two national landmarks. He cut the ribbon of the Golden Gate Bridge and he cut the ribbon opening the New York Worlds Fair. While not a national historic site, in 1955 he wast here at the ribbon cutting for Disneyland, and at thousands of other supermarkets, theme parks, public buildings and even movie studio lots.

He told the story of a man who came up to him at an event in a walker. The old man said "don't you remember me, when I was a kid I was on your radio show."


As for his sex life, four years ago he said it had not changed except that when his wife ask him to go up stairs to "have a little whoopie" he has to respond "make up your mind, choose one."

At 93 he kept the country club tent full of VIP's laughing for a full 40 minutes, non-stop.

A Canadian by birth, Linkletter was a major campaigner for the war effort during the Second World War, and one of America's top entrepreneurs,  earning millions upon millions on investments and projects. Of course is best remembered for "Kids Say the Darndest Things."

The New York Times offers its obituary writes "the genial host who parlayed his talent for the ad-libbed interview into two of television’s longest-running shows, “People Are Funny” and “House Party,” in the 1950s and 1960s, died on Wednesday at his home in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles." 


The Times goes on to report on his rags to riches, see the world and be open to everyone story book life.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/arts/27linkletter.html?src=mv

Radio and TV personality Art Linkletter (left), who appeared in only two movies, was positively brilliant in his only acting role, as Happy Hogan in Richard Whorf's too-seldom-seen and eerily prescient TV satire "Champagne for Caesar'' (1950). Happy is the nitwit master of ceremonies on "Masquerade for Money,'' where unemployed geniusRonald Colman hopes to clean out eccentric sponsor Vincent Price. Happy also turns out to be the love interest of Colman's sister, played by Barbara Britton, the first actress I ever remember having a crush on. Linkletter also played himself in the 1946 movie version of his radio show "People Are Funny,'' which later had a long and popular run on TV. -NY Post

“I know enough about a lot of things to be interesting, but I’m not interested enough in any one thing to be boring,” Mr. Linkletter told The New York Post in 1965. “I’m like everybody’s next-door neighbor, only a little bit smarter.”