In 1968, Dawson was in the film The Devil's Brigade as Private Hugh McDonald.įollowing the cancellation of Hogan's Heroes, Dawson was a regular joke-telling panellist on the short-lived syndicated revival of the game show Can You Top This? in 1970 and joined the cast of Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In that same year. A year later, Dawson released a psychedelic 45-rpm single including the songs 'His Children's Parade' and 'Apples & Oranges' on Carnation Records. He had a minor role in Universal's Munster, Go Home!. He gained fame in the television show Hogan's Heroes as Cpl. In 1965, Dawson had a small role at the end of the film King Rat, starring George Segal, playing 1st Recon paratrooper Captain Weaver, sent to liberate allied POWs in a Japanese prison. In the same year Dawson made a guest appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show (season two, episode 27) playing 'Racy' Tracy Rattigan, a lecherous flirt who was the summer replacement host on the Alan Brady Show. On 8 January 1963, Dawson appeared on The Jack Benny Program, season 13, episode 15, as an audience member seated next to Jack, barely recognisable in glasses and false moustache. In September 1961, Dawson began hosting a late-night talk show, the Mike Stokey Show, on Los Angeles television station KCOP-TV. In 1959, he made four appearances on BBC TV's Juke Box Jury, three of them alongside Dors, to whom he was by then married. In 1958, he appeared alongside his future wife, Diana Dors, on BBC TV's A to Z: D, a programme featuring entertainers with names beginning with the letter D. He also had at least four BBC Radio programme appearances during 1954, including two bookings on the Midday Music Hall on BBC Home Service and two spots on How Do You Do, a BBC Light Entertainment broadcast billed as 'a friendly get-together of Commonwealth artists.' Possibly his first television appearance occurred on 21 June 1954, when he was 21, and was featured on the Benny Hill Showcase, an early BBC Television programme focused on 'introducing artists and acts new to television'. Career Comedy and variety artist in the UK Įmm began his career in England as a stand-up comedian known as Dickie Dawson. Following his discharge from the merchant service, he began pursuing a comedy career using the stage name Dickie Dawson he later changed his alias to Richard Dawson, which he eventually adopted as his legal name. During 19, he made several passages on the RMS Mauretania from Southampton to ports of call, including Nassau, the Bahamas, Havana, and New York City. Īt age 14, he ran away from home to join the British Merchant Navy, where he pursued a career in boxing, earning almost $5,000 in shipboard matches. In a radio interview with Hogan's Heroes co-star Bob Crane, Dawson recounted how this experience severely limited his school attendance, stating that he attended school regularly for only two years. His brother John Leslie Emm (five years older) and he were evacuated as children during World War II to escape the bombing of England's major port cities in the south.

His father drove a removal van and his mother worked in a munitions factory. Dawson was well known for playing Corporal Peter Newkirk in Hogan's Heroes, as a regular panelist on Match Game (1973–1978), and as the original host of Family Feud (1976–1985, 1994–95).Ĭolin Lionel Emm was born in Gosport, Hampshire, England, on 20 November 1932 to Arthur Emm (born 1897) and Josephine Lucy Emm ( née Lindsay born 1903). Richard Dawson (born Colin Lionel Emm 20 November 1932 – 2 June 2012) was a British-born American actor, comedian, game-show host, and panelist in the United States.

Creepy gameshow host name