Tuesday, May 29, 2007

R.I.P. Charles Nelson Reilly


70's game show mainstay Charles Nelson Reilly died this past Friday at the age of 76, apparently due to complications with pneumonia. He ruled on "Match Game" and "Match Game PM" (a game show so great it was on twice a day), the Sid & Marty Kroft weirdfest "Lidsville", won a Tony Award and, more recently, did a great job playing a sci-fi author on one of the all-time best episodes of "The X-Files" in 1996 titled "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'".

He was certainly an interesting and talented guy. And sort of a conundrum, to my young eyes at least. He was openly gay and dressed rather flamboyanty, but his sense of humor was actually pretty dry. Understated innuendo, if you will. Unlike, say...Paul Lynde, who screamed it to the heavens (no disrespect to Mr. Lynde, who
was also cool).

I'm gonna watch some "Match Game" on the Game Show network tonight.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI there is an all day Match Game- athon this Saturday on GNC as a fitting tribute to CNR. You might want to set your TiVo so you can relive some of CNR's wit and count how many times they rework the question " Instead of making whoopie they made BLANK"

Blogfoot said...

CNR was a great band. They played at Woodstock, you know.