(n immigrants, he graduated from
Knox College .
Rayburn was married to Helen Ticknor from
1940 until her death in October
1996 . They had one child, a daughter, Lynn. After the birth of their child, Rayburn was drafted into the
U.S. Air Force .
He chose his stage name by randomly pointing at a page in the telephone book, after being told ''Rubessa'' sounded "too
Italian ".
Before appearing in television, Rayburn was a very successful actor and radio performer. He had the drivetime
New York radio show, first with
Jack Lescoulie and later with
Dee Finch called "Rayburn & Finch," on
WNEW-AM , one of the first two-man team in morning radio. He also landed the lead in the Broadway musical
Bye Bye Birdie after
Dick Van Dyke left the production to star in the classic sitcom which bears his name.
Breaking into television as the original announcer on ''
The Tonight Show '', he eventually appeared as a panelist on the quiz show ''
The Name's The Same ''. Rayburn once hosted a local New York City-based show on
WNEW-TV (now WNYW), ''
Helluva Town ''.
In
1955 , he took over as host of the summer replacement game show, ''
Make The Connection '', from original host,
Jim McKay . From there he hosted shows such as ''
Choose Up Sides '', ''
Dough Re Mi '', and ''
Tic Tac Dough ''. On radio, Rayburn became one of the many hosts of the popular NBC program ''
Monitor '' in
1961 and remained with the show until
1973 .
In an uncredited role (he reportedly did not want his name to appear), Rayburn played a TV interviewer in the
1959 movie, ''
It Happened To Jane '' starring
Doris Day . His involvement was mentioned on an episode of Match Game '77.
During the
1960s , he occasionally substituted for
Johnny Carson on ''
The Tonight Show ''. In
1967 , Carson would make a surprise appearance on the original black-and-white version of ''The Match Game'' during the same week that ''Tonight'' announcer
Ed McMahon was a guest celebrity. In
1973 , Rayburn recalled his guest-hosting duties as "the hardest job" he ever had.
In
1962 Rayburn first hosted ''
Match Game ''. The original version, which aired on
NBC , lasted until
1969 . The show returned to
CBS in
1973 with a new format in which contestants had to match celebrity answers to humorous "fill-in-the-blank" questions. Millions tuned in and it soon became the highest-rated show in daytime television history.
From
1973 to
1977 , it was #1 among all daytime network game shows, fueled mostly by the zany questions and Rayburn's witty style. His interaction with the panel and contestants and his antics, including breaking through the entrance doors, roller-skating on stage and climbing the audience, made the show a classic.
The daytime revival of ''Match Game'', which featured regular panelists
Richard Dawson ,
Brett Somers and
Charles Nelson Reilly , ran until
1979 on CBS and another three years in first-run syndication until
1982 , with a concurrent night-time version, ''Match Game PM'', airing from
1975 to
1981 . Rayburn was nominated for two
Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Host or Hostess in a Game or Audience Participation Show.
During the years when ''Match Game'' was taped in Los Angeles, Rayburn lived in
Osterville, Massachusetts on
Cape Cod , and would commute to California every two weeks to tape 12 shows over the course of a weekend (five daytime shows and one nighttime show per taping day).
In
1983 , a year after the syndicated ''Match Game'' disappeared, the show was revived as part of the ''
Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour '', with Rayburn hosting the Match Game segment and sitting on the panel of the ''
Hollywood Squares '' segment. The show lasted nine months on NBC.
Perhaps, one of the most famous ''Match Game'' moments came during a taping in
1974 he unintentionally told a contestant, Karen Lesko, that she had "pretty nipples", meaning to say "dimples." The incident was cut from the original CBS episode and is not shown in
GSN reruns either. Nonetheless, it has come to be known as possibly the most embarrassing "host screw-up" in game show history. The moment has been aired on several present-day TV specials regarding game show mishaps.
On one occasion on Match Game (CBS), the name of
William F. Buckley Jr. (a famous conservative) was brought up. Rayburn said that Buckley was "...always wrong!" At one point, tabloids circulated that Rayburn supported
North Vietnam during the
Vietnam War ; however, this turned out be a falsified and fictional story.
In an episode of the syndicated version of the show, he asked a contestant if a yellow star on her shoulder were a symbol of "communism." She denied it, and the show continued.
He knitted socks as a publicity stunt during his time on ''Rayburn and Finch'' and later became avid in needlepoint, so much to the point that he would constantly do some in plane rides from
New York to Match Game tapings in
Hollywood . In a
1974 ''Match Game'' episode, Match Game creator
Mark Goodson made a surprise visit to congratulate the host on making the show #1 among daytime television programs and Goodson gave Rayburn a needlepoint bag as a gift. In a later episode that year, panelist Richard Dawson showed off a picture of Gene knitting socks as part of the aforementioned publicity stunt.
Being of Croatian ancestry, Rayburn could also speak the language. On one Match Game episode, when a contestant with the same ancestry would appear on the show, Rayburn would exchange a few words in Croatian with them.
From
1978 up until Rayburn's death, he never spoke with ''Match Game'' regular panelist
Richard Dawson . Dawson was a popular celebrity panel member who enjoyed joking around with the rest of the crew, yet in late
1977 until the summer of 1978, he appeared less interested in the game, probably due to the fact that he was hosting his own new hit game show, ''
Family Feud ''. Years later, Rayburn recalled that Dawson was in later years, a "loner...with a monumental ego" who was "trying to kill the show."
During and between his ''Match Game'' years, Rayburn served as guest panelist on two other
Goodson -
Todman shows, ''
What's My Line? '' and ''
To Tell The Truth '', where he exhibited the same inquisitiveness on serious subjects he showed on ''Monitor''. Three years after the original ''Match Game'' was cancelled, Rayburn hosted the short-lived
Heatter-Quigley Productions show, ''The Amateur's Guide to Love'' (
1972 ). He also hosted a pilot for
Reg Grundy Productions in 1983 called ''Party Line'', which later became ''
Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak '' (which first aired in 1986 and was cancelled after 13 weeks).
Rayburn appeared as a contestant during the Game Show Hosts Week of
Card Sharks .
Rayburn appeared on ''
Fantasy Island '' as a game-show host -- he and another host were game show rivals who wanted to do the ultimate game show to win the woman they both loved; Roarke accommodated them with a game-show set, but the host's chair was more like a throne, and death was a real possibility. In the end, the two men, in a dead heat, were offered a final tie-breaker, a "sudden death" round.
In between game show stints in 1982-83, Rayburn hosted a weekly local talk/lifestyles show seen live on
WNEW-TV in
New York City called ''
Saturday Morning Live ''. His tenure was brief when he ultimately accepted the hosting assignment for ''
The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour ''.
The final game shows Rayburn emceed were: a
1985 revival of ''
Break The Bank '', where Rayburn was fired after 13 weeks and replaced by Joe Farago, and ''
The Movie Masters '', an
AMC Cable game show that ran from
1989 to
1990 .
Right before production was to begin on a new Rayburn-emceed ''Match Game'' revival in
1985 , an ''
Entertainment Tonight '' reporter publicly disclosed his age, which was much older than many people believed. Rayburn had trouble finding jobs after that, blaming the reporter for disclosing his age and subjecting him to
Age Discrimination .
Rayburn portrayed himself on a ''
Saturday Night Live '' sketch in
1990 , which featured
Susan Lucci (as her character from ''
All My Children '',
Erica Kane .) He returned as one of Kane's previous husbands (alluding to Erica Kane's many marriages during her stint on that show), stopping another marriage with the host of a game show portrayed by
Phil Hartman .
Rayburn's last TV appearance was a
1998 interview with ''Access Hollywood'' intended to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the CBS ''Match Game''. Portions of the interview have been re-shown on the
Game Show Network which in
2001 showed portions of another previously unaired interview during the first airing of its ''Match Game Blankathon''.
Rayburn died at his daughter's home of
Congestive Heart Failure in 1999, one month after receiving a Lifetime Achievement award from the
Academy Of Television Arts & Sciences .
