Wink Martindale, who hosted popular game programs like “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough” and conducted one of the first television interviews ever recorded with a young Elvis Presley, passed away.
He was ninety-one. According to his publicist Brian Mayes, Martindale passed away in Rancho Mirage’s Eisenhower Health on Tuesday. For a year, Martindale had been fighting lymphoma.
“He was doing pretty well up until a couple weeks ago,” Mayes stated over the phone from Nashville.
The movies “Gambit” and “The Price is Right” with Bob Barker and “The Joker’s Wild” with Jack Barry were released on the same day in September 1972.
“‘Gambit’ taught me a fundamental principle of any genuinely successful game show: KISS!” “Gambit” spelled winner from the moment it aired! Martindale wrote.
“Keep It Simple Stupid,” in his memoir “Winking at Life,” published in 2000. “Like playing Old Maids as a kid, everybody knows how to play 21, i.e. blackjack.”
