"They wanted the boy to do sports and the girl to do the dances and stuff that were going on in the Twin Cities — very sexist — and play music once a week." He hosted that show for two years before attending the University of Minnesota and doing a three-year stint in the Marines, according to the Bay Area Radio Museum.
His big break on network TV came in 1962 when he was made an announcer and sidekick on "The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show." Later, after .
, died Tuesday of a heart attack in his Mill Valley, CA home. Lange hosted the game show for more than a decade after it debuted in 1965, and over those years played host to contestants including Michael Jackson, Steve Martin, Farrah Fawcett and Arnold Schwarzenegger competing for the right to win a date by answering questions that were intended to illicit PG-13 responses well before there was such a thing as PG-13.
Though Lange had a successful career in radio, he is best known for his television role on ABC's , which debuted in 1965 and on which he appeared for more than a decade, charming audiences with his mellifluous voice and wide, easygoing grin. Michael Jackson, Steve Martin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, appeared as contestants.
“He loved doing local radio, especially before it was computerized.” Lange himself once told the Bay Area Radio Digest that his favorite aspect of the medium was that “you don’t have to worry about lighting directors and cameramen or script writers and all that.” “Good radio is still the most fun,” he said, “It always will be.
Plus, you don’t have to wear makeup and you don’t have to shave.” Lange is survived by a sister, five children, two stepchildren and four grandchildren.
It first aired on December 20, 1965 and was the first of many shows created and packaged by Chuck Barris from the 1960s through the 1980s.
ABC dropped the show on July 6, 1973, but it continued in syndication for another year (1973–1974) as The New Dating Game.PHOTOS: 2014's New Broadcast and Cable TV Shows Lange also worked as a disc jockey for decades in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, and upon his retirement from broadcasting in 2005, he was the morning DJ for KABL-FM, which specializes in playing classics from the Big Band era to the 1970s."As much as he's known for his television work, his real love was radio," his wife said.Lange was known for blowing a kiss goodbye to the audience at the end of each episode."Jim Lange was one of the great show hosts of television.Though Lange had a successful career in radio, he is best known for his television role on ABC’s “The Dating Game,” which debuted in 1965 and on which he appeared for more than a decade, charming audiences with his mellifluous voice and wide, easygoing grin. Michael Jackson, Steve Martin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, among others, appeared as contestants.