Peter Marshall, the Emmy Award-winning host of “Hollywood Squares,” has died. He was 98.
Marshall died on Thursday of kidney failure at his home in Los Angeles, his publicist Harlan Boll said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.
Marshall hosted “The Hollywood Squares” for 15 years, from 1966 to 1981.
“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business,” Marshall said in a 2010 interview for the Archive of American Television, according to The Associated Press. “I walked in, said ‘Hello stars,’ I read questions and laughed. And it paid very well.”
Born in Huntington, West Virginia on March 30, 1926, Marshall kick-started his career in show business as a teenager, landing a job as an NBC Radio page and an usher at Paramount Theater in New York City. After his high school graduation, Marshall was drafted into the Army in 1944 and began work as a disc jockey for the Armed Forces Radio.
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By the late 1940s, Marshall and comedian and film producer Tommy Noonan began performing regularly in major nightclubs and theaters throughout the country. After starring in multiple films in the ’60s, Marshall’s first starring role on Broadway was in “Skyscraper” alongside Julie Harris in 1965.
In 2021, Marshall opened up to Fox News Digital about the show’s abrupt ending.
“[Fred Silverman], he turned down ‘Hollywood Squares’ when he was the head of CBS,” he said. “He always hated the show! And then he came over to NBC and he kept changing our time, trying to get us off. And finally, he brought David Letterman for an hour and a half. And that’s when he canceled it. But that wouldn’t work! David Letterman is not daytime. David Letterman is late night. And I was right. . . . We were doing great. And then he canceled it to put David Letterman on, which didn’t work. But then they put him on late at night, and he was wonderful.”
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While the game show ending caused a major shift in his schedule, Marshall didn’t have time to mope around.
“Well, I had a career besides that,” he said at the time. “I was working Vegas 26 weeks a year. I would do theater. So after I did ‘Squares,’ I did another show called ‘Fantasy Island’ for two years. . . . And I’ve just stayed busy. You move on in this business. That’s the great adventure. I’ve always worked. I’ve been one of the lucky guys.”
Three years prior to his death, he and his wife of 35 years, Laurie, were both diagnosed with COVID-19 on Jan. 12, 2021. In a statement sent to Fox News by Marshall’s spouse, it was revealed that the star was initially treated at home, but later required hospitalization.
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“In mid-January, my wife started feeling dizzy, so she went and got tested,” Marshall recalled to Fox News Digital at the time. “While we were waiting the 48 hours for her results to come back, I knew that we both had it, because I realized I felt dizzy too. I took both the rapid test and the 48-hour test. The rapid test said I didn’t have it, so we were very relieved, but the 48-hour test came back positive.”
Realizing that the hospital staff was “under such strain, and resources were in short supply,” Laurie said the family decided to bring her husband home where he could live out his final days surrounded by family and his animals “rather than die alone in the hospital.” However, Laurie was warned that Marshall wouldn’t be able to survive at home without “the high flow oxygen therapy that the hospital was giving him.” Laurie claimed she was then advised to make final arrangements.
Marshall was discharged on Feb. 12 for what was expected to be a hospice situation.
“From the time I went to the hospital, I worried I wouldn’t make it because of how many people seemed to be dying from it, and given my age, I knew I was at high risk for dying from it,” said Marshall. “Then in the hospital, I continued to decline. I knew I was dying in the hospital. Every time I spoke to my wife, I wondered if it was the last time we’d speak.”
“The medical team my wife found for me once she brought me home is what saved my life,” Marshall said at the time. “Mind you, I wasn’t so sure that was a good thing. I was in very, very bad physical shape at that point, and didn’t want to linger if I was leaving the world, which seemed to be the case.”
“I got through the virus pretty easily, but my system was weakened, and I contracted pneumonia,” Marshall explained. “That also turned into sepsis. Any one of those three by themselves is enough to kill someone my age. It took a lot of medical expertise to turn that around. Miraculous, to say the least.”
Peter is survived by his wife, Laurie, daughters Suzanne Browning and Jaime Dimarco and son Pete LaCock and was predeceased by son David LaCock in 2021.
The Associated Press and Fox News Digital’s Stephanie Nolasco contributed to this post.
