Obit watch: April 16, 2025.

Wink Martindale. NYT (archived).

Martindale said he became interested in hosting a TV game show in 1965 when he learned that Password‘s Allen Ludden would “go in two days a week and tape five shows one day and five shows the next and the other five days play golf. I went to my agent and said, ‘How about sending me on a game-show hosting interview?’”
He eventually landed at NBC’s What’s That Song? (billed as Win Martindale) and worked for a year on that, the first of the 20 game shows that he hosted (only Bill Cullen did more). He was on Tic-Tac-Dough for a decade, did two shows for producer Chuck Barris (How’s Your Mother-in-Law? and Dream Girl of ’67) and produced game shows as well.

Another one that would have got past me if it wasn’t for “The Rap Sheet” (and I haven’t seen an obit anywhere else): Peter Lovesey, one of the great British crime writers.

Wikipedia:

He was also one of the world’s leading track and field statisticians.

Interesting, as his first novel (which was re-issued in a 50th anniversary edition late last year), Wobble To Death, is a Victorian era murder mystery…set against a speed walking marathon.

In addition to the scope of his unparalleled crime fiction career, Peter Lovesey will be remembered by his many grieving friends as the paragon of decency, compassion, loyalty, self-discipline, and pride in good work—in short, a human example of what it means to live a good life.

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