5/26/10

RIP - Art Linkletter



Art Linkletter, the Moose Jaw, Sask.-born host of the popular TV show People Are Funny, has died at 97

His son-in-law announced the performer died at his home in Los Angeles. There's no statement on the cause of death, although he suffered a stroke in 2008.

Linkletter's career got going in the 1950s, when he hosted the NBC shows House Party and People Are Funny, and in 1955, he presided over the grand opening of Disneyland. House Party contained a popular segment in which Linkletter interviewed children, "Kids Say the Darndest Things," which became a book and then a TV series fronted by comedian Bill Cosby in the late 1990s.
Linkletter's life was marked by personal tragedy. In 1969, his daughter, Diane, jumped to her death, and in 1980, his son, Robert, was killed in a car crash. Linkletter had been active in recent years with the United Seniors Association, an alternative group to the AARP.

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