Art Linkletter, 1912–2010

Art Linkletter had a simple formula for finding children to interview on his popular television show. He wrote to schools, asking teachers to nominate the child they would most like to have out of the classroom for a few hours. That selection process led to some memorable exchanges, as when Linkletter asked one boy what his parents did for fun. “Search me,” the boy replied. “They always lock the door.”

Linkletter was a pioneer of early live television, said The Hollywood Reporter, and at one point in the 1950s, he hosted “five shows running concurrently on network TV.” His primary vehicle in TV’s earliest days was House Party, which began on CBS Radio in 1944 and moved to the small screen in 1952. The show’s most popular segment featured interviews with youngsters. The best were preserved in his 1957 book, Kids Say the Darndest Things, which held the No. 1 spot on the best-seller list for two years. It was just one of the nearly 20 books he authored; the last, about enjoying old age, was published in 2006.

Linkletter amassed great wealth in later life, but his origins could scarcely have been more humble, said the Los Angeles Times. Born Gordon Arthur Kelly to an unwed mother in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, he was adopted by an elderly itinerant preacher, Fulton Linkletter, and his wife, Mary, and moved with them to California as a young child. He left home at 16, working a succession of odd jobs until breaking into radio in 1933. “An accomplished businessman,” Linkletter eventually controlled more than 70 companies through his Linkletter Enterprises. He made what may have been his shrewdest deal in 1955, when his friend Walt Disney asked him to preside over Disneyland’s opening-day ceremonies—for the standard actors-union fee of $200. Linkletter agreed, on the condition that he be awarded the film and camera concessions at Disneyland for the next 10 years.

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For all his financial and show-business success, Linkletter’s life was darkened by tragedy, said USA Today. He outlived three of his children, including his daughter, Diane, who leaped to her death from a window in 1969, at age 20. Linkletter blamed her suicide on LSD, though post-mortem tests found none in her system.

Until the end of his life, he remained active, touring the country and speaking frequently on “positive aging.” He was always modest about his own abilities. “I had no talent,” he once told an interviewer. “But the most important talent you can have in show business is to be liked. People liked me.”