ART LINKLETTER DEAD AT AGE 97

IN MEMORIAM
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May 26 (Bloomberg) -- Art Linkletter, the genial radio and television host who spent more than two decades interviewing children and getting them to say "the darndest things," has died. He was 97.

He died today at his home in the Bel-Air section of Los Angeles, the Associated Press reported, citing his son-in-law, Art Hershey.

Linkletter gained fame as a sympathetic interviewer on "House Party," a daytime variety show that aired on CBS radio and TV from 1945 to 1969. In the show's best-known segment, "Kids Say the Darndest Things," Linkletter would draw amusing answers from schoolchildren by asking who did the housework at home, or whom they wanted to marry.

He capitalized on the popularity of the routine through a series of books, including "Kids Say the Darndest Things" (1957), which topped the best-seller list for two straight years. CBS revived the concept and title for a primetime show in 1998, with Bill Cosby as host and Linkletter as a contributor.

Linkletter also hosted the NBC program "People Are Funny," which ran from 1954 to 1961. The show put ordinary people into extraordinary situations to capture their varying reactions. Some critics now call it one of television's first reality shows.

A family tragedy turned him into one of the most visible spokesmen for the anti-drug movement in the 1970s. His 20-year- old daughter, Diane, died after jumping out of her kitchen window in 1969, and Linkletter publicly blamed her death on LSD.

When an autopsy found no drugs in her system, Linkletter insisted her suicide was caused by damage from prior LSD use. He was appointed to President Richard Nixon's advisory council on drug abuse, wrote a book, "Drugs at My Doorstep" (1973) and appeared on talk shows to warn parents about LSD.

Young and Old

Linkletter said his first radio interview with a child was in 1943 with his son Jack, then 5. Asked about his first day at school, Jack said he wasn't going back.

"I said, why not? He says, 'Well, I can't read and I can't write and they won't let me talk.'"

More than 25 years of such interviews followed. "Kids under 10 and people over 70" were best on the show, Linkletter said. "The old people don't care, and the kids don't know what they're saying," he said.

Asked what's good about aging, Linkletter gave the answer he once got from a 100-year-old woman: "There's so little peer pressure.'"

Looking far younger than his years, Linkletter accepted a Daytime Emmy award for lifetime achievement at Radio City Music Hall in New York in 2003, his third Emmy. It came more than three decades after he left daily broadcasting to concentrate on his many business and civic interests.



Linkletter wrote more than two dozen books, many based on his radio and TV interviews; the Library of Congress listed some 300 recordings of his interviews on tapes, DVDs and other media. He won a Grammy Award in 1970 for best spoken word recording for "We Love You Call Collect," which he recorded with Diane shortly before her death.

In his book "Women Are My Favorite People," Linkletter credited a sense of humor and his wife for a happy marriage that lasted more than seven decades.

If a discussion started escalating into an argument, Linkletter said he would break the tension by saying, "Honey, this is getting serious. If it gets much more serious, I'll have to kill you."

Linkletter's son Robert died in an auto accident in 1980 at age 35. Jack Linkletter, who followed his father into broadcasting, died in 2007 at age 70. The cause was lymphoma. He and his wife also had daughters Dawn Griffin and Sharon Hershey.

In 2006, when he was 94, Linkletter published his 28th book: "How to Make the Rest of Your Life the Best of Your Life