MOORE, Garry

(b. 31 January 1915 in Baltimore, Maryland; d. 28 November 1993 in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina), radio and television performer and writer. One of television's first "stars of the ordinary," Moore was not an actor, comedian, or performer in any traditional sense, yet he made a name for himself as host of I've Got a Secret (1952–1964) and The Garry Moore Show (1958–1964; 1966–1967).

Born Thomas Garrison Morfit, son of the wealthy Baltimore attorney Mason P. Morfit and Mary Louise Harris, Moore rebelled against a country-club upbringing and dropped out of high school in 1933. Hoping to become a playwright, he joined the Vagabonds, a local amateur theater company, penning dialogue for musical comedy revues and sketches. Among the troupe's members, he encountered Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, wife of the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. The two became friends and collaborated on several one-act plays. When it became apparent that these were not likely to be produced, Fitzgerald used family connections to secure a job for Moore at a radio station, as a temporary measure while he continued to work on his writing.

From this beginning, he plunged headlong into commercial broadcasting, moving from a local job to network radio and from daytime talk to a prime-time variety series in which he costarred with Jimmy Durante. CBS, initiating television operations after World War II, struck up a relationship with Moore that would make him a star of the small screen for two decades. By the late 1950s he occupied more hours of national broadcast time than any other performer. His work schedule included a daily radio program, a daily daytime TV program, and hosting duties on a weekly prime-time game show. The latter, I've Got a Secret, was a Mark Goodson–Bill Todman panel show modeled after What's My Line? It featured a group of four celebrities chatting their way toward a guess at the "secret" that a contestant had whispered in the host's ear. Moore had it canceled in 1964, apparently out of sheer exhaustion. It was the twelfth most popular show on television when it left the air.

If I've Got a Secret was his biggest hit, Moore's comedy-variety hour was probably his best work. In 1958 CBS asked the star to give up his daily daytime show in favor of a weekly prime-time series. Choosing to produce it in New York at a time when most such series had moved to Los Angeles, he introduced a number of Broadway stars and cabaret acts to the small screen, including Carol Burnett, Dorothy Loudon, Jonathan Winters, and Alan King. Burnett, who was a regular on the show, would model her own long-running comedy-variety show after it. Other regulars on The Garry Moore Show included the brilliant double-talk artist Marian Lorne, and Durward Kirby, Moore's "sidekick" announcer.

With a dozen or more comedy-variety shows on the air at the turn of the 1960s, Moore gave his program a distinct identity by including several recurring features that were not part of the variety show's music hall tradition. In a regular segment entitled "Candid Camera," the conceptual auteur Allen Funt, late of radio's Candid Microphone, showed short films of people who had been set up for various types of embarrassment and humiliation. In 1960 Candid Camera spun off as a separate series hosted by Funt and Kirby and became one of the decade's biggest hits.

While most comedy-variety hours ended with some sort of ensemble sketch or musical number, Moore concluded his show each week with a grand finale titled "That Wonderful Year." About seven minutes in length, the segment examined music, fashion, and current events (the latter from a lighthearted perspective) during a particular year in American pop-culture history, culminating in a costumed ensemble musical production. Its focus on style expressed through loosely structured montage rather than on conventional documentary voice anticipates the direction that filmed commercials were taking by the late 1960s. Andy Warhol, who rarely had much to say about specific television content, called "That Wonderful Year…the best thing on television during the black-and-white period." He also lauded the show's spoofs of old genre films. Both Moore and Burnett received Emmy awards for their performances on the show during the 1961–1962 season.

Noting that he had "said everything I ever wanted to say three times already," Moore left television at the end of the 1966–1967 season. At the age of fifty-two he was one of the medium's wealthiest personalities. After spending several years sailing around the world on his yacht, he returned to daytime television, hosting a syndicated daytime revival of To Tell the Truth (1969–1977), a panel show similar to I've Got a Secret. In 1977, in a planned media event, Moore was one of fifty-six celebrities, including the astronaut Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin and the congressman Wilbur Mills, who publicly "came out" as recovering alcoholics for the purpose of encouraging others to seek treatment.

Moore survived a bout with throat cancer in the late 1970s and spent much of his ensuing retirement at his favorite activity, sailing, dividing his time between seaside homes at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and Northeast Harbor, Maine. Moore married Eleanor Little, with whom he had two sons, on 5 June 1939. She died in 1974. A second marriage, to Mary Elizabeth "Betsy" De Chant, took place on 16 January 1975, and the couple had a daughter. Moore died of emphysema.

Tom Shales, "Garry Moore: A Host of Talents; The Genial Genius of TV's Infancy," The Washington Post (30 Nov. 1993), provides a review of Moore's career with attention to his impact on early television. Some four hours of taped, transcribed interviews with Betsy Palmer, a colleague and close personal friend of Moore, contain factual information and personal anecdotes; the interviews are held by the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. Obituaries are in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times (both 29 Nov. 1993).

David Marc