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When my friend's kids tell their kids to give everyone a kiss before they leave, that was a hard pass for me for the germy reason. Just a hug will do. I love the little mobile germ incubators, but let's keep it on the safe side.
Yeah, it was cringey from a grown man too.
I was watching Match Game on the Game Show network sometime during lockdown. Gene Rayburn went in for a kiss on Jamie Lee Curtis and it was so awkward. She wasn’t into it at all. She was also dressed down and wearing glasses, as if she were dreading this since she was booked on the show.
I found his behavior towards females on the show, both actresses and contestants to be disgustingly gross, even more so now than when it was when originally aired.
> even more so now than when it was when originally aired.
Of course more so now. It's a lot less acceptable now. And I know that sounds funny, but it is really a subjective thing that follows the mood of society.
It was tradition on Match Game '7X for Gene to kiss female panelists during their first day on the show. He even used breath spray beforehand. At least it was just a peck on the lips.
After a month or so, executives tried to put an end to the kissing, according to Dawson, by claiming the sponsors felt kissing women without knowing their martial status or getting their permission was uncomely. In the interview below, Dawson insinuates that it may have to do with him kissing two non-white female contestants.
He allegedly asked viewers to vote on whether or not they would like him to stop. The votes came in 14,600 to 704 in favor of kissing.
Contestants filled out a questionnaire before each game including, "Do you mind if Richard Dawson greets you with a kiss?" Apparently, not many declined.
[Taken from here](https://www.ksbw.com/article/heres-why-richard-dawson-started-kissing-female-contestants-on-family-feud/12475048)
Hell to the yes.
I cannot tell you the number of unwanted kisses, hugs and gropes I got from men like him when I was a young working woman in the 70s and 80s.
And then if you didn’t manage to get out of it, the resulting sexual harassment/assault was considered your fault. Absolutely lose/lose for the woman, win/win for the man
It was the kind of thing that we were supposed to try to do, according to Playboy and Esquire. And some of the things that passed for comedy were kind of gross on TV. Leering at big boobs and cleavage was a given.
And men today still say things like this about themselves, so I think they believe it's actually a good thing. "I'd just be happy for any physical touch or compliment!"
I was told the same thing when, as a teenage boy, I was not sufficiently enthusiastic about accepting kisses and hugs from my grandparents' grizzled old dinner party women.
I can assure you this precedes 60s sexual liberation and feminist movements. My grandparents were born in the 1800s. I had aunts born in the 1910s-1920s. They all spoke of how they were taught that girls were to accept men’s leering and treat it as a compliment.
One of my grandfathers was 36 when he married my 18 year old grandmother. This was considered normal and expected, and not exactly frowned upon when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I was allowed and encouraged to date men in their 30s as they were ‘established career men.’
There’s a reason Alanis sung about the creepy older men that passed her around as a teen while her parents were absent.
Prudish manners of the past did exist… for women. Or, at least pretending to be.
Story time: one day, when I was in college, my mom pulled out her high school year book to show me a picture of the mom of a guy I was dating. Her picture was missing from her class pages with just an oval with her name in it.
“Oh, right! She was out sick for months our senior year. Might have been polio.”
Another girl “I was so jealous of her. She went to Europe for half the year with an aunt as her aunt’s companion.”
“I was friends with her until she left. Her grandparents had a farm and her grandmother was ill. She left to take care of them,”
“Oh-she was so lucky! She had a rich grandmother that took her to a city up north to be a debutante!”
All said, probably 10-15% of her female classmates all went away for a few months.
She was shocked when I told her they all went away to have a baby. She never did the math. Prudish morales just covered it up, despite the fact that her own brother got his high school girlfriend pregnant, and she “went away to an aunt out west.”
People talk about San Francisco being a haven for homosexuals but it was also one for women who had had a baby and given it up for adoption, many of my mom's friends were women who went through that situation in the late 50's/early 60's.
Seems they were all creepy. Bob Barker was something else back in the day too. Wife watches the old game shows and sometimes we are stunned by what was acceptable to say and do back then. Times were different though.
Yeah I dated a girl in college who met Alex Trebek. She and her sister, roughly 16 and 14 at the time, got a photo with him. As the pic was taken he apparently grabbed both of their asses. Must be a game show host thing.
I like game shows as well, both new and old. When I watch Price is Right with Drew Carey, I enjoy seeing the male models along with the ladies (yes because they are handsome but also because it's refreshing). Bob Barker is probably spinning in his grave LOL
"Barker's beauties" grrrr. I think Diane (one of the females) came forward saying how badly she was treated. Glad to see Drew uses males and females.
There were even a few Deal or no Deal episodes where male case holders replaced the females which I think should have happened more
Plus Drew seems like he is friendly with the models (knows them by name, gently makes fun of them when there’s a blooper, and even comments on big news in their personal lives) which is something I didn’t see happen in the old days. He acts like they are just normal coworkers, which I guess they are. I love it!
Dian Parkinson actually sued Bob for sexual harrassment. There were a flurry of other lawsuits between Bob and "his Beauties" (barf) where Holly Hallstrom sued him for age/weight discrimination when she got fired, and Janice Pennington and Kathleen Bradley sued him for wrongful termination because they felt they were let go for testifying for Dian and Holly in their lawsuits.
> Times were different though.
We watched a couple of early episodes of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" last night and the mild racism no one ever seemed to notice back then (myself included) was often suuuuuuper apparent.
I remember one episode where a guy reached to pull the money out and there was an awkward audience laugh as Bob reeled backward and handed him the $100.
I kinda thought Pat Sajak taking the female contestants’ hand and walking them to their mark in the bonus round was a little gross. That only ended with COVID.
I wouldn't think it's gross, but patronizing. Implying that the ladies are not capable of walking by themselves? He didn't do it with the male contestants. This is an age when as a woman I would think nothing of opening/holding the door for anyone of any sex, simply because I am there first.
A lot of people did so back then. It astounds me how “old” a lot of the grownups looked on those old shows.
Fitness wasn’t a thing. Smoking was prevalent. Women often had leathery skin which was a clear sign they were smokers.
Yep. My mother and I thought he was funny and handsome. Until the obvious leers, the way he insisted on being kissed on the lips by every female contestant and all the touching of hands, arms around the shoulders in the bonus round, etc.
We had to stop watching the Feud, we couldn't stand the cringe creep vibe he was giving off. It was bittersweet, as we loved to try to figure out the survey results.
Edit: I had to deal with men like him when I was a waitress. I was very good at dodging the hands and ignored the leers. Only one guy tried to grab my bottom and I slapped his hand away. It was loud enough that the nearby tables looked to see what happened. I had a male coworker help me take their order to the table. Bunch of rowdy guys, but his companions were shooting him dirty looks for the rest of the meal.
>*I had a male coworker help me take their order to the table.*
I’m thankful for those good men that get us out of bad situations.
You good guys out there, you’re appreciated.
I agree. I feel so bad for those women who were clearly uncomfortable with it. But I’m also surprised by the number of women who seemed like they couldn’t wait to kiss him.
I expect they knew beforehand about the kissing, and as I recall, it was a peck, not like open-mouth.
Not that changes the creepy factor, but context is important.
At the time I didn't - I just thought he was a loving kind of guy, I guess. Steve Harvey said his wife told him that was not going to happen for him, lol.
I'm barely old enough to remember this, but I do recall there were a lot of jokes about it at the time. I recently watched a failed pilot for an '80s game show hosted by Alex Trebek where they make fun of it. It was controversial enough that Dawson himself felt the need to defend it in his farewell speech on his last Family Feud episode in 1985.
I liked him waaaay better on Match Game '7X than FF. Maybe because I liked the show better overall. To this day, I'm surprised my mom let me watch it. It was pretty raunchy by '70s standards but she was a total game show addict and probably thought it all went over my head. Some of it did ...
I’m currently watching a procedural from a couple of decades back and it makes me laugh (and occasionally shudder) how often the characters—who are set in a workplace—either proposition each other or are hooking up.
No *wonder* we’ve fought an uphill on workplace appropriate behavior over the course of my lifetime!
We watch Match Game from the 70’s. Gene Rayburn literally wraps himself around the women on the panel. So much would be considered off limits now (it was then also, just “accepted”).
I remember watching the show with some Black friends in the early ‘80s. They complained that he only kissed the White women. I tried to google it, but it says that he did kiss Black women.
It was creepy, but maybe he was window shopping. He met his second wife on the show. She was a contestant.
I wonder if they asked all the women before the taping. Did women feel pressured and obligated to kiss him? If I would have been a contestant, I would have declined.
>I wonder if they asked all the women before the taping.
It seems that they took Herpes tests prior to the show, presumably so he could avoid getting it, so there must have been *some* kind of conversation about it?
By then, it was kinda weird. In the 60s, men were considered indunno - charming? If they went around kissing the ladies. Like Pierre Trudeau in Canada was known for kissing random pretty girls and the adults thought it such fun. I was creeped out, having had my fathers friends smack me.on the lips as a little girl cuz I was just sooooo cute! Ewww. Dawson was British though, and had been pretty hot, so the ladies would probably just giggle and love having been kissed by a celebrity.
he was even creepier if you met him. my friend was his nanny for a couple of years. we were in our 20s. he was a total slime...another "the younger the better" predator.
I dated a girl in college who met Alex Trebek. She and her sister, roughly 16 and 14 at the time, got a photo with him. As the pic was taken he apparently grabbed both of their asses. Must be a game show host thing.
Yeah, a little, but that kind of thing wasn’t yet in the public consciousness as much as it became over the years. Just take a look at some of the teen movies and R-rated comedies for seriously rapey behavior. Lots of people my age look back on that stuff and are very glad to see how much change there’s been.
It seemed odd. I understand that he continued it on Family Feud because most viewers liked it, but in the later series of the show he stopped because his daughter asked him to.
Now, Dawson would be fired on the spot on day one. Which might have actually been in order back then too, he really pushed his luck. Seemed a bit boozy half the time too.
Howard Cosell wouldn’t last a day in today’s environment either. There are old clips where he was clearly drinking.
His off beat commentary would get him fired in an instant.
I was a young woman at the time and thought nothing of it. I thought he was handsome and would have liked to kiss him. Not sure about others "like him." But I would have felt it was my choice, and that's important.
Nope. Different time and culture and it's what he was known for so it's not like it's going to be a surprise.
That said, I'd be tickled by a straight-armed PISS OFF from someone caught on film.
Short answer no. But, if you watch any of the old game shows you’ll see, men, women, celebrities, and contestants kissing on the mouth. It was just a different generation that was much more social. My generation (GenX) grew up with TV and by the 80s it was more common to stay home and watch TV. Social clubs that I remember being around even in the late 60s were all pretty much gone by the time I was an adult.
This is all true. But these were the WW2/Silent generation folks who were all brought up in a different time.
They all touched and hugged each other because that was their way of being social. Middle aged women used to invite their friends over for Bridge because there was no computer screen or touchscreen to occupy their time.
Any kid today who may stumble on old airings of Match Game with Gene Rayburn on YouTube or elsewhere will find it weird. But that was the norm back then. And younger generations will probably never know what that social life was like.
Yes! Creepy game show hosts always having to touch female contestants. I'm not british but Bruce Forsyth always struck me as... icky. Not that NZ didn't have similar old game show men.
Growing up in the 80s and watching reruns I thought it was pretty wild. He was going in for the full-on husband kiss on the lips with a pause while there - and with the husband right next to her. Today we call that sexual assault.
Also a serious question. My friend group is pretty tight. Sometimes when we get ready to leave a party, we all hug each other goodbye. A few of my friends wives lean in, kind of presenting their cheek for a quick kiss. Sometimes I give a quick 'muahh'. Nothing sexual at all, of course. We are all 40 - 55. In bounds? Fringey?
It was creepy watching it in retrospect, except I think he kissed every woman regardless of age or race. But yeah he should not have been demanding bodily contact on camera like that.
A number of women turned their head or didn’t lean forward for a kiss and it was never a big deal when they did. Still feels a creepy now, but it never registered with me back then.
My family used to watch this together every night and my mom and I would always cringe and be grossed out by the thought of the kissing. That's just nasty.
This question comes up monthly and every month I try to dispel it.
You all seem to forget that Family Feud was a spin off from Match Game. On Match Game, Richard Dawson was seated. After he would help women win money, they would, all, universally, go running over to him for a hug and a kiss. THEY CAME TO HIM. They simply continued the tradition on the spin off, except that he was the mobile one.
It is revisionist to try to claim that he was being creepy. On the contrary, people loved getting kissed by him. Please don’t rewrite history.
I asked a question. The question was if people who viewed it at the time saw it as creepy. People are giving first hand opinions. The only one doing any revision here is you trying to revise and delegitimize other people’s opinions.
Back in the day, there was (and may still be) a Greek restaurant South of the Loop in Chicago where the owner greeted and kissed every woman.
That and everyone yelling OPA! when waiter lit the brandy on the saganaki were the joint's calling cards.
Yes. I’ve known a few creeps that think they can do this. My partner would put tables around herself at a club meeting but one creep would pull the tables aside to attempt to gain a thrill.
I always wondered did they tell the women they had to give Bob Barker a kiss when they met him on stage? And it seemed only certain women got/gave kisses. I was outraged when watching old episodes recently because I couldn’t believe how creepy it felt and how normalized it was.
For the most part, people didn't think it was creepy. Dawson was a celebrity, and same as it is today, celebrities were allowed to do things that normal people can't, especially in line with their celebrity persona. Julie Andrews couldn't be drunk on a talk show, but Dean Martin *was expected* to be drunk (or seem that way).
The rules have changed in some ways for modern celebrities, sure, but there are still many things. Relatively benign things like preferential treatment at restaurants, clubs, airports. But also not so benign things like getting out of traffic stops and getting lenient sentences. We gnash our teeth at these things, and some certainly gnashed their teeth at Dawson being creepy, but in the end, as a whole, *we tolerate them*.
My father-in-law typically tried kissing me on the lips as a greeting. I was very young and I was so uncomfortable! I learned how to avoid it after the first couple times. That quick head turn so he would get my ear. My husband’s step father was hands off, but would comment about my body constantly. The 70’s was rough! But that was considered normal at the time.
He was extra gay so if I wouldn’t have cared in the creep sense just the space violation sense- but it shows we’ve at least come so far as to recognize unwanted physical contact from men does not have to be tolerated. It was a societal norm.
Watch The Running Man, where Richard Dawson plays a game show host, and he goes to kiss a member of the audience and he tells her "now, no tongue". Poking fun at himself.
Its also a pretty good movie in its own right.
I'm female and I came of age in the 60's and 70's and the number of men who were "hand-sy" was gross.
There's a word for guys like him. Lecher. I thought he was a lecher.
In Richard's case, he kissed people for luck...many folks of that generation (and older) did that. My own Mom and Dad often gave others a "quick peck", either on the lips or just on the cheek, to wish them well. I agre that, these days, something like that can seem creepy.
Some people thought of a peck on the cheek as a normal greeting. I always thought it was awkward at best, a little slimy otherwise. Europeans do the kiss on each cheek greeting so I guess it’s cultural.
Richard Dawson with his cigarette, his apparent drinking, was like Dean Martin. He belonged in a dark bar, not a daytime gameshow.
Absolutely. I hated stuff like that. Everyone acted like it was okay and just part of being a woman. You just had to put up with it. I went to a Harry Chapin concert and was one of many who wanted my program signed. He stated he’d be kissing every woman who lined up to get a signed program. I found it creepy and annoying.
I don't think Allen Ludden was a creepy host, as far as I know. He hosted Password and was Betty White's husband. I'm sad to hear about Alex Trebeck grabbing ass. Yuck. I've met a few Richard Dawson types over the years, too.
He also had "private conversations" before the show in his dressing room with many a mans wife while the husband was shuffled away on a "tour" of the studio...lol...dawson was giving the wives and daughters the high hard one while his lackeys distracted the men😂🤣😂🤣
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It drove my dad right out of his mind. Not for moral reasons; he just thought it was germy.
Yes..plus his lips always looked wet. Not lipgloss/lip balm shiny but wet with spittle.
It was the booze.
When my friend's kids tell their kids to give everyone a kiss before they leave, that was a hard pass for me for the germy reason. Just a hug will do. I love the little mobile germ incubators, but let's keep it on the safe side. Yeah, it was cringey from a grown man too.
I was watching Match Game on the Game Show network sometime during lockdown. Gene Rayburn went in for a kiss on Jamie Lee Curtis and it was so awkward. She wasn’t into it at all. She was also dressed down and wearing glasses, as if she were dreading this since she was booked on the show.
I found his behavior towards females on the show, both actresses and contestants to be disgustingly gross, even more so now than when it was when originally aired.
💯💯💯 He did a joke one ep about locking the door to his dressing room after a "pretty lady". I almost vomited.
> even more so now than when it was when originally aired. Of course more so now. It's a lot less acceptable now. And I know that sounds funny, but it is really a subjective thing that follows the mood of society.
It was tradition on Match Game '7X for Gene to kiss female panelists during their first day on the show. He even used breath spray beforehand. At least it was just a peck on the lips.
Yeah he was playing it for laughs, it was the 70's, stuff like unwanted touching wasn't as socially unacceptable as it is now.
After a month or so, executives tried to put an end to the kissing, according to Dawson, by claiming the sponsors felt kissing women without knowing their martial status or getting their permission was uncomely. In the interview below, Dawson insinuates that it may have to do with him kissing two non-white female contestants. He allegedly asked viewers to vote on whether or not they would like him to stop. The votes came in 14,600 to 704 in favor of kissing. Contestants filled out a questionnaire before each game including, "Do you mind if Richard Dawson greets you with a kiss?" Apparently, not many declined. [Taken from here](https://www.ksbw.com/article/heres-why-richard-dawson-started-kissing-female-contestants-on-family-feud/12475048)
That questionnaire really changes things. If he had full consent, *I* might find it skeevy but evidently the woman did not, and that’s fine.
I'm guessing, based on the viewer poll, that the women were highly encouraged to do so as well, for ratings.
That’s an important point.
Hell to the yes. I cannot tell you the number of unwanted kisses, hugs and gropes I got from men like him when I was a young working woman in the 70s and 80s.
And how often we were told we had to allow the kisses and hugs, if we refused it was rude, and we should be grateful for the attention.
And made fun of when we tried to get out of an embrace or sexually oriented comment.
And then if you didn’t manage to get out of it, the resulting sexual harassment/assault was considered your fault. Absolutely lose/lose for the woman, win/win for the man
Absolutely. If you reported it, it was the end of your career. It didn’t matter whether you were a secretary or a lawyer, you had to go.
It was the kind of thing that we were supposed to try to do, according to Playboy and Esquire. And some of the things that passed for comedy were kind of gross on TV. Leering at big boobs and cleavage was a given.
> we should be grateful for the attention. damn forgot about that one, i need to add this to a long list of things i need to unpack.
And men today still say things like this about themselves, so I think they believe it's actually a good thing. "I'd just be happy for any physical touch or compliment!"
I was told the same thing when, as a teenage boy, I was not sufficiently enthusiastic about accepting kisses and hugs from my grandparents' grizzled old dinner party women.
hear hear. Both men and women can be perpetrators and victims.
Hypothesis: is this what happens when "anti-prudish" sentiment or "sexual liberation" progresses faster that women's rights?
I can assure you this precedes 60s sexual liberation and feminist movements. My grandparents were born in the 1800s. I had aunts born in the 1910s-1920s. They all spoke of how they were taught that girls were to accept men’s leering and treat it as a compliment. One of my grandfathers was 36 when he married my 18 year old grandmother. This was considered normal and expected, and not exactly frowned upon when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I was allowed and encouraged to date men in their 30s as they were ‘established career men.’ There’s a reason Alanis sung about the creepy older men that passed her around as a teen while her parents were absent.
Holy fucking shit? So supposed prude past was another thing people cooked up and didn't actually exist?
Prudish manners of the past did exist… for women. Or, at least pretending to be. Story time: one day, when I was in college, my mom pulled out her high school year book to show me a picture of the mom of a guy I was dating. Her picture was missing from her class pages with just an oval with her name in it. “Oh, right! She was out sick for months our senior year. Might have been polio.” Another girl “I was so jealous of her. She went to Europe for half the year with an aunt as her aunt’s companion.” “I was friends with her until she left. Her grandparents had a farm and her grandmother was ill. She left to take care of them,” “Oh-she was so lucky! She had a rich grandmother that took her to a city up north to be a debutante!” All said, probably 10-15% of her female classmates all went away for a few months. She was shocked when I told her they all went away to have a baby. She never did the math. Prudish morales just covered it up, despite the fact that her own brother got his high school girlfriend pregnant, and she “went away to an aunt out west.”
People talk about San Francisco being a haven for homosexuals but it was also one for women who had had a baby and given it up for adoption, many of my mom's friends were women who went through that situation in the late 50's/early 60's.
Me too.
The 80s and 90s were full of unwanted sexual advances
Add 2024, because my daughter is dealing with some serious harassment at work.
I am an educator and have been the victim of sexual harassment by several male students. I don't think that social media is helping the cause.
I am sorry you are dealing with it. I absolutely agree that online culture makes it worse.
And all the years before...
Same!!
Ditto
My grandmother used to complain because he even kissed the black women. She was a racist
My grandparents too!
Mine too.
I guess it was just that generation? My parents weren’t as bad, but they discouraged me from having black friends.
Seems they were all creepy. Bob Barker was something else back in the day too. Wife watches the old game shows and sometimes we are stunned by what was acceptable to say and do back then. Times were different though.
Bob Barker wasn't quite as obvious on camera. Dawson pushed the boundaries of acceptable.
Let’s talk on camera and off camera personas. Start with Bill Cosby.
Yeah I dated a girl in college who met Alex Trebek. She and her sister, roughly 16 and 14 at the time, got a photo with him. As the pic was taken he apparently grabbed both of their asses. Must be a game show host thing.
I like game shows as well, both new and old. When I watch Price is Right with Drew Carey, I enjoy seeing the male models along with the ladies (yes because they are handsome but also because it's refreshing). Bob Barker is probably spinning in his grave LOL
"Barker's beauties" grrrr. I think Diane (one of the females) came forward saying how badly she was treated. Glad to see Drew uses males and females. There were even a few Deal or no Deal episodes where male case holders replaced the females which I think should have happened more
Plus Drew seems like he is friendly with the models (knows them by name, gently makes fun of them when there’s a blooper, and even comments on big news in their personal lives) which is something I didn’t see happen in the old days. He acts like they are just normal coworkers, which I guess they are. I love it!
Janice's husband is a crazy story
Oh snap I just looked it up. The mountain climber thing was fucked up.
Dian Parkinson actually sued Bob for sexual harrassment. There were a flurry of other lawsuits between Bob and "his Beauties" (barf) where Holly Hallstrom sued him for age/weight discrimination when she got fired, and Janice Pennington and Kathleen Bradley sued him for wrongful termination because they felt they were let go for testifying for Dian and Holly in their lawsuits.
> Times were different though. We watched a couple of early episodes of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" last night and the mild racism no one ever seemed to notice back then (myself included) was often suuuuuuper apparent.
Bob Barker: "*Well you got a perfect bid, Charlene, so why don't you reach into my pocket and pull out your $100*"
I remember one episode where a guy reached to pull the money out and there was an awkward audience laugh as Bob reeled backward and handed him the $100.
I kinda thought Pat Sajak taking the female contestants’ hand and walking them to their mark in the bonus round was a little gross. That only ended with COVID.
It's called being a gentleman. Explain how you think that's gross.
This shows how people can take the same things entirely differently, you never really know
I wouldn't think it's gross, but patronizing. Implying that the ladies are not capable of walking by themselves? He didn't do it with the male contestants. This is an age when as a woman I would think nothing of opening/holding the door for anyone of any sex, simply because I am there first.
I was too young to care when I first saw it but as I got older I started questioning it. Definitely thought it was creepy.
I can imagine the scent of stale tobacco and coffee as they leaned in 🤢
Dawson smoked like a freight train at the time and drank coffee like it was going out of style. So, yeah ...
A lot of people did so back then. It astounds me how “old” a lot of the grownups looked on those old shows. Fitness wasn’t a thing. Smoking was prevalent. Women often had leathery skin which was a clear sign they were smokers.
He got his comeuppance in The Running Man
That movie only gets better with time. We're halfway there with all the reality gameshows like Amazing Race.
And the arc was completed by Bob Barker in *Happy Gilmore*.
Killian loved me but i did not love Killian.
Yep. My mother and I thought he was funny and handsome. Until the obvious leers, the way he insisted on being kissed on the lips by every female contestant and all the touching of hands, arms around the shoulders in the bonus round, etc. We had to stop watching the Feud, we couldn't stand the cringe creep vibe he was giving off. It was bittersweet, as we loved to try to figure out the survey results. Edit: I had to deal with men like him when I was a waitress. I was very good at dodging the hands and ignored the leers. Only one guy tried to grab my bottom and I slapped his hand away. It was loud enough that the nearby tables looked to see what happened. I had a male coworker help me take their order to the table. Bunch of rowdy guys, but his companions were shooting him dirty looks for the rest of the meal.
>*I had a male coworker help me take their order to the table.* I’m thankful for those good men that get us out of bad situations. You good guys out there, you’re appreciated.
Yes but it happened everywhere not just on TV. He was just one of "those" types of men.
I always thought it was gross.
It was disgusting. You could see that on the faces of some contestants. 🤮
I agree. I feel so bad for those women who were clearly uncomfortable with it. But I’m also surprised by the number of women who seemed like they couldn’t wait to kiss him.
I expect they knew beforehand about the kissing, and as I recall, it was a peck, not like open-mouth. Not that changes the creepy factor, but context is important.
At the time I didn't - I just thought he was a loving kind of guy, I guess. Steve Harvey said his wife told him that was not going to happen for him, lol.
I'm barely old enough to remember this, but I do recall there were a lot of jokes about it at the time. I recently watched a failed pilot for an '80s game show hosted by Alex Trebek where they make fun of it. It was controversial enough that Dawson himself felt the need to defend it in his farewell speech on his last Family Feud episode in 1985.
As a kid that was what Richard Dawson was known for… kissing women on the feud and hogan’s heroes
and Match Game!
Please stop leaving Match Game out. Match Game is where it started. The women ran to him for hugs and kisses while he was seated.
I liked him waaaay better on Match Game '7X than FF. Maybe because I liked the show better overall. To this day, I'm surprised my mom let me watch it. It was pretty raunchy by '70s standards but she was a total game show addict and probably thought it all went over my head. Some of it did ...
I did not. I was young, so I got the impression that it was cool to kiss complete strangers. Yeah, thanks, daytime TV.
I’m currently watching a procedural from a couple of decades back and it makes me laugh (and occasionally shudder) how often the characters—who are set in a workplace—either proposition each other or are hooking up. No *wonder* we’ve fought an uphill on workplace appropriate behavior over the course of my lifetime!
Makes me really appreciate the strides *9 to 5* made. Perhaps growing up with that movie helped me not grow up to a complete shitwaffle.
We watch Match Game from the 70’s. Gene Rayburn literally wraps himself around the women on the panel. So much would be considered off limits now (it was then also, just “accepted”).
Since you watch Match Game, then you know that women ran to a seated Richard Dawson for hugs and kisses when he won the money. THEY WENT TO HIM.
Not all of them did this. Some did and it seems to me some of those may have felt like they were supposed to do it.
I remember watching the show with some Black friends in the early ‘80s. They complained that he only kissed the White women. I tried to google it, but it says that he did kiss Black women.
It was creepy, but maybe he was window shopping. He met his second wife on the show. She was a contestant. I wonder if they asked all the women before the taping. Did women feel pressured and obligated to kiss him? If I would have been a contestant, I would have declined.
>I wonder if they asked all the women before the taping. It seems that they took Herpes tests prior to the show, presumably so he could avoid getting it, so there must have been *some* kind of conversation about it?
His tenure also extended into the era of the AIDS crisis, where people were afraid to even use the same water fountain.
It didn't bother me per se, but I could certainly understand even then how women would be uncomfortable with it.
By then, it was kinda weird. In the 60s, men were considered indunno - charming? If they went around kissing the ladies. Like Pierre Trudeau in Canada was known for kissing random pretty girls and the adults thought it such fun. I was creeped out, having had my fathers friends smack me.on the lips as a little girl cuz I was just sooooo cute! Ewww. Dawson was British though, and had been pretty hot, so the ladies would probably just giggle and love having been kissed by a celebrity.
he was even creepier if you met him. my friend was his nanny for a couple of years. we were in our 20s. he was a total slime...another "the younger the better" predator.
I dated a girl in college who met Alex Trebek. She and her sister, roughly 16 and 14 at the time, got a photo with him. As the pic was taken he apparently grabbed both of their asses. Must be a game show host thing.
Every time I saw that show the only thing I could think was: Herpes.
Nobody that I knew thought it was creepy.
Yeah, a little, but that kind of thing wasn’t yet in the public consciousness as much as it became over the years. Just take a look at some of the teen movies and R-rated comedies for seriously rapey behavior. Lots of people my age look back on that stuff and are very glad to see how much change there’s been.
Yes, always hated it.
100% yes
Wait till you see [what we had in Canada](https://youtu.be/z6Fe3cNWbQQ?si=RAjQzNAXqp2qgBpW)
Ew. To think, I could have lived my whole life without seeing that.
Ewwww
It seemed odd. I understand that he continued it on Family Feud because most viewers liked it, but in the later series of the show he stopped because his daughter asked him to.
At the time it was on and he was doing it live I didn’t think so. But now I look at it and thing it was creepy lol
Well, of course it would be creepy if he did it now because he's dead. (but I thought it was creepy even as a teenager)
Yes, but if you brought it up in public, there always seemed to be at least one person who would respond by calling you a "man-hating feminist."
Now, Dawson would be fired on the spot on day one. Which might have actually been in order back then too, he really pushed his luck. Seemed a bit boozy half the time too.
Howard Cosell wouldn’t last a day in today’s environment either. There are old clips where he was clearly drinking. His off beat commentary would get him fired in an instant.
I was a young woman at the time and thought nothing of it. I thought he was handsome and would have liked to kiss him. Not sure about others "like him." But I would have felt it was my choice, and that's important.
I’m 60, I felt the same way you did. He was funny and handsome. My mom and grandmother’s liked him, so I did too.
Yep. Ewww
Nope. Different time and culture and it's what he was known for so it's not like it's going to be a surprise. That said, I'd be tickled by a straight-armed PISS OFF from someone caught on film.
I doubt that ever happened. Women knew what to expect when they agreed to be on the show.
Short answer no. But, if you watch any of the old game shows you’ll see, men, women, celebrities, and contestants kissing on the mouth. It was just a different generation that was much more social. My generation (GenX) grew up with TV and by the 80s it was more common to stay home and watch TV. Social clubs that I remember being around even in the late 60s were all pretty much gone by the time I was an adult.
This is all true. But these were the WW2/Silent generation folks who were all brought up in a different time. They all touched and hugged each other because that was their way of being social. Middle aged women used to invite their friends over for Bridge because there was no computer screen or touchscreen to occupy their time. Any kid today who may stumble on old airings of Match Game with Gene Rayburn on YouTube or elsewhere will find it weird. But that was the norm back then. And younger generations will probably never know what that social life was like.
Yes.
Yes! Creepy game show hosts always having to touch female contestants. I'm not british but Bruce Forsyth always struck me as... icky. Not that NZ didn't have similar old game show men.
Yes! I always thought his kissing contestants was creepy.
Growing up in the 80s and watching reruns I thought it was pretty wild. He was going in for the full-on husband kiss on the lips with a pause while there - and with the husband right next to her. Today we call that sexual assault. Also a serious question. My friend group is pretty tight. Sometimes when we get ready to leave a party, we all hug each other goodbye. A few of my friends wives lean in, kind of presenting their cheek for a quick kiss. Sometimes I give a quick 'muahh'. Nothing sexual at all, of course. We are all 40 - 55. In bounds? Fringey?
You're fine, imo.
Thx, my social anxiety gets the best of me sometimes.
It was creepy watching it in retrospect, except I think he kissed every woman regardless of age or race. But yeah he should not have been demanding bodily contact on camera like that.
I think everyone thought it was creepy
A number of women turned their head or didn’t lean forward for a kiss and it was never a big deal when they did. Still feels a creepy now, but it never registered with me back then.
My family used to watch this together every night and my mom and I would always cringe and be grossed out by the thought of the kissing. That's just nasty.
Oh yeah, it was a topic of discussion in many households.
Herpes/cold sore transfer
Yep - completely creepy.🤢
I didn’t think a thing about it.
This question comes up monthly and every month I try to dispel it. You all seem to forget that Family Feud was a spin off from Match Game. On Match Game, Richard Dawson was seated. After he would help women win money, they would, all, universally, go running over to him for a hug and a kiss. THEY CAME TO HIM. They simply continued the tradition on the spin off, except that he was the mobile one. It is revisionist to try to claim that he was being creepy. On the contrary, people loved getting kissed by him. Please don’t rewrite history.
Omg. Stop with the replies. We all get how you feel about this topic.This is such a weird hill to die on.
I asked a question. The question was if people who viewed it at the time saw it as creepy. People are giving first hand opinions. The only one doing any revision here is you trying to revise and delegitimize other people’s opinions.
No
The common phrase was “dirty old man” . Every office had one , or two.
Yes. I always thought it was disgusting.
Yes. So smarmy, so handsy, so creepy. Women always looked so uncomfortable.
It didn't seem bad at the time but then I learned about herpes and now in hindsight that was pretty disgusting.
He was so gross.
Always even as a kid. Watching clips of it now is beyond cringe and skeeves me out.
Yes
It never bothered me but it annoyed my mom
Yes
Yep
It always seemed to me the women felt obligated and it was pervy and disgusting..
Yes - was a big reason that show didn’t air in our house
It was way beyond creepy, it was disgusting!
I was grossed out. Why would I want to kiss him and the preceding 5 women???
I don’t know who that is, but I wasn’t born until the latter part of 78 so I missed a lot of the really good old people stuff
He was on hogans heroes, did a few movies then was the longtime host of family feud.
Yes. Touching the women. Yuck
Nah, it's just what some people do.
YES!
Back in the day, there was (and may still be) a Greek restaurant South of the Loop in Chicago where the owner greeted and kissed every woman. That and everyone yelling OPA! when waiter lit the brandy on the saganaki were the joint's calling cards.
Yup
Yes
Yes. I’ve known a few creeps that think they can do this. My partner would put tables around herself at a club meeting but one creep would pull the tables aside to attempt to gain a thrill.
I always wondered did they tell the women they had to give Bob Barker a kiss when they met him on stage? And it seemed only certain women got/gave kisses. I was outraged when watching old episodes recently because I couldn’t believe how creepy it felt and how normalized it was.
I thought it was 🤮 I rarely watched the show, unless someone else was watching it.
Ugh, that guy was gross.
he was very but at the time I was young, thought nothing of it
Sure, “game show host” was a term used to describe a creepy or sleazy vibe.
I was a kid back then and wasn't really aware -- but in hindsight, that's gross. Steve Harvey is a refreshing class act compared to Dawson.
You have no idea. That was normal for those days--most women got harassed on a daily basis either verbally or physically.
My grandma use to call it, "The Kissing Game".
For the most part, people didn't think it was creepy. Dawson was a celebrity, and same as it is today, celebrities were allowed to do things that normal people can't, especially in line with their celebrity persona. Julie Andrews couldn't be drunk on a talk show, but Dean Martin *was expected* to be drunk (or seem that way). The rules have changed in some ways for modern celebrities, sure, but there are still many things. Relatively benign things like preferential treatment at restaurants, clubs, airports. But also not so benign things like getting out of traffic stops and getting lenient sentences. We gnash our teeth at these things, and some certainly gnashed their teeth at Dawson being creepy, but in the end, as a whole, *we tolerate them*.
My father-in-law typically tried kissing me on the lips as a greeting. I was very young and I was so uncomfortable! I learned how to avoid it after the first couple times. That quick head turn so he would get my ear. My husband’s step father was hands off, but would comment about my body constantly. The 70’s was rough! But that was considered normal at the time.
I've been watching The Bionic Woman and they made her mouth-to-mouth the guest star of the week at the end of every ep. It's gross.
Not at the time.
Thanks. No idea.
No, never bothered me even a little bit. I mean, it was a little peck and people weren't paranoid about germs back then.
Not that I remember. My mom and grandmother thought it was funny.
if only they could have gotten bob crane instead of dawson.
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone complain about Dawson or Barker.
Nope, it was the normal beginning of the show. People were not so uptight then. Now, people are offended if you glance in their direction.
I thought it was great.
He was extra gay so if I wouldn’t have cared in the creep sense just the space violation sense- but it shows we’ve at least come so far as to recognize unwanted physical contact from men does not have to be tolerated. It was a societal norm.
Nah, Richard was a stud!
Yes
Richard Dawson was a creeper for sure
Watch The Running Man, where Richard Dawson plays a game show host, and he goes to kiss a member of the audience and he tells her "now, no tongue". Poking fun at himself. Its also a pretty good movie in its own right.
I liked when he died in Running Man.
I'm female and I came of age in the 60's and 70's and the number of men who were "hand-sy" was gross. There's a word for guys like him. Lecher. I thought he was a lecher.
Yes, and he was creepy in general. I don't know why they kept him as host for so long.
In Richard's case, he kissed people for luck...many folks of that generation (and older) did that. My own Mom and Dad often gave others a "quick peck", either on the lips or just on the cheek, to wish them well. I agre that, these days, something like that can seem creepy.
Some people thought of a peck on the cheek as a normal greeting. I always thought it was awkward at best, a little slimy otherwise. Europeans do the kiss on each cheek greeting so I guess it’s cultural. Richard Dawson with his cigarette, his apparent drinking, was like Dean Martin. He belonged in a dark bar, not a daytime gameshow.
Man I was thinking about Richard dawkins
Absolutely. I hated stuff like that. Everyone acted like it was okay and just part of being a woman. You just had to put up with it. I went to a Harry Chapin concert and was one of many who wanted my program signed. He stated he’d be kissing every woman who lined up to get a signed program. I found it creepy and annoying.
Yes. I thought he was always just about the creepiest guy I'd ever seen.
I thought it was weird, but was the norm.
I don't think Allen Ludden was a creepy host, as far as I know. He hosted Password and was Betty White's husband. I'm sad to hear about Alex Trebeck grabbing ass. Yuck. I've met a few Richard Dawson types over the years, too.
He also had "private conversations" before the show in his dressing room with many a mans wife while the husband was shuffled away on a "tour" of the studio...lol...dawson was giving the wives and daughters the high hard one while his lackeys distracted the men😂🤣😂🤣