John O'Hurley has spent forty years in television as J. Peterman on Seinfeld, the host of Family Feud and To Tell the Truth, a season one finalist and eventual champion on Dancing with the Stars, and for more than two decades the voice of the National Dog Show every Thanksgiving morning.
He talks about landing the Peterman role one day after his own sitcom was canceled, the ten years he spent as a daytime soap opera star on Young and the Restless and All My Children, voicing Mayor Doofenshmirtz on Phineas and Ferb and King Neptune on SpongeBob SquarePants, and the phone call in 2000 that made him a shareholder in the real J. Peterman Company. It is a full tour of a career that touched almost every corner of American television.
Show Highlights:
The producers handed him an actual J. Peterman catalog and told him to sound like it reads. He describes the voice he found as a 1940s radio drama crossed with a bad Charles Kuralt.
Season one of Dancing with the Stars ended in a voting controversy so tangled that ABC ordered the finale run a second time. O'Hurley won the rematch against Kelly Monaco and sent the money to cancer research, where a match from Michael Milken pushed it to nearly a million dollars.
The body double hired for his twin brothers storyline in daytime soaps was Chazz Palminteri, who spent his downtime in the dressing room writing A Bronx Tale.
He hosted Family Feud for four seasons and explains exactly why he walked away, along with the contestant answer that broke him: name a classic film starting with C, and the man said Sea Biscuit.
The National Dog Show exists because NBC Sports executive John Miller rented the Christopher Guest movie Best in Show one weekend and pitched a dog show for the two hour gap between the Macy's parade and football. It now pulls close to 30 million viewers.
You're going to love my conversation with John O'Hurley
Thanks for checking out Classic Conversations! Dive into pop culture nostalgia with comedian Jeff Dwoskin as he hosts the best TV and film interviews. Hear inspiring stories from actors, comedians, musicians, and pop culture icons about the road to success. Part comedy, part drama—always entertaining.
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