Jack Narz, 85, longtime TV game show host

Before he testified, Mr. Narz was unaware of cheating on ''Dotto,'' the quiz-show host said in a 1990 interview. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

LOS ANGELES - Jack Narz, who was the host on "Dotto" when it became one of the first television programs ensnared in the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s and who went on to emcee "Concentration" and other game shows, died Wednesday. He was 85.

Mr. Narz, brother of veteran game-show host Tom Kennedy, died of complications of a stroke at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a family spokesman said.

While waiting in line to get tickets for a Broadway show on a Friday night in 1958, Mr. Narz was paged to a telephone. On the line was a spokesman for "Dotto" sponsor Colgate-Palmolive, who told him that CBS had determined the daytime show was rigged and that it would not air the next Monday. The version that aired nights on NBC also was pulled.

Mr. Narz was as surprised as anybody by the show's sudden cancellation, said Steve Beverly, a game-show specialist and professor of broadcasting at Union University in Tennessee.

"Jack was called to give a deposition before the grand jury investigating. He passed the polygraph test and was completely exonerated," said Beverly, who became a friend of Mr. Narz's.

Before he testified, Mr. Narz was unaware of the cheating, the quiz-show host told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 interview.

"While we were on the air, one of the future contestants on the show went through a woman's purse in the contestants' dressing room," Mr. Narz said. "While going through the purse, he discovered someone had given her some answers."

The cancellation of "Dotto" in August 1958 helped trigger an investigation of the game-show industry that revealed rigging to be rampant. Almost all prime-time quiz shows were taken off the air. Congress held full-scale hearings in 1959, and federal regulation of quiz shows was instituted.

Game-show hosts from that era - including Mr. Narz - were little more than hired guns who showed up about half an hour before the live broadcast and ran through the material, Beverly said. They were not tightly connected to the producers, many of whom fixed the shows to heighten the drama, he said.

Although Mr. Narz hosted several more game shows, Beverly said, his friend told him: "I always felt that I was a 'day late and dollar short' kind of guy. From that point on, that maybe there were some shows I didn't get because they said, 'He was on that show, maybe we shouldn't take a shot on him.' "

Mr. Narz might have been best known for hosting the mid-1970s remake of "Concentration," which filmed 195 shows - a season's worth - in nine weeks.

Among the other game shows he hosted were "Video Village," "Seven Keys," and a syndicated version of "Beat the Clock" that debuted in 1969.

"He was the Dean Martin of game-show hosts . . . because he was so easygoing, so smooth. . . . When you saw him on the air, you felt he was a guest in your home," Beverly said. "He never overpowered his shows. . . . He was a textbook example of what an emcee ought to be."

A native of Louisville, Ky., Mr. Narz served as a military pilot during World War II.

After military service, he worked for several radio stations before landing a job as an announcer on television's "Queen for a Day," which led to a spot on the 1950s children's science- fiction program "Space Patrol."

"Narz is fondly remembered by many baby boomers as the announcer who got us to scarf down cereal that tasted like cardboard so we could get box-top premiums for '25 cents in coin,' " Jean-Noel Bassior, author of the 2005 book "Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television," wrote in an e-mail.