Geoffrey Bruce Owen Edwards[1] (February 13, 1931 – March 5, 2014) was an American television actor, game show host, and radio personality.
As a news reporter for KHJ-AM radio, Edwards was present in the basement of Dallas police headquarters when Jack Ruby shot suspected John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963.
[3] After a few short stints at other stations, Edwards was hired at KMPC[4][5] in Los Angeles, occupying the 9 a.m.-noon slot for several years beginning in February 1968 until December 1979 when he resigned to focus on his TV career.
The series, which aired afternoons on CBS television, did not fare well and the network cancelled it in favor of the phenomenally popular Match Game remake.
[6] Edwards was not unemployed long, as Chuck Barris hired him to host The New Treasure Hunt that launched in weekly syndication in fall 1973.
For the next nineteen months, ending in September 1975, Edwards would commute back and forth between California and New York as Jackpot taped at NBC's Rockefeller Center studios.
The duo signed a deal with Warner Brothers to produce the game show pilot Pot of Gold for NBC, but the series never sold.
They also worked on a talk show based on the magazine Ladies Home Journal, but that series also failed to sell and Smith-Edwards Productions folded in 1981.
Later that year, Edwards returned to television to host a daily revival of Treasure Hunt for syndication that was cancelled at the end of the 1981–82 season.
[7] Except for a week of substituting for an indisposed Monty Hall on Let's Make a Deal in early 1985 and an unsold Bob Stewart pilot for ABC called $50,000 a Minute, Edwards remained largely inactive on the national television scene.
Then, in 1986, Edwards was called on by Stewart yet again, this time to replace Blake Emmons as host of its Montreal-based revival of Chain Reaction (which aired in the US on the USA Network).
Edwards, like Perry, commuted back and forth between the United States and Canada between 1986 and 1991, hosting The Big Spin and the 1989 revival of Jackpot!
In an interview with Blog Talk Radio, Edwards said he helmed the pilot of Fun & Fortune, the lottery game show in Missouri (before Rick Tamblyn became the permanent host).
Edwards died of complications from pneumonia at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, on March 5, 2014, less than a month after his 83rd birthday.