While briefly attending Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, California, Perry was an outstanding basketball player thanks in part to his height (at 6'4" or 193 cm); he graduated in 1952.

Perry started out as a singer in Special Services after college at Penn, working on Armed Forces Radio during the Korean War.

Afterwards he presided over several other game shows, including Eye Bet and The Money Makers (also called Bingo at Home), the latter also airing on syndicated television in some US markets for 13 weeks in 1969.

Although Perry was American by birth, he and his family emigrated to Canada in the early 1970s and moved back to the U.S. in the late 1970s when he was hired to host Card Sharks.

[citation needed] Perry also served as an announcer for That Show starring Joan Rivers, a short-lived two-month series that aired in 1969 on syndicated television.

Another game show also produced in Canada for syndicated TV in the U.S., The Moneymakers (a game based on Bingo), aired in 1969, originally titled Bingo at Home, in which contestants and home viewers had a chance to win money (albeit less than $100 at a time) and in some years his co-host was Dominique Dufour, Miss Canada 1981.

His biggest break in the United States came in 1978 when NBC and Mark Goodson–Bill Todman Productions cast him for their new show Card Sharks.

In 1982, NBC named Perry host of $ale of the Century, a revived version of the 1969–1973 series, airing from January 3, 1983, until March 24, 1989.

Starting in January 1985, he added a third hosting gig to his resume, taking the reins of a nightly syndicated $ale of the Century that ran until September 1986.

During his tenure at NBC, Perry appeared in the made-for-TV movie The Great American Traffic Jam (1980) along with fellow game show hosts Wink Martindale, Jack Clark, and Art James.

He was also involved in charitable causes, both in Southern California and Canada, and was a regular host of the annual Telemiracle telethon in Saskatchewan for many years in support of the Kinsmen Clubs in that province.

[citation needed] In 1994, Perry hosted a pilot for a lottery game show titled Cash Tornado for Mark Goodson Productions.