Fine Italian
Dining in a
Casual
Atmosphere

Now

meticulous about that."
Floyd, who graduated from
Southfield Lathrup High School,
attended Western Michigan University
and Wayne State University. Although
working toward a journalism degree,
he tried his luck with improv comedy.
He worked with the troupe Detroit
Times Theater Company at the Soup
Kitchen Saloon.
After group members decided to
split, Floyd formed a two-man team
with Richard Laible, and they played
all the clubs around town and toured
to Indiana and Ohio. They both
moved to Los Angeles, but Laible
didn't like it and relocated to Chicago,
where he got involved with Second
City, wrote and performed for trade
shows and started a family.
Our comedy was based on audi-
ence suggestion," Floyd recalls. "We
would ask for things like an occupa-
tion or location and do a comedy
scene based on that. We encouraged
audiences to yell stuff out, stop us and
give us a new direction, and they'd still
be yelling as acts came up after us.
The stand-ups who followed hated
us."
In California, Floyd joined with
another comedy troupe and put a
band together, playing guitar and writ-
ing the songs. Dropping the live corn-
edy and keeping the music, he regular-
ly performs with the Hempstead
Nursery, which has released a name-
sake CD featuring guitar-oriented
rock. The group is working on a sec-
ond recording.
"When I moved to California, I
wanted to get into acting and film
editing," explains Floyd, who dabbled
in filmmaking when he was a young-,
ster. "I got some writing work and did
comedy at the same time. All of a sud-
den, there was a bunch of comedy
game shows coming up, and I fell into
writing for some of them.
"Different production companies
wanted to hire me. It's a pretty small
world once you get into it. I feel I was
in the right place at the right time."
Believing that the personality of the
game-show host is critical to the pro-
gram's success, Floyd is glad to have
Povich on his Twenty One team.
"The host really has to drive the
show," he says. "Since Maury comes
from the talk environment with a
background in news broadcasting, we
figured he would be serious but also
open up the players [for the audience]
before we locked them up in the
booth to compete."

-

GAME on page 84

What's
The Deal?

OPEN

i FOR

Former game-show
host Monty Hall
opines on the_ current
spate of game shows.

Monty Hall is guiding a visitor
past the fine artwork in the foyer
of his Spanish-style Beverly Hills
home, where you don't see a sin-
gle memento from the game show
that made him a TV icon.
People mostly remember Hall
from Let's Make a D.
the land-
mark show that ran intermittently
from 1963 to 1991, featuring
prize-hungry contestants in chick-
en costumes or bunny suits vying
to see what was behind Doors
No. 1, 2 or 3. Audience members
traded knickknacks for refrigera-
tors, and strangers still chase Hall
down the street, yelling that they
have a bobby pin in a purse, a
hard-boiled egg in a pocket.
While Deal made the emcee a
household name, his life's passion
is less known to the general pub-
lic. What many don't realize
about Hall is that he has raised
almost a billion dollars for dozens
of charities, at least half of them
Jewish, from Israel Bonds to
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to
the Israel Children's Centers.
Today, three hospital wings
bear his name, and so do two city
streets, in Cathedral City, Calif,
and in his native Winnipeg,
Canada. Even at age 78, Hall,
born Monty Halparin, makes
more than 100 appearances a year
around the world, speaking and
performing gratis at benefit
shows, and enlisting the help of
his celebrity friends.
In 1963, after moving to the
States, Hall hit the big time with
Lets Make Deal, which he co-cre-
ated with partner Stefan Hatos.
On the wildly popular show, he
worked without cue cards, ad-lib-
bing his way through deals and
unruly contestants.
"They just jumped up and
hugged me and kissed me," he
recalls. "But sometimes, they
WHAT'S THE DEAL on page 84

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