By TODAY.com news services
Randy Rasmussen / AP
Richard Dawson, center, during a taping of "Family Feud" in 1980 with Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Dorsett and Cowboys cheerleader Suzette Scholz-Derrick.
Richard Dawson, the British actor and comedian best known for kissing every female contestant he could get his hands on in the television game show "Family Feud," has died his son said Sunday.
"It is with a very heavy heart that I inform you that my father passed away this evening from complications due to esophageal cancer. He was surrounded by his family. He was an amazing talent, a loving husband, a great dad, and a doting grandfather. He will be missed but always remembered," Gary Dawson said in a posting on Facebook.
Dawson hit fame playing a British prisoner of war in the the bizarre 1960s comedy show "Hogan's Heroes," which made out his Nazi captors as benevolent bumblers. He later became a regular on game shows, titillating audiences with just-this-side-of-dirty innuendos on "Match Game" and then, most prominently, as host of "Family Feud," in which two families competed to see which one could more accurately predict Americans' answers to odd survey questions.
Dawson hosted "Family Feud" from 1976 to 1985 and again from 1988 to 1995. He won an Emmy award in 1978.
Dawson, who lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., married one of the contestants he met on the show, Gretchen Johnson, in 1991. She survives him, as does their daughter, Shannon. He is also survived by two sons, Gary and Mark Dawson, from his previous marriage to Hollywood starlet Diana Dors.
