The New York Times described him as, "the slim, alert man with the big horn-rimmed glasses, the large eyes, and the elfin grin which splits his face wide and lights it like a ball park at night."  Time Magazine said "his smile gleams as brightly as the lens of his eyeglasses, and whatever else may happen, he is never speechless."   Groucho Marx simply called him "the second-wittiest man on the air."   Bill Cullen was one of the busiest and most popular personalities in the history of television.  He appeared as a regular in more different television series than any other performer, and in a field where careers are sometimes measured in months, he was employed almost continuously for more than forty years in radio and television, often with multiple series on the air at the same time.  We hope you enjoy this site dedicated to the remarkable career of Bill Cullen.

 

Bill Cullen Photo of the Month   September, 2011    The only picture we've ever seen for Give and Take, only the second national credit in Bill's TV career.  Depending on the source, Bill was listed as the announcer (as he is in this photo) or sometimes as the co-host of this brief series, which was based on a radio show that also teamed him with host John Reed King.  We have no idea why the host was decked out in what appears to be comical fashion, while Bill wore a sharp suit.  At least one radio episode of Give and Take survives, but no video that we know about.  The TV version only ran for three months.

The Bill Cullen Homepage   September, 2011    The most interesting update (to us anyway) is also one of the most disappointing.  One of the biggest obscurities we'd discovered in researching Bill's career was an unsold pilot he did in 1961.  Bill would have been the host of a variety series featuring performances at nightclubs across the country.  Recently, a 16mm film of that program surfaced on Ebay.  While we were able to learn many more details about the program from the listing, we lost out on picking up the film itself.  So we've added some details to our description of the show, now listed under its correct title of A Very Special Evening, but the program remains elusive.  The great Paul Anka was the star featured in the pilot, another reason we're disappointed not to have secured a copy for ourselves. So that's the video we don't have.  Now for the video that we do.  In the mid-seventies, Bill agreed to play himself in an industrial film intended to be shown privately to Mobil Oil dealers from around the country.  The result is certainly one of the oddest things you'll ever see Bill do.  See for yourself in our newly uploaded video of Bill's most obscure game show, The Bottom Line.  Watch for Bill to have some naughty fun that he couldn't get away with on broadcast TV! Another rare video treat turned up recently.  Fellow collector and fan Gene Christianson came across three complete episodes of Bill hosting The Price Is Right, and uploaded the lot of them to YouTube.  All three appear never to have aired on GSN, meaning they are available in full for the first time since their original airing nearly fifty years ago.  They also include original commercials, some done by Bill himself!  All three episodes can be found HERE. We've also managed to locate what is, to date, the earliest recording we have of Bill in action.  All eight seconds of it.  One of Bill's first jobs as a CBS staff announcer was to introduce the bands that performed in the anthology series One Night Stand. At least one of those introductions survives, from July 6, 1944.  Bill introduces bandleader Tommy Tucker, and it's Tucker who introduces all the songs, leaving Bill with nothing else to do. Finally, on the subject of radio, we've repaired the broken links to the audio files scattered throuhgout our radio tribute pages.  Go to those sections for some rare and unusual moments of Bill in action.  We've also added several new ones, including an entire episode of This Is Nora Drake in the CBS Announcer section.

THOSE RESPONSIBLE

Matt Ottinger is a television producer, educator and host based in Michigan.  He is a lifelong fan of game shows in general and of Bill Cullen in particular.  His other major web site devoted to game shows is The Game Show Home Game Home Page, which offers detailed information about commercially released game show memorabilia, such as box games, books and records.  In addition, he is one of the administrators of The Game Show Forum, a place for lively debate about game shows past and present. Fred Wostbrock is a game show, infomercial and broadcasting agent based in Studio City, California.  He owns the largest private collection of game show photos in the United States.  He is also one of the three authors of The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows and a co-author of The Ultimate TV Game Show Book.  We are grateful to Fred for allowing us to include some of his pictures of Bill on this tribute site.  Because they are his photos, we can't grant permission for their use in any other way, including on any other website. Kenneth Johannessen is a radio professional in the Pacific Northwest and a researcher currently working on a history of the Mutual Broadcasting System.  He is responsible for tracking down all of the Variety reviews seen on this site, as well as countless additional facts, dates and details. In addition, many dear friends, as well as a few people we don't really know well at all, have been helpful over the years offering information, research and suggestions.  Those people include Marshall Akers, Daniel Benfield, Leah Biel, Mike Burger, Brendan McLaughlin, Adam Nedeff, Tim Lones, Eric Paddon, Chris Tufts, Bob Zager and many more whom we'll add to this list as soon as we remember how stupid we were to leave them off in the first place. The Bill Cullen Homepage is created using a combination of the SeaMonkey HTML editor and a ridiculously old version of Netscape Composer and is designed to be best viewed with a 1024x768 screen resolution with a small font setting.  The font is Verdana.  Pictures are from a variety of published sources and, as we can't say often enough, from the collection of Fred Wostbrock.  No video frame grabs are used in any of these pages.  We could, and we'd have some amazing ones, but it's more challenging this way.  This is a non-profit fan site and we don't mean to mess with anybody's copyrights.  Finally, we never got to meet the man, but everybody on TV called him by his first name.  So do we.