Legendary North End dealmaker turns 93

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2014 (4232 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Monty Hall’s walk to fame began in the unlikeliest of places.

Before he was Monty Hall, co-creator and host of the television game show Let’s Make a Deal, he was Maurice (Monte) Halparin, the poor, sickly son of a kosher butcher in Winnipeg’s North End.

“It was a very difficult youth,” Hall said on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.
“It was during the Depression, and on top of the Depression and my father having a tough time, illness played a big part in my life.

“I was very, very sick as a child. I was terribly scalded at the age of seven in a kitchen accident. When I recovered from that, I was so weak I came down with double pneumonia. That was harrowing for my family and myself. I finally pulled through, but I spent a year in bed. It was a very tough time.”

Born on Aug. 25, 1921 to Orthodox Jewish parents Rose and Maurice Harvey Halparin, Hall, now 93, and his family bounced around north Winnipeg, living in Luxton, North Point Douglas and Elmwood, because, as Hall puts it, “I guess we couldn’t pay the rent.”

When he was healthy, Hall, a St. John’s High School graduate, recalls delivering meat from his dad’s shop by bicycle all across town, even in -40C weather.

“It  would take several hours and I’d come back frozen stiff,” he said.

However, making deliveries wasn’t so bad when he could make time for a stop at Kelekis Restaurant.

“I used to stop off there and get my french fries for five cents and eat them on the bicycle,” Hall said.

In 1946, Hall graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Science degree, majoring in chemistry and zoology. He intended to become a doctor but was refused admittance to the school’s medical program, as the U of M faculty of medicine had a quota at the time on the number of Jewish students it would admit.

Still, Hall’s time at the U of M did set him down the show-business path.

“At the university, my first big break was a musical comedy called You Can’t Beat Fun. The director of that show got me into radio and that’s how the transition happened,” Hall said.

While in university Hall worked as a part-time DJ at Winnipeg radio station CKRC (now 99.9 BOB FM). In 1946, he moved to Toronto’s CHUM radio, and eventually made the move into TV, hosting the daytime CBC program Matinee Party.

When CBC cancelled Matinee Party in 1954, Hall decided to take his talents south. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he hosted various TV and radio shows, including a brief run as the colour man for New York Rangers games on WINS radio.

In 1961, Hall moved to Los Angeles where he and business partner Stefan Hatos came up with Let’s Make a Deal.

“I took us about a year to sell it, because nobody wanted to buy this crazy show where people dressed up in costumes and were running all over the place. But, after we sold it, it was an instant hit, and well, we’ve been on for over 50 years now.”

Let’s Make a Deal premiered on NBC in 1963, before moving to ABC in 1968, where it ran until 1976. The game show also had brief runs from 1980 to 1981, 1984 to 1986 and 1990 to 1991. In 2009, Let’s Make a Deal was revived by CBS with Wayne Brady as host.

“It’s absolutely fun,” Hall said of the reason for the show’s endurance. “There was never a show like this before where people just had a good time. It was colourful, it was exciting, and people reacted to it from the very beginning. To this day they still come to the show dressed up in costumes of one sort or another and they get into a spirit.”

Let’s Make a Deal earned Hall a spot on both the Hollywood and Canada Walks of Fame, but if you ask Hall what’s he’s most proud of, he’ll tell you it’s Marilyn, his wife of 67 years, and their children, Joanne Gleason, a Tony-Award winning actress, Sharon Hall, president of Alcon Television, and Richard Hall, a television producer.

Hall is also proud of his charity work, which includes being the international chairman for Variety, the Children’s Charity, for which he was awarded the Order of Canada in 1988.

“I think my work with charity around the world is a better monument than television,” Hall said.

And, despite his great success, Hall hasn’t forgotten where he started.

“I’m still a staunch Winnipegger. I live for the day when Winnipeg wins the Stanley Cup. That means I’ll be 120 years old,” said Hall with a laugh.