Jim Lange, Original Host Of TV's "Dating Game," R.I.P.

Jim Lange, a veteran radio disc jockey who became best remembered for his stint as the orginal host of the television game show The Dating Game, passed away this past Tuesday at his Mill Valley, California home at age 81 after suffering a heart attack.

In 1965, producer Chuck Barris hired Mr. Lange to host a newly-created TV game show entitled The Dating Game.  

Known for his voluminous hair, velvet tuxedos, and boyish charm, Jim would host the program, in ABC Network (both daytime and prime time) and local syndication versions into the 1980s.

Here's a look at the show's premise:

The show’s premise was simple: a contestant, usually a young woman, read scripted questions, awash in gentle double entendres, to three men. (Q. “If you were a holiday, how would you like to be celebrated?” A. “I would love to be Arbor Day, and be potted.”)

The men, known as Bachelors Nos. 1, 2 and 3, were seated behind a screen, visible to the audience but not to the contestant. (“And h-e-e-r-e they are!,” Mr. Lange ritually intoned on introducing them to viewers.)

Based on their answers, the contestant chose one of them to be her date on a romantic getaway, furnished by the show. In a nod to the mores of the times — or, more accurately, to those of a somewhat earlier time — the trips were chaperoned, sometimes by Mr. Lange, sometimes by Mr. Barris.

On some episodes, the roles were reversed, with a male contestant interrogating three bachelorettes. On others, celebrities — among them a juvenile Michael Jackson and a youthful, heavily muscledArnold Schwarzenegger — took the contestant’s chair.

In an era in which a woman was expected to wait for a man to ask her out, “The Dating Game” billed itself as a blow for progress.