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Dec 30, 2007 · The decline of the daytime game show in the ’80s was perhaps inevitable more women were working, and with the baby boom all grown up and new competition from video games, there were fewer people ...
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- Early Life
- Career
- Later Career
- Personal Life
- In Pop Culture
Reilly was born in The Bronx, the son of Charles Joseph Reilly, an Irish Catholic commercial artist, and Signe Elvera Nelson, a Swedish Lutheran. When young, he often made his own puppet theater to amuse himself, and his mother often told him to "save it for the stage." At age thirteen, he survived the 1944 Hartford circus fire which killed 169 peo...
Stage
Although most of his early career was spent on the stage, Reilly made his film debut with an uncredited role in 1957's A Face in the Crowd. He was a regular and popular performer in comic roles for several summer seasons in the 1950s at the Starlight Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri. Reilly appeared in many Off-Broadway productions. His big break came in 1960 with the enormously successful original Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie. In the groundbreaking musical, Reilly had a small onstag...
Television
Reilly kept active in Broadway shows but he became better known for his TV work, appearing regularly on television in the 1960s. He appeared as one of What's My Line?'s mystery guests and as a panelist on that program. In 1965, he made regular appearances on The Steve Lawrence Show. Television commercials that he made throughout the 1960s and 1970s included Excedrin and Bic Banana Ink Crayons. From 1968 to 1970, he appeared as the constantly flustered bumbler Claymore Gregg on the television...
From 1976, Reilly primarily taught acting and directing for television and theater, including directing Julie Harris, who was portraying Emily Dickinson in her one-woman Broadway play The Belle of Amherst. In 1979, he directed Ira Levin's play Break a Leg on Broadway. Despite the previous year's success of Levin's Deathtrap, Break a Leg closed afte...
Magazine and newspaper profiles of Reilly throughout the 1970s and 1980s did not mention his personal life or sexuality. Many years after the cancellation of Match Game, he revealed his homosexuality in his theatrical one-man show, Save It for the Stage: The Life of Reilly. Much like fellow actor and game-show regular Paul Lynde of the same era, de...
For Big Lizard in My Backyard, their 1985 debut album, Philadelphia punk band The Dead Milkmen recorded a song called "Serrated Edge" that features numerous absurd references to Reilly as a Jesus figure and orgy centerpiece. In 2001, Reilly was the subject of a sketch on Saturday Night Live, spoofing Inside the Actors Studio, and was portrayed by A...
Reilly was one of three regular panelists on the program and often engaged in petty, hilarious arguments with fellow regular Brett Somers (the two generally sat next to each other on the show, Somers in the upper middle seat and Reilly in the upper right-hand seat). Charles typically offered sardonic commentary and peppered his answers with ...
TV-PG. IMDb RATING. 7.5 /10. 21. YOUR RATING. Rate. Comedy Game-Show. "MATCH GAME 73 (1973)" Welcomes BERT CONVY "The Snoop Sisters", MISS JAYE P. MORGAN, CHARLES NELSON REILLY "SID and MARTY KROFFT's LIDSVILLE", (MRS.) BRETT SOMERS (-KLUGMAN) "Neil Simon's The Odd Couple and THE NEW PERRY MASON", RICHARD DAWSON "THE NEW DICK VAN DYKE SHOW" and ...
- (21)
- 1973-07-16
- Comedy, Game-Show
- 30
Episode #5.85: With Gene Rayburn, Don Sutton, Brett Somers, Charles Nelson Reilly.
