18. Sonny Fox Had a Good Run
While Sonny Fox didn’t last as long as Bob McAllister, he remained the host of “Wonderama” for eight years. That was the longest run before McAllister. Previously, Fox had hosted a show for adults called “The $64,000 Challenge,” but he was not entertaining enough. It was probably for the best. Fox landed on “Wonderama,” and the show he’d hosted wound up part of a quiz show scandal. In fact, the 1994 drama, “Quiz Show” was a movie about the scandal. That incident made it all the way to the Supreme Court, without Fox of course. They’d fired him, absolving him of any guilt.
17. Fox’s Key to Success Was Timing
The delivery of comedy is timing. This was no truer than on the set of “Wonderama.” Fox knew it but admits it was a different time in the ‘50s and ‘60s. “I had four hours, so I could watch the kid after he said his first sentence, stop talking, and keep on watching him or her, and then pause, and then the kid would start up again, and that’s when the gold would come out,” Fox told the Observer. “You had to have time for that. Remember, when I was doing it, to change the channel you had to get off the sofa, go over to the television set, and change the bloody channel. Now the kids have the wands in their hands, and everyone is afraid that if we take a breath, click, they’re on to something else.”