Richard Dawson’s Time Hosting Family Feud Involved Herpes Testing for Contestants

According to a new book, contestants on Family Feud during Richard Dawson’s term as host had to undergo herpes testing on site.

Kliph Nesteroff, author of Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, claims that the game show had to request herpes testing for competitors owing to the late host’s fondness for kissing female contestants on the lips.

According to a Pacific Daily News story, the game show instituted a new regulation requiring both male and female competitors to “undergo a mouth test with a magnifying glass from medical distaff.” Nesteroff describes one contestant’s experience, in which a production assistant said, “OK, everybody line up for your herpes tests,” as they entered a dressing room containing the test materials.

The testing began when fans expressed concerns over Dawson’s original hosting of Family Feud from 1976 until 1985. The show was accused of “promiscuous kissing” in a letter published in the Philadelphia Daily News, and the risk of illnesses that may arise was described as “too loathsome to recount.”

“When you watch Family Feud clips from that era on YouTube and see Richard Dawson kissing the ladies, a lot of the comments in the comment section will say things like, ‘Well, it was a different time.'” That was how men were back then. It was another epoch. “People weren’t as sensitive,” Nesteroff claims. “And here, again, is evidence to the contrary that all kinds of people were complaining.”

Outrageous examines censorship in the entertainment industry from the Vaudeville era to the present day. Nesteroff demonstrates that censorship — and the logic behind it — has long been a part of the business, whether analyzing racism in 1800s theater or public anger over the pregnancy narrative in I Love Lucy.

Nesteroff claims that every TV show, from The Bionic Woman to Alf to Laverne & Shirley, has a complaint. He didn’t include a narrative in the book about The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and the host’s Aunt Blabby persona.

“A senior citizens’ rights group launched a campaign demanding that he stop playing the character.” “They felt it was defamatory to seniors and contributed to stereotypes of seniors as feeble, stupid, and inept,” Nesteroff adds.

Nesteroff, a former stand-up comedian, claims that performers don’t consider whether anything is “off limits” in their material.

“Standup comedy and funny people operate in a much more organic manner than I think people outside of comedy realize or understand,” he said. “Because, to people who aren’t funny, being funny appears to require an enormous amount of labor and thought.” When you’re born with the ability to be hilarious, it’s all instinct.”

Nesteroff believes that time has changed our perceptions of entertainment and censorship.

“The hysteria of today over whatever it might be will look just as ridiculous 40 years from now as the hysteria over Elvis [Presley] looks to us today, or the hysteria over the Beatles looks to us today, or the hysteria over The Simpsons looks like to us today,” Nesteroff said. “Because those people were very serious back then.” So, when people go wild over whatever it is — drag queens or textbooks or whatever the grievance is over — I believe it will appear completely silly in the future, which implies it is absurd today.”