Sonny Fox
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Sonny Fox (b. Irwin Fox, 1925, Brooklyn, NY) is an American television host and executive and broadcasting consultant; and, the fourth host of children's television legend Wonderama.
A one-time prisoner of war, from the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, Fox's first experiment in children's programming came in 1954 with a St. Louis program, The Finder (KETC), a children's news and travelogue program considered the first successful such show. His first national exposure came when CBS brought him aboard in 1955 to co-host the children's travelogue Let's Take a Trip---"[T]aking two children on sort of an electronic field trip every week -- live, remote location, no audience, no sponsors," Fox himself has described that show.
He then became the first and extremely short-lived host of The $64,000 Challenge, the spinoff of The $64,000 Question, in 1956. He yielded within just a few weeks to Ralph Story--he simply wasn't as funny or bright hosting the game as he was in person, according to producers, not to mention he was awkward enough that, as he put it himself years later, he often "had a predilection for asking the answers." His blink-of-an-eye tenure on the show may have been the biggest break of his career: it kept Fox from catching any of the coming taint of the quiz show scandal in 1958-1959. By that time, Fox's involvement in game shows went no further than occasionally filling in for original host of The Price is Right, Bill Cullen; or, Beat the Clock host Bud Collyer.
It was just as well that Fox bombed on The $64,000 Challenge, because the job for which he was suited best, which allowed him to be himself, arrived in 1959: the independent Metromedia network (born of the ashes of the former DuMont Network) hired Fox to host Wonderama on its New York flagship, WABD (soon to become WNEW), succeeding the team of Bill Britten and Doris Faye. Fox's hiring ended what some who remember the show call the musical-hosts syndrome that went with it for its first few years after the show was created and hosted by Sandy Becker, who became a New York children's programming star in his own right. Fox became Wonderama's sole host for eight years, until August 1967. And, depending on how you looked at him, Wonderama's audience found itself a second father or an elder cousin.
Suave, congenial, and dryly witty, Fox balanced effortlessly between the serious and the slapstick, turning Wonderama into a weekly academy at which anything could happen and often did---whether Shakespearean dramatisations, guest celebrities (not strictly from among entertainers, either), magic demonstrations (customarily by legendary magician James "The Amazing" Randi), art instruction spelling bees, learning games, or other elements. Fox was so deft at balancing what could have been a haphazard hodgepodge into a seamless whole---and so consistent in never talking down to his young guests and viewers, treating them with legitimate respect and tolerance---that Wonderama, all four hours worth, was rarely if ever known to have bored either the children who appeared on the show (the segments showing the weekly 25 or 30 children waving cross-armed, leading in and out of commercial breaks, were as much a signature as Fox himself) or those who watched it.
In 1959, Fox reached back to the "color war" team competitions he knew as a child in summer camp to create and host Just For Fun, a two-and-a-half hour Saturday morning show involving two teams of kids in Blue and Gold jumpsuits to compete in contests ranging from the mildly athletic to the wildly bizarre. One mainstay was the Treasure Chest competition: One contestant from each team would be placed in front of a locked chest and 1000 keys. When the winner found the key to open their chest, a siren would sound, and whatever was happening at the time (be it cartoon, commercial, skit, etc.) was interrupted. The winner would stand with arms outstretched and a towering pile of board games and toys would be placed in their arms.
A year after he launched Just For Fun, Fox hosted ABC's first original Saturday morning show, On Your Mark, a children's game show in which kids ages 9-13 answered questions about various professions. On Your Mark lasted one season, but the lively Just For Fun lasted until 1965.
Fox left Wonderama in 1967; his successor, Bob McAllister, continued the show both locally and in national syndication through the 1970s. Fox gradually withdrew from television work (he had made occasional acting appearances in television movies during his Wonderama years), spending time in theater and other entertainment, until he spent one year (1977) running children's programming for NBC. He also spent time as a lecturer at the SUNY Stony Brook campus in the 1970s. Eventually, he joined and became a chairman of the board for Population Communications International, a New York-based nonprofit concern dedicated to influencing media coverage and presentation of family planning issues--including work with U.S. and international soap opera producers helping them develop "more healthful" family planning story lines, as a newspaper article described it in 2002.
Fox was also board chairman for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He lives in the Los Angeles area.
But it is Wonderama for which Fox's name and personality are most remembered. And it is a remembrance he appreciates. When the TVparty.com Website for television nostalgia added a Wonderama page featuring comments from past fans of the Fox-era show, it received a reply from Fox himself. "Stumbling on the Wonderama site and reading the thoughts of past acolytes," he wrote, "I feel a bit as though I had died and am eavesdropping on chit chat at my funeral. Eerie. But delightful . . . I am struck by how vivid the relationship remains. What wonderful satisfaction to know that one has left a thumbprint on the malleable minds of young people--an impression which is still alive after thirty years. "
