Sonny Fox

Irwin "Sonny" Fox (June 17, 1925 – January 24, 2021) was an American television host and broadcaster who was the host of the children's television program, Wonderama. Through his career, he had hosted other children's educational and entertainment shows including Let's Take a Trip, Just for Fun and On Your Mark, in addition to family shows including The $64,000 show. Fox was also a producer of movies including And Baby Makes Six, Mysterious Two and Brontë. He served as the chairman of Populations Communication International, a non profit advocating for a change in attitudes toward family planning.

Early life Irwin Fox was born on June 17, 1925, to a Jewish family in the Parkville section of Brooklyn, New York, to parents Gertrude (Goldberg) and Julius A. Fox. In a separate event, an American clerk at the camp marked him as a Protestant rather than Jewish, when Jewish prisoners were identified and sent to a slave labor camp in Berga, in Germany.

The $64,000 Challenge In 1956, Fox became the first host of the game show The $64,000 Challenge, a spinoff of The $64,000 Question. In his first appearance he was identified as "Bill Fox," but by the second program he became "Sonny Fox" because, he claimed, the name "Bill Fox" had been registered by another entertainment personality; in the same interview Fox stated his difficulties as a game show host included his "predilection for asking the answers."

Fox's brief tenure on the show may have enabled him to escape tainting from the 1950s quiz show scandals, and during an interview on American Experience he reported being horrified by related testimony to Congress—including that of child star Patty Duke, who had participated on The $64,000 Challenge and who later admitted that she had been coached to lie to Congressional investigators.

Wonderama In 1959, the independent television station group Metromedia (born from the former DuMont Network) hired Fox to host Wonderama on its New York flagship station, WABD (later becoming WNEW-TV), succeeding the team of Bill Britten and Doris Faye. Fox became Wonderama's sole host until 1967. Fox's version of the program was a mixture of slapstick and serious content, with the marathon Wonderama (during Fox's tenure the show ran four hours Sunday mornings) including Shakespearean dramatizations, guest celebrities including John Lindsay and Robert Kennedy, magic demonstrations (customarily by magician James "The Amazing" Randi), art instruction, spelling bees, Simon Says, learning games, or other elements. He forfeited another opportunity to host a talk show, The New Yorkers, because it would mean leaving Wonderama.

On Your Mark In 1960, Fox hosted ABC's first original Saturday morning show, On Your Mark, a game show in which children answered questions about various professions. Because Fox was under "exclusive" contract to WNEW-TV, On Your Mark aired on Channel 5 in New York, instead of ABC's station WABC-TV. On Your Mark lasted one season.

Other media activities In 1966, Fox appeared in the film The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. Fox co-hosted a daily talk/variety show for adults titled The New Yorkers on WNEW-TV, with co-hosts Penelope Wilson and Gloria Okon, plus newsman Stewart Klein in 1967. In 1976, Fox hosted the California-based Way Out Games, and during 1977 he ran children's programming for NBC.

In the later part of his career, he also served as a producer of made for TV movies And Baby Makes Six (1979), Mysterious Two (1982) and Brontë (1983). (PCI), a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to improving family planning issues through popular media. PCI's work included working with U.S. and international soap opera producers, helping them develop "more healthful" family planning story lines.

In September 2012, Fox published his memoirs, titled But You Made the Front Page! Wonderama, Wars and a Whole Bunch of Life.