Condition: Very Good. SIGNED! Not personalized (See Photos)! Packed in a BOX with cardboard backing and padding. (See Photos!) Pages: not written on, clean, bright, odor free. Dust Jacket: clean, bright, light bumping to edges. Same or next day shipping (weekdays and Saturdays)! Ships from California.  ABOUT: In the history of televised game shows no name is more synonymous with "host" than Wink Martindale, the man who has guided nineteen game shows. Only his idol, the late Bill Cullen, hosted more shows than Wink. 

But Martindale's forty-five plus years in broadcasting encompass more than the hit game programs for which he is best known. Before TV there was radio! Before game shows there was a Gold Record, and along with "host" there have been numerous "producer" credits as well. 

Winston C. Martindale — nicknamed "Wink" by a neighborhood pal — was born and raised in Jackson, Tennessee, the only member of a family of seven with a broadcasting bent. He was born with a strong desire to be a radio announcer. Wink's first "mike" was two paper cups connected by a kite string. 

It wasn't long before he was sitting behind the real thing. After years of pestering his Sunday School teacher (who just happened to manage one of the local radio stations), Martindale was auditioned and hired to work for WPLI at the tender age of seventeen, just three months before graduating from Jackson High School. He was given $25 per week and did everything; read the news, commercials, play-by-play football and basketball, played records — and swept out the station at night if need be. 

Over the next two years Martindale graduated to ever larger stations, including the station of his "dreams"— WHBQ in Memphis, which he had listened to as a teenager. He hosted the station's popular morning show Clockwatchers, while attaining a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Memphis. Wink was at WHBQ that historic night when Elvis' first record was played and became an instant hit