Monty Hall got his name from a billboard typo
Monte Halparin of Winnipeg wanted to be a doctor, but secret quotas on Jewish students kept him out of medical school. A Toronto radio station shortened his surname and misspelled his first name on its billboards. As Monty Hall he co-created Let's Make a Deal, and a famous probability puzzle carries his name.
Hall was born on August 25, 1921, to Orthodox Jewish parents in Winnipeg's north end; his father owned a slaughterhouse. A local businessman called Max Freed, one of his father's customers, paid his way through the University of Manitoba, where he took a science degree in chemistry and zoology. He spoke Yiddish. He started in radio at Winnipeg's CKRC while still a student, spent a short time at the Canadian Wheat Board, and moved to Toronto in 1946, where the station CHUM gave him his stage name.
Canadian television was a disappointment. After CBC Television launched in 1952, his shows there were cancelled and one programme he had devised was taken off him. In 1955 he moved to New York, flying back to Toronto several times a month to record his radio quiz Who Am I? He hosted Cowboy Theater on NBC, worked as radio analyst for the New York Rangers in the 1959–1960 season, and took over the CBS game show Video Village from Jack Narz.
Let's Make a Deal, created with his partner Stefan Hatos, began on NBC daytime on December 30, 1963, moved to ABC in 1968 and returned repeatedly in syndication. Hall usually produced it as well as hosting, working beside model Carol Merrill and announcer Jay Stewart. When CBS revived the format in 2009 with Wayne Brady as host, Hall stayed on as creative consultant until he died. The show also lent his name to the Monty Hall problem, a puzzle drawing on game theory and psychology.
Charity was, in his own account, what drove him. His family says he raised close to 1 billion dollars, and hospital wards in Toronto and Philadelphia are named after him. He was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in May 1988, and he has stars on both the Hollywood and Canadian walks of fame, a double he shares with Alex Trebek and Howie Mandel. He died of heart failure at home in Beverly Hills on September 30, 2017, four months after his wife Marilyn.
Source: Monty Hall
