Richard Dawson, Family Feud, and the Kissing Bandit Era

Fifty years ago, Family Feud did more than arrive on daytime television. It kissed its way into pop culture history. When the game show premiered, it quickly became a ratings staple, but its lasting identity was shaped by original host Richard Dawson. Coming off his fast-talking popularity on Match Game and his earlier role on Hogan’s Heroes, Dawson brought a mix of charm, confidence, and physical affection that set Family Feud apart from every other game show on television. He did not simply read survey questions. He leaned into the audience, engaged contestants directly, and earned a reputation as television’s most famous kissing bandit. Over eight seasons, Dawson transformed hosting into performance, making the show feel warmer, more personal, and unmistakably human.

Richard Dawson’s hosting style blended showmanship with sincerity. A handshake was rarely enough, as a quick kiss became his trademark and a supposed symbol of love and good luck. Contestants arrived prepared to answer survey questions and often left with a kiss and a story they would tell for decades. That affectionate approach was popular with viewers and helped define the early success of Family Feud. According to executive producer Howard Felsher, Dawson kissed an estimated 20,000 women during his original run, a staggering figure that became part of game show legend. Dawson explained the habit as something he learned from his mother, framing the kisses as gestures of warmth rather than flirtation. When network executives attempted to curb the practice, Dawson put the decision to a vote. Audiences overwhelmingly supported keeping the kisses, cementing them as a defining feature of the show.

One of those on-air kisses even turned into a real-life romance. In 1981, Dawson met his future wife, Gretchen Johnson, when she appeared as a contestant on Family Feud. During that episode, he kissed her four times, a moment that later felt more like destiny than coincidence. When Dawson returned to host the show in 1994, the kissing tradition had come to an end. After promising his young daughter that he would only kiss her mother, Dawson retired the practice, leaving it behind as a nostalgic artifact of television history. The laughs and surveys continued, but the show itself had evolved.

Behind the scenes, Dawson’s on-camera affection came with an unusual and little-known medical subplot. During his tenure from 1976 to 1985, contestants were reportedly required to undergo herpes testing before appearing on Family Feud. Dawson’s habit of kissing female contestants on the mouth raised concerns among viewers and medical professionals who worried that his good luck ritual could spread more than charm. In response to complaints, producers introduced precautionary measures that included mouth inspections using magnifying glasses and cotton swabs.

Honestly, I would be far more worried about Richard Dawson spreading herpes to the contestants than the contestants giving it to him. At that point, he was basically the human version of a communal microphone, going from face to face at lightning speed. The contestants only kissed one guy. Dawson kissed everyone. If anyone needed to worry about contact tracing, it was the host working the podium like a kissing assembly line. The real suspense was not on the survey board. It was whether the next kiss came with applause or a prescription.

Viewer discomfort eventually reached newspapers, including a letter published in the Philadelphia Daily News that described the kissing as promiscuous and warned about potential disease transmission. While the testing policy addressed those concerns with an unspoken “I promise not to kiss and tell” understanding, the kissing itself did not survive beyond Dawson’s era. Later hosts abandoned the practice entirely, and by the time Steve Harvey took over in 2010, Family Feud had fully moved on. Today, the show continues to thrive, but its early years remain one of the strangest and most fascinating chapters in television history. Half a century later, Richard Dawson remains the host who did not just guide a game show. He kissed his way into legend.