Jim McKrell

James MacKrell (born October 12, 1937) is an American television personality, best known for emceeing television game shows such as Celebrity Sweepstakes and The Game Game. He was born in Little Rock, Arkansas. Published variations of his name include James MacKrell, Jim McKrell and James McKrell.

Jim McKrell
Born
James MacKrell

(1937-10-12) October 12, 1937
OccupationActor
Years active1969–present
Spouse(s)Cathy MacKrell

Show business career

Jim McKrell's broadcast career has spanned five decades and has included every aspect of communications from local and network commercials to hosting specials to guest starring in popular series and features. McKrell was the host and star of the hit NBC game show Celebrity Sweepstakes. He also hosted The Game Game, Quiz Kids, plus several unsold game show pilots. He also was the announcer of the game shows Sweethearts in 1988 and Couch Potatoes in 1989. McKrell's career has taken him to all areas of television and movies. His theatrical credits include such memorable films as Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977), Albert Brooks' Defending Your Life (1991) Semi-Tough (1978), Teen Wolf (1985) with Michael J. Fox and Harry's War (1981). McKrell also played TV news reporter Lew Landers in two movies directed by Joe Dante, The Howling (1981) and Gremlins (1984), and has had guest starring roles on television in Dallas, Soap, Moonlighting and The Golden Girls among over 40 others. His made-for-TV movies include Christmas Miracle in Caufield, U.S.A. (1977), Walk Don't Run and A Reason to Live (1985). McKrell was also a regular on General Hospital, Capitol, Generations and Days of Our Lives.

As a performer/writer/producer, McKrell has made advertising a major focal point of his career. He has been corporate spokesman for giants such as Chevrolet and Disney. He has starred in spots for household names such as Whirlpool, Fiber Con, Serta, Goodyear, Mattel, Oster, Radio Shack, Entex, and more. He also has appeared as a spokesman for industrial and corporate films for Toyota, Exxon, Xerox, Shell, Coca-Cola, and others. For 14 years, McKrell was the corporate host for the National Easter Seals Telethon, and he wrote and produced several projects for ACTA Communications in Chicago. He has also done a good share of television informercials.

A veteran of radio, his credits include some of the top radio stations in the nation including KMPC and KFI Los Angeles, WMEX in Boston, WNOE in New Orleans, KBOX in Dallas, KXOL in Fort Worth (under the on-air name, Jimmy Kaye, where he worked with longtime friend George Carlin), and WFUN Miami. In recent years, he hosted a top rated talk show in Houston, Texas on KKTL, and was a news anchor at KHTV Channel 39 in Houston.

Jim's father, Rev. James K. "Uncle Mac" MacKrell, Sr., was a radio personality on KCUL radio station in Fort Worth, Texas.

After show business

While McKrell continues to take on voiceover projects (most recently for the movie Imps (2009)), he is basically retired and lives near Conroe, Texas. He is still very active and plays tennis daily.

MacKrell published his first fictional novel, Down from the Mountain: the Story of Bandit and the Wolf. According to press releases, "It is an action-packed novel as far sweeping as the big skies of Montana, where it all takes place. Jim MacKrell salutes the resolve of the American rancher and the animals that work ‘loyally’ alongside to provide the very essence of our rural way of life."

Personal life

McKrell and his wife Cathy have four children together.

gollark: That's currently all I have to say about Android opensourceness. I might come up with more later.
gollark: Banking apps use this for """security""", mostly, as well as a bunch of other ones because they can.
gollark: Google has a thing called "SafetyNet" which allows apps to refuse to run on unlocked devices. You might think "well, surely you could just patch apps to not check, or make a fake SafetyNet always say yes". And this does work in some cases, but SafetyNet also uploads lots of data about your device to Google servers and has *them* run some proprietary ineffable checks on it and give a cryptographically signed attestation saying "yes, this is an Approved™ device" or "no, it is not", which the app's backend can check regardless of what your device does.
gollark: The situation is also slightly worse than *that*. Now, there is an open source Play Services reimplementation called microG. You can install this if you're running a custom system image, and it pretends to be (via signature spoofing, a feature which the LineageOS team refuse to add because of entirely false "security" concerns, but which is widely available in some custom ROMs anyway) Google Play Services. Cool and good™, yes? But no, not really. Because if your bootloader is unlocked, a bunch of apps won't work for *other* stupid reasons!
gollark: If you do remove it, half your apps will break, because guess what, they depend on Google Play Services for some arbitrary feature.
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