Alan Thicke

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Alan Thicke (born Alan Jeffrey Thicke on March 1, 1947 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian actor, songwriter, game show host and talk-show emcee. Throughout the late 1980s to early 1990s, he was most famous as Jason Seaver, the patriarch on the ABC television series Growing Pains. The show also starred Joanna Kerns and Kirk Cameron.

He graduated from Elliot Lake Secondary School in 1965 as homecoming king. He attended the University of Western Ontario and worked as a disc jockey.

Thicke composed the original theme song to Wheel of Fortune (1975), titled "Big Wheels," which was used until 1983. Among other game show themes, he also composed The Diamond Head Game (1974) and Whew! (1979). Thicke also composed and sang the theme for The Wizard of Odds, a 1973 NBC game show that he produced. The show also featured the U.S. television debut of fellow Canadian Alex Trebek.

Outside of daytime TV, Thicke also composed (with then-wife Gloria Loring) the themes to the NBC sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and its spinoff The Facts of Life.

A clip of what appeared to be a Thicke-hosted Canadian game show from the early '70s, Face the Music, was screened when Thicke was a guest on Later with Bob Costas. In the 1980s, he hosted a Saturday morning game show called Animal Crack-Ups. Then in 1997, he also hosted a television version of the board game Pictionary. And in the early 2000s, he hosted All New 3's a Crowd on Game Show Network.

Thicke was also the host of his own popular talk show in Canada during the early 1980s, called The Alan Thicke Show. The show at one point spawned a prime time spin-off entitled Prime Cuts, which consisted of edited highlights from the talk show. Based on the success of his talk show, Thicke was signed to do an American late night talk show Thicke of the Night. Although it helped launch the careers of Arsenio Hall and Louie Anderson, it was a spectacular failure against The Tonight Show. Thicke also made a cameo appearance in a holiday Lexus commercial in the late 90’s where he played a white man like himself, a golden retriever, and even the part of the black woman. He also appeared on the American television series Hope and Gloria, which lasted only 35 episodes. In 2004, Thicke hosted the Miss Universe Canada pageant. In April 2006, he hosted the Celebrity Cooking Challenge on NBC which teamed celebrities with famous chefs in a cooking competition.