Leaving the teddy on

“We moved when I was still very young — I celebrated my second birthday in California,” Eubanks said. “I still have some cousins here, though.”

Eubanks, 76, spoke Monday morning at the Causeway Bay Hotel on Lansing’s south side. His appearance was part of the Lansing Town Hall 61st Celebrity Lecture Series, which serves as a fundraiser for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. Over 800 showed up to listen to Eubanks wax philosophical on six decades of hosting “The Newlywed Game,” meeting the Beatles and creating new four-letter words.

“We were the dirty show of our time — ‘The Newlywed Game’ was the first time that (pop culture) had looked in people’s bedrooms,” Eubanks said. “I wouldn’t use the term make love, so I came up with ‘whoopee’ from the Frank Sinatra song (“Making Whoopee.”) Whoopee became a four-letter word, and it worked.”

But Eubanks expressed dismay at the way culture has given way to a “show, don’t tell” policy when it comes to intimate topics.

“If you’ll allow a metaphor, we never took the teddy off the girl,” he lamented. “But now they’ve taken the teddy off the girl. Once you go to dirty, you have no other place to go but dirtier. And so consequently, I think they’re taking some good formats and are damaging them. When I watch them do ‘Newlywed Game’ now on Game Show Network, it’s like somebody hitting my mother in the head.”

Before he turned to game shows, Eubanks was probably best know for introducing America to the Beatles — he mortgaged his home to book their famous Hollywood Bowl show. He also worked with the Rolling Stones, Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton, but he found his real gift was getting everyday people to open up to him.

“It’s amazing, I learned how to make people talk,” he said. “I learned it mostly from Johnny Carson. John and I were not friends — I’m not sure anybody was, he was a very lonely guy — but I would watch him, I would watch his expressions. He could say 1,000 words (with a look).”

Probably the most infamous confession on the game show was the urban legendinfused “In the butt, Bob” retort: According to urban legend, that’s what a man replied when he was asked where the strangest places was that he and his wife had ever made whoopee. The truth isn’t far from the truth — it was a actually a woman who answered that, and her response was, “In the ass.”

“The ‘in the butt, Bob’ thing, I don’t know where that came from,” Eubanks shrugged. “It will be on my tombstone.” (He doth protest too much; he named his autobiography “In the Book, Bob.”)

Eubanks has hosted the Parade of Roses in Pasadena annually for the last 35 years and tours casinos doing a live mashup of eight different game shows. Next week, he’ll have back surgery, bringing a permanent end to his horseback-riding hobby. But he didn’t seem too put out.

“I enjoy what I’m doing. I’m really blessed. It’s a marvelous life,” he said. “I’m having more fun than you’re supposed to have.”