Mblumber · CC BY-SA 3.0

A game show producer who created The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game, then hosted his own deliberately chaotic amateur-talent showcase, The Gong Show, from 1976 to 1980. He also wrote the 1962 hit song "Palisades Park" and, in his 1984 memoir Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, claimed to have secretly worked as a CIA assassin — an unverified story later adapted into a 2002 film directed by George Clooney.