Biography

Bert Parks, born Bertram Jacobson. Parks was an actor, singer, and radio and television announcer, best known for hosting the annual Miss America telecast from 1955 to 1979. Parks entered radio broadcasting at age 16, for Atlanta's WGST. Three years later, he moved to New York City and was hired as a singer and straight man on The Eddie Cantor Show, then becoming a CBS Radio staff announcer. Parks was the host of Break the Bank, which premiered on radio in 1945 and was telecast from 1948 to 1957, as well as Stop the Music on radio in 1948 and television from 1949 to 1952. The success of Stop the Music took a toll on the ratings of the popular radio show hosted by satirist Fred Allen, who began spoofing Parks' program with skits mocking the premise of the show, one called Cease The Melody. He also helmed a daytime variety show in 1950, simply called The Bert Parks Show, as well as appearing in an episode of the comedy WKRP in Cincinnati. Parks' last known TV appearance, a Pepsi commercial, first aired in June 1991.
- IMDb mini biography by: Hollywood Page Of Death

Best known as the long-time host of the Miss America Pageant, 1954 - 1979, an image he parodied to fine comic effect in the film, The Freshman (1990).

He was the third Professor Harold Hill in the "The Music Man" at the Majestic Theater in New York City in 1960, after Robert Preston and Eddie Albert.

Attended Marist High School in Atlanta

Singer/actor.

Parks was born to Hattie Spiegel, daughter of Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary, and Aaron Jacobson, a Jewish merchant who immigrated from Latvia.