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Bert Parks (December 30, 1914 - February 2, 1992), an American actor, singer, and radio and television announcer and host, is remembered best as the longtime, iconic host (1955-1980) of the annual Miss America Pageant telecast, live from Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Because his enduring image remains that of the tuxedoed pageant host, who balanced between courtliness and fatherliness, even as he sang the pageant's long-running theme ("There She Is," written by Bernie Wayne and introduced by Parks on his very first Miss America telecast), Parks' concurrent career as a once-ubiquitous radio and television host is almost completely obscured by comparison.

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Born Bert Jacobson in Atlanta, Georgia, Parks showed his entertainment facility as early as age three, when he was said to have entertained his parents with impersonations of film legend Charles Chaplin. He got his first broadcasting job at age sixteen, for Atlanta's WGST radio, and moved to New York when he was nineteen. His resonant voice and charming before becoming a CBS radio staff announcer. By the time he hit his thirties, Parks's broadcasting star began rising in earnest.

Parks became the host of host Bud Collyer) and went on to television from 1948-1957. But Parks became best known at that time for hosting the phenomenally popular on ABC (the former NBC Blue Network) beginning in 1948, bringing it to television a year later and keeping it there until 1952. As an orchestra or vocalists presented a song---the vocalists hummed the song title but sang remaining lyrics---a listener anywhere in the U.S. might get a call from the show and, when the listener answered, Parks would holler, "Stop the music!" A correct guess earned a prize and a shot at a "Mystery Melody" involving a giant jackpot.

In fact, some critics thought the beginning of the end of old-time radio as usually remembered came when . (Wary of the trend of giveaway shows taking hold in radio, Allen actually wrote and performed a hilarious outrated the highly literate master of the ad-lib and Allen's Alley, a radio fixture since the mid-1930s who had the nation's number one rated radio show in 1946-47. (Allen daringly---but typically---offered $5,000 to any listener who got a call from .) Allen left radio a year later, mostly because of his health (his doctor advised him to take a year off), partly because his ratings had fallen sharply against , and partly because he loathed what he thought was a lowering of standards as television began eating into radio's audience and radio scrambled to keep or re-attract it.

Other gamequiz shows Parks hosted in the first decade and a half of television (the debut years are noted here) included (1961). Remarkably, the scandal which rocked television quiz and game shows at the end of the 1950s avoided Parks entirely.

He also had a stab at daytime variety with (1950), a variety show featuring such regulars as Betty Ann Grove, The Heathertones, Harold Lang, and the Bobby Sherwood Quintet;

But the job for which Parks really became an American institution became his in 1955, a year after the pageant's television premiere (with future actress Lee Meriwether winning the title) on ABC. For over two decades, as it moved to NBC (in 1966, also the first time the pageant was telecast in colour), and withstood later protests over sexism and exploitation, Parks made himself an American icon hosting the Miss America Pageant, which was born in 1920 but which he took over as its host in its second television appearance. Aside from his famous (and easily parodied, by himself and others alike) singing of the theme song, Parks' real talent was his ability to make the pageant contestants feel at ease and look their best, considering they really were stage amateurs. Pageant historian Vicki Gold Levi put it this way: "He made you feel that he could be your guest at Thanksgiving dinner and he would just sit there and tell you all about Miss Alabama and all about Miss California. And he just was such an important ingredient of why the television show worked."

Parks himself liked to think that folksiness in hand with charm was the key to his success hosting the pageants, and he had that uncommon ability to turn an unexpected pratfall into a great laugh without embarrassing himself or the unfortunate contestant. But Parks wasn't exactly just an eager boy from the farm: In his own way, Parks was suave, courtly, and fatherly at once; perhaps one television retrospective of the Miss America pageants () put his signature moment best: "His moment of serenading each year's winner evoked a debutante ball, a father giving away the bride, and a Cinderella story, all in one."

Maybe that was why---however much some thought Parks too old and others thought him too corny and even sexist---Miss America pageant organisers provoked a national uproar when they fired Parks after he hosted the 1980 edition. It was as if the nation's patriarch, stale though he may have been at times, had been dumped without so much as a by-your-leave.

In fact, the way Parks was fired became almost as much of a scandal as the fact that he was fired at all. According to , pageant organisers felt pressured to replace Parks by 1979. But when they decided to do it at last, they did it by sending a letter to his Connecticut home---while he was traveling to Florida. (For many years, Parks spent time in stage productions, including a successful stint succeeding Robert Preston in .)

That was bad enough, but the news leaked to the press before Parks saw the letter. He picked up a newspaper to read about his own firing. The uproar even included the longtime king of late-night television, Johnny Carson, who instigated an unsuccessful letter-writing campaign aimed at reinstating Parks. The pageant stood fast and brought in former star Ron Ely beginning in 1980 and, in due course, veteran character actor and daytime television host Gary Collins.

In 1990, Parks was invited back to the Miss America telecast to help celebrate the pageant's 70th anniversary---as a guest. Gary Collins serenaded the winner with the signature "There She Is," but Parks serenaded the 25 previous Miss America winners who gathered on stage. The good news was that Parks received a standing ovation from the theater audience. But the bad news was that there were a few mistakes, enough that Parks would not be asked to return again.

It may not have mattered, after all. Parks died of lung cancer at age 77 two years later. Whether or not his iniquitous firing had something to do with it, the Miss America Pageant suffered falling television ratings over several years, until NBC dropped it after thirty years due to a record low rating in 1996. The pageant telecast returned to its original television home, ABC, until that network decided to drop it after the 2004 pageant due to low ratings.

In 2005, the pageant announced it would move to Las Vegas, with co-star James Denton as the new host and the telecast presented on cable network Country Music Television (CMT).

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