George Keller, 84, who oversaw the formation of Chevron Corp. in what was then the largest corporate takeover, died Friday.
The former chairman and chief executive died of complications from orthopedic surgery, his daughter- in-law Emma Gilbey Keller told The New York Times. He died in Palo Alto, Calif., said Diane McNulty, a spokeswoman for the Times, where Keller’s son Bill is executive editor.
As chairman of the Standard Oil Co. of California, Keller executed the company’s $13.3 billion takeover of Gulf Oil to form Chevron in 1984. The deal was considered risky at the time.
But in a magazine interview a few years later, Keller praised the acquisition as a success. He noted that the deal doubled Chevron’s oil reserves and that much of it was paid for by selling some of Gulf’s assets.
Jack Narz, 85, a longtime game show host who was an early victim of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s when a show he was hosting was canceled, has died.
Narz died Wednesday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke, his wife, Delores, said Thursday.
Among the shows he hosted over the years were “Video Village,” which began in 1960, “Seven Keys,” 1961, “I’ll Bet,” 1963, and “Now You See It,” 1974, according to the book “TV Game Shows!” by Maxene Fabe. He also guest-hosted many shows and did updated 1970s versions of older shows such as “Concentration” and “Beat the Clock.” Narz had a small role in the scandal that gripped the nation in the late 1950s but was not accused of wrongdoing.
He was host of “Dotto,” a televised connect-the-dots game, when it was abruptly taken off the air in August 1958. A contestant had gone to authorities after he found a notebook backstage indicating another contestant was given answers in advance.
