Alan Thicke
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Alan Willis Jeffrey (March 1, 1947 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian actor, songwriter, game-show host and talk-show emcee.
He graduated from Elliot Lake High School in 1965 as homecoming king. He attended the University of Western Ontario and worked as a disc jockey while in university.
Thicke composed the original scores to Wheel of Fortune (1975), which was entitled Big Wheels which was used until 1983. Among other gameshows themes, he also composed the songs for The Diamond Head Game (1974) and Whew! (1979) and The Wizard of Odds, a game show he also produced and that was hosted by fellow Canadian Alex Trebek. Thicke also composed (with then-wife Gloria Loring) the themes to Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life.
In 1997 he also hosted a television version of the gameshow Pictionary.
He has also written songs for various singers including Marc Anthony, Christina Aguilera, Mya, Brian McKnight and Pink.
Thicke was also the host of his own popular talk show in Canada during the early 1980s called The Alan Thicke Show which was followed by an unsuccessful American version entitled Thicke of the Night, and was also on American television series Hope and Gloria, which lasted only 35 episodes. Throughout the late 1980s to early 1990s, he was most famous as the patriarch on the American television series Growing Pains. In 2004, Thicke hosted the Miss Universe Canada pageant.