Don Lane, Australia’s ‘Lanky Yank’

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Don Lane, an American song-and-dance man who became a television celebrity in Australia known as ‘The Lanky Yank,’ died Thursday. He was 75.

Lane’s manager Jayne Ambrose said he died in a hospice in Sydney from a dementia-related illness.

Lane was one of the best-known figures on Australian television for almost two decades until he retired the ‘Tonight Show’-style program that bore his name in 1983.

He was born in New York as Morton Donald Isaacson and was an aspiring nightclub entertainer in the United States — his biggest claim to fame was an appearance on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ He came to Australia in the 1960s and was hired as stand-in host for the Nine Network’s ‘Tonight Show.’

He was handed a full-time job in 1975 and ‘The Don Lane Show’ became a ratings winner.

In the 1990s, Lane became the host of a weekly broadcast of NFL games, offering enthusiastic explanations of plays and rules to an audience steeped in cricket and rugby.

-- Associated Press