The Many Masks of Richard Dawson When Richard Dawson first turned up as host of "Family Feud" in 1976, some people might well have done a double-take. "What is this?" they might have asked. An actor disguised as a game show host? That's because before "Family Feud," there was "Hogan's Heroes," a popular sitcom about captives in a German prisoner-of-war camp in World War II. Mr. Dawson, who died on Saturday at 79, played one of the prisoners, Cpl. Peter Newkirk, and along with a cast that included Bob Crane, Ivan Dixon, Robert Clary, John Banner and Werner Klemperer helped to prove that Nazi Germany could be funny. Mel Brooks's film version of "The Producers" was still three years in the future when the series made its debut on CBS in September 1965. Mr. Dawson was a perfect fit for what was in essence an early ensemble-cast sitcom. Though the show had a lead character - Crane's acerbic Col. Robert E. Hogan - it was a classic group effort, each player a cog so essential that to remove one would be to wreck the machine. It was a template later followed by "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Seinfeld" and others, the seemingly contradictory ensemble comedy with a star. On the show, which ran six seasons, Mr. Dawson played a specialist in picking pockets, forging documents and so on. But perhaps it's fitting that his later career on "Family Feud" made fans wonder if he was an actor disguised as a game-show host, because on "Hogan" it was not uncommon to find him trying to create the impression that he was someone else. In the Season 2 episode "The Swing Shift," while posing as a German worker for an undercover operation, he is conscripted into the German army and almost ends up as a guard in his own P.O.W. camp. In a Season 5 episode, "Is There a Traitor in the House?," he has to persuade the Germans that he has decided to become a traitor to the Allied cause. And in "That's No Lady, That's My Spy," from Season 6, he dons a dress and passes for a woman - a decidedly unattractive woman - in a ruse to get hold of desperately needed penicillin. On "Hogan," Mr. Dawson was fluid and natural in the ensemble: he never called attention to himself or seemed schticky the way that, say, Jerry Lewis always did when he shifted from stand-up to acting. So that made it all the more surprising when he turned up as "Family Feud" host and was instantly a master of schlock, with the kissing and all. Before long, viewers who stumbled on him doing a guest spot on, say, "The Love Boat" might have flipped the earlier question on its head: "What is this, a game-show host masquerading as an actor?" Also worth noting is that Mr. Dawson in a sense made "Family Feud" into a "Hogan's Heroes" of game shows. It had a star - himself, as host - but it was also a game-show version of an ensemble comedy, with the guests as the vital supporting players. Many of its predecessors were dry and inorganic compared with "Feud" - think "What's My Line?" or "Password." Mr. Dawson - who knows? maybe drawing on his "Hogan" experiences - seemed to understand that a much more engaging type of game show could be made by turning the host into a ringmaster who readily shared the spotlight.