Background and career
Alan Willis Thicke (née Jeffrey; 1 March 1947 – 13 December 2016) was a Canadian-American actor, songwriter, and game/talk show host. He was the father of singer Robin Thicke. Thicke was best known for playing Dr. Jason Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains on ABC. In 2013, he was inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame.
Thicke was born on 1 March 1947 in Kirkland Lake, Ontario, the son of Shirley "Joan" Isobel Marie (née Greer), a nurse, and William Jeffrey, a stockbroker. They divorced in 1953. His mother married Brian Thicke, a physician, and they moved to Elliot Lake. Taking his stepfather's name, Thicke graduated from Elliot Lake Secondary School in 1965. He went on to attend the University of Western Ontario, joining the Delta Upsilon fraternity.
Thicke hosted the Canadian game show Face the Music for CHCH-TV by Niagara Television in 1975 (not affiliated with Sandy Frank Productions' 1980-81 version). He hosted the Canadian game show First Impressions on the CTV network during the 1976–77 season, taped at CFCF-TV in Montreal, the Saturday morning celebrity game show Animal Crack-Ups in the late 1980s, and, in 1997, a television version of the board game Pictionary. In the early 2000s, he hosted the All New 3's a Crowd on the Game Show Network.
Norman Lear hired Thicke to produce and head the writing staff of Fernwood 2 Night, a tongue-in-cheek talk show based on characters from Lear's earlier show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. In the late 1970s, he was a frequent guest host of The Alan Hamel Show, a popular daytime talk show on Canadian TV, usually hosted by Alan Hamel. When the Hamel series ended in the early 1980s, it was replaced by The Alan Thicke Show. The show at one point spawned a prime-time spinoff, Prime Cuts, which consisted of edited highlights from the talk show. Thicke was later signed to do an American syndicated late-night talk show, Thicke of the Night, for the 1983–1984 TV season. Heavily promoted prior to broadcast as a competitor to NBC's The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Thicke of the Night was short-lived.
Thicke had a successful career as a TV theme song composer, often collaborating with his then-wife Gloria Loring on these projects, which included the themes to the popular sitcoms Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life. He also wrote a number of TV game show themes, including The Wizard of Odds (for which he also sang the vocal introduction), The Joker's Wild, Celebrity Sweepstakes, The Diamond Head Game, Animal Crack-Ups (which he co-wrote with his brother Todd Thicke and Gary Pickus), Blank Check, Stumpers!, Whew!, and the original theme to Wheel of Fortune. Thicke was a popular songwriter. He co-wrote "Sara", a solo hit for Bill Champlin and included on the latter's Runaway album (1981). Thicke produced a variety of television shows, including Anne Murray Christmas specials for the CBC, beginning in the late 1970s.
Thicke became well known when he played Jason Seaver, a psychiatrist and father, on the family sitcom Growing Pains. When the show began, Jason was moving his psychiatry practice into the home to be closer to the family's children while the family matriarch Maggie, played by Joanna Kerns, resumed her career as a reporter. Growing Pains debuted on ABC in 1985 and ran until 1992. For his role, Thicke was nominated for a Golden Globe award in 1988. Thicke reprised his role in two reunion TV movies, The Growing Pains Movie (2000) and Growing Pains: Return of the Seavers (2004).
