Mary Hart turns 76 on Sunday, November 8. Born Mary Johanna Harum on that day in 1950 and raised in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, she spent 29 years as the bright, steady voice of Entertainment Tonight, and Guinness World Records eventually named her the longest-serving host in entertainment news. If you tuned in at dinnertime in the 1980s, hers was the face that told you who had married, who had split and what was opening Friday. That famous voice also landed her in the pages of one of the most respected medical journals in the world. In 1991, a neurologist reported that it was doing something to one viewer that no other voice on television could do, and the next year the story turned up as a plot on Seinfeld. Before we get to what the doctors found, it helps to know how a schoolteacher from South Dakota ended up behind that desk at all. How Did A Miss South Dakota End Up Hosting ‘Entertainment Tonight’? Mary Hart 1997 / Wikimedia Commons Hart was crowned Miss South Dakota in 1970 and went on to the Miss America pageant, where she finished among the top 10. Something clicked when the cameras turned toward her. “I think it literally was the first time I was interviewed on television, I went, ‘That’s what I want to be doing,'” she told the Associated Press in 2017. She first spent a few years teaching high school English in Sioux Falls, and she worked her way through stations in Iowa, Nebraska and Oklahoma before moving to Los Angeles in 1979. She picked up a small part on Days of Our Lives and co-hosted the local edition of PM Magazine, and then came her big break, a national NBC talk show alongside Regis Philbin. It was canceled after only a few months in 1982. Entertainment Tonight asked to interview her about the cancellation, and the next day the show offered her a job as a correspondent. “At the time, neither Regis nor I knew what it would lead to, but it turned out to be the best thing for both of us,” she told Broadcasting & Cable in 2011. Within weeks she was co-hosting, and soon viewers were paying attention to more than her delivery. Why Were Mary Hart’s Legs Insured For Millions? Mary Hart, Red Dress Collection / Wikimedia Commons Over the years Hart sat beside Robb Weller, John Tesh, Bob Goen and Mark Steines, and the camera kept finding her legs. Her then-agent suggested insuring them with Lloyd’s of London, a stunt that echoed the old Betty Grable publicity trick, and ET has reported that the policy covered $1 million per leg. Hart never expected the attention. “I never dreamed it would have legs of its own, so to speak,” she told the AP. “Nor did I ever believe it would be a big news story.” When Dan Rather opened a newscast by asking what the Exxon Valdez and Mary Hart’s legs had in common, she called it “one of the most astonishing headlines I’d ever heard or seen.” She was a sport about it for decades. When she returned to the ET stage in October 2015 for the show’s 35th season and was asked whether the legs were still covered, her answer was breezy. “I doubt it,” she said. “No, I don’t think they have been insured for a long time.” By then she had been off the anchor desk for four years, and leaving had been entirely her choice. Where Is Mary Hart Now? Mary Hart at the 39th Emmy Awards / Wikimedia Commons Hart announced in August 2010 that her 30th season would be her last. “I kept thinking that after 10, 15, 20 years, it would be time to try something else,” she told Broadcasting & Cable. “But it’s finally time for me to move on and do something different. It’s the right time for me.” Her final broadcast aired on May 20, 2011, and what she missed most was the newsroom family. “We went through marriages, births, deaths, celebrated as a family and mourned as a family and I miss that the most,” she said in 2015. Her own family came first after that. Hart married producer Burt Sugarman, the man behind The Midnight Special, in 1989, and the couple have a son, Alec, known as AJ. When the TV academy called in 2017 to tell her she would receive a Daytime Emmy for lifetime achievement, she was on a trip to Chicago with both of them. “My jaw dropped,” she told the AP. “I know Burt and AJ were looking at me concerned that something awful had happened, because I immediately got emotional.” These days Dodgers fans know her best as the season-ticket holder in the front row behind home plate, where IBTimes reported she was cheering through the 2025 World Series. Of all the headlines her career produced, though, the strangest one came from a hospital laboratory in upstate New York. What Did Doctors Find When They Tested Mary Hart’s Voice? Jerry Seinfeld, Jason Alexander and Michael Richards on Seinfeld / Everett Collection In a letter published in the July 11, 1991, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Venkat Ramani of Albany Medical College described a patient in her 40s who had suffered recurring seizures for about four years. The spells brought pressure in her head, a queasy stomach and mental confusion, and she was convinced they started when a particular Entertainment Tonight co-host began to speak. Even her own family doubted her, Ramani told the Associated Press. He never named the patient, but he later confirmed the voice was Mary Hart’s. So Ramani tested it. Electrodes were attached to the woman’s head while she watched a tape of the program with the sound on and off, and he also played her other shows and other female voices. According to UPI’s report on the letter, the seizures were triggered only by Hart’s voice, “and not by visual stimulation, emotional anticipation, or background music.” Watching it happen was “very dramatic,” Ramani told the AP, and once the lab confirmed what she had been saying all along, “she was very relieved.” Nobody could say why Hart’s voice did it. Ramani’s guess was that it reminded the woman of something from her past. “But we couldn’t prove anything,” he told UPI. With medication, and by “assiduously avoiding” the program, she stayed relatively free of seizures through two years of follow-up. She turned down therapy meant to get her used to the voice. As for ET, a spokeswoman for the show had no immediate comment when the news broke. Television did comment, in its own way. The 1992 Seinfeld episode “The Good Samaritan” had Kramer, played by Michael Richards, collapsing every time Hart came on the screen. Writer Peter Mehlman told TheWrap he never did any research on the case. “Just the mere fact that somebody was convulsing to Mary Hart was enough for me,” he said. According to Mehlman, Entertainment Tonight refused to let the show use her real voice when the episode first aired. Years later, the show changed its mind, and in syndicated reruns, Kramer finally hits the floor to the genuine sound of Mary Hart. The post Doctors Once Proved Mary Hart’s Voice Could Trigger Seizures In One ‘Entertainment Tonight’ Viewer appeared first on DoYouRemember? - The Home of Nostalgia. Author, Dana Daly