Dawson was born in London, the first son of the actor and game show host
Richard Dawson and the actress
Diana Dors. A young Dawson appeared with his father on a few early episodes of
Family Feud. He worked as an assistant to the producer
Mark Goodson and as a showcase and question writer for
The Price Is Right,
Concentration,
The Better Sex,
Match Game and
Family Feud. His father once introduced him on a telecast of
Family Feud to promote his band The Midnight Ives and had an appearance with Ronnie Mars on
Dinah! He was a creative consultant of the latter show's second run, with his father as host from 1994 to 1995. Dawson was also an associate producer at
Rastar Productions and at NBC for
You Bet Your Life, a remake based on a
Groucho Marx TV program from the 1950s that his father's production company produced in the 1980s. In 2001, he was hired by
Paul Schrader as a technical advisor for the movie
Auto Focus. In March 1979, Dawson married Cathy Hughart, an assistant producer on his father's
Family Feud show. "I could not have chosen a classier spouse for my son or a more wonderful person than Cathy," Richard Dawson said. The two later divorced. Mark Dawson married Eleidys Carrasco in September 2019 in Colombia. Together, they have a daughter named Victoria Dawson, born on her paternal grandmother's birthday, 23 October 2018. Dawson manages the all-female
tribute band The Iron Maidens, the
cover band Crabby Patty, and the all-female
heavy metal band
Phantom Blue. Drummer
Linda McDonald is a member of all three bands. In 2008, with Brad and Tom Zutaut, he developed a tribute bands television show for New Wave Entertainment.
Mother's alleged 'missing millions' Diana Dors allegedly claimed to have hidden more than £2 million in various European banks. In 1982, she reportedly gave Dawson a sheet of paper on which, she told him, was a code that would reveal the money's whereabouts. His stepfather, Alan Lake, supposedly knew the key that would crack the code. Still, when Lake died by suicide very soon after Dors' death, Dawson was left with an unsolvable puzzle. ==Selected filmography==