This being Thursday, it's time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. This being the last Thursday of the month, it's time for another TV edition, and this time it's a theme that's extremely easy for me: game shows. I was a huge fan of the genre growing up in the late 1970s and 1980s, a time when there were a lot of game shows in daytime and a moderate number of syndicated game shows, most of which had regular people playing for modest prizes, mostly shot live-to-tape unlike now with central casting archetypes, apocalyptic sets (thank you, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?), and numerous stopdowns making tape sessions run long. (I had an acquaintance on a game show board who was a contestant on Who's Still Standing? who had extremely negative things to say about his experience, particularly how they treated one female contestant; unfortunately I can't find a link to his blog post.) At any rate, for me the big difficulty was making certain I hadn't used any of the game shows I picked, having picked game shows for several past TV editions. With that in mind, I picked three shows featuring one of the great hosts of all time, Alex Trebek and his fantastic white afro:
High Rollers (1974-1976, 1978-1980). This show is based on the simple game Shut the Box, a game where you have the numbers 1-9 and roll a pair of dice with the goal of getting rid of all nine numbers. The show added the twist of putting the numbers in three columns and adding prizes awarded to the person who completed a column and won the game. The dice girl on the first version was Ruta Lee, wife of producer Merrill Heatter and remembered by classic film fans as Tyrone Power's friend in Witness for the Prosecution.
Double Dare (1976). Not the game show with kids doing sloppy stunts when they couldn't answer the question and had to take a physical challenge. This is a tough quizzer giving two contestant clues to a person, place or thing. When you thought you knew the mystery answer, you could ring in, and if right, take a dare that your opponent wouldn't know the answer with one, or even two, more clues. The bonus round reversed this, taking Ph.Ds. (this being the era when that implied out-of-touch middle aged white guy) and trying to stump at least one of them after four clues such as "Students at Princeton protested its 1969 cancellation" (the subject being Star Trek in an era before the first movie brought the franchise back to the national cultural consciousness). Hide your eyes when they show the main game subject, and this is a really fun quiz show.
Battlestars (1981-1982, 1983). This game asked celebrities in triangular boxes Hollywood Squares-style questions (Merrill Heatter, who produced this one, also produced Hollywood Squares), with the object being to answer the question correctly when the last point of the triangle around a celebrity's box was selected. Not exactly the best show or original mechanic; Heatter would reuse the Hollywood Squares agree/disagree mechanic for yet another show, All-Star Blitz a few years later. But that one was hosted by Peter Marshall so I didn't want to use it here.
Finally, and unrelated to Alex Trebek, I present Tony Randall's comments on what might be the greatest game show of all time, Pyramid:
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5 comments:
I remember High Rollers (and of course Ruta Lee and her immovable hair and megawatt smile) and watched it occasionally. It wasn't a great show but could be fun.
I know I saw a couple of episodes of Double Dare but my recall is very sketchy.
Battlestars is one that I missed but I love the episode you posted has both Debbie Reynolds and a baby Jerry Seinfeld! It is very reminiscent of Hollywood Squares (I watched that all the time)but both the set and the music is terrible!
I'm in complete agreement that the Dick Clark years of Pyramid was the best game show ever. You couldn't be a loudmouth fool and last on the show. It required a level of native intelligence that most other game shows don't and Dick Clark was the perfect host. He kept everything on track but he also had a sense of fun and never made the show about himself.
I'm much more inclined to shows like the original Pyramid rather than the sideshow crap like Price is Right or Family Feud though every now and then a show like the original Match Game comes along that I'll get a kick out of.
The $25,000 Pyramid (1973-1988)-Starting in ’73 as the $10,000 Pyramid the game is played in two parts-two teams consisting of one contestant and one celebrity play three rounds of seven words which must be guessed by a description. Whichever team gets the highest score moves over to the Winner’s Circle where six subjects (in a pyramid shape) must be guessed using only a list in one minute. If all are guessed the contestant wins the title amount. Requiring both focus and a keen mind Dick Clark hosted the series in this iteration with a sure hand keeping the game moving. The latest tricked out version isn’t nearly as good with Michael Strahan doing a terrible hosting job but the game is strong enough to withstand even his feebleness and the weak, braying celebs and contestants that seem to populate it now. Betty White was a regular guest celebrity!
Password (1961-1989)-Again two teams consisting of one celebrity and one contestant try to guess a series of words which then are clues to a word puzzle. The first to solve three puzzles moves to Super Password where they attempt to guess ten words in alphabetical order for a big money prize. Betty White (she was married to original host Allen Ludden) was a regular guest celebrity!
Match Game (1962-1982)-Two contestants give answers to a series of fill in the blank questions and try to match the six celebrity panel to win big cash. Hosted by Gene Rayburn this goofy, freewheeling show (a week’s worth of shows were filmed in one day and the celebrities were known to imbibe heavily during the lunch break) was famous for its suggestive questions and madcap antics. Betty White was a regular guest celebrity!
Bonus oddity:
Celebrity Bowling (1971-1978)-Exactly what the title says. Two teams of celebs bowl to win prizes for selected home viewers! Bizarre show somehow managed to last an incredible seven years!! As far as I know Betty White was never a guest celeb!
I'm only familiar with the Kids Double Dare lol.
I think the problem with the current Pyramid is that they seem to want a celebrity show with a game rather than a game show with celebrities. By the 80s, producer Bob Stewart knew who the good celebrity players are and had them on quite a bit, even if they were not particularly famous any more (Henry Polic II or Shelley Smith, for example).
Today's writers want to force the players into giving mildly titillating clues while any humor in the 80s was almost always down to a bad guess or a clue giver getting desperate, as in this clip of a contestant trying to clue ASPARAGUS.
That's a great clip and a good illustration of your very true point. Shelley Smith was the absolute BEST player! Intelligent controlled and most importantly focused.
Henry Polic III, Teresa Ganzel, Markie Post, Earl Holliman, Martha Smith, Nathan Cook, Mary Cardorette, Charles Siebert, Audrey Landers and Adrienne Barbeau were all extremely good as well. Not the most famous but they were very open and sharp. What I think distinguished them and the many other good celebrity players, Michael J. Fox, Vicki Lawrence, Abby Dalton, David Graf, Melody Thomas Scott etc., was that they were good team players, wanted to win for their teammate and weren't there to show off.
Now it's all showboating and screaming. I love the game so I tried with the new one but the only decent show I've seen so far was when Rosie O'Donnell and Kathy Najimy were on and that was because they actually were adept at the game and didn't feed into Strahan's stupid patter. But it's not just the celebrities who are weaker it seems the contestants aren't nearly as proficient as they were on the earlier shows.
The Double Dare I found a bit boring and don’t remember it but I do remember the others. Alex started to control his hair after the first one and I do like the 3rd one despite the similarity to Hollywood Squares. I wonder if Jerry Seinfeld would like this tape to disappear.
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