I used to love watching game shows as a kid. I enjoyed it as much as cartoons. To this day my favorite is still $20,000 pyramid.
Was watching an old episode of I’ve Got a Secret a while back where the guest was Colonel Sanders; he was instantly recognizable to me, of course, but he was unknown to the panelists at that time. His secret was that he had just sold his business and had the check for two million dollars in his pocket.
He said his gas station / restaurant had gone bust when a new highway rerouted all his business. He and his wife were flat broke and 65 years old, and he used his first Social Security check for gas and cheap motels to go traveling around to convince business owners to pay him to use his fried chicken recipe.
Panelist Henry Morgan said something like the Colonel should be using his iconic appearance to market the product – somebody at corporate must have been watching.
We’ve been watching What’s My Line and To Tell The Truth. WML is like the most hip urbane Manhattan dinner party. John Daly was so smooth. We crack up at how well the panel does with the mystery guest. They sure knew their celebs, and what’s happening in town. (Sample question: Were you at (name of famous restaurant) last night? I guess we don’t run in the same circles!)
To Tell The Truth is fun because, even after all this time, it’s still possible to play along*. And for both shows, seeing who was on, with the ability to see what happened to them in the intervening years, is quite fascinating.
One time, one of the imposters was some guy off the street - some unemployed NYC poet named Rod McKuen. I hear he had some success later.
Another time, they had “hair stylist to the stars”. We wondered what happened to him -turns out, he was tragically in the wrong house on the wrong night.
One other guy who was on What’s My Line was a Medal Of Honor winner, who turned out tomake the news 40 years later.
However, we found I’ve Got A Secret to be the inferior member of the triad. It’s like What’s My Line, but not as well done. And no one seems to get along. 
*Unless, like Turble mentions, the person is recognizable now. I’d love to see the Col Sanders one. They had one with stunt driver Joie Chitwood, and two of the three choices were women, so if you know that JC was a man, it was kind of easy.
I’ve got one: Video Village. There were some episodes with contestants that were kids and others that had adults. Simple concept…roll the dice in a little cage and advance that number of steps along the walk(s) in Video Village. Whatever is on that step, you win or have to do (go back, go to jail, etc.) I don’t have any idea what made it so fascinating, but my brothers and I loved it. No special knowledge or skills were required to play or win.
The vocalist on Name That Tune was named Kathie Lee. She later co-hosted a talk show with Regis Philbin and married a star running back and football announcer and currently co-hosts the final hour of the Today Show.
Today they’re running $100,000 Pyramid with Michael Strahan as host. He’s pretty funny and the show is pretty much the same.
I’m really liking the new Match Game with Alec Baldwin as host. He has great comedic timing. They get a lot of current and old SNL people on the panel.
This being the SD, here ya go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q1TrR2nh_E
I had mis-remembered a couple of points but story is still pretty cool.
One episode of “To Tell the Truth” from the early 60s featured three contestants with bags over their heads. The reason was that one was a Soviet defector, and didn’t want his face shown.
At the end of the program, all three of the panelists picked #3, and I had pretty much decided it was #3, too. That should have been a give-away, that he was too convincing.
Dead wrong. I won’t spoil it for you, in case you haven’t seen it, but I will say this:
One of the impostors was a Nikita Khrushchev lookalike from NYC. But neither he, nor the other one received any votes.
My late mother-in-law won that one, about sixty years ago. Along with the regal ephemera, she got a refrigerator and a collection of Braille books to start kaylsmom on a life of literacy.
All but one, as far as I know, and GSN has aired the one episode on occasion. It might even be on YouTube.
GSN used to air TPIR (the Barker version, not the old Cullen one) every weekday, but when Fremantle got control of pretty much the entire Goodson-Todman library of shows, it decided that it would not allow anyone to air TPIR repeats (not even the Cullen ones, IIRC) until the current CBS version finishes its run. Even when GSN did air episodes, Barker refused to let them air episodes with fur coats as prizes, although one slipped through in a showcase every now and then.
TTTT did this sort of thing quite a few times. One of the newer episodes had three men dressed as Santa, complete with beards; I think one of them ran some sort of 24-hour Santa’s Helper helpline. The other two were Christopher Hewett (the star of Mr. Belvedere) and Rip Taylor.
I did notice something with WML; a number of episodes have large pieces cut out of them - for example, when Liberace and John Wayne were introduced as panelists. At first, I thought it was because there was only one set of “master” kinescopes, and the pieces had been removed for use in a 25th Anniversary special ABC ran in 1975, but GSN has run the special as well, and none of the clips are in it.
As for WML “moments,” the one that pops into my head first was the guy who came on stage and started doing a commercial, right after the mystery guest had entered. It turned out that he was supposed to be in a studio across the street.
Yes. The 1950s-1960s WML, TTTT, IGAS… shows – some shows having the same challengers appearing on both TTTT and WML, etc. – are an entertaining combination of civilized, family-friendly, and funny. I have been watching, as they are uploaded to YouTube, the TTTT episodes. One drawback is that about 1/3 of all the challengers’ names are misspelled, for whatever reason. (The original compiler of the list did so pre-internet? Was a non-native speaker of English?) Aside from the annoyance of about one misspelled name per episode, there is the thrill, such as it is, of searching the internet, finding the correct spelling, then finding articles about the people and their fascinating accomplishments.
TTTT typically has 3 teams of challengers per episode, each team with 1 truth-teller and 2 imposters. The panelists seem to have gotten around enough to ask intelligent questions of the challengers. (Per Alan Follett, a commenter about Polly Bergen on the July 15, 1958, episode, “In many areas Polly is almost magically ditzy, but she does display a solid knowledge of jazz.”)
Watching the episodes 50+ years after they first aired also provides some “hey there” moments, like seeing Bill Moyers before he became a TV personality. Or Oriani Fallaci. (I recognized her just from her silhouette, and got further confirmation from her first response to a question. In now more-grimmer episodes, seeing Davey Moore 15 months before his untimely death. Or foreign correspondent Anita Ehrman 3 years before her mysterious(?) death. On a cheerier note, that episode also includes now-94-years-old Janis Paige as one of the panelists.
The imposters also are an entertaining bunch. Besides some being “only a housewife” or “looking for work”, others are related in some way – by name, occupation, etc. – to the real person. Other others are free spirits. For example, one of the imposters on the July 14, 1959, episode was Jutta Schultze-Rhonhof, who had previously she had crossed the Atlantic in a catamaran. On the July 28, 1959, episode, one of the imposters was James Wharram, the designer and skipper of the catamaran.
TTTT’s emcee Bud Collyer does mention, at the end of some episodes, sobering mini-editorials (whether or not any of the panelists seemed to have imbibed before the taping) on topics like the usefulness of wearing seat belts, of supporting various non-profit organizations, etc. He also has a quick wit, and he gives me the impression of doing so unscripted. During the February 11, 1963, episode, Peggy Cass was questioning Mary Wilroy, manager of Washington D.C.'s Blair House, a place for the President’s guests to stay. Peggy asked Ms. Wilroy #1, “Do you feed them there at Blair House, or do they have to eat out?” Per #1, “Oh no, we feed them.” Bud then interjected, “Give them a meal ticket and send them out on their own!” Happy dining.
Card Sharks and Press Your Luck were two favorites when I was a kid. My sister and I would play our own version of Card Sharks yelling LOWER! and HIGHER!
There was also Joker! Joker! Joker! with its devil and Tic Tac Dough with its Dragon.
Two game shows I also liked but they were hard to find because they were on usually at weird hours was Camouflage where the contestant had to find a hidden picture in a picture and trace it with a pointer. And Starcade where kids played video games to win a video game (the Star Wars episodes were the best).
I used to love that show, and even had the board game version complete with a cute little plastic dicecage. Thinking about this reminds me of another childhood favorite: “Seven Keys”, hosted by Jack Narz.
My fave episode of all time is the IGAS with the Lincoln assassination witness. I must’ve missed it in the original run, because it was a total revelation when I saw it in repeats in the 1980s.
I do remember a couple of episodes of it from the original run that have shown up on Buzzr. One was the stage magician Michel de la Vega, who suspended Moore between 2 chairs. The electric organ music did spook me out at the time, as well as Moore saying he didn’t know how it was done. Now I recognize it’s a standard trick so I’m not really impressed.
But my overall fave show now is WML. We used to watch it every Sunday at 9:30 PM. There is a definite resemblance between Daley and my late father.
A Canadian show along these lines that people may not know is Front Page Challenge. It ran for decades on the CBC. The panel would ask questions of a hidden guest, to try to figure out why they’re newsworthy. There’s a famous episode with Malcolm X as the guest:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aqmyGulYJ7M
I remember an episode from the 1960s where the guest was over 100 years old, and had been present at an 1860s event having its hundredth anniversary. The first question was something like “did this event take place in the 60s?” which threw the panel quite off
I was going to mention this one! I don’t know why I liked it so much, but I did. In college I met someone whose mother was a contestant.
Also remember liking a game show possibly called Seven Keys. From what I recall there were contestants paddling in rubber rafts to small islands to dig for treasure or to fit a key in a treasure chest or something.
There was a game show I liked in the late 70’s called Whew!. It was only on for 2 seasons but I really enjoyed it during the time it was on.
I tried to get GSN to play it, but unless I missed it I failed. I even wrote a parody song about it.
There was also a pretty good game show for kids on in the early 70’s called Runaround that I quite liked.
I used to love GSN before it was consumed by network decay. I loved the old Family Feuds with either Richard or Ray hosting, but I find modern day FF so unwatchable I can’t bear to be in the same room.
Going way back, I loved the old kids game show Shenanigans with Stubby Kaye. I vaguely remember Video Village but I thought it was cool. Other favorites from the old days: Sale of the Century, Joker’s Wild, High Rollers (with a young Alex Trebek), Card Sharks, and Press Your Luck.
Concentration was cool as hell. That’s another game that would be spoiled today with modern graphics, the old mechanical board whirring and clicking and the prizes won being slid into a panel behind the players (which doubled as the door for them) was great.
And there was Let’s Make a Deal with Monty Hall and the miniskirted model Carol Merrill. Love the costumes the contestants wore and their agonizing over their choices.
See if your provider carries Buzzr.
[QUOTE=silenus]
I ran across an episode of Press Your Luck yesterday while channel-surfing.
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[QUOTE=Quimby]
Card Sharks and Press Your Luck were two favorites when I was a kid.
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[QUOTE=BobLibDem]
Other favorites from the old days: …Press Your Luck.
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[QUOTE=Asimovian]
As a kid, I loved Card Sharks and Press Your Luck.
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Seems like a good place to plug the musical I just finished writing: Big Bucks: The Press Your Luck Scandal. It’s about the guy who successfully scammed the show out of $110,000 back in the '80s. We did two staged readings of the show in NYC and now I’m trying to get the funds together to have an Off- or Off-Off-Broadway run. People in this thread might find it interesting to check it out!