The Acme was busy when I arrived, but it slowed down even before the Eagles game started at 1. We'd be off and on for the rest of the day, but never overwhelmingly busy. Thankfully, the worst thing that happened all day was cleaning up blueberries someone spilled and holding up the line.
In addition to the weather scaring people off, football-loving customers admitted the Eagles-Giants game got really interesting. The Eagles were up 24-7 at half-time when I went on break. By the time I finished, they'd beaten the pants off the Giants 48-22.
I'd just finished changing when Mom called. I texted her earlier to thank her for the Swiss Colony box. She's not doing a whole lot. The area in Virginia where Mom lives with Keefe, Julia, and Aurora is surrounded by traffic-laden highways she hates dealing with. At least sweet little Aurora is long at home and doing just fine. She already weighs 10 pounds and has had no further medical problems.
Mom also insinuated Rose may be finally ready to talk to me. She said she had her own problems. I wish she'd found a better way to deal with them than shutting me out. It does sound like she's ready to look for a job and go back to work.
Had dinner while watching Match Game '74, then went into writing. Debralee doesn't think she can really do anything to help the Nutcracker. She's no warrior! Gene's convinced otherwise. She did say she loved him.
Finished up the night on YouTube honoring Bob Barker, who turns 99 tomorrow, bless his soul. He spent 50 years as a game show host on television. Ralph Edwards originally hosted Truth or Consequences on radio, but he turned the TV version over to Barker in 1956. He'd continue as the host of the show until 1973. Though he's obviously a little nervous here, he still has a great time right out of the gate with all the ladies and kids doing stunts.
Speaking of kids, the only show he hosted for Chuck Barris was The Family Game from 1967. This is basically Barris' cross between his Newlywed Game with families instead of couples and the later Child's Play. Here, it's kids giving wacky answers to slightly racy questions and their parents trying to match them. While Bob does have fun with the children, the show is better-known today for being the last black-and-white program on the networks before they switched to all-color in 1968.
Bob was actually Goodson and Todman's second choice for hosting The New Price Is Right. Their original choice, Dennis James, couldn't get out of his NBC contract. He ended up hosting the nighttime show from 1974 to 1977, when Barker took over that, too. The revamped Price Is Right was such a new concept, Bob appeared on an episode of the short-lived revival of I've Got a Secret in 1972 to explain it. The episode was hilarious even before he came on, with no one able to figure out that a man was tossing rocket-powered frisbees at the screen, or that Bob was somehow letting the audience bid on Anita Gillette's bikini and Richard Dawson's mailbox. (Pat Carroll was offended when her kazoo only went for pennies!)
The New Price Is Right was an instant sensation straight out of the gate. The show now offered three mini-games in addition to the bidding. The top two winners of the games would bid on a big Showcase stuffed full of prizes. When it started faltering in the ratings around 1975, CBS bumped it to an hour, and that's the way it's been ever since.
We have four Price episodes here - one of the early half-hour shows, an episode from 1988 I may have seen as a child, one from 1999 that ran when I was in college, and Barker's last show in 2007. It's interesting to see how the show evolved over the years, from brownish backdrops to a bright neon set, from the Bonus Game to Plinko and the Bargain Game to the Grocery Game. Barker barely changed over the years, other than finally letting his hair turn white in the late 80's...and getting into trouble with his models, who accused him of being a little too intimate with them.
Barker was better-behaved on other people's shows. He hosted an episode of that Tattletales host week from 1975 and really seemed to enjoy it, especially getting a kiss from a lady in the audience during the opening. He was a semi-regular on Match Game from its beginning in 1973 to around 1980, joining Gene Rayburn in drooling over pretty ladies, offering refrigerators to the audience, and wondering why announcer Johnny Olsen wasn't calling people to "come on down!"
Honor a true TV legend with these classic episodes! (Look for the original commercials on many of them, including Truth or Consequences and the Price shows. The Family Game is in two parts and Truth has numbers over it, but there's not a whole lot left of those shows.)
No comments:
Post a Comment