Did the last quick Camp Minnie short while cleaning up from breakfast. The girls turn it into "Camp Spooky" for a scary Halloween tale around the fire. Goofy is supposed to be the ghost, but his costume is a lot scarier than a sheet! Meanwhile, Cuckoo Loca turns out to have the best costume of all.
Switched to Match Game '77 while making my bed and putting my new CDs in folders. Gene came in for quite a bit of ribbing in these episodes. In the first one, he had to retie his shoelaces after Elaine Joyce thought it would be cute to mess with them. In the second, he briefly takes the role of the contestant and lets her ask the Head-to-Head question when she's gives a bad answer to "__ Pork."
From the earlier weather reports, I had expected it to rain all day. When I went out to run errands, it was sunny, windy, and cool, though also murderously humid. It was too humid to do a lot of running around, but I figured I could do a few things I didn't get to last week.
Started at Target in Westmont. I really just needed more of those tasty glazed almonds and honey-roasted almonds there. I'm almost out of fruit, so I bought some cherries, too. Had lunch at Starbucks, but I wasn't happy with my order. The tomato-mozzarella-pesto sandwich was ok, with big juicy tomato pieces. I ordered the frozen Pineapple Lemonade, though, and the baristas were so busy chatting among themselves, they gave me the regular unfrozen Pineapple Lemonade. It was too sweet. That's not the first time they've gotten things wrong there, either. I don't think I'll be going back there. From now on, the kids can have it.
There was one place I wanted to visit on my long bike ride last Wednesday, but never got to. I wanted to take a look at the Audubon Public Library, which is a couple of blocks down from Market Street. Turns out, that was easier said than done. Road work sprung up all over town since last week. I saw cop cars on Market Street and went by Abbie Road to see if Bob was ok (he was), then dodged more cops and repair vehicles digging up the messy roads in Audubon and laying new gravel.
Finally found the library on a side street, next to its senior center. The library is a simple building from 1957 (from the block on its side). It's smaller than the Haddon Township Library, but larger than the former Oaklyn Library. Nice collection, too. I peered at their colorful children's section and an interesting collection of books about movies and theater. They did have a for sale rack outside, but I saw nothing I wanted and moved on.
(Incidentally, I checked their websites. Neither the Haddon Heights Library nor the Audubon Public Library have any openings.)
It was almost 3:30 by that point. The traffic on the White Horse Pike had been bad even on my way to the library, and it wasn't any better an hour later. Stopped briefly at WaWa in Audubon for a watermelon Propel and soft pretzel, then dodged traffic and headed down the White Horse Pike until I got into Oaklyn.
Brought my laundry downstairs, then went straight into job hunting. Most of the interesting editing and proofreading jobs are in Philadelphia or the Philly suburbs, and I saw no library assistant jobs at all. I couldn't really focus on writing, either. (Almost forgetting to put my laundry in the dryer didn't help.) Rearranged Patti giving Joyce the silver shoes after the legs of the Wicked Warlock of the East disappear, trying to lead better into the arrival of his Western counterpart...
Dark clouds moved in sometime around 5 PM. By 6, we were in the midst of a full-blown thunder storm, complete with lashing winds and noisy pyrotechnics. The heavy rain continued off and on for the next hour or so, but I don't think it's done anything since then.
Broke for dinner and to bring my laundry upstairs at 7 PM. They once again jumped back to the first Match Game Syndicated episode with Bart Braverman and Eva Gabor. Charles criticizes the director Marc Breslow...who then directs the cameras over his head or to the sides, anywhere but on him!
Finished the night on YouTube celebrating the game shows of the 1950's. Game shows had been popular on radio since the early 30's. Truth or Consequences was among the first to make the jump to national television in 1950. Original host Ralph Edwards was in charge of that version. YouTube has an episode of the second prime time run on NBC from 1956 with Jack Bailey. This show didn't change much over the years. It's still the same off-the-wall trivia questions, followed by equally weird stunts, quests, or people trying to count all the bricks in a room or guess someone's weight.
Truth was far from the only stunt show to get an early start. Beat the Clock began on radio as Time's a-Wastin' in 1948, but if there was ever a genre of game show made for TV, the stunt show was it. It jumped to TV in 1950 and was an instant smash. It was a lot more fun to actually see Bud Collyer lead couples through wacky stunts, many of them gross-out precursors to what kids would be doing on Double Dare thirty years later.
The panel show also got its start in the 50's. What's My Line began in 1950, initially with a rotating panel trying to figure out what the occupation of some person was. The panel would guess two contestants, then do a "Mystery Guest" who was either someone famous, or someone who had done something important. The third episode from 1950 marks the first time long-standing panelists Arlene Francis and Dorothy Klighalen were on the show together.
What's My Line was so successful, everyone started to create their own witty panel guessing games. The most popular imitations came from the show's original creators, Mark Goodson and Bill Todman. To Tell the Truth started as a night time show in 1956. Three people claim to be someone with a unique occupation or hobby or an amazing story. The panel has to guess which contestant is telling the truth. The show was such a smash, CBS added a daytime version in 1962.
The short-lived DuMont Network tried its hand at its own Line with Twenty Questions, which also began in radio. Here, the panel, consisting of local academics and a college student, uses those questions to guess what the subject sent by a viewer is. I'm afraid this one isn't nearly as much fun as the two Goodson-Todman classics. The game moves super slow, the subjects are dull, and neither the panel nor the host Bill Slater have a ton of personality.
The other major game show genre of the 50's was the quiz show. These were elaborate affairs, with people sweating in isolation booths as they tried to guess questions that are often tough even by today's standards. The $64,000 Question began in radio as Take It or Leave It. The show didn't make the jump to TV until 1955, when Revlon became their sponsor. People guessed increasingly difficult questions in a single category. If they missed a question, their game ended there. The show was a smash success, making household names of its winners. I have an episode with probably the most famous winner, Dr. Joyce Brothers, here. Turns out she knew a lot more about boxing than one might think. Not only did she win the big prize, she was the only woman to do so. Hal March is the stoic host.
While Question wasn't fixed (though its spin-off $64,000 Challenge was), other shows weren't that ethical. The most notorious of the shows that eventually led to the "quiz show scandals" was Twenty One. After its first episode ended with few questions answered, the sponsor Geritol demanded it be reworked. Everything was manufactured, from the answers to the contestants being instructed in how to dress and act onstage. College professor Charles Van Doran became its biggest success story, a handsome man who had a tremendous run of four months on the show...that was all fixed. The first man he defeated, Herbert Stempel, tried to blow the whistle, but few people listened until accusations began piling up on other shows, too.
That ended the high-paying quiz show imitations in a hurry. They were all gone by the end of 1959. (It also ended one company sponsoring a show. From the early 60's onwards, the networks would take over programming, selling slots to different companies rather than to just one.) Goodson-Todman were the only producers whose shows were exempted from the bloodbath. No one was getting much money on the panel shows, and their hugely popular auction program The Price Is Right was more interested in luxury prizes and people's reaction to them than enormous wads of cash.
Take a trip back in time to the game show's humble beginnings with these rare shows! (Many of them have their original commercials...and numbers running across them. Also, most of the copies are not the best, but keep in mind that these are kinetoscopes that were never made to be run more than once or twice. Most of these shows are lost - we're lucky to have them at all.)
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