Spent the next hour and a half taking down the St. Patrick's Day decorations and putting up the ones for Easter. There's the big resin statue Patchy Bunny and the porcelain bunny in the purple dress and the bunny candy holder Mom gave me years ago. Flora the Bunny and Freddie the Frog are roly poly toys that used to play music (though they haven't worked in ages). Mom made the small raffia wire garland hung with the tiny wooden bunnies and carrots and the larger one with the painted wooden eggs that hang down. She sent me the two egg-shaped Sees' Candies tins and boxes, too.
The bunnies in the bright floral outfits with the dangling beaded legs and the little blue calico bunny were tucked into a glittery mylar garland in front of the TV. The lop-eared pink Beanie Baby bunny I found at a yard sale is hanging out with the collectible bears. The two small blue chicks came from Build-a-Bear and are on the children's book shelves.
Watched Press Your Luck while I ate and pulled the decorations out of the closet. These episodes belonged to a dark-haired lady with big tortoiseshell rimmed glasses and a wider smile. She came from behind twice. Got a trip and a billiard table in the first episode and beat the champ. In the second one, she barely won a motorcycle when the lady who was amassing more money ran into a Whammy on her last turn.
I think I've seen the Split Second episodes before, but that didn't make them less exciting. The first episode was especially cool. A young woman who wanted to be a screenwriter and director was behind the entire episode, getting less money than the other contestants. She still managed to beat the Countdown Round with the most questions. She did even better in the second, just getting past the guy.
Soon as she won and I got the spring decorations container back in the closet, I headed out the door. I had to run a few errands today, beginning with the post office. I just needed stamps there. Waited for an older woman to finish sending out her package, then bought the pretty tulip stamps the cheerful lady behind the counter suggested.
Dollar General is a block down from the post office, so I went there next. Picked up Kind bars and stuffed toys for the kids' Easter bags. They're the only other place besides the Acme I've seen the 4-gallon trash bags. Grabbed a box of those as well. (And forgot the pads I went there for. I'll get them tomorrow.)
Had a nice walk home, too. Though it was much chillier and far windier than it has been, it also wasn't the Arctic weather I assumed we'd be hit with. It was still fairly warm if you could get out of the wind, probably in the upper 40's, lower 50's. It's certainly looking like spring now. Every garden sports sunny daffodils, golden forsythia blooms, and pastel hyacinths. Thick carpets of green grass have mostly replaced the dry tan lawns.
Put on the second season of F-Troop as I had lunch, and then while I applied for a job in Hamilton. There's two big changes at Fort Courage as we open the second season. First of all, the show is now filmed in color. Second, the theme song dropped its lyrics and replaced the montage of sequences from episodes with comic artwork depicting all the strange goings-on at the Fort.
The stories get a little more fantastical, too, like the season opener "The Singing Mountie." The crooning Canadian policeman (Paul Lynde) arrives in a rolling dog cart to capture Sneaky Pierre (Larry Storch in another dual role), a fur trapper who stole his latest finds. The Singing Mountie, however, isn't what he claims to be, while Pierre is less of a sneak than the Mountie claims.
Agorn is horrified when all of the men but him are transferred out of Fort Courage. Even worse, they have to train their replacements, G-Troop. They learn "How to Be F-Troop Without Really Trying" when it turns out G-Troop is even more incompetent than the men they're replacing.
The arrival of a Prussian soldier (Harvey Korman) and his hot hair balloon sends O'Rourke into expansive daydreams of never having to patrol on foot ever again. Those dreams end abruptly when it turns out the German has something far more sinister in mind for his flying invention. O'Rourke and Agorn end up saying "Bye Bye Balloon" to warn the Hikawis of the Prussian's plans.
After the payroll train is robbed, Agorn and O'Rourke are assigned to make sure it doesn't happen again. They're supposed to protect the money, but really would rather be anywhere else. Bandits saying "Reach for the Sky, Pardner" have them thinking of creative ways to keep that loot out of their hands.
O'Rourke is horrified when Agorn loses his memory after falling off his horse. Wild Eagle suggests a local medicine man (Milton Berle) who functions as a Native psychiatrist. Turns out the guy has a lot more in mind than figuring out where Agorn's brain is. Agorn's scrambled mind makes him the perfect patsy for "The Great Troop Robbery."
O'Rourke, Agorn, Dobbs, and Vanderbilt are excited to resign their posts and homestead a real ghost town, one that's said to have a real ghost. They're skeptical, until the ghost starts showing up everywhere. Parameter and Jane also notes that "The Ghost Goes West" when they try to find a way to bring their wayward troops home.
Switched to Match Game '77 while eating dinner. The first episode started off with Brett admiring Gene's gray suit and red tie. (And I have to admit, I did rather like that scarlet tie with the stripes myself.) Elaine Joyce is less amused when Gene tries to move his microphone cable and avoid knocking her off like he did to Trish Stewart that one time. In the second episode, the new champ gets to ask Gene the question when she totally blanked on the Head-to-Head.
Let it run into Match Game Syndicated. Charles tries advocating for Bess Myerson in Brett's place again, something that would turn into a running gag with him during the 1980 syndicated episodes. Marcia Wallace does better, first joking about her and Judy Landers being similar, then making a surprising match on the Head-to-Head "He's So __."
Took a shower, then finished the night at YouTube honoring the 74th birthday of Beat the Clock. This is another beloved format that goes way back. It started on radio in 1948 as Time's a Wastin'...but if there was a genre of game show made for TV, it was the stunt show. Beat the Clock debuted on CBS in 1950 and was an instant sensation. Couples do wacky stunts in 60 seconds or less to earn money and prizes. Only the woman takes part in the Super Bonus Round that has her rearranging tiles with words to form a saying.
This was one of the biggest hits of early TV, and as far as I can tell, it changed very little over the course of its original 1950-1961 run. Bud Collyer was the enthusiastic host on both the night and short-lived daytime CBS runs and stayed when the show moved to ABC's afternoon schedule in 1958. His first co-hostess Roxanne was so popular, she had a doll made that looked like her.
Beat the Clock returned in 1969, this time to syndication. The stunts and young couples playing were pretty much the same as before, but the bonus round was replaced by a celebrity doing a solo stunt on their own. The contestants won an extra $50 if they guessed correctly whether the star could do the stunt or not. Jack Narz was the original host, but by 1972, the commuting to Canada to film the show got to be too much for him. Announcer Gene Wood took over for the show's remaining two years, and did quite well, too. Robert Morse is the celebrity on Narz's episode; Giselle McKenzie helped inaugurate Wood's run.
CBS brought Clock back to its daytime lineup in 1979. The main game returned to its original contours, but there was yet another bonus round. This time, the contestants slide pucks on a shuffleboard. Whatever money it lands on is what they get. Monty Hall was the host for this one pretty much under protest - it was the first show he'd done for a company other than his own since 1961. Narz had largely retired from hosting by this point and moved to the announcer's booth.
Wish Hall and CBS had more faith in this. Apparently, despite still being a lot of fun to watch, even wacky stunts couldn't beat the red-hot Card Sharks. They turned it to all celebrities playing for the audience, which did absolutely nothing to help the ratings. Ironically, the show has had the last laugh. It's probably the version of Beat the Clock most likely to turn up today, including occasionally on Buzzr.
It would be 2002 before another network took a chance on this format. Family-oriented PAX TV added a third couple and asked trivia questions to decide who would perform each stunt. There's yet another bonus round. The winners step into a booth and try to catch money and prizes slips blowing around. Yeah, it's cheap and absurd as it sounds, and doesn't work any better than it did in The Diamond Head Game in 1975. The trivia questions don't really add much, either. Once again, this version didn't last a year.
(The show's most recent revival was on Universal Kids in 2018, this time with kids and their parents playing. Alas, it only ran a year despite being a relatively faithful adaptation and is nearly impossible to find now. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Beat the Clock again in the near future, maybe in another children's version. The simple stunts are still a heck of a lot of fun to watch after all these years.)
At any rate, hope you have as much fun watching the original slime time game show as I did!
1 comment:
My favorite gag in Easter Beagle continues to be when they walk in the store and find it already decorated for Christmas.
I think you can shag down anyone my age and say "IT IS BALLOON!" in your best Chief Wild Eagle voice and everyone will remember that episode. It used to be part of an ad for F Troop.
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