The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: whewfan on May 12, 2020, 04:58:12 PM
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On a recently posted classic LMAD, Monty plugged his book, called Emcee Monty Hall, which was part of one of the deals for the show. Anyone ever read the book?
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I bought a copy on eBay years ago, and it's an excellent read. I had no idea how much his faith had played into his life, and all the charitable work he had done. His upbringing in Winnipeg, definitely shaped the man he became. If you're expecting it to be a book strictly about tv and his emceeing, you'll be disappointed. It's a full biography, which is very well written.
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If you're expecting it to be a book strictly about tv and his emceeing, you'll be disappointed. It's a full biography, which is very well written.
As has been mentioned here before, our own Adam Nedeff, who's already tackled Bill Cullen, Allen Ludden, Gene Rayburn and Dennis James in previous biographies, is working with Monty's estate on a greatly expanded version of this book. It will feature new interviews and new research by Adam, so you can assume there will be a lot more about game shows in there. Keep in mind that Monty wrote his original book in 1973. There's another 44 years of his life and career that simply hadn't happened yet!
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There is also another book out, Remembering Monty, which came out a year ago. Assumingly this will detail game shows more.
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I just finished reading it on the Internet Archive. I found it quite interesting and informative. I think you'd enjoy it. Here's the link: https://archive.org/details/emceemontyhall0000hall (https://archive.org/details/emceemontyhall0000hall)
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I thought he was a bit bitter in the book, especially when it came to mentioning his paychecks. One person's opinion, though.
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I thought he was a bit bitter in the book, especially when it came to mentioning his paychecks. One person's opinion, though.
I'll agree with that, though I thought most of the bitterness came through in his discussion of his childhood. (Some of that is understandable if distasteful.) Still, it wasn't enough to ruin my enjoyment of the book.
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I think that while hosting LMAD was a positive experience for Monty, I always got the impression he felt that his hosting typecasted him and he had problems finding roles where he could act and sing. In the documentary, Deal!, The Making of Let's Make a Deal, Monty talks about how some have described LMAD as being "about greed." This description obviously upset him, as he tersely explained that he felt LMAD was never about greed. Watching the show, some contestants were perfectly happy being offered no more than $500 for an unknown box or curtain. It would be highly unlikely they would play for the Big Deal, but that didn't matter to some.
In terms of Monty guest starring on TV shows, at least a few times he played a character, or "himself", but not as a game show host. He did The Odd Couple, once as the LMAD host, and another time as himself, but in that one he got to sing. He also played a dentist that used hypnosis to numb pain in That Girl!, and on The Love Boat, he played a character.
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A few weeks ago, I read or saw a piece on Monty where he mentioned he was ready to move on from LMAD and try other projects like singing and acting. IIRC, he also tried his hand at a summer variety show. But it always came back to game shows.
It was either the article that interviewed Adam Nedeff, or the Canadian game shows documentary.
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I thought he was a bit bitter in the book, especially when it came to mentioning his paychecks. One person's opinion, though.
Even when discussing LMAD's move from NBC to ABC in an interview some years ago, it seemed that despite a getting better deal at ABC, he never got over the fact that he felt wronged by NBC.
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A few weeks ago, I read or saw a piece on Monty where he mentioned he was ready to move on from LMAD and try other projects like singing and acting.
He makes that pretty clear in the book, but he's also honest about how his other endeavors (Vegas, a TV special) flopped, blaming himself for letting others control the process instead of trusting his own instincts.
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I've always felt that NBC cleaning out their schedule in 69 was because of losing LMAD. If that doesn't happen, ABC doesn't become the no.1 network in daytime, NBC does.
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I've always felt that NBC cleaning out their schedule in 69 was because of losing LMAD. If that doesn't happen, ABC doesn't become the no.1 network in daytime, NBC does.
In the 1960's, ABC seemed to be the "counter culture" to daytime with all the Chuck Barris shows and "Dark Shadows". Acquiring LMAD made it "legit" and probably paved the way for the traditional shows like "Password" to fit comfortably in the schedule. It was as though they stopped programming for the college crowd and more for the homemaker. Was ABC number one? I thought CBS had that title.
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I've always felt that NBC cleaning out their schedule in 69 was because of losing LMAD. If that doesn't happen, ABC doesn't become the no.1 network in daytime, NBC does.
In the 1960's, ABC seemed to be the "counter culture" to daytime with all the Chuck Barris shows and "Dark Shadows". Acquiring LMAD made it "legit" and probably paved the way for the traditional shows like "Password" to fit comfortably in the schedule. It was as though they stopped programming for the college crowd and more for the homemaker. Was ABC number one? I thought CBS had that title.
ABC wasn't #1. They became a STRONG #2 when LMAD moved over.
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I've always felt that NBC cleaning out their schedule in 69 was because of losing LMAD. If that doesn't happen, ABC doesn't become the no.1 network in daytime, NBC does.
In the 1960's, ABC seemed to be the "counter culture" to daytime with all the Chuck Barris shows and "Dark Shadows". Acquiring LMAD made it "legit" and probably paved the way for the traditional shows like "Password" to fit comfortably in the schedule. It was as though they stopped programming for the college crowd and more for the homemaker. Was ABC number one? I thought CBS had that title.
To be fair, ABC got "One Life to Live"(soap) before they acquired LMAD. Didn't OLTL have some controversy at first, because some southern stations refused to air it over some storyline? Maybe they went a bit too far on that.
But getting LMAD was the best move that ABC could have made, as OLTL began gaining ground on You Don't Say, causing NBC to clean out their schedule soon after.
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Anybody else notice how Monty seemed to try so hard to become a Trebek-like host for his Split Second reboot? Yeah, it's a more serious show than LMAD, but he was not as laid back as the original Kennedy version was.
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I think that while hosting LMAD was a positive experience for Monty, I always got the impression he felt that his hosting typecasted him and he had problems finding roles where he could act and sing. In the documentary, Deal!, The Making of Let's Make a Deal, Monty talks about how some have described LMAD as being "about greed." This description obviously upset him, as he tersely explained that he felt LMAD was never about greed. Watching the show, some contestants were perfectly happy being offered no more than $500 for an unknown box or curtain. It would be highly unlikely they would play for the Big Deal, but that didn't matter to some.
In terms of Monty guest starring on TV shows, at least a few times he played a character, or "himself", but not as a game show host. He did The Odd Couple, once as the LMAD host, and another time as himself, but in that one he got to sing. He also played a dentist that used hypnosis to numb pain in That Girl!, and on The Love Boat, he played a character.
An old time radio shpow collector has posted 2 episodes of a 1949 CBC comedy show called "The Wrigley Show." Monty is the announcer abnd plays stooge to comedienne Mildred Moray. He's excellent.
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In the 1960's, ABC seemed to be the "counter culture" to daytime with all the Chuck Barris shows and "Dark Shadows". Acquiring LMAD made it "legit" and probably paved the way for the traditional shows like "Password" to fit comfortably in the schedule. It was as though they stopped programming for the college crowd and more for the homemaker.
There are limitations to that sentiment, in several regards:
1) It feels reductive with quite a bit that ABC aired in daytime pre-LMAD: can we really call Treasure Isle, Dream House, or Wedding Party counter-cultural in any sense, for instance?
2) It exaggerates how rapidly the ABC daytime schedule changed- in part because they programmed fewer hours than the other two networks, there wasn't massive immediate churn, and even some of the new programs don't seem that far removed (some of the short-lived soap operas around 1970, for instance, seem to fit in the efforts ABC had engaged in earlier of having these appeal to a younger audience).
3) Finally, there is an important general context to keep in mind- ABC as a network overall programmed for a younger audience than NBC and CBS did at that time, in an effort to find an audience that could make it something other than the distant third network. It took some time to work overall (in the late 1960s, it was still considerably behind NBC, who in turn weren't that close to CBS), but by the mid-1970s this would pay off, and to a heavy degree this approach to programming is the one that had become dominant with all the broadcast television networks.