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Author Topic: CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds  (Read 16772 times)

JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« on: November 01, 2013, 12:09:33 AM »

Recently, I was lucky enough to acquire 122 episodes of The Joker\'s Wild from the final year of the CBS run. They span from episode 418, to the finale, numbered 685. I wanted to share a number of the fun finds from different special episodes, as well as some corrections/additions to the Wiki-type info we\'ve shared about the show over the years.


* By the first show in the set, episode 418 (VTR 5/6/74), Face the Devil is in place. The average value of a prize package is around $1500. Later in the run, they start adding the $1000 from the wheels into the total, likely to make it sound more impressive.


* Until about September 1974, Jack distinctively calls this \"The Money Wheels.\"


* When a player wins this bonus, they play the Joker\'s Jackpot music from the first few years of the run. This is replaced with a different old timey cue later in the run.


* The natural triple rules we\'re familiar with from the syndie run are in place. A natural triple in the main game is worth a merchandise prize (valued at about $300). A natural triple in the end game means you win automatically. Your total is bumped to $1000, or the sum of your money plus the triple, whichever is greater.


* Another rule I wasn\'t clear on (that may have changed in the syndie run): you cannot reduce a natural pair or triple to a lower value. Unless there was a joker involved, you had to play for whatever showed up on the wheels.


* Five wins were worth a car. In 1974, they were typically Buicks worth over $3,000 that were plugged daily. By early 1975, the frequent car plugs were eliminated, only occurring when game five was afoot. The Chevy Vega was one of the cars from the later period. When a car is won, the bonus round win music is played.


* Musical categories were featured with some regularity in this period; about every other game when I started watching these shows. With rare exception, they involved playing a big band instrumental version of a familiar song (think Name That Tune) followed by a question.


* Multiple choice questions were frequent, but did not represent every question. Many of the questions were also tweaked so Jack only asks for one word (a last name, a flower heard in a song title, etc). Jack\'s screen is used frequently for visual clues.


* Like Allen Ludden going on safari for Password Plus, http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2887/10598533216_385f327c28_o.png\'>Jack Barry got a http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7448/10598518135_bce4a555e9_o.png\'>little brave with his http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3821/10598531606_c1832e771e_o.png\'>wardrobe every few weeks or so.


* The time\'s up signal was a bell, later changed to the Tattle Tales/Press Your Luck buzz-in signal.


* The logo changed from the ornate version seen in the pilot and first few years to the plainer one with circles on episode 421.


 


* The last day with \"The Savers\" and random stock music was episode 520 (air 10/18/74) and the Alan Thicke music started the next Monday on episode 521 (10/21/74).


 


* Much like the syndie run, they began displaying departing champion\'s totals on their scoreboard. This could expand to five digits by dropping the eggcrate-generated dollar sign and using the old lighted dollar sign from the first few years.


* These episodes appear to be the versions sold into syndication before the show returned for good. One commercial break per show is eliminated with a hacky edit. In addition, they almost always fade out before the CBS Television City logo makes it on screen. By the final few months of shows, Jack reads in replacement fee plugs, and the original crawl is dubbed over.


* Dan Enright appears in the credits by episode 586 (VTR 1/10/75, air 1/24/75)


* The audience pan intro from the finale begins with episode 589 (VTR 1/17/75, air 1/29/75) and survives the series with occasional tweaks and alternate versions. Episode 589 also begins the individual category reveals we\'re familiar with from the syndie run.


* The Mystery Category debuted on episode 590 (air 1/30/75). Everything about it was the same as the syndie run, except the seven cards simply had question marks on them, and took on their familiar appearance by episode 604 (air 2/19/75). Mystery Category shows up practically every day in the first full game of an episode.


* Starting with episode 637, they attempted the flashback intro for a brief spell. The show faded up to a freeze frame of a past show with Johnny Jacobs quickly saying \"From Television City in Hollywood, it\'s the Joker\'s Wild!\" After a selection of clips set to the endgame win music, they froze again and supered the logo with Johnny saying \"and today there\'s more in store on the Joker\'s Wild!\" before his intro of Jack.


* Fast Forward made its debut on episode 665 (air 5/16/75), just 20 shows from the end. It initially features Science, but before the run is through, Fast Forward Movies shows up.


Next post: Oh Those Wacky Promotions!


 


 


-Jason


« Last Edit: November 01, 2013, 12:09:51 AM by JasonA1 »
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JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #1 on: November 01, 2013, 12:22:47 AM »

* Children\'s specials occurred with some regularity. Jack notes they happen at Christmas, New Year\'s, Easter, and in the summer, all attempting to catch the young audience when they\'re out of school. These episodes are slated with a C after the show number. The events typically last a few days, not the whole week. Two such specials also occurred for the show\'s third anniversary.


* On these specials, young children play for points, trying to reach 500 first, and win a $500 educational bond. The winner ascends a special platform so they\'re at Jack\'s height to play the end game. They play the first end game where they spin three prizes and decide whether to keep those, or take another spin, to a maximum of three. The losing player receives a $100 bond and prizes, like a World Book Encyclopedia, tickets to Marineland, etc. At Christmas, the losing contestant also got to pick an age-appropriate gift from under a Christmas tree on the set.


* A frequent prize offered to the kids was a huge stuffed animal that was taller than Jack. While Johnny described the first two prizes, Jack retrieved the animal from the wings and handed it to the winner, who tried in vain to carry it off stage.


* Any children that don\'t get to play a game receive the loser\'s gifts and sit on stage with Jack on the final show of the event for a quick interview.


* In addition to potential clearance issues with the music categories that may have prevented GSN from showing these, the children\'s shows featured categories where kids watched clips from popular cartoons or Disney movies, and had to answer a question about them.


* Another special done multiple times was Senior Citizens, including the first week of September \'74 and the first week of October \'74. A moment from one of these shows made it into a promo that circulates, where an 80-year-old woman does push-ups center stage.


* To commemorate the third anniversary of the show\'s premiere, a promotion started on the week of September 16th. Special http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5498/10598533776_d86bf636e0_o.png\'>\"Jackpot Jokers\" were placed on the wheels - regular jokers with the word \"jackpot\" across them like a pageant sash. If a player could spin up all three Jackpot Jokers, they won a 45-day trip around the world worth almost $4,000. In addition, they got a cash jackpot that started at $250, and grew $250 for each day it did not come up.


* Starting on January 8th, 1975, the show started its \"Lucky Hundreds\" promotion. In the weeks leading up to it, Jack touted the fact one player could win over $10,000 with one spin of the wheels. Much like the Jackpot Jokers, contestants could win a trip around the world and a cash jackpot - but this time the chance was in the endgame. All http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7345/10598775683_55714ed47f_o.png\'>$100 spaces were marked \"Lucky.\" If they got \"http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3778/10598529636_cba9d21b28_o.png\'>Lucky 100s\" in all three windows, they won the bonus round with a natural triple, plus the $7200 trip, plus a $3000 cash bonus. Starting with episode 579 (air 1/15/75), they began adding $100 a day to the cash bonus, and the trip was now billed as being worth $7600. The cash would grow until the trip was won, or the total prize package reached a value of $15,000.


* On the week of March 3rd, 1975, an audience game was introduced. All members of the studio audience were fitted with a pink Price is Right name tag. After every Face the Devil, Johnny Jacobs called down one lucky audience member to play the Face the Devil for the same prizes from a duplicate large handle located at the foot of the audience. On the first pull of this handle, Jack discovered it wasn\'t properly built to stop when pulled, and kept his leg against it for the rest of the game. If a player spun the devil, they won a merchandise prize as consolation.


* The audience game returned in a different form on March 31st and continued for the next three weeks. This time frame was my favorite stretch of shows because it was so nuts. The three days prior to this was a children\'s special for Easter, during which Jack was explaining there would be a second children\'s special soon (4/23 and 4/24) because different schools were taking different vacations in 1975. Then he played clips from the first audience game to promote its return on Monday. When we fade up on Tuesday, Jack walks by a scale and a pile of envelopes to reach his podium. It turns out the scale is part of the first Face the Devil prize package, where the champion played for a trip to Las Vegas, plus $10 for every pound they weighed. For your edification, that female champion weighed 120 pounds.


* In the second audience game, the winner of the main game tried to earn a member of the studio audience spins of the Joker machine. If the game winner hit a devil on their first spin, no audience game was played. If they spun less than $500 (whether they kept it, or lost it to a devil) the audience player got 3 spins. If they spun a total of $500-$975, the audience player got 4 spins. If the stage player won Face the Devil, the audience player got 5 spins.


* Jack presented the contestant with a choice of three envelopes each containing the name of an audience member. The chosen player met Jack and the champion at the audience slot handle, while a \"Foggy Mountain Breakdown\" type track played. Now the wheels contained jokers and devils a\'la the second CBS endgame. If they spun Joker-Joker-Joker on the first spin, they won $100 for themselves and $100 for the stage contestant. Each subsequent http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3771/10601918516_a1ec911623_o.png\'>Joker-Joker-Joker doubled the money for a maximum reward of $1,600. If http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5472/10601908514_28dc087c16_o.png\'>a devil came up, they both lost their money, and the audience member got a consolation prize.


* For this audience game, the audience was fitted with custom pink nametags - a rectangle with a joker logo in the upper left, and their name hand-written on the rest.


* During the crawl of episode 605, Johnny Jacobs intoned: \"23 million Americans have it and half of them don\'t know it. High blood pressure. The silent killer. What causes it? Scientists are trying to find out. Help them with a gift to the Heart Fund.\"


* During the crawl of episode 606, Johnny Jacobs intoned: \"Every 47 seconds of every hour of every day, someone in the United States dies of a heart attack. It doesn\'t have to be that way. Give to the Heart Fund - now. Thank you.\"


 


 


-Jason


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Bryce L.

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #2 on: November 01, 2013, 02:06:40 AM »

One question... I\'ve always heard that by the time Face The Devil came around, the Joker\'s Jackpot had been retired. Does that line up with what you\'ve seen from these episodes?



golden-road

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2013, 08:08:59 AM »

I have two questions:


 


1. Will you upload eps on your YT page?


 


2. This is nitpicky, but did grand totals end in 00/25/50/75, or were they not doing that yet?


« Last Edit: November 01, 2013, 08:18:28 AM by golden-road »

JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #4 on: November 01, 2013, 01:34:07 PM »


One question... I\'ve always heard that by the time Face The Devil came around, the Joker\'s Jackpot had been retired. Does that line up with what you\'ve seen from these episodes?




 


There was no Joker\'s Jackpot on these episodes. Jack made a frequent point to say \"you continue playing with no risk...\" in the first few months worth of these shows.


 


-Jason


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Bryce L.

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #5 on: November 01, 2013, 02:10:44 PM »


 




One question... I\'ve always heard that by the time Face The Devil came around, the Joker\'s Jackpot had been retired. Does that line up with what you\'ve seen from these episodes?




 


There was no Joker\'s Jackpot on these episodes. Jack made a frequent point to say \"you continue playing with no risk...\" in the first few months worth of these shows.


 


-Jason


 




So I presume that the elimination of the Jackpot was a fairly recent thing, in those first few months...


Ian Wallis

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #6 on: November 01, 2013, 05:11:47 PM »

Wow - cool find!  I\'d love to see more CBS episodes of the series.


 


Some comments:


 



 


These episodes appear to be the versions sold into syndication before the show returned for good. One commercial break per show is eliminated with a hacky edit. In addition, they almost always fade out before the CBS Television City logo makes it on screen. By the final few months of shows, Jack reads in replacement fee plugs, and the original crawl is dubbed over.



 


We only got the reruns in our area for the last two months of the run, July - Sept \'77, then the new episodes started.  I remember they were all from spring 1975, and the original endings ran intact.  I even recorded a few on audio tape so I know those ones had the originals.  Maybe the dubs occurred on episodes from after the part of the run we got(?)  Barry did the same with some Break the Bank reruns in summer \'77 too.


 


I always thought the Joker\'s Jackpot ended sometime in the summer of \'73.  I distinctly remember Jack making a big deal over a couple of contestants that hit the magic $25,000 grand total, and the scoreboards showing $25,000.   I remember he stated to one contestant, anything over that amount you win you\'ll have to give back to get down to $25K.   I suppose they could have done that by winning multiple Joker\'s Jackpots, but I thought the five-wins-for-a-car rule was in place by then.  Just going on old, hazy memories.


 


Based on the description of the shows Jason\'s got, it seemingly occurred a lot later than I originally thought.  Maybe my memory is from the summer of \'74 rather than \'73.  The champion was seated on camera right by then, so they must have made that change sometime in \'74.


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Vahan_Nisanian

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #7 on: November 01, 2013, 05:12:38 PM »

Jason, you mentioned these episodes being the ones sold to Syndicated reruns, because of the hacky commercial edits, and redubbed prizes and credit crawls. Strangely enough, Republic Pictures never did any of that when they were running 130 episodes of Press Your Luck on a few local stations, prior to the USA Network acquisition.


 


Also, was TJW preempted once more between 2/19/75 and 6/13/75, or was it just a labeling error (common in cataloging television episodes)?



JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2013, 06:36:22 PM »

Also, was TJW preempted once more between 2/19/75 and 6/13/75, or was it just a labeling error (common in cataloging television episodes)?



 


Just looked at the calendar to see what you mean...686 shows should line up with 6/13/75. Considering Jack makes a point on the finale of saying goodbye for the \"686th time,\" it\'s very possible they realized their own counting error and gave him the correct info by the time he made his speech. But I can\'t say for certain. Perhaps there was a holiday in there they were bumped for. The show *was* pre-empted on New Year\'s Day - Jack invites viewers to tune in \"the day after tomorrow\" on the 12/31/74 show. But at least once, they had their airdates wrong on the slate at the start of the taping day and corrected them by the third show in the day. And I\'ll have a whole post of fun moments later today or this weekend, but suffice to say, math wasn\'t their strong suit at the time, which resulted in some game errors.


 


-Jason


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TLEberle

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #9 on: November 01, 2013, 06:52:19 PM »
I could probably geek all over you with questions and stuff, but I\'ll just say thank you for being so willing to share and to catalog all of the changes and various things the show did and for little in return other than the satisfaction in a jorb well done.

So I lied there:
How can being bad at math cause game errors? The counting was in fifties.
Travis L. Eberle

Allstar87

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #10 on: November 01, 2013, 07:02:50 PM »


* Like Allen Ludden going on safari for Password Plus, http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2887/10598533216_385f327c28_o.png\'>Jack Barry got a http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7448/10598518135_bce4a555e9_o.png\'>little brave with his http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3821/10598531606_c1832e771e_o.png\'>wardrobe every few weeks or so.




 


I just love 70s fashion. :)


 


I gotta say, this is quite an amazing find! Thank you for sharing all of this with us!


JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #11 on: November 01, 2013, 07:08:17 PM »


I could probably geek all over you with questions and stuff




 


Feel free! I keep forgetting tidbits here and there, so it may help me fill in something interesting I just neglected to write down.


 


The math errors were in the endgame. They were manually typing things in, changing one number at a time. Not that it excuses anything...but at least a few times, a player had $950 or so, wrestled with the decision to go on, only for the folks offstage to tell Jack they were already over $1000, and they missed some money along the way.


 


-Jason


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TLEberle

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #12 on: November 01, 2013, 07:53:08 PM »
Since you volunteered: as I understand it a natural triple of anything other than $100 would win the bonus with the applicable total; $100s across won the jackpot, is that correct? (When I first heard about it I thought there were two flavors of $100s up there, just one makes everything easier.)
Travis L. Eberle

JasonA1

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #13 on: November 01, 2013, 08:11:04 PM »

Yes.


 


-Jason


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golden-road

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CBS Joker's Wild - Facts and Finds
« Reply #14 on: November 01, 2013, 09:43:23 PM »

Any chance of any eps going on your YT page, or did the person ask not to?