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I just acquired a back issue of TV Guide in which the review of the week is of a game show. See if you can guess what show the reviewer is talking about based on this brief, edited excerpt.
"The first TV set I had was built like the fancy phonographs of that time (around 1938-40)....
"The first program I saw regularly...was a version of the old parlor game of charades....The 1939 charades was 10 times as fresh, pleasant, inventive, and well-produced as (name of show being reviewed)....
"(The producer has/producers have) been working toward this perfect example of (his/their) product for years. (He knows/They know) that some people try to get as much into a given time as possible....(His/Their) idea is to get in as little as possible....it is 99.9 percent nothing....
"You've got to plan long ahead to create anything as dull as this. Even with practice, it must have been a hard show to create."
Two clues: this is not an obscure show, and I've liked what I've seen of this show a lot better than this reviewer did. (No, I'm not mentioning the name of the reviewer, because that would narrow it down for all you TV Guide collectors to try to look it up.)
I'll post the answer and more of the review in a couple of days.
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Body Language (I'm probably way off)?
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I'm torn as to whether or not charades has any bearing on what the game is. Beyond that, I'm torn between several candidates. But I'll go with The $10,000 Pyramid.
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I'll go with ...Hollywood Squares
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It's a toss-up between Body Language & Show-offs, but I'll go with the latter.
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"Working toward this perfect example of (his/their) product for years" has me thinking this came from the Mark Goodson factory. Could it be Password?
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You're not actually miming things, but, for some reason, the "charades" part made me think of What's My Line?
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This sounds a lot like "Body Language." As much as I liked the show, I too can agree a lot of it was nothing, timewise.
-Jason
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I will guess Password. If memory serves, the game declared dull by many critics.
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If this was interesting enough for Jim to contribute, it'd have to be a standard-bearer show like What's My Line? that we all somewhat revere. There are enough bad reviews of bad shows out there that aren't worth mentioning.
Even Tom Kennedy never spoke in totally glowing terms about Body Language.
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I can recall TV Guide reviewing Body Language sometime in 1985, and while they didn't give the most glowing praise (or much praise at all), they didn't lambaste it like that. My guess: I've Got A Secret.
Tyshaun
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CBS TTTT
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My guess would be Body Language or Stump the Stars (Celebrity Charades).
Don
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As has been correctly guessed, from the May 12, 1962 issue of TV Guide, this was Gilbert Seldes' review of "Password."
(I'm claiming fair use for research/discussion purposes in posting the entire review below, but, mods, please delete if you believe it's necessary.)
Begin quoted material:
The first TV set I had was built like the fancy phonographs of that time (around 1938-40). On the inside of the lid was a mirror. You lifted the lid -- the picture came off the tube upside down, got reflected in the mirror, and you saw it right side up.
The first program I saw regularly -- I was working for CBS, but NBC was on the air before we were -- was a version of the old parlor game of charades. The most recent program I've seen -- about five hours ago -- was Password. The 1939 charades was 10 times as fresh, pleasant, inventive and well-produced as Password of 1962.
The structure of the program follows the pattern used by the producers (Goodson-Todman) in many others (the most successful is probably What's My Line?). It's a guessing game. In this one you have two teams of two each. One member of each team is given a word, the other doesn't know what it is. (You know, though: in a voice so hushed you would think a death was being announced, an unseen man tells you.) The one who knows gives the other a clue -- it must be a single word.
It's a riot. The hidden word is "shape." Clue: "figure." No good, because, to "figure," the response is "form." Next clue: "Monroe." Bingo! What's more, the man who guessed "shape" from the "Monroe" clue was a minister. An unseen studio audience expired with glee.
Or the hidden word is "vaudeville" and the third -- and successful -- clue given in "variety"; you fall back in admiration of the human intelligence.
Once in a while the clue-giver forgets himself and gives the hidden word. Then it's fun.
The producers of Password can't be blamed for all this. They have been working toward this perfect example of their product for years. They know that some people try to get as much into a given time as possible -- Ben Casey, for instance. Their idea is to get in as little as possible. In Password they are as near to perfection as any human beings can hope to get -- it is 99.9 percent nothing.
The program occurs daily and once a week at night, and the only difference I could find was that at night I saw a talented movie star of about 15 years ago -- she said she was doing nothing, she'd like to do a play. Daytime I caught a not-so-talented TV star -- he hadn't been doing much of anything. An enthusiast of G-E College Bowl told me that Allen Ludden, who moderates both of these programs, seems happier with the collegians.
An announcement informs you that the contestants on Password have been talked to in advance. That's to head off any suspicions you may have about the absolute honesty of the proceedings. It is hardly worth the effort. We know beyond any doubt that the contestants didn't know the words -- the whole thing is so dull it almost makes you long for the good old days of scandal. But this doesn't mean that the program hasn't been carefully planned. You've got to plan long ahead to create anything as dull as this. Even with practice, it must have been a hard show to create.
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Thanks for digging up a very interesting article.
As they say, genius is never recognized in its own time...
Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but...how does "Monroe" lead one to "shape?"
Oh...just figured it out. Still, seems like a rather odd clue to give instead of "triangle," "square," etc.
--Sam
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[quote name=\'SamJ93\' date=\'Mar 6 2005, 12:21 AM\']
Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but...how does "Monroe" lead one to "shape?"
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The player put together the two clues given at that point, figure and Monroe
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[quote name=\'SamJ93\' date=\'Mar 6 2005, 12:21 AM\']Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but...how does "Monroe" lead one to "shape?"
Oh...just figured it out. Still, seems like a rather odd clue to give instead of "triangle," "square," etc.[snapback]77155[/snapback]
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This was "Password" year one. There were no real strategies set up yet, so people (especially the males) tried to throw some connotation in with Hollywood starlets for words like "shape", "figure" and "form" rather than going for the more earthly term like "circle" or "hexagon". I've even heard "Lolobrigida" being used for "figure".
The clue Jim E. refused to give gave it pretty much away as an older show, since it predated Cleveland Amory as TV Guide's critic. But gee, it's heartening to think that TV Guide was as clueless about some TV shows forty-five years ago as they are today. Consider this: Allen Ludden never made the cover of TV Guide while other prime time hosts like Bill Cullen and Garry Moore were regular fixtures on the mag's frontis.
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James Monroe had a great figure. On the topic of TV Guide reviewers and game shows, I was horrified that Cleveland Amory was booked on the same Blyden WML? as the Russian dancing bear trainer. Was Cleve's reputation as an animal rights activist yet to come?
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I thought it was Password...Jeff Graham put that "the whole thing is so dull..." line into a write-up of the all time greatest game shows that closed his 1988 GS book, Come on Down.
Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")
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[quote name=\'trainman\' date=\'Mar 6 2005, 12:06 AM\']An announcement informs you that the contestants on Password have been talked to in advance. That's to head off any suspicions you may have about the absolute honesty of the proceedings.
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What exactly did this announcement mean? I haven't seen more than one or two eps of the original show, and then they were the later eps.
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[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 10:39 AM\'][quote name=\'trainman\' date=\'Mar 6 2005, 12:06 AM\']An announcement informs you that the contestants on Password have been talked to in advance. That's to head off any suspicions you may have about the absolute honesty of the proceedings.
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What exactly did this announcement mean? I haven't seen more than one or two eps of the original show, and then they were the later eps.
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It's your basic statement that the contestants were interviewed before the selection, just as they are on every other game show. In those days, there were more shows picking their contestants out of the audience; that clearly wasn't the case with Password, which requires at least half a brain. (Of course, even TPIR interviews today; I can't think of any show where you could be pulled out of the audience to participate. I'm not even sure about "Whose Line?")
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[quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 11:39 AM\'][quote name=\'trainman\' date=\'Mar 6 2005, 12:06 AM\']An announcement informs you that the contestants on Password have been talked to in advance. That's to head off any suspicions you may have about the absolute honesty of the proceedings.
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What exactly did this announcement mean?
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It means they weren't snatched from a bus stop and thrown onto a set next to Peter Lawford.
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[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 01:01 PM\']Does anybody have a clear copy of the theme from "60 Minutes?" Not the current one, the original with the different stopwatch.[/quote]
I. Love. This.
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[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 12:31 PM\'][quote name=\'Mike Tennant\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 11:39 AM\']What exactly did this announcement mean?
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It means they weren't snatched from a bus stop and thrown onto a set next to Peter Lawford.
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Thank goodness. I can't think of a worse fate to befall anyone.
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Being put on camera next to Bob Crane, perhaps?
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[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 12:51 PM\'][quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 01:01 PM\']Does anybody have a clear copy of the theme from "60 Minutes?" Not the current one, the original with the different stopwatch.[/quote]
I. Love. This.
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I'll trade him if he has the typewriter SFX used in 1978 on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. I already have the Smith-Corona version from '77.
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[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 01:45 PM\'][quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 12:51 PM\'][quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 01:01 PM\']Does anybody have a clear copy of the theme from "60 Minutes?" Not the current one, the original with the different stopwatch.[/quote]
I. Love. This.
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I'll trade him if he has the typewriter SFX used in 1978 on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. I already have the Smith-Corona version from '77.
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I have a MIDI recreation of that theme on an MP3, will that suffice?
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[quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 11:51 AM\'][quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 01:01 PM\']Does anybody have a clear copy of the theme from "60 Minutes?" Not the current one, the original with the different stopwatch.[/quote]
I. Love. This.
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To this day, I still worry about the number of brain cells I lost when I first tried to understand why CBS found it necessary to release an "official" theme from "60 Minutes", it being nothing more than the longest, most mind-numbing 30 seconds of "tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick" ever created.
And we sometimes wonder why game show themes (or TV themes in general) get so little respect by most people...sighhhhhhhhh...:)
Jake
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The review is interesting, in that Seldes, who is considered one of the first intellectual types, if not *the* first intellectual type to treat pop culture as worthy of being taken seriously, doesn't care for the show most often used in the post-quiz scandal era as an example of a more intellectual game show than most of its daytime company of the time. (In his stint as a TV Guide critic, he gave a favorable review to "The Beverly Hillbillies," undoubtedly one of the few critics at that time to do so.)
Here's a link to a review of a 1996 book on his life:
http://www.popcultures.com/reviews/rev_0025.htm (http://\"http://www.popcultures.com/reviews/rev_0025.htm\")
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[quote name=\'SplitSecond\' date=\'Mar 7 2005, 10:39 AM\']Being put on camera next to Bob Crane, perhaps?
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or under Bob Crane?
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I found this revelation quite interesting, as well:
http://www.povonline.com/tvtickets/TVTickets023.htm (http://\"http://www.povonline.com/tvtickets/TVTickets023.htm\")
[check the story underneath the "Password" ticket]
I understand his point of view, but I think he's being a little tough on Allan. I mean, it's not as though we're talking about "I've Got a Secret", which requires a much more gregarious host.... classic "Password" is a pretty laid-back concept.
And this, by the way is on Mark Evanier's site. Thanks, Mark!
-Kevin