Author Topic: Celebrity Sweepstakes (Read 12613 times)

davemackey · « **Reply #30 on:** February 18, 2010, 12:15:38 PM »

[quote name=\'Mr. Bill\' post=\'236089\' date=\'Feb 18 2010, 10:52 AM\'][quote name=\'Matt Ottinger\' post=\'236038\' date=\'Feb 17 2010, 01:16 PM\']but it does make the central conceit of the show less relevant.[/quote]
Surely you don't mean this, Matt!

The "P" key is two doors over to the right.

/Mr. Sugar Daddy hasn't had any problems finding women -- remember who he's married to now...
[/quote]
He went from boobs to legs. He's moving down in the world.

clanky06 · « **Reply #31 on:** February 18, 2010, 04:21:02 PM »

After going to Warner Brothers about five times in 1976 to try out as a contestant on You Don't Say!, a contestant coordinator read off the names of those who were to stay. It turns out he read every name except mine and one other guy's. I drove home feeling pretty low. However, about a month later I got a phone call from Ralph Andrews Productions saying that they had bought back Celebrity Sweepstakes from Burt Sugarman, and NBC wanted to revive the ratings, and could I go right to the NBC studios in Burbank day-after-tomorrow? You bet!

Each member of the studio audience had a box with six buttons so they could vote on the celebrities' abilities to answer the questions. This supposedly determined the odds that appeared. Ralph Andrews himself "instructed" the audience about voting, and this education resulted in the odds going much higher, the contestants winning more money, and the ratings climbing. That was the official story, but I would bet some software "adjustments" were involved, also.

The contestant coordinators told us that Carol Wayne had been "prompted" so as to gain a persona of a "dumb blonde" who is "actually smart." Ralph Andrews made a huge point that under his new management, there would be no more prompting. So, the CC told us, Carol Wayne was going back to being "dumb" again—except for show biz questions, where she wasn't bad.

I went on for the second show of the week. The celebrities were Bill Cullen, Elaine Joyce, Carol Wayne, Alan Sues, Norm Crosby and Pat Carroll. I lost on Elaine not being able to spell "mayonnaise" and Pat Carroll not knowing that a humming bird is the only bird that can fly backwards, but for the most part I called on Bill Cullen, and he didn't let me down! For the final "bet," you could either bet "none," or bet it all. During the commercial break, Ralph Andrews would come up on the set and take a peek at how we bet. I bet it all twice on Bill Cullen and ended up with $25,000. A year later I was a contestant on Ralph Edwards' Knockout, created by Mark Maxwell-Smith and hosted by Arte Johnson. Won $10,000 on this one, for $35,000 in two years total. To put this in perspective, a few years earlier we bought our house for $42,500—worth about 20 times that now.

Ian Wallis · « **Reply #32 on:** February 18, 2010, 05:22:21 PM »

Thank you Clanky! Great story.

Just out of curiosity, would you happen to remember approx when your show aired? Brendan was kind enough to send me some celebrity information (thanks Brendan) and it might help us fill in some of the missing dates. It sounds like you were on towards the end of the run after they changed the format. I'm pretty sure it was sometime in July or early August when that occurred. If Carol was on the panel, it must have been at least the second week of the format change because she wasn't there for the first week.

It's interesting that they changed the format and less than three months later were cancelled. Obviously it didn't boost ratings enough!

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Ian can confirm, but I think Bill multi-tasked that day as panelist and announcer. I remember Dick Tufeld announcing the second syndie run.

I think Bill probably did double-duty, but that's just an educated guess based on 35-year-old memories of watching it.

clanky06 · « **Reply #33 on:** February 18, 2010, 09:22:03 PM »

Well, it just so happens that I have a copy of the NBC Contestant Prize Form, and the air dates are August 24-26. Here's another interesting side-bar: besides the cash, I "won" a bunch of sponsor goodies, one of which was Liv-a-snaps dog food coupons, worth $25.00. They came by registered mail. So if they would go to this trouble for dog food, think of what they will do for a check for $25,000! Well, it came by regular mail in an windowed check envelope! Another good thing was that they had income averaging back then.

I got a call inviting me to be in the audience for the last show. There weren't two vacant seats together so my wife and I didn't sit together. Apparently, this last show is the only one preserved on video. Early on during a scan of the audience, the camera pauses on my (then) wife Debbie. Another thing I noticed was during the final "all or nothing at all" bet, they placed plywood blinders in front of the celebrities so you couldn't watch them write their answer. When I was a contestant, I could watch them write, and that was very helpful!

Alan Sues would verbally wander off with his answers, causing everyone to laugh with references to "whips and chains," for example. Everyone would laugh except Jim McKrell, that is.

On another show the final question was "Which president introduced bathtubs to the White House?" Only Alan Sues knew it was Millard Fillmore. That sure looked suspicious to me. But actually, this information was based on a 1917 satirical piece written by H. L. Mencken, and so wasn't true at all! A hoax that lived on, even without the Internet!

This reminds me of another contemporary Ralph Andrews show 50 Grand Slam with Tom Kennedy as host. A question in the "Musicals" category was who wrote the music for Silk Stockings? The contestant answered "Cole Porter," and Tom said no, it was George Gershwin! After a commercial break they acknowledged that Cole Porter was indeed right, and to compensate for the contestant's "loss of concentration," they made some concession or other. I did a statistical analysis on the probability of a contestant making it all the way to $50,000 with their rules, and found it to be very low. They went to two general knowledge games a day, but still the $50,000 was never won.

clanky06 · « **Reply #34 on:** February 18, 2010, 09:35:39 PM »

One more thing—when you are a contestant, you have tons of "waiting time" to kill. The producers tend to select "nice people," and it becomes very easy to "bond" with the other contestants. During my time on Knockout, I talked quite a bit with Janet, NBC's S&P representative who was "babysitting" us. She said that the nicest people, the ones that being with was the most pleasurable, were those on Name That Tune. At the other end of the spectrum were the 50 Grand Slam contestants.

davemackey · « **Reply #35 on:** February 19, 2010, 07:15:34 AM »

[quote name=\'clanky06\' post=\'236120\' date=\'Feb 18 2010, 09:22 PM\']Alan Sues would verbally wander off with his answers, causing everyone to laugh with references to "whips and chains," for example. Everyone would laugh except Jim McKrell, that is.[/quote]
Hopefully, he helped the contestants there. Unlike that one time on "Cross-Wits"...

calliaume · « **Reply #36 on:** February 19, 2010, 09:44:30 AM »

[quote name=\'clanky06\' post=\'236120\' date=\'Feb 18 2010, 09:22 PM\']I got a call inviting me to be in the audience for the last show. There weren't two vacant seats together so my wife and I didn't sit together. Apparently, this last show is the only one preserved on video. Early on during a scan of the audience, the camera pauses on my (then) wife Debbie. Another thing I noticed was during the final "all or nothing at all" bet, they placed plywood blinders in front of the celebrities so you couldn't watch them write their answer. When I was a contestant, I could watch them write, and that was very helpful![/quote]
I've mentioned this before here, but on Match Game's Super Match, even though the contestant's back was turned, a very aware contestant could hear Richard Dawson's Magic Marker strokes on the card as he wrote his answer, possibly discerning the number of letters in his response.. I wonder if that was ever beneficial in any way.

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Alan Sues would verbally wander off with his answers, causing everyone to laugh with references to "whips and chains," for example. Everyone would laugh except Jim McKrell, that is.

Which is probably why McKrell told Sues to shut up -- his words -- during the final good-bye speech.

Don Howard · « **Reply #37 on:** February 19, 2010, 02:57:25 PM »

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' post=\'236108\' date=\'Feb 18 2010, 05:22 PM\']

Quote

Ian can confirm, but I think Bill multi-tasked that day as panelist and announcer. I remember Dick Tufeld announcing the second syndie run.

I think Bill probably did double-duty, but that's just an educated guess based on 35-year-old memories of watching it.
[/quote]
He did. I saw one of those three shows and he announced from his celebrity contestant position on the set.
[quote name=\'calliaume\' post=\'236167\' date=\'Feb 19 2010, 09:44 AM\']

Quote

Alan Sues would verbally wander off with his answers, causing everyone to laugh with references to "whips and chains," for example. Everyone would laugh except Jim McKrell, that is.

Which is probably why McKrell told Sues to shut up -- his words -- during the final good-bye speech.
[/quote]
Not as harsh as "shut up". What he said was "...and you try to be quiet". Shut up (or even STFU) may have been what Jim was thinking, however.