Roger Dobkowitz Interview

[Joe Mello]

On a similar tack, "Wheel of Fortune" has finally, after 37 years on the air, begun repeating puzzles. I'm sure I was the only one in the room who noticed.

Just for fun, which one did you notice?

Also, I'd be willing to bet that this wasn't a practice started that recently.

[wheelloon]

On a similar tack, "Wheel of Fortune" has finally, after 37 years on the air, begun repeating puzzles. I'm sure I was the only one in the room who noticed.

I always wondered what took them so long. In their case, they could simply add a word or two, since they love gratuitously wordy puzzles.

It has been a policy on Wheel for some time that a puzzle can be used three times before it is "retired." I don't remember where I originally learned this, but I researched it some years back (as in like 10-15 years ago) after I began noticing puzzles I thought I remember being used in the past. If the number of repetitions being seen recently seems to have increased, maybe this rule has been upped to 5 or something.

As for Rayburn, I remember hearing online (I thought it was on here) that his demeanor on set wasn't always reputable. Roger's commments make it look like it was a lot worse than what I had heard before now, but I can't say his comments surprised me.

[geno57]

There were preserved in a MG office the green 3" x 5" index cards containing the questions used in New York.

A couple of years ago, Dick DeBartolo was selling "original" MG question cards from the NBC run.  I bought a couple of sets.  They're on white or off-white card stock.

Were the green ones for a separate permanent file, or something?

Minutiae, I know.

[toddyo]

Blame it on Old Man Periwinkle. He was in charge of filing them away, and one day, he forgot where he was and _______ed on them.

[chris319]

Were the green ones for a separate permanent file, or something?

Maybe they were used on camera?

If the drawing exists for the Lightning Round mechanism, maybe Corey has his dad's drawing for the '60s MG question box or the trilon mechanism or the score roller.

We used to rewrite and reuse puzzles on P+. That was part of Jake's job.

[Eric Paddon]

Another example of a stale/repetitive formula is how everytime a question was Superman related, the answer was always supposed to be a variant of "land on his BLANK" with "S" as in their idea of a pun that after the tenth time wasn't funny at all.

[geno57]

If the drawing exists for the Lightning Round mechanism, maybe Corey has his dad's drawing for the '60s MG question box or the trilon mechanism or the score roller.

Something I love about that '60s MG question dispenser:  It was not mechanical at all.  Dick De -- who sat just offstage, behind a curtain -- would attach the card to a clip, which was on the end of a rod.  Then he'd push the rod up a track, which led into the box.  A mechanical sound effect would be played simultaneously, in the control room.

This comes directly from Dick De.

[Unrealtor]

I don't think tighter writing or cast chemistry would've changed that; they wrote, what, 10-15 Showcases for a week's worth of daytime and nighttime TPiRs, probably less if there was only one skit per episode? Compared to a good 10 riddles per show on MG, and I could see how burnout could happen.

What also springs to mind for me is that by the early 90s, it seems like they did one of the old stand-bys (train depot, every room in the house, Janice and Kathleen go to the mall) at least a couple of times a month, if not more like weekly.

[Matt Ottinger]

As much as a small handful of us might remember some of the more clever Showcases through the decades, I would suggest that the writing for Match Game was a constant necessity, and had to stay at a reasonably high level of quality for the show to work at all.  Whereas on Price, the show would have gone on just fine if nobody ever wrote a single humorous Showcase.

[BrandonFG]

What also springs to mind for me is that by the early 90s, it seems like they did one of the old stand-bys (train depot, every room in the house, Janice and Kathleen go to the mall) at least a couple of times a month, if not more like weekly.

You've now reminded me of the "Prizes related to the word ___" showcases that seemed to be a staff favorite in the late-90s/early-2000s...

[BillCullen1]

I never heard about Rayburn being unfaithful to his wife. I'm a little surprised, but I'm figuring Roger wouldn't lie about something about this. I can only imagine what he knows about Bob Barker that he might be keeping to himself. He does speak nicely of Tom Kennedy and Dennis James. I wonder if Roger worked on other G-T shows besides TPIR and MG.

[Vahan_Nisanian]

Did Barker ever have a grudge against Dennis James? Just curious.

[GrandGame1440]

I seem to recall him mentioning somewhere that he worked on the 70s version of Now You See It.

[TLEberle]

Did Barker ever have a grudge against Dennis James? Just curious.

Why would he need to?

[tvrandywest]

If the drawing exists for the Lightning Round mechanism, maybe Corey has his dad's drawing for the '60s MG question box or the trilon mechanism or the score roller.

Something I love about that '60s MG question dispenser:  It was not mechanical at all.  Dick De -- who sat just offstage, behind a curtain -- would attach the card to a clip, which was on the end of a rod.  Then he'd push the rod up a track, which led into the box.  A mechanical sound effect would be played simultaneously, in the control room.

This comes directly from Dick De.

Exactly correct. And the mechanical sound effect that was played was that of an electric cash register (for the kids, that's like the one used on TPiR's Grocery Game). And that comes directly from Mark G.

Randy
tvrandywest.com