Roger Dobkowitz Interview

[tvrandywest]

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.

Mr. Rayburn was very fond of women, and that included women other than his wife, during her life and following her passing. And that came directly from Gene R.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

[chris319]

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.

That was for the rotating panels in front of the players that said "MATCH". I don't think the question box had a sound effect. Gene would simply pull the card out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ6DBUZerig&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PLF0D49640C1E89065

[Vgmastr]

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...

Ugh, those were awful.  The worst I can remember was prizes related to the word spot, and for the final prize the script was "...and finally, behind the door you'll spot a brand new car!"  Pretty obvious they weren't even trying at that point.

[Don Howard]

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

Indeed he did. He is listed sixth on the list of six people mentioned under the heading Production Staff.
Source: The credit crawl on the NYSI episode where Rosemary broke the $17000 jackpot.

[Jimmy Owen]

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.

Mr. Rayburn was very fond of women, and that included women other than his wife, during her life and following her passing. And that came directly from Gene R.

Randy
tvrandywest.com

There was this motel in Encino....

[toddyo]

[dale_grass]

There was this motel in Encino....

Where girls from Genoa pleased Geno.
Once vino was drank
They'd blank on his blank
Til Carlo would shout "Tempo fino!"

[Jimmy Owen]

There was this motel in Encino....

Where girls from Genoa pleased Geno.
Once vino was drank
They'd blank on his blank
Til Carlo would shout "Tempo fino!"

If this were Facebook this would get a "like."

[Hastin]

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.

Looks like this happened on Wednesday night:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGlJv0v3xFo&feature=share%27%2C%29

[clemon79]

There was this motel in Encino....

Where girls from Genoa pleased Geno.
Once vino was drank
They'd blank on his blank
Til Carlo would shout "Tempo fino!"

Thread over. Someone wanna get the lights on the way out?

/bravo!

[chris319]

The "production staff" were people hired only for taping days at the low, low rate (IIRC) of $25 per day plus a catered lunch. They were not on the show's payroll as salaried employees of the show. Writers ("editorial staff"), researchers, contestant coordinators, producers, directors, EPs, "creative consultants", etc. were on the show's payroll. Announcers and models were considered daily hires (per diems) and were paid scale. Emcees made whatever they agreed upon with Mr. Goodson, or in the case of Bob Barker, the network. We also used G-T employees who held AFTRA cards as stand-ins for rehearsals and they were paid AFTRA scale.

To the best of my knowledge, Roger was not on the MG payroll but was a per-diem studio P.A. If he was listed on the credits of NYSI as being on the production staff, he was also a per-diem studio P.A. for that show.

[wdm1219inpenna]

Of course, there were many questions that would get the response "tinkle" and "boobs". They stopped questions of that nature sometime in the '78 run. I'm not saying those questions were THAT frequent, but enough to be milked for the first 5 years.


Forgive me, but I couldn't let this unintentional funny go by the wayside.....

The reference to boobs followed by "milked" was just too good to ignore!

Very disappointing things to learn about Mr. Rayburn I must say.  He did have an ego, that much was certain, but I never realized how cheap he was, or how surly he could become off the air, at least as told by Roger.  There are always 3 sides to a story, side 1, side 2, and the truth, which usually lies someplace in between.

[Kevin Prather]

I know I heard somwhere that Gene got hepatitis. Maybe that's how he got it - fooling around with other women. IIRC, David Letterman was talking about it while he was interviewing someone. Rayburn's hepatitis came up as a subject of discussion, for whatever reason.

Ahem.