Episodes of Whew! coming to Wink's page

[whewfan]

Just got notification through Facebook that at least 2 episodes of Whew! will be posted if the YouTube page gets 8000 subscribers. These are likely episodes that have not been traded around and are from the pre-celeb run.

[WarioBarker]

Here's the post in question.

These are likely episodes that [...] are from the pre-celeb run.

I can confirm this - the slates pictured (#131 and #133) are for the October 30 and November 2, 1979 shows (Whew! didn't air on November 1 due to Magazine), the latter being the last pre-Celebrity episode. Winc.'s already uploaded #132 (October 31, 1979), during which Tom noted the aforementioned pre-emption.

[Bob Zager]

I remember it was originally a three-week special, then went back to just contestants briefly, and became "Celebrity Whew!" permanently before Christmas-time.

I'd heard a story that not too long before the transition, there was a contestant who had won the game, the screen went blank for a few seconds, and then Tom Kennedy appeared solely, and mentioned that the contestant fell and broke his leg, and would not be able to continue.  Is this episode still around?

[WarioBarker]

I remember it was originally a three-week special, then went back to just contestants briefly, and became "Celebrity Whew!" permanently before Christmas-time.

Just confirmed this with a brief (free) search in the Variety archives for mentions of "Celebrity Whew" in 1979 - the only result I got (10/31/79 Weekly, Page 48) noted that the show "will have a one-week relapse to just plain "Whew" again during the week of Nov. 26-30."

[KrisW73]

I'd heard a story that not too long before the transition, there was a contestant who had won the game, the screen went blank for a few seconds, and then Tom Kennedy appeared solely, and mentioned that the contestant fell and broke his leg, and would not be able to continue.  Is this episode still around?

I wanted to add this sounds like the contestant that walked up to the Gauntlet to Pomp and Circumstance as opposed to the usual bumper. The story sounds right and in that case I would assume Bart Sugarman would have the only copy as it hasn't appeared in the wild (yet).

[TimK2003]

I'd heard a story that not too long before the transition, there was a contestant who had won the game, the screen went blank for a few seconds, and then Tom Kennedy appeared solely, and mentioned that the contestant fell and broke his leg, and would not be able to continue.  Is this episode still around?

I wanted to add this sounds like the contestant that walked up to the Gauntlet to Pomp and Circumstance as opposed to the usual bumper. The story sounds right and in that case I would assume Bart Sugarman would have the only copy as it hasn't appeared in the wild (yet).

The contestant was a police detective, nicknamed "Blackie", who broke his leg going into commercial after winning the match.  He did return on a later episode (literally to "Pomp & Circumstance" music) a few weeks later after another contestant "retired" by winning the Gauntlet. They picked up where he left off and took on the Gauntlet to continue his run.  He wasted no time as he won the $25K minutes after his return.