The sideways wheel still is from the Shopper's Bazaar pilot. The other still in the promo is actually from the Wheel pilot with Edd Byrnes, and it appears that Edd's face was blurred out.
To my knowledge, Woolery never hosted a pilot under the Wheel of Fortune title. He hosted at least one pilot for Shopper's Bazaar in 1973, while Byrnes hosted at least two pilots for Wheel of Fortune in 1974.
As for your staging question, Neumms, the wheel was upstage center (at 12 o'clock). Chuck was positioned at a Dating Game-esque lectern at roughly 1 o'clock. The contestants were seated in chairs at 3 o'clock, directly opposite the puzzle board (9 o'clock). There was no hostess; the puzzle board consisted of pull cards (think the old Jeopardy! board, only smaller).
Interestingly enough, there was a variation on the used letter board that was actually visible on camera; the very bottom row of the puzzle board would display any letters that were called, similar to a typical pen-and-paper game of Hangman.
The wheel was not spun by the contestants, but rather was in continuous motion. The contestants would signal for Chuck to \"stop the wheel\", and Chuck would press a button that would interrupt the current that was keeping the wheel in motion. The wheel would slow to a stop, and whatever was under the one singular pointer (think Star Wheel) was what the player would play for.
Two real anomalies on the wheel: a $0 space (where a contestant could keep her turn by calling an appropriate letter, but would earn no money for it) and a \"Your Own Clue\" space. Your Own Clue allowed the player to pick up the clue phone on the table in front of them and hear (along with the studio audience, but not her opponents) whether the puzzle was a person, place, or thing, because that information wasn't given at the outset of the puzzle like on Wheel.
The shopping format was a little different. Players selected the four prizes they wanted to play for before the show, and in which order. If a player earned enough for prize #1 and solved the puzzle, that prize was won and the remaining money would be applied to prize #2, etc. All money carried over to each subsequent puzzle (even by the contestants who didn't solve the previous puzzle), but the only way to apply that money toward the prizes a player selected would be for her to solve a puzzle.
The Wheel pilots had the format and set that we all grew to know and love, just with different music (similar in style to \"Big Wheels\", but very minor, detective drama-sounding) and a frightening host (Byrnes).
I don't have any record of Woolery hosting a Wheel of Fortune pilot, and it's entirely conceivable that when the decision to scrap Byrnes was made, Merv might have felt comfortable going straight to series with Woolery, given all the similarities between Bazaar and Wheel. Can anyone back this up or refute it with something other than internet urban legend?
