MGPM tonight

[melman1]

This episode is from the fall of 1980... Allen Ludden's last appearance since he suffered a stroke in late October (Edwin Newman announced this in his news segment on one of the last episodes of \"The David Letterman Show\" which went off the air at that time).

The episode guide at matchgame.org says that GSN does not show the daily syndie shows from this week, so the PM show is all that remains.

Johnny O. introduced Allen \"from Password Plus\".  Didn't P+ replace Letterman?

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Jul 31 2003, 06:39 PM\'] Didn't P+ replace Letterman? [/quote]
 No, P+ started in 1979, I believe. Wasn't it the other way around?

[melman1]

Now that I think about it, Las Vegas Gambit and Card Sharks replaced Letterman - he made fun of this all through their last week.

The Letterman show was 90 minutes at first, later cut back to 60.  And P+ aired for quite a while after Ludden died, with Tom Kennedy hosting IIRC.

[zachhoran]

On 10/27/80, Letterman was replaced by Blockbusters and Las Vegas Gambit when cancelled. 30 of Letterman's 90 minutes had been replaced by the soap Texas two months earlier(Another World was lowered from 90 to 60 minutes at that time). P+ had nearly two years on the air at that point, premiering on 1/8/79. 10/27/80 was also the day on which Tom Kennedy took over the P+ reins from the ailing Ludden. The MGPM episode with Ludden and White from 1980 was taped while Ludden was still doing P+.

[melman1]

Very sad to watch this MG knowing what was to come very soon after, and also knowing that Allen and Betty knew the condition he was in.  They both hid it very well, being the professionals they are/were.

[melman1]

Also - I saved an article on the history of Password that came from http://tvgameshows.5u.com/password.htm .  But this site no longer seems to exist.  Anybody know what happened to it?

[curtking]

I don't know where the original is, but the Web Archive still has a few versions of the page:

Web Archive

Curt

[Timsterino]

I caught this on the 12:30am airing. Thank you for the heads up!  I have to say that anytime Allen Ludden or Bill Cullen were panelists on any show, it made me smile. They were IMHO the greatest.

Tim :-)

[Ian Wallis]

P+ had nearly two years on the air at that point, premiering on 1/8/79

-----

\"Password Plus\" did premiere on January 8, 1979, along with Bob Eubanks' \"All-Star Secrets\".  They both replaced a show called \"America Alive\", an hour-long attempt at a live talk show.  On the January 5, 1979 \"Card Sharks\", Bob appeared promoting the debut of \"All-Star Secrets\".  This show has been run by GSN and is in many game show collections.

\"Password Plus\" was reportedly going to be called \"Password '79\", but the title was changed just before the first taping.

[Matt Ottinger]

Also - I saved an article on the history of Password that came from http://tvgameshows.5u.com/password.htm . But this site no longer seems to exist. Anybody know what happened to it?

That article was written by Steve Beverly, and it was a part of Steve's website back when it was more of a general fan site.  Since then, he's changed providers at least a couple of times, and he hasn't made recovering all that past data a priority.  Ironically, many of the links on his page (including the one for Allen Ludden) are dead links to his own former providers.