Gameshows Then And Now: Discussion & Wishlist

[shapeshifter]

This evening BUZZR TV aired an episode of the Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour in which Gene Rayburn gave a Match Game clue that went something like:
   Boxers often get cauliflower ears. In a fight with Michael [bleep] I got a cauliflower blank.
He read it 3 times, and each time they bleeped the word or name after "Michael."
All of the answers were "knees." Does anyone know what was bleeped?
It ran from October 31, 1983 to July 27, 1984.

ETA: a poster on the BUZZR TV thread answered my question. It was 

Spoiler

midget

Edited December 13, 2019 by shapeshifter

[bmasters9]

Buzzr has an old CBS Tom Kennedy game show on now called Whew!; it's kind of like a timed mountain climb version of Jeopardy!. What you had to do is correct what were called "bloopers" (clues with one part wrong, usually, but not always, the last part). You (the player playing the board, who was called the "charger") had to do that once per level on each of 6 levels within a minute; your opponent (the "blocker") could stymie and frustrate that goal by laying "blocks" (6 in total), and if you ran into one, you lost 5 seconds from your clock. If you fulfilled the goal (reached the top), you won a round; else, the blocker did.

Here's an early episode of Whew! uploaded by the great Wink Martindale; this will, I trust, illustrate what that short-lived CBS game was all about:

 

[shapeshifter]

At last I have the definitive pronunciation of "Whew!'

[bmasters9]

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

At last I have the definitive pronunciation of "Whew!'

Hearing Tom Kennedy say it, I take it?

[shapeshifter]

31 minutes ago, bmasters9 said:

1 hour ago, shapeshifter said:

At last I have the definitive pronunciation of "Whew!'

Hearing Tom Kennedy say it, I take it?

Yes. 
Tom Kennedy really had the Game Show Host persona down.

Interesting that the game's difficulty was baked into the complexity of the process rather than the trivia.
Today that would be a ratings failure waiting to happen, but back then there wasn't much on TV, so the audience would eventually catch on.

Edited September 6, 2021 by shapeshifter

[bmasters9]

And BTW, an example of a "blooper" (this one not used on the show, though): "In The Kissing Booth films, Elle Evans was played by actress Joey Bishop" (correct answer: King). The underlined part is what was incorrect, and what had to be corrected.

Also, the bonus game was called The Gauntlet of Villains, and the winning player had to correct 10 more bloopers in the basic space of 60 sec., plus one more second for every $100 earned in the game during charging and blocking (so if a player had, say, $700 won up front, that would be 7 more seconds added onto the base minute, so the player would have 67 seconds to clear the villains). Each villain had a screen called a "Telly Belly," and Tom would read a blooper with the last part wrong (here, in the bonus game, only the last part was wrong with each blooper). If the player was right and in time, the villain's arm would lower, and the player could continue; else, he/she had to stay on that villain as long as it took to defeat it. $100 was paid for each correct answer, but clearing the villains won $25K and retired the player (because CBS' winnings limit at the time was $25K; IIRC, there is no limit now).

Here is an example of a successful Gauntlet run by well-known (albeit deceased) player Randy Amasia:

 

[shapeshifter]

2 hours ago, bmasters9 said:

well-known (albeit deceased) player Randy Amasia

Interesting:
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1214386/bio
http://www.illustriousgameshowpage.com/farewell.html

[Giuseppe]

On 9/5/2021 at 6:41 PM, bmasters9 said:

Buzzr has an old CBS Tom Kennedy game show on now called Whew!; it's kind of like a timed mountain climb version of Jeopardy!.

I thought I knew, or at least had heard of just about every game show from the decade or so before I was born, but when BUZZR started airing this, I was like "What?? A game show called Whew!? I'd never heard of this in my life. I was working from home a lot during this time and usually had BUZZR on in the background in the afternoon while I worked, so this show kind of 'interrupted' my routine. Gotta say, I disliked it immensely. Something about the cartoony 70s images along with the weird color pallet of the big board and the odd set design just really didn't sit well with my eyes. An admittedly weird series of reasons for not liking a show, but there it is, lol.

Edited May 13, 2022 by Giuseppe