Television: Truth and Consequences

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Far better are the shows whose absurdity is a byproduct of seemingly innocent good intentions. Some of these are legendary. In NBC's The Diamond Head Game (1975), set on a Waikiki beach, contestants entered an isolation booth in a papier-mâché volcano and dived for greenbacks that "erupted" from below. In ABC's Money Maze (1974), wives ran around, like rats in a huge labyrinth, after cash and merchandise. The Neighbors, chaired briefly by Regis Philbin in 1975, pitted actual neighbors against each other in the effort to discover who exhibited the most shabby behavior back home. Other outrageous games have been fronted by some of television's most esteemed personalities. Mike Wallace, who once investigated games on 60 Minutes, was the host of Who Pays? in 1959: on that show, players had to match butlers, chauffeurs and maids with their celebrity employers.

David Susskind prefigured Chuck Barris with Supermarket Sweep (1965), in which housewives raced down the aisles of a grocery store trying to stuff a cart with goodies. Mark Goodson and the late Bill Todman, usually the classiest of games producers (What's My Line?), are responsible for The New Price Is Right, the most frantic of current shows.

These days, however, some of the most bizarre games are those that feature stars rather than ordinary housewives. The trend solidified when the long-running Hollywood Squares first hit it big in 1966, thus inspiring a score of imitation shows built around show-business players. Unfortunately, there are not enough celebrities to go around; for some reason, big names like Redford and Streisand have not yet been persuaded to play Password Plus. To counteract this talent shortage, producers have created their own stars—often with unintentionally hilarious results. Game shows are often a grazing ground for feeble Borscht Belt comics and the depressed lead actors of canceled prime-time series. When these forgotten celebrities are not to be found, "stars" are literally created overnight. On The Match Game, Host Gene Rayburn always treats Player Brett Somers as if she were the toast of Beverly Hills—but had anyone ever heard of her before she did games? Carol Wayne has been doing a dumb blond (or, lately, dumb brunet) act for years on game shows, apparently on the premise that viewers might confuse her with Jayne Mansfield. Alex Trebek turns up on Hollywood Squares, even though his only claim to celebrityhood comes from serving as host on other game shows. Since the other squares are at times occupied by the likes of Vince Edwards, the Hudson brothers, the Gabor sisters and Margaret Truman, the viewer often feels as if he has stumbled into a video black hole full of fame's has-beens and never-weres.

Game shows are not always merry.