Dick Cavett writes about his experiences as a celeb on what started life as The $10,000 Pyramid and escalated, as all amounts of money that are not your income seem to do, towards higher amounts. Mr. Cavett was a fine player of that game.
He apparently did not have to "audition" to be on it but at some point, some celebrities did. They'd had a few who had not done so well on-air to the point where the contestants (the "civilians," as Cavett calls them) really didn't have a prayer of winning the Big Money…and it's not good TV if they don't seem to have a chance. So an actor I knew had to prove he could play the game. He was a regular on a popular TV series but he had to go into the production office one Monday morning and ace a practice game they'd play there.
All weekend, he honed his Pyramiding skills and I was one of those who prepped him. The show had sent over a tape (I think it was Beta) of episodes to show how it was done and he went out and bought a copy of the home game only to find it didn't contain the bonus round (i.e., The Pyramid). It didn't have a trace of Dick Clark on its packaging either, which is just the kind of thing Dick Clark Productions would have done if they'd owned the show and had a host they didn't want to cut in on the product either.
So we practiced and practiced, which meant I had to write out Pyramid categories for him to list for the other friends he was playing against. And we watched the tape of episodes which all featured either Cavett or Tony Randall, who I guess were deemed to be superior players. Both had rapid minds when it came to inventing clues and both seemed to understand — as we were told some celebrity players didn't — that on a show like this, there was a time to be funny and there was a time to focus on helping your partner win what for them might be life-changing, pay-off-the-MasterCard money.
My TV star friend apparently could not master that last part. When he went in on Monday to play for the staff, he said something during the bonus round that got a tremendous laugh from everyone in the room…but he didn't win the money. When informed he'd done wrong, he argued that the laugh had not cost his partner the loot; that by that point, she was clearly not going to win the $10,000 or however much was on the line. True, the producers told him…but the home audience wouldn't see it that way. They'd consider it a tragedy that the contestant had lost…and here was this boorish TV star kidding around and not taking the game seriously.
"So I'm not going to be one of your celebrity players?" he asked.
"I'm sorry," the producer said. "But no."
The TV star thought for a half-second then asked, "In that case, could I come on as a contestant?"