You're all familiar with the game shows Match Game and Hollywood Squares, right? Well, in 1983 there was a brief, shining moment when neither of those two shows was on the air in either its original form or one of the umpteen revivals. Someone at NBC decided that America could not be without them a moment longer and brought them back as a combined hour.
A two-game game show, they felt, needed two hosts. They hired Gene Rayburn, who'd hosted the first two incarnations of Match Game but they did not hire Peter Marshall, who'd been the host of the original Hollywood Squares. Reportedly, he was not even approached and I have no idea why. To handle the game he'd launched, they brought in Jon "Bowzer" Bauman, the breakout star of the rock 'n' roll group Sha Na Na.
For the first half of that hour, Rayburn would host Match Game with six celebrities, one of whom would be Bauman. Halfway through, they'd add three more celebrities, slap another tier of seats on the set and Gene and Jon would switch places. They'd then play Hollywood Squares with Mr. Bauman hosting. At the end, Rayburn would take back the host microphone as the winning contestant for the day played the Match Game bonus round for serious bucks.
It must have sounded good in the meetings but it didn't attract a huge audience and ended after — if we are to believe Wikipedia and we shouldn't always — 191 episodes. I have no idea how a Monday-thru-Friday show could have an episode count that wasn't a multiple of five but that's what it says. In any case, there were probably a number of reasons why the combined might of two hugely-powerful game shows didn't run anywhere near as long as either had individually, one being that the shows were too similar so each made the other look unremarkable.
Also, I don't think they always got stars who were up to the challenge of being amusing in quick spurts. The hired a lot of folks who were there not because they were entertaining panelists but because they were on a hit prime time show and some weren't all that funny. Years later in a Twitter post, Jon Bauman wrote, "Understand that this was the only completely honest version of Hwd Squares ever where no Squares were sitting there with the punch lines of the jokes in front of them." Maybe that was part of the problem.
I worked with Bauman on another show soon after — he was a very nice, smart guy by the way — and we got to talking about the MG-HS Hour and why it didn't succeed. He told me about that honesty and also about one slight bit of dishonesty that did sneak in a few times. ..
The way Match Game was played, questions would be asked of the stars and they'd each write down one response, then display it when called upon. In Round 1 of a two-round game, the contestant would try to match all six stars. In Round 2, only the stars who'd gone unmatched in Round 1 would play. According to Jon, there was one recurring panelist who craved the extra screen time that would be his if he played in both rounds…so in Round 1, he'd quickly write down two responses. When called upon to display his answer, he would show one that didn't match the contestant. Ergo, the star got to play in Round 2. Jon said he wouldn't tell me who the star was but I guessed and he said I was right. He would not like it if I told you.
And there may have been other reasons why the show didn't fly. Both game shows in their original forms had developed a family of regular "stars" (as is common, the noun was used hopefully) but the hour amalgam didn't really even try to do that. And it didn't have a great time slot and maybe it was too much of the same thing…
In any case: It went off and for a long time, those episodes weren't rerun anywhere because one company owned Match Game and another company owned Hollywood Squares. They'd forged some sort of partnership alliance to do the original hours but were unable to come to terms for a syndication deal. That finally got solved and now they're rerunning on the Buzzr cable network which features all game shows, all the time.
And here's what prompted me to write about it. Right now, they're running episodes from a week in which one of the panelists was a hero of mine…the great satirist, Stan Freberg! I knew Stan quite well and thought I knew just about everything he'd ever done but I never knew about this.
How he got on this show, I have no idea. Maybe — and this is a reach — it had something to do with the producer, who was Robert Sherman, son of Allan Sherman. Robert and I went to high school together but we've only talked twice in the last fifty years so I may not be able to ask him. But his father, of course, was a great performer of song parodies, most notably "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh." People were often getting Allan's repertoire confused with Stan's and telling Stan how much they loved "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh."
I believe the first episode with Stan aired last night so you have four more chances to catch one and see him in one of his few game show appearances. If you watch, keep in mind he may not come on until the middle of the show. The other guests in the week include Willie Tyler & Lester, Marcia Wallace, Bruce Baum and Bill Rafferty.