It Actually Happened: And They're Off!

We're always happy to stumble across obscure game shows, especially those which involve notable names, so it did bring a smile to our face when the 1974 pilot for a short-lived show called Celebrity Sweepstakes came our way. This ran early in the morning on weekdays when I was in school (and if I was off school, I probably was still snoozing at 9:00am!) so I missed seeing it. Ever. This 25-minute dose of insanity can be viewed on YT here for those of a mind to see it.  

Alfred Hitchcock once famously said that actors should be treated like cattle. But here, they're more in line with horses at the starting gate! A foliage-riddled set contains a row of numbered guest stars who will be roundly exposed for their lack of trivial knowledge!

#1 is John Astin, longtime actor best known for portraying the suave, cigar-wielding Gomez Addams on The Addams Family.

Next to him at #2 is Lucie Arnaz, daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, who prior to working on the Broadway stage was a costar of Here's Lucy alongside her mother and brother. 

#3 is Ted Knight, who went from a serviceable character actor to a household name when cast as weatherman and self-loving dullard Ted Baxter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. 

In the #4 position is Patty Duke Astin, John's then-wife and an Oscar-winner for her role in The Miracle Worker (1962.) She also had been a sitcom star with The Patty Duke Show and is immortal as Neely O'Hara in Valley of the Dolls (1967.)

Next to her at #5 is Dean Jones, who'd been the leading man in a considerable string of Disney comedies such as That Darn Cat! (1965), The Love Bug (1968) and The Million Dollar Duck (1971.) He also famously walked away from the hit Broadway musical Company after only a few weeks (leaving his successor Larry Kert to pick up a Tony nomination.)

And rounding out the participants in slot #6 is former child star Jane Withers, who'd since become well-known for playing Josephine the Plumber in a long-running series of TV ads for Comet cleanser. 

The concept was unusual to say the least. The celebs were placed in their starting gate and...

...the studio audience was called upon to participate by figuring the odds of a given question being answered correctly by one of the celebs. 

Host James MacKrell would read a question...

...and the audience would then use the machines in front of them to select one of the 6 places before them, choosing the person they felt was most likely to answer that question correctly. 

This meant that Aunt Fran, Uncle Stu and cousin Jerry were basically sizing up the celebs and picking the one they felt had the best chance of coughing up the answer!

Then a computer would "lay odds" on the stars. In this instance, people thought Ted Knight would nail it, so he was the "favorite" while they figured Jane Withers wouldn't know her ass from a hole in the ground. (At least fewer folks chose her - or John Astin - than the others.) 

Over amongst more foliage were three contestants who used the odds assigned to the celebrities to bet some of their money, hoping to pick a winner and clean up. 

In this instance we have Sandi,

Cy

and Jackie.

The celebs, not knowing in advance who might be called on, all wrote their answers down.

Then the success rate was kept track of on this big board. 

So if you were called on, but couldn't provide a correct answer (which was often the case), you were revealed as a dim bulb. 

Knight, being in the midst of a hit series, seemed to be called on quite a bit whether he knew anything or not. 

Jones seemed to get answers right more often than not. 

Arnaz seemed utterly hopeless. She couldn't answer anything...!

Finally the audience figured there was no chance of her ever giving a correct answer so she wound up with 46 to 1 (!) odds!!

As everyone tittered at this, she got up and tried to break out of her little stable cell, but two armed Pinkerton guards must have been on the other side and prevented her from escaping. Note that the crew/producers have her first name misspelled on her placard! 

Cy was drowning and was all the way down to $5.00! 

He decided to jump off the cliff and choose her because on the off chance that she could provide the right answer, he'd clean up. 

To the amazement of Cy and everyone else within a 15 mile radius of the studio, she actually got the answer right!! 

Suddenly, with that, he leapt from third place to first!

Duke, on the other hand, had been laughing so much during the question that she failed to even write anything down at all! 

I couldn't help but be fascinated that Arnaz was situated on a panel with Duke, considering that Arnaz' mother Lucy loathed Duke from her entanglement with her son Desi Jr and the scandal that found Duke pregnant by one man, believing it was the offspring Desi's and then marrying the first one to give the child a "name." But they were divorced long before the child's birth. The child, Sean Astin (adopted by John), was an adult before his true parentage was all sorted out. It was the first husband's! 

This was one of the big prizes available that day. 

Losers were consoled by a gift certificate for the then omnipresent Spiegel catalog.

The game proceeded with race-themed segments called "The Home Stretch"...

...and "All or Nothing." 

When the show went to air regularly, a number of changes in format were made, but this is the general way that it went that first time. 

Whoever designed this long board was very ambitious about how much the various celebrities might know! I learned long ago from celebrity editions of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! that it's rare and remarkable when a star has any considerable store of knowledge. LOL 

This publicity flyer was issued to affiliates who might be open to carrying the program. There were both daytime and nighttime renditions, though neither lasted for very long. Depicted on it are the host, MacKrell, with two contestants (down from the initial three) and celebs Joey Bishop, JoAnn Pflug, George Hamilton, Carol Wayne, Dick Martin and Dan Rowan.  

Here you'll find some other names who popped up on the show (most of which is not available for viewing thanks to the then-standard practice of "wiping" -- erasing and reusing -- the videotape.) More nighttime episodes have survived than the daytime ones.

Bishop and Wayne were basically regulars on the show, with the other four spots rotating. Here we have Clifton Davis on hand (versus Dick Martin, whose image was on the flyer.) 

Here, from one of the few surviving eps that have been uploaded to YT, is another lineup: James Farentino, his then-wife Michele Lee, Peter Haskell, Wayne, Nipsey Russell and Anne Meara. 

Here we can see some of the "enhancement" of the set in the regular series. 

If the host MacKrell seems familiar to you, it may be because he appeared in quite a few movies and TV shows as a reporter or as a game show host. 

He is unforgettable to us here in The Underworld for his appearance on The Golden Girls as the host of "Grab That Dough," a game show which saw the greed-driven four girls split into two opposing teams and wound up with Dorothy (and her "meat hooks") situated in a booth with cash fluttering about!

The nighttime rendition of the show began with this artwork as the traditional anthem "First Call" (aka "Call to the Post') was played on a trumpet.

Here's another celebrity roundup: Greg Mullavey, Pearl Bailey, Dick Gautier, Wayne, Lonnie Shorr (WHO?!) and Jaye P. Morgan. 

We've adored Gautier for as far back as our memory can stretch.

He is practically the king of 1970s open shirt (with requisite gold chain) and often seems as if his game show appearances began before he could finish dressing! LOL

One rather fateful (and rather ghoulish) installment had Joey Bishop, Lucie Arnaz (back for more!) and Buddy Hackett sharing the stage with three others of note. 

First was Robert Blake, who was accused in 2002 of murdering his wife. He was (controversially) acquitted, but found liable in civil court. Next is Freddie Prinze, who committed suicide by handgun in 1977. And then Wayne, whose then-husband Burt Sugarman produced Sweepstakes. She was discovered dead at 42 in 1985 following an argument with her boyfriend which was ruled accidental.  

And with that we are across the finish line for this post. If you're in the mood for some celebrity cheese, do head to YT to check out some of the episodes which have been kindly uploaded. Quite a few are from the original studio masters and are in good condition (versus the pilot I featured here, which was from second or third generation video!)