Seeing the Kennedy PW+'s again reminded me of the stories of how Gene Rayburn, Peter Marshall, and Bill Cullen were also candidates as Allen's permanent successor. Now from the stories I know why each couldn't or didn't want to do it (a little fuzzy on Peter's situation though). But my question is, how well of a fit do you think PW+ would have been for each of the hosts?

Bill of course did a good job as usual in his four weeks as sub host. I talked a bit about Gene on my GSN review (over at my Blurty...visit today! ;-)) and how BTB85 was actually close as far as the puzzles. But of course it wasn't the "same" Gene there, as by his admission (I believe) it was a straight Q&A otherwise...at least the main game was. I thought the main game was easily BTB's better half (both with Gene and Joe Farago), I'd imagine it'd be even better given guest stars for Gene to interact with. Still, it would be odd to see him outside of MG. As for Peter...his voice ever so slightly resembled that of Allen's, but other than that I really haven't seen much of him outside of HS-like shows. So can't really call that one.

What do you think, sirs?

I'm going to go off the board and vote for Art Fleming. In your mind's ear, listen to him call out those Alphabetics board letters with each successful solve.

If not Tom, then Bill. Gene would have been too restrained (plus he'd have to be in Cali more than he would have liked.) Peter would have been ok. All three were doing five-day-a-week shows at the time so they may have been too busy. Tom was only doing two NTTs a week in addition to P+. Of course, had Whew! survived.......

I had thought that is The Price is Right hadn't been successful, Bob Barker would have been great as a Password host.

I disagree. (Now here's where we need Peter Marshall!) Bob is wonderful with audience participation games like TorC and TPIR, or even beauty pageants--anything where he gets lots of time to interact with the participants and isn't bound too strictly by the format. A format-driven show like P+ would restrict him too much. He might have been a competent replacement, but I don't think he would have been the best choice.

Of those suggested in the original query, I'd have to go with Uncle Bill. Art Fleming, however, isn't a bad suggestion. Art James, Jack Narz, or even Jim Peck would have been good, too.

Then there's always the possibility that Bert Convy could have gotten the job. Although many have problems with his schmoozing with the stars, there's no denying he got 4 1/2 years out of SP, so perhaps he wouldn't have been a bad choice for the P+ job, either.

I think Gene would have done a good job. He's a smart guy, and he wasn't as wild at the end of MG's run as he was earlier.

Seeing Convy on Super Password this week, he reminds me a little of John Davidson doing Pyramid, just in that the game's a little cerebral for him. Obviously, he can run a game much better than Davidson, and granted, it did have a good run, but it wasn't the perfect match, as Tattletales was.

That's interesting...as seeing PW+ again, I notice that when Tom started hosting, it started feeling a bit more like SP...I can't totally explain it, but somehow I thought of what you said about Bert above. Tom was quite less subdued than Allen, so maybe that's it?

What would you think of Eubanks doing Password? If a new version of Super Password came along, I could see it..a bit older, doing fewer goofy grins, reacting to odd clues like he did to some of the Newlywed Game answers. The old Password benefitted from a more cerebral host, making a simple game come off as classier. Keep him just moving the game along in a classic hosting style, and a little more casual..do you think he could pull it off?

My God. I would plunge a knife directly into my skull.

"Fourth and final cluuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue."

No, wait, let me guess...You don't like Bob Eubanks?

I can't stand Tomtato Head Eubanks, either.

If a new version of Password came out, I think Marc Summers would be a good host of it. He's laid back enough but I think he'd keep the game moving.

Fair enough. Figure he's incapable of a style transplant, eh? I may have hoped too much...

The fact that he's spent 30+ years hosting every show in the same pukey DJ style pretty much proves that, I think.

Mind, there are hosts I hate FAR more than Eubanks. I simply think his style (which is damned perfect for The Newlywed Game) was inappropriate for some of the shows he's done, and that some of the suggestions for shows he'd be good at are, with all due respect, wrong. My own damn opinion, nobody elses. :)

Byron Allen, fresh off of "Real People", should have been considered.

Whoops! Posting on the wrong topic. Continue....

Actually, I'd propose Bill Rafferty.

He's truly under-rated as a host. He did a great job with CS and BB '87.

The thing with P+ is that firstly, TK was picked in part by Betty and Allen themselves to take over. As Betty said "Tom took good care of Password", and secondly, if you watch the show and see the wide shots, it looks like Ludden is still there. Tom has the same glasses and overall appearance.

(Note he looks *younger* on TPIR 85, and that's probably because they had him dye his hair for the job)

As with most of us, I was a game show fan from a young age. I didn't know who Allen Ludden and Tom Kennedy were until I got a little older, but when I was about 6 1/2 or 7, and watching that show, I remember thinking, "I don't think that's the same guy that they started with..."

"It's more than Password -- it's Password Puke!"

Don't believe everything you read in celebrity autobiographies.

That's why I said in part

To refresh my memory, Chris, can you post anything on the actual selection of TK?

I really think TK did a good job with P+ and made the show his. Also, he had very big shoes to fill, and he filled them well.

G-T seemed to do an excellent job picking hosts for their creations and revivals.

Not to change the topic but who was the WORST host that G-T ever drafted?

Allen and Betty were very tight-lipped about Allen's illness until he suffered his stroke. For Allen and/or Betty to have "picked" or even suggested a long-term replacement would have tipped us off to the seriousness of his illness.


It would be betwen Dick Martin and Sonny Fox.

Well, there's always Lee Bowman, but that was before your time. And I think Frank Buxton was probably a washout too, given Robert Q. Lewis replaced him.

Seriously, Eubanks wouldn't have been in contention. At that point, Goodson still had a bee in his bonnet over Rhyme and Reason, and wouldn't have considered Eubanks for anything. He got over it a few years later.

Ol' reliable Jim Peck would have been an option, but I'm pretty sure they wanted a more well-known name. To be honest, Kennedy was as good as anyone else they could have had.

A couple of other gentlemen who had worked for Goodson in the past and might have been good were Alex Trebek and Monty Hall. They both had to go to Vancouver for work (Monty got paid, though. Right?)

What we don't know, but can only speculate, is that ABC may have been influential in Eubanks getting Trivia Trap in the same way CBS was influential in Monty getting Beat the Clock. Goodson would never have hired Monty of his own free will, given that they were direct business competitors.

Alex may have been too cool (aloof?) to establish a rapport with celebrities, at least that may have been the perception.

As far as Eubanks goes, you have pretty much accented the points I made in the first statment - it would have to be now, not then - he would have to drop the Mr. Top-40 ramrod announcer style and be casual, and he'd have to let the players and contestants be the focus, not himself, allowing just some occasional "what were you thinking?" facial reactions to odd clues. I think there are some similarities in the style of hosting for Password and Newlywed Game, but Bob's warm interaction skills have never been strong. At least to me, anyway. The one thing that was hardest to reconcile about Eubanks was..even though a Bob developed it, it just sounded strange to hear a "Bob" announced as the star of Password. A lighter game, yes... But enough on that.

As far as G-T host picks, did Mark approve or just reluctantly accept the selection of Bowzer on Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour? Did being a co-producer limit his say on some things, since Squares was an Orion property? And as much as I like Bob and Ray as performers, what few episodes I saw of The Name's The Same, they seemed uncomfortable in an unscripted situation.

Eubanks says in his book (or at least the early galley form; I haven't gotten the finished book) that he ran into Goodson's attorney at LAX and asked to audition for Goodson, and got Trivia Trap a few weeks later. It's possible ABC might have made some sort of deal with Hill-Eubanks (that was Bob's production company in the early '80s) that fell through, and ABC gave Eubanks a payoff by having him host Trivia Trap (isn't that more or less how Monty would up on All-New Beat the Clock?). That's the only possible quid pro quo I can think of; Eubanks hadn't hosted anything for ABC since Rhyme and Reason closed shop eight years before.

Eubanks says in the book he would be terrible at hosting Jeopardy; I don't think he'd be especially good at Password, either. It's the sort of game where, if things are going well, the host isn't especially noticeable, and Eubanks has never been the receding type. (Well, maybe his hairline...)

Yes on both counts...PW+ did indeed have real winners guiding the show in Tom, Allen, and Bill. And up until 1991, G-T/MGP seemed to make bringing back shows effortless, even the short-lived revivals had some merit. If only their successors at Fremantle had the same magic powers...

See that's the thing. Goodson and his associates knew how to tinker with a format and make it work. Shows like the current-day TPIR, Match Game 7x, Password Plus, and to a lesser extent the various '80s revivals all showed that change isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, once Mark died, so did all the creativity. The folks at Fremantle can't seem to change things without messing them up badly, so really, the best advice for them is to play it safe. Hopefully they'll keep that in mind if they ever choose to revive Password.

I think a lot of it with G-T was they had the clout to pretty much pick their own hosts. They knew the host inventory they had and knew where to place them.

If we look at the hosts that G-T used, they were very hesitant to bring in new hosts unless they *had* to. (Almost all the major hosts have worked for G-T at least once and been pretty good at it)

The 80s gave us several brand new hosts (Combs, Henry, Bowman and Rafferty), of varying quality. After watching Rafferty, he is as I've said is *very* under-rated as a host. I'm watching Eubanks CS now and it seems to drag on and on, Rafferty kept things moving and didn't ramble nearly as much as Eubanks did.

I'm not convinced Eubanks was Mark's first choice for CS. I think that Rafferty would have been better on the daytime version, but with Eubanks doing NG during that era, I'm guessing that was why Rafferty was tapped for the night time version)

Every other host that G-T used in the 80s was someone they'd already used prior.

Even Ross Shafer wasn't *that* bad on MG '90. He had the format down, it was the lousy match-up thing (ABC possibly responsible for!?) I saw a lot of Gene Rayburn in him, he wasn't as fully comfortable with the format as he should or could have been.

This is somewhat straying from the topic, but I found it interesting that "Blockbusters" on NBC was up against "Card Sharks" on CBS. So Rafferty had to compete against a version of a show he hosted in syndication. Would that fall under irony?

I recall reading a story about Ludden's stroke and not quite knowing what that meant (I was 9 years old at the time) -- but I figured it had something to do with why I saw Tom some months later on the show. I don't recall ever seeing a Cullen episode in first run.

No, that would fall under coincidence. :-)

Random but on-topic thought: We know CBS and Goodson had to find a new host for CS since Jim Perry was busy with $ale of the Century. Had Jim been available, would he have gotten a look?

ObCS: Anyone else find it odd that the syndicated CS used art cards for the short credit roll while CBS used CGI for the daytime show?

There's an O'Jays song in there somewhere...

Two things to further this topic:
FIRST! Allen was in no condition to "hand-pick" anything. Months later, when he was heard but not seen on Hour Magazine that was quite apparent.
SECOND! Oh, just hear Art Fleming as he's plopping down those stairs: "Why, thank you! Thank you, my friends. Thank you, Gene Wood. Thank you so much. Welcome, welcome, welcome and thank you for coming to play our game and welcome to Password Plus, America's favorite game of word communication where our players must identify the password from a one-word clue." You know you'd love it.

If this has been said already, I apologize for repeating....But I noticed when watching P+ this week, at least on one show, when Tom Kennedy was introduced at the beginning, he said "Hi Allen!", which I thought was a neat gesture..

You might be right. Eubanks had to audition for Card Sharks according to his book, and that was something he hadn't done since the original Newlywed Game.

I would think G-T would have gone back to Perry had he been available. But since Sale of the Century had both a network and syndie version running, he was totally off limits. Thus Bill Rafferty (and I haven't caught anything yet on GSN yet, so I'll have to tape some episodes after the move).

I wonder if either Fleming was more trouble to work with than we think, or production companies so associated him with Jeopardy! that he never got any other offers. Even Allen Ludden, who I gather wasn't always the easiest guy to work with, hosted at least three other shows beside Password, but aside from a single episode of College Bowl, Fleming only did Jeopardy!

Based on his version of Blockbusters, I'd have to strongly disagree with that assessment. Maybe other elements of the show were working against him (as compared to Cullen's version, everything seems inferior - the set is cheaper, the contestants not as bright, etc.), but he just seems grating to me.

Yeah, I guess I do find it weird. Same for Blockbusters '87---at least these first few. And here's my Horan moment of the day, but that crawl looked to have been snatched from TPIR, considering the font that they used for the syndicator info.



I THINK we may have a Line of the Day here...

Or perhaps NBC possibly being spiteful? :-)

When J! was revived in 84-85, Fleming was reportedly miffed he wasn't contacted about doing it. He was doing a trivia call in show on KMOX in St. Louis for the last few years of his life.

And if you ask me, Trebek does J! just as well as Fleming did. (Of course, Trebek has done it far longer than Fleming ever did!)

As for Ludden, Stumpers was a take on Password, IIRC (It was also a lousy show!), and Liars Club was I think filler until he got P+ back on the air. (of course considering Larry Hovis was behind it!)

Please. It wasn't filler. It was a job, and he took cause it paid money, not because 'he' was waiting to get P+ back on the air. 'He' didn't have a thing with 'that' either.

Gawd, if 'you' don't know what 'you' are talking about, please 'don't post'.

Remember we're talking about Ralph ANdrews. Ralph Andrews and "paid money" do not go hand-in-hand

Fleming did throw a few barbs at the revised Trebek Jeopardy in an article on J! in Sports Illustrated (honest!) back around '88-'89. The writer has Fleming, the then Breckenridge, Colorado saloon keeper, saying the new version is "much too easy", going on to say the prizes were lousy. "Runners up used to keep their prize money. A dollar out of first place and you win a year's supply of lip gloss." As to the glitz, the polish, "It's not part of the real world. It's part of Hollywood." Sour grapes? The show has moved on nicely from it's tacky looking early days. Wonder what Art would say now if he were here?

I'm guessing in the late 70s that there were some at G-T who blamed Trebek for "Double Dare" bombing, so he didn't have a chance at another job there--at that time.

As for Perry getting his "CS" job back, the understanding I had was that all hands wanted something closer to Bruce Forsyth's take on the format in the UK, which was more of a comedy show. Out of everyone they looked at, Eubanks probably fit the bill the best. Granted, Raferty may've been better, but they may not've looked at him at the time.

In fact, the original revival plans called for the use of married couples, just as it was played across the pond.

Chuck Donegan (The Illustrious "Chuckie Baby")

Ah ha! That could explain why Bob was selected for this version of the show. It's well known that he had a rich on-camera history in dealing with couples and perhaps that was the reason he was considered the top candidate.

You said it better than I did. I was getting at the fact that Allen was filling time and getting himself back out there. It didn't hurt that MG was planning a revival of Password, but you totally missed the point.

Some people in this business take jobs to fill time till the next best thing comes along. Ludden took the Liars Club job not necessarily because he needed work, but because he *wanted* work.

No, I think you're STILL missing the point. Do you know for a fact that MG was planning a revival of Password in 77 when he took Liars Club? If you have privy to such knowledge, please share. Otherwise, you are speculating, and DON'T know what you are talking about (see above criticism.)

Are you in this business? Cause I don't think you are. So don't suggest that you get Ludden's karma....cause I don't think you do.

Allen Ludden was not in demand as a game show emcee (or anything else for that matter). Like everyone who works for a living, TV personalities included, it was in his best interest to accept whatever employment was offered him.

Do you say this because its fact; or because you seemingly didn't get along with him?

Use your head, Mark. Outside of Password and the early days of College Bowl, Allen's game show credentials were meager. Can you name any producers or networks who were eager for his services the way they were for Bill Cullen's or Tom Kennedy's?

Chris is right; other than Password and College Bowl, he did Stumpers, Liar's Club, and Win With the Stars. Packagers: Lin Bolen, Ralph Andrews, and Stuart Phelps-Jesse Martin -- none of whom are among the top five game show packagers.

Allen was good at handling Password, but if you do the same thing 250 or more times a year for 10 years, you're bound to get it down sooner or later. Further, when it's the standard format and not Password Plus/Super Password, it's one of the easiest formats in the world - hand out word packets, announce whose turn it is, count down from 10, repeat. Hell, I hosted Password three times on my college local-access station and the format was never a problem. (However, since I tended to babble, had a wardrobe courtesy of The Salvation Army, a haircut inspired by Duran Duran and a barely visible mustache, I haven't watched the one surviving tape for a long, long time.)

I, for one, am tiring of the Duran Duran prejudice on this forum.

That said, even THEY didn't try to do that with facial hair. Kudos. :)