Monday, October 17, 1966

[AaronHandy3]

“Ladies and gentlemen, today, one of these stars is sitting The Secret Square, and the contestant who picks it first could win a prize package worth over $2000! And now which star is it? (drumroll with brass note before each star's name) Nick Adams...Agnes Moorehead...Charley Weaver...Pamela Mason...Wally Cox...Rose Marie...Morey Amsterdam...Abby Dalton...or Ernest Borgnine? All in The Hollywood Squares! And now, here's the master of The Hollywood Squares, Peter Marshall!”

That was announcer Kenny Williams’ opening spiel to the premiere telecast of The Hollywood Squares, Heatter-Quigley's tic-tac-toe game of the stars, which occurred in living color on NBC @ 11:30 a.m. EST, opposite The Dating Game on ABC and reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show on CBS. (The latter competitor was ironic since Dick Van Dyke Show regulars Morey Amsterdam and Rose Marie were guests on that first week, and in fact stayed regulars for years.)

Ernest Borgnine was the first Square to occupy The Center Square on the first NBC week of Squares shows (October 17-21, 1966). Paul Lynde, the show's celebrated Center Square, first appeared with the cast during the second week (October 24, 1966 to October 28, 1966), and, after a couple of years as just a recurring guest, was added as a regular full-time in 1968. Rose Marie and announcer Kenny Williams are the only regulars to appear in the first and last episodes of The Hollywood Squares and the unsold 1965 pilot recorded @ CBS Television City hosted by Bert Parks.

The immense popularity of The Hollywood Squares yielded a brief primetime edition on NBC, seen every Friday night @ 9:30 (EDT) between January 12 and September 13, 1968. Another primetime edition, this time in syndication, was launched in November 1971. The daytime version became the second longest-running game show in NBC Daytime history (right after 1958-73's Concentration!), lasting for 14 seasons and 3,536 episodes until June 20, 1980. Host Peter Marshall tried to assure viewers that "we're going to have some fun!" on the finale, but several jokes and comments (funny or not) seemed directed at The Peacock Network and Fred Silverman, at the time its head of programming.

Celebrities on the last NBC Daytime grid were Rose Marie, Tom Poston, Michelle Lee, Charlie Callas, Vincent Price, Leslie Uggams, George Gobel, Marty Allen, and Wayland Flowers & Madame (who were center square, since Paul Lynde had left the show by this point in a dispute, and, surprisingly enough, no direct mention of him was made on the final show!). George Gobel was the last daytime Secret Square but no one picked him during that game.

Wayland and Madame were heavily criticized for taking up too much precious time on The Hollywood Squares' final show, at times even getting host Marshall's goat as he desperately attempted to hasten the show's pace for its duration since a new car was at stake; sadly, time ran out before the contestants got a chance, but Marshall made up for it by giving them a shot at the bonus prize. The finale's fading minutes found Peter Marshall bringing the stars and the production staff on camera to introduce them (including producers Merrill Heatter and Bob Quigley), and made special references in his departing speech:


"I want to thank all of the stars of the past, and people like Wally Cox and Charley Weaver, and folks like that that we miss terribly, but thank God for The George Gobels and...all the people who do our show. So, on behalf of the staff of Heatter-Quigley, and of all these people who work here at NBC---and they are the best!---we may be #3, but if we get another show like ours, then we can be #1 again!

"So, on behalf of everybody, and on behalf of my wife Sally, and my 6 children and my 2 grandchildren, thank you! You have made us the hit that we have been! Thank you out there! You are the ones who have been responsible!”


The Hollywood Squares was one of 3 game shows plucked from the NBC Daytime schedule to make room for David Letterman's ill-fated 90-minute daytime show (ironically, Letterman had earlier on appeared as one of The Squares!): the others were The New High Rollers, another Heatter-Quigley staple, and Chain Reaction. Its syndicated primetime version continued for one more year, with Paul Lynde returning to his old center square, expanding to five nights a week, and switching operations from NBC Studio 3 in Burbank to The Riveria Hotel in Las Vegas. (Another popular game show shares the honor with The Hollywood Squares of defecting to The Riveria Hotel: Let's Make A Deal, whose host, Monty Hall, was another one of The Squares!) Lynde would leave the show again, but return for a walk-on in the syndication finale. And George Gobel was once again the last ever center square.

A good game show, as it is proven, never dies (or stays dead for long); it just keeps coming back in different incarnations. The Hollywood Squares made living proof of that thrice: on NBC in 1983, as the ill-fated Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour, with the MG portion emceed (for one last time) by Gene Rayburn and the Squares portion hosted by Sha-Na-Na alumnus Jon "Bowzer" Bauman; in 1986, as the syndicated New Hollywood Squares, hosted by old Hollywood Squares regular John Davidson and announced by Shadoe Stevens; and, of course, the 1998-2004 version, hosted by Tom Bergeron and formerly featuring Whoopi Goldberg as The Center Square (Ellen DeGeneres later performed in Goldberg's stead). But regardless of how many times it is resurrected, it is always the original 1966-81 version which shall remain fresh in the hearts of game show enthusiasts world wide...even though NBC did erase all but its final 2 years for reuse!

Then in 2001, a representative of Dan Curtis Productions, Jim Pierson, went looking for the few still-lost color videotapes of the 1960s gothic ABC soap, Dark Shadows…and happened upon "shelves and shelves" of two-inch quad masters, of what Peter Marshall himself placed at over 3,000 classic Hollywood Squares shows dating from 1968 to the late 1970s! GSN snatched up about 150 episodes and unveiled the newly rediscovered Squares reruns on April 15, 2002.

First up was Episode 10 of the NBC primetime series (complete with original NBC Peacock opening!!!), which first aired in living color (sic!) @ 9:30 p.m. (Eastern) on March 22, 1968. The celeb panel was comprised of Wally Cox, Nanette Fabray, Sally Field, Zsa Zsa Gbor, Buddy Hackett, Van Johnson, Walter Matthau, Jan Murray, and Charley Weaver. Cherubic Peter Marshall flanked Naval officer Deiter Dengler (X) and happy homemaker Donna Brown (O). The secret square in the first round was Van Johnson; Donna picked him and managed to win a new 1968 Pontiac Firebird! Walter Matthau was the next secret square, worth a trip to Rio De Janeiro by PanAm, though no one picked him. Deiter Dengler won 1 game and $300; Donna Brown (who's given to screaming fits of excitement each time she wins!) won 4 games for a total of $1,200 and, in addition to winning a Firebird, won a bonus prize at show's end: a contemporary grand piano by Kimball! Departing contestants received a home edition of The Hollywood Squares (the first edition!) and a World Book Encylopaedia.

Later that day, two 1970s shows and another NBC primetime telecast from 1968 were shown. Prior to its pulling the reruns in September 2003, GSN has run more than half of the 1968 NBC prime time shows and roughly a hundred of the 1971-81 syndicated shows, including a Storybook Squares episode from December 1977 which aired around Halloween 2002.