Just Letting the Funny Out - No Parody of Match Game, More Like the Real Thing

[Zoneboy]

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Forget The French Connection, Farrah Fawcett-Majors or the Fonz, the real cultural icon of the 1970s was ________.

If you said, Match Game, ding-ding-ding! You win.

The game show featuring the blankety-blank questions has had several incarnations over the years, but the version hosted by Gene Rayburn from 1973 to 1982 was the perfect fusion of comedy and competition, becoming, for several of those years anyway, the highest-rated program in all of daytime TV.

Marcia Wallace, best known for her role as Bob's receptionist Carol in The Bob Newhart Show, was a regular panelist on many a game show back in the day. But her favourite remains Match Game, where fun was the order of the day.

"Are you kidding me?," she says on the phone from her home in L.A. "It was as close as you get for being paid for going to a party as you'll ever find. It was wonderful."

Party indeed. "People drank in those days," she says. As is the schedule with all game shows, numerous episodes are taped on a given day. The first two or three were fine. "Then we had some lunch where there was definitely a couple of drinks. Nobody was ever falling down but certainly things got looser. They absolutely got looser."

The camaraderie and looseness was a big part of its success. And it couldn't have worked without the right emcee to bring those personalities together.

"There was no better host in the world ever than Gene Rayburn," says Wallace. "He was funny, he was sassy, he was naughty, he kept the game going, he made the contestants feel good, he set up the celebrities. He was perfect."

Which is no knock on Jimmy Pardo, the L.A.-based comedian who has been hosting a live version of the game for three years. Pardo, who once hosted National Lampoon's Funny Money on the Game Show Network, brings the same dynamic to the live show, which will play the Firehall Arts Centre this weekend as part of the Global ComedyFest. Panelists like Wallace, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Richter and Brian Posehn will be on hand to supply answers for a lucky audience member.

Make no mistake, this is no ironic alternative comedy lampoon of the game show.

"I think the trick was not to do it as a parody," says Pardo, no relation to the occasional Match Game TV announcer, Don Pardo, although he gets asked that question about 500 times a day. "Just play the game and the funny will come out."

Getting his comedic peers to join in was half the battle, too.

"Every time they tried to bring Match Game back on TV," he says, "they put six people on the stage and then they tried to recreate or force this chemistry that doesn't exist. And it just doesn't work. Whereas the one that we bring up to Vancouver, we all know each other. And we're able to laugh at each other. If somebody tells you your answer sucks, you're able to laugh about it as opposed to going, 'Why is Jim J. Bullock telling me I'm not funny?'"

Even the 65-year-old Wallace is right at home. "Boy is she great," says Pardo. "She fits right in. She's sharp, she's funny and she brings a little bit of history to the game. And she's not afraid to go a little blue if she needs to. She's just a joy to be around."

With a renaissance in TV game shows hosted mainly by comics, is there a place for Pardo back on the tube?

"Sadly they're famous comics," says the self-deprecating Pardo. "They're taking my job and I'm going to have to whack Howie Mandel in the back of the head with a two-by-four."