Game Show TV Milestone Of The Week

[AaronHandy3]

APRIL 5, 1971


An updated version of the 1961-1967 CBS Daytime war of the words, hosted by The Professor Of Game Show Emcees, Allen Ludden, best known as Password, had its premiere at 4 P.M. (EDT) on ABC Television (replacing its six-year-old Gothic soap opera with a huge cult status, Dark Shadows). It was the latest in a spate of retreads of old Mark Goodson-Bill Todman games (e.g. What’s My Line?, To Tell The Truth, The New Beat The Clock, The New Price Is Right and Match Game 73). Here, new rules allowed a contestant to stay on the show as long as five days as long as he or she continued winning, and the winning team played the "Betting Word" after the "Lightning Round", wherein a contestant was offered a chance to risk any or all winnings on the ability to get his/her celeb partner to say the word in 15 seconds thereby doubling the bet. Another new twist added to ABC's Password was a Tournament of Champions, done to a small degree in the original '60s CBS version, in which the winner would return the next week to face the previous year's grand champion in a best-of-seven playoff for $10,000!

Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched) and Bill Bixby (The Courtship Of Eddie's Father) launched the premiere week. Native Californian Judy Spicer, decked out in lavender 1971 hot pants, drew whistles on every partner change and rolled up $2,400 before retiring at the end of the first week undefeated. ABC's Password was popular enough to inspire a December 1, 1971 episode of The Odd Couple (ABC, 1970-75), in which Mr. & Mrs. Password, Allen and Betty White Ludden appear as themselves, and Felix Unger (Tony Randall) and Oscar Madison (Jack Klugman) become contestants on Password, but they don't seem to make a very good team. (Note: The Password set in the episode was a mere mock-up which did not take after the actual Password set for it was taped in Los Angeles whilst The Odd Couple was situated in New York City.) Betty White and Let's Make A Deal host Monty Hall guest-emceed on separate occasions when Allen Ludden appeared as a panelist.

After a couple of years, the old format had begun to stagnate, and on November 18, 1974, Password All-Stars, with only celebrities playing for charity, commenced. The main game now had a new "double" rule (a player was given the choice of going for double points by trying to get his/her teammate to say the password on one clue) and before the main game was a new jump-in elimination round. Replacing The Lightning Round was a new 20/20 Password Round, which added points to a celebrity's total. But like the old saying "too many cooks spoil the broth," too many stars spoil the game, and contestants were reinstated in yet another revamped edition of Password on February 24, 1975. The elimination round played before the main game and the "double" rule remained, only now a 3-step lightning round was used in the bonus game. Nothing worked, however, and the show was dropped on June 27 to make way for the Bobby Van-hosted Showoffs, another Goodson-Todman game. An approximate total of 1,099 episodes were produced for Password. Happily, shortly thereafter, Allen Ludden was awarded an Emmy for Outstanding Game Show Host for Password (his only one!), just as Password itself won an Emmy for Best Game/Audience Participation Show.

Password currently has the biggest profile on Game Show Network (now known as GSN), with continuous repeats of the original 1966-67 color CBS Daytime (and 1962-65 B&W CBS Primetime) edition, and periodical runs of the 1979-82 (Password+Plus) and 1984-89 NBC Daytime editions (Super Password). Unfortunately, the 1,099 episodes of the '71-75 ABC Daytime version (along with the B&W CBS daytime edition) aren't in this rotation, as ABC, in a sort of "recycling" endeavor, erased the videotapes containing them for reuse (undoubtedly for the purpose of recording later Goodson-Todman games for The Alphabet Network, namely Family Feud and The Better Sex). As a tragic consequence of this, a few surviving copies of ABC's Password ever exist anymore: 8 prints in the UCLA Film & TV Archives (including one on the Friday of the premiere week!), 3 copies in the trading circuit (one Password All-Stars and 2 episodes of the original run, including the finale), and I'm not sure, but The Museum Of Television & Radio may have a handful, too. (Why Goodson-Todman never bothered to make spare copies for the network [to air and dispose of as they saw fit] and keep originals for themselves is a mystery to me...)

(Info gleaned from my own ABC Password Page.)