This Week's Game Show Milestones

[AaronHandy3]

MAY 4, 1984


A game show icon is lost.

During a nice, leisurely morning jog in NYC's Central Park, famed host Jack Barry succumbed to a fatal heart attack, at the age of 66. With partner Dan Enright, Barry originated such game show favorites as Winky Dink And You, Concentration, Tic Tac Dough, and Bullseye. The 1950s Game Show Scandals stemming from programs Twenty-One and The $64,000 Question made them the most controversial figures of TV history. As a result of The Scandals, Jack Barry was a virtual pariah to the networks until his work on Generation Gap and The Reel Game, and his creation of The Joker's Wild, which originally aired on CBS between 1972 and 1975, restored his status in TV game show culture.

Many closed door meetings on whether what to do about Joker occurred until Bill Cullen was named host following his brief stint on NBC's Hot Potato, another Barry-Enright venture. This would be Cullen's final game.

In fact, The Joker's Wild turned out to be the final game for each one of its emcees, including 1983 interim host Jim Peck.

MAY 6, 1974


The $10,000 Pyramid, created and produced by Bob Stewart and hosted by Dick Clark, returned on ABC @ 4:00pm (Eastern) with celebrity guests Anne Meara and Soupy Sales, after a mere absence of just five weeks following the abrupt demise of the CBS version (to make way for Goodson-Todman's Now You See It).

The ABC version yielded a 6-year hit, spinning off a once-a-week nighttime $25,000 Pyramid version for syndication in the prime-access time slot emceed by Bill Cullen on local stations in September 1974, adding a new feature, "The Big 7", in December 1974, winning Emmies left and right, increasing the top dollar value to $20,000 in January 1976, and airing 1,808 episodes (including the ones on CBS) until June 1980.