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Sunday Is Peter's Day
at Game Show Congress
5 Legends Luncheon
Original Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall will be joined by his wife Laurie and some of his children and grandchildren for today's third annual Game Show Congress Legends Luncheon....A 15-minute video on Marshall's career will be presented prior to testimonial speakers Tom Kennedy, Kathy Garver, Harry Friedman and Rose Marie.....I've Got a Secret's Betsy Palmer, GSC's Panelist Legend of the convention, will present the Bill Cullen Career Achievement Award to Marshall with Cullen's widow Ann at her side.
William Morris Agency senior vice president Mark Itkin receives this year's Ralph Edwards Career Achievement Award. Itkin packaged the deal which brought Deal or No Deal to NBC, along with the network's earlier success, Fear Factor.....Among Itkin's testimonial speakers: Supermarket Sweep and Sale of the Century creator Al Howard and former programming chief for all three of the original networks, Fred Silverman.
Former Greed and Jeopardy! champion Bob Harris was on hand to discuss his new book which will be on the shelves soon. Harris also played in both the Smarty Pants and Buzzer Battle competitions....Millionaire $1.86 million winner Ed Toutant captured the Smarty Pants event for the third time in its four-year history at GSC....A substantial number of GSC attendees applied to become contestants on NBC's forthcoming 1 vs. 100. The production company is doing personality interviews Monday in Burbank.
Larry Anderson and Burton Richardson formed a first-rate announcer/host team during the Buzzer Battle quizzer to raise money for charity. Why Anderson is not currently emceeing a game is a mystery that only the minds of network programmers can answer. Richardson was a hoot with his delivery of some of the unconventional team names....Paul Paquet again delivered an outstanding Smarty Pants with a spirited battle.
TV's only female quiz show millionaire Nancy Christy is in from Tulsa for GSC and she has not lost her zest for the quizzes.....Flight attendant Suzie Colbert, who has not missed any GSC events, is now flying out of Washington, D.C.....Greed legend Dan Avila, who finally struck gold with a $100,000 victory on Millionaire, made the rounds both Friday and Saturday....Wink Martindale's wife Sandy and producer Ron Greenberg's wife Nancy joined Saturday's activities.
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Ralph Edwards Tribute (will be restored soon)
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BURBANK----Classic television show reunions often leave viewers disappointed because they are frequently produced by creative people who did not work with the original series.Saturday's Tic Tac Dough Reunion at Game Show Congress 5 captured the heart and soul of the show, its key principals and the love of the fans for a game which for a period in 1980-81 was the top-rated nightly syndicated show on television.
After a montage of clips depicting GSC Contestant Legend Thom McKee's 46-day journey to win 43 consecutive games and $312,700 in cash and prizes (including eight cars), host Stu Shostak engineered a train of nostalgic memories.
Ron Greenberg, Tic Tac Dough's first executive producer for its '70s version, and producer Allen Koss provided the background and history on the series, along with rich behind-the-scenes stories.
Watching the introductions of the reunion panelists was similar to the anticipation for a double main event on a boxing card. When TTD host Wink Martindale strode onto the platform, the audience spontaneously rose for a showering standing ovation. Martindale introduced his wife Sandy, saying, "She was Elvis's girlfriend for six-and-a-half years. I took care of Elvis." The King of Rock 'n' Roll was a close friend of Martindale's and their early careers intertwined in Memphis.
The second topliner was when Shostak brought on McKee and his wife Jenny. During Thom's recordbreaking run on Tic Tac, Jenny was the lovely young Navy wife who constantly signaling numbers to her husband during the bonus round in hopes of helping him avoid The Dragon. No ifs, ands or buts, Jenny McKee has only grown in beauty and her husband will not dispute that contention one iota.
Just as last year when the great Ruth Horowitz of Concentration fame received a love feast, so was the same for the Congress attendees for the McKees.
In an all-too short hour-long discussion, Shostak wove through the history of the series---including its tainted original version on NBC from 1956-59, a casualty of the quiz scandals. Both Greenberg and Martindale said no trepidation erupted over reviving the series 19 years after its cancellation during television's blackest era. "Enough time had passed," said Greenberg. "People were ready to move on and leave the past behind." Martindale added: "I had no second thoughts at all about doing the show. Enough safeguards were in place and federal laws had been passed that would send someone to jail for rigging a show. I don't know of anyone who wanted to go to jail for that."
The McKees, both in their twenties at the time of their unbridled success, said they never tired of the marathon run. "I still consider it one of the greatest times of my life," said Thom McKee. "It was something I never expected. I had two opportunities to lose, once at about $142,000 and another time around $155,000 and my opponents missed questions they probably shouldn't have missed."
McKee went on to say he was rooting for Jeopardy! whiz Ken Jennings' success in 2004 and pulled for him to break the 24-year-old winning streak record (Jennings went on to win 74 games). "I thought it was a tremendous run but I can tell you, I really felt for him the day he lost because it reminded me of a little bit of the empty feeling I had the day it ended for me."
Computer engineer Mike Berger's handiwork returned again in an almost perfect re-creation of Tic Tac Dough's board, graphics and memorable Hal Hidey theme music. Twenty-one years after he left the show, Martindale returned to the podium and hosted a GSC challenge game between McKee and audience contestant Joe Van Ginkel. The game ended in a tie but not before the audience's amusement at McKee connecting on three consecutive questions on the category of The Beatles. Once a master, always a master.Thom was presented with the second GSC Contestant Legend statuette and told the audience the weekend was "an honor and a memory he will always cherish."
Equally as emotional was to watch the Martindales and McKees engage in a family reunion of their own. Two of the McKees' three sons are with them for the convention. Neither had ever met Wink, though their VHS and DVD players have churned out their father's nostalgia constantly through their growing up years.
If one were giving a one-word description of Thom McKee, the word would be humility. Nine weeks on a television quiz show in the 1980s gave a young, financially-struggling Navy couple economic stability much sooner than they would ever have anticipated. All because of one man's grasp and memory of a little thing called trivia. McKee never sought to appear on another quiz show. He felt the moment was his one special opportunity in life and never felt the need to duplicate it. However, for those sharing in The Tic Tac Dough Reunion at Game Show Congress, the joy was in the willingness of the McKees, Wink Martindale, Ronnie Greenberg and Allen Koss allowing everyone to rekindle and recapture a precious bit of the moment which was the talk of the nation 26 years ago. We still talk about it today.
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BURBANK NOTES: Sunday's finale of GSC5 launches with a 10 a.m. panel of game show industry executives, including Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman, Deal or No Deal executive producer Scott St. John, Split Second creator and People's Court executive producer Stu Billett, former CBS executive Michael Brockman, Greenberg and Fox Reality Channel programming chief Bob Boden.....The Legends Luncheon honoring Hollywood Squares host Peter Marshall and William Morris Agency senior executive Mark Itkin begins at 12:30. Videos paying tribute to Marshall and Itkin will be followed by testimonials from several close associates and personalities of the honorees.....Martindale will be one of the two Legends honorees for Game Show Congress 6.
Tic Tac Dough Reunion, Hosts & Announcers
Game Show Congress Coverage (Sat.)
Game Show Congress Coverage (Fri.)
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