Another Game Show Day On The OTN.

I've been looking at some DVDs of some old game shows, and found two of them that are worthy of OTN status.
One of them is timeless, and the other is very much of its time.
The first is "Masquerade Party"
I remember going to an airing of an episode of "Masquerade Party" when it was in its heyday.
The late fifties.
I remember afterwards asking for and getting Johnny Olsen's autograph.
He was "Masquerade Party's announcer.
He was everybody's announcer.
He was very nice.
"Masquerade Party" had all the earmarks of a Goodson-Todman production.
It had four celebrity panelists.
It had a game that was almost clever.
It had Johnny Olsen.
But it was not a Goodson-Todman production.
A celebrity was made up in a rubber mask and a costume, and the panel, with the help of rather subtle clues, had to guess who the Mystery Celebrity was.
It gave the celebrity a chance to stretch, and put on accents.
It was always very entertaining.
They revived it in the 1970's with Richard Dawson as host.
Again, it was not a Goodson-Todman production.
It was out of the same stable that gave us "Let's Make A Deal", Heatter-Quigley.
This time around, it was in color.
And the game was exactly the same, and exactly as good.
There is no reason why it can't be done today.
Just as entertainingly, and just as successfully.

The other OTN entry is "The Movie Game"
It was on in the late 60's.
Larry Blyden was the host.
Another Johnny, in this instance Johnny Gilbert, better known as the announcer on "Jeopardy", and for pronouncing the word "dollars" as "dolluz", was the announcer here.
Although there were far fewer dolluz at stake.
They had real movie stars as panelists.
They usually asked rather esoteric questions about old movies.
And I always knew the answers.
This is all why they can't do this show today.
Either they'd do it the same way, and I'd know all the answers, or they'd contemporize it and a younger audience would know all the answers, and I wouldn't know anything.
My movie mind turned off somewhere in the early nineties.
And now, there are certainly a lot more of them.
To this day, I can't tell Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, or Brad Pitt apart from one another.
And there would be no legitimate movie stars who would be willing to be panelists.
Certainly none of the above-mentioned.
But the original version was very entertaining, and made me feel like a genius.
Particularly when I knew more than the movie stars themselves.
They once had Shirley Jones on as a panelist.
The gimmick was that they showed miniature versions of sets from famous movies.
They showed an exterior western street.
They even had a miniature Wells Fargo Wagon.
Larry Blyden even referred to it, with other clues.
With all of this help, Shirley Jones could not identify it as the set from "The Music Man"
You know.
The movie she starred in?

I live for such moments.

Mark Rothman, CEO of the OTN.

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