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SubTitle: SI Scandals
Posted by: DAN BLAINE (100.53680@germanynet.de) on 11/03/1997@03:30hrs:
1. The name of the quiz show was the "$64,000 QUESTION". I believe the quizmaster was Hal March. As noted in the answers, the contestant was placed in a sealed glass booth and communicated via a microphone and loudspeaker. I think they started off with $64 and kept doubling until $64K was reached. However, once they got above the $10K bracket, they would just have the contestant for one question each week, thereby heightening the suspense. Dr. Joyce Brothers was probably the most famous contestant and as stated, her category was boxing.
2. The SI contestant who was involved in the "cheating" was named (if I remember correctly) Redmond O'Hanlon. I want to make it clear here that he committed no violation of the law...he was merely in cahoots with the producers of the show, who fed him some of the questions and answers in advance. They did this to keep their ratings up. He did, however, commit the crime of destroying the public's trust in TV quiz shows and also that of destroying SI'der's pride in a native son making good. After that, we wondered if some of Groucho's quick adlibs and repartee weren't prerehearsed and if some contestants weren't fed the "magic word"...by the way, what happened when they said the "magic word?". Or that some contestants on "Beat the Clock" weren't really professional circus jugglers, or that maybe Bud Collyer was having a thing with the "lovely Roxanne", or that maybe the "Halo light" on Sylvania TV's didn't make them more pious than other brands.
3. Mr. O'Hanlon's area of expertise was Shakespeare: he could quote line and verse from any of the works even if only given an act and scene. It was all the more amazing because most of us at that time were being force fed Shakespeare in high school and had enough problems trying to remember a few lousy lines just to pass a mid-term exam! Conversly, he could name the work, act and scene a line came from. What made it all the more amazing, he was a NYC city fireman, not an academic.
4. Was scrubbed: Bob was right, I didn't realize that the "perp's" family was still on SI. (The same could be said for 1-3 above, but I really got stung by that scandal, as did many other Staten Islanders) Besides "perp" #4 paid for his crime, whereas #2 didn't, he just made money on the deal.
5. Halloween: I guess nobody else ever committed tricks or dressed in
costume. Back in those days, before some sicko gave kids apples with
razor blades stuck in them, kids went out trick or treating WITHOUT
their parents. Any self respecting kid would be too ashamed to have
his parents tag along! The older siblings or the kids next door were
sometimes forced to let the "little kids" tag along with them, but they
usually ditched them as soon as they could, and the little kids would
make a bee-line for home, whining to the parents that they had been
ditched and most parents would just say "wait until next year, you'll
be old enough then to go by yourself". Things changed after the press
created a national panic about "poisoned apples, etc." and kids rarely
went trick or treating without their parents after that. (I know that
years later, I wouldn't let my kids go out without me!). One current
practice I find particularly abhorrent is that in which parents pack
their kids in a car, drive to a strange neighborhood and let the kids
trick or treat down to the end of the block, pick them up and drive to
the next neighborhood...a real class act!