The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour


Aired
NBC Daytime, October 31, 1983-July 27, 1984
Run time
60 Minutes
Hosts
Gene Rayburn and Jon Bauman
Announcer
Gene Wood
Origination
NBC Studios, Burbank, California

The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was a fusion of Match Game and The Hollywood Squares into an hour-long show. The first half would be The Match Game and the second half would be Hollywood Squares. This version was produced by A Mark Goodson (Television) Production in association with Orion Television.

Game Format[]

Match Game[]

Two new contestants played the Match Game half of the show. Just like Match Game all by itself, the object of the game was to match as many of the celebrities as they can. At the beginning of each round, one contestant had a choice of two questions (A or B) leaving the other one for the other contestant. Each contestant was read a statement with a blank at the end or near the end. Then the six celebrities wrote down their answers to fill in the blank. When finished, the contestant in control gave an answer of his/her own after which the stars revealed their answers. Each time the contestant matched he/she scored a point but each celebrity can only be matched one time. Like Match Game PM the game was played in three rounds and the player who had matched the most celebrities at the end of round three won the game. If the game ended in a tie, a Super Match style question was read and the contestants were shown four possible answers which were faced away from the stars. Each contestant chose an answer by number and then the stars one at a time gave verbal answers. The player whose answer was mentioned first won the game. The winner of the game won the right to play Hollywood Squares against the show's returning champion.

Telephone Match[]

A home viewer contest was played during "sweeps" period in February and May 1984. At the start of Round 2, Rayburn called one home viewer that was previously selected at random and awarded him/her $500. That viewer then played a Head-to-Head match against that celebrity of his/her choice, receiving an additional $5,000 and a walk-on role in a popular NBC daytime soap opera for making an exact match.

NOTE: It is assumed that the winner would receive a trip to the NBC Burbank area or to New York City (If the soap was Another World, which was taped in New Your City at the time) if they won the telephone match.

Hollywood Squares[]

In the Hollywood Squares half, Jon & Gene traded places with each other and an extra tier swung in to make room for three more stars. As in Hollywood Squares all by itself the object of the game was to get three stars in row. They do that by agreeing or disagreeing the stars' answers to questions, each time they do that correctly they capture a square and scored $25, but each time they do that incorrectly the square and money went to the opponent. The first player to get tic-tac-toe or get five stars wins the game and more money. The first game was worth $100 and every game thereafter was worth $100 more than the previous.

What makes this Hollywood Squares different from all the other versions are these rules:

The champion played X and the challenger played O. This was the only version where sex does not matter.
A contestant can actually win by default by having the opponent fail to block by missing the question.
All questions were multiple choice & true or false, because Mark Goodson said no to writing bluffs for the celebrities along with having less "zingers" to use.
There was no secret square game

When time ran out, a school bell rang, and the player with the most money by that time won the match. If the match ended in a tie, one final question was played with the star of one contestant's choosing; if the contestant can agree or disagree correctly, he/she won the match; otherwise, the match went to the opponent. The winner of the match went to play the $30,000 Super Match. Both players kept the cash.

Super Match[]

The Super Match was mostly the same as the original down to the host, for Gene Rayburn took over once again, but the Audience Match amounts were increased, and all nine stars participated.

Audience Match[]

A prior studio audience was asked to give its best response to a fill-in-the-blank phrase, and its three best answers were placed and hidden away on a game board. Each one was assigned a dollar amount according to the popularity of each answer; the top answer was worth $1,000, the middle answer was worth $500, and the least popular was worth $250. Once the question was revealed, the winning contestant selected three stars who gave their answers to help out the contestant. When the answers were given, the contestant then chose which answer to use or reject them all and give an answer of his/her own. When all was said and done, the answers were revealed one at a time starting with the least popular answer and ending with the most popular. If the contestant can match any of the answers, he/she won the money attached to the answer. If the player chose an answer that was not on the board, he/she earned $100.

Head to Head Match[]

In the Head to Head Match portion, the nine stars had numbered cards in front of them. Four of the stars have 10s, another four had 20s, but only one of them had a 30; those numbers affected the amount won in the Audience Match. The winning contestant chose which star to play with, at which point the chosen celeb revealed his/her number, and whatever the number revealed was multiplied to the Audience Match award won (ranging from $1,000 to $30,000). Host Rayburn then read another fill-in-the-blank phrase after which the chosen star wrote his/her answer. The winning contestant then gave his/her answer after which the chosen star revealed his/hers and if they match, the winning contestant won the grand cash prize.

In order to win the money, the contestant had to match his/her chosen celebrity's response exactly or it cannot be accepted; this meant that multiple forms of the same word, e.g. singular or plural, were usually accepted whereas synonyms were not.

Champions stayed on the show until they won five days in a row (for a possible payoff of $150,000 plus their Hollywood Squares winnings) or defeated.

Personnel[]

Hosts: Gene Rayburn and Jon Bauman
Announcer: Gene Wood
Producer: Robert Sherman
Director: Marc Breslow
Set Designer: Dennis Roof
Music: Edd Kalehoff

Trivia[]

This show replaced another short-lived Heatter-Quigley produced game show/talk show hybrid Fantasy.
John Bauman's first game show hosting gig was The Pop-'N-Rocker Game in syndication from 1983 until 1984.
While one host hosted the appropriate half of the show, the other host sat on the panel.
Host John Bauman has also appeared on the 70s version of Match Game as his alter ego named "Bowzer".
In the Hollywood Squares half, the set was the inspiration for Hip Hop Squares (2017 version) and Nashville Squares.
Due to conflicting ownership rights between Mark Goodson Productions (Fremantle) and Orion Television (now MGM), The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour has never been reran on cable in 35 years. However, after never being rerun, it has been announced that the digital subchannel Buzzr is planning on adding the show to its lineup later in 2019. A four-episode mini marathon consisting of episodes 002 to 005 aired on February 17, 2019. It was added permanently to the schedule on September 30, 2019.
Then current & future hosts Pat Sajak, Bob Eubanks, Chuck Woolery & Arsenio Hall guest-starred in some episodes.
The now-defunct NBC Experience store in New York City used a picture from the pilot episode to represent Hollywood Squares on a mural featured on the store's floor. In it you can see that the Squares contestants/host area was in the same style as the series but only in shades of grey instead of the reds, yellows and blues of the series set.

Music[]

Score Productions

The main theme from this show would be reused as a car prize cue on The Price is Right and the 1986 version of Card Sharks.

The times-up bell SFX was the same one used on Sale of the Century and Supermarket Sweep, and the generic bells were from the original 1978 version of Card Sharks as well as Classic Concentration starting in late 1987.

The ticket plug would also be reused on The Price is Right as a showcase cue.

The theme can also be heard on the live stage show called The Price is Right Live!.

The theme was also used on the short-lived British version of Price called The New Price is Right hosted by Bob Warman, it aired on Sky One from 1989 until 1990.

A revamp of the theme "Lottery" was used by WNEV-TV/WHDH-TV in Boston during the late 1980s and early 1990s as well as several local Illinois game shows.

34 years later, the elements of the Squares set were later inspired by three incarnations of the franchise called Hip Hop Squares (2017 version), Nashville Squares and Celebrity Squares.