Match Game

The Match Game was an American television game show where contestants tried to match a panel of six celebrities in answering fill-in-the-blank questions.

Gene Rayburn

Gene Rayburn (December 22, 1917-November 29, 1999) was an American radio and television personality who hosted Match Game during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Rayburn was born Eugene Rubessa in Christopher, Illinois, the only child of Croatian immigrants, and he graduated from Knox College. Rayburn became a popular radio personality in New York City on WNEW-AM. He was half of the first two-man team in morning radio, partnering with Jack Lescoulie and later Dee Finch. before breaking into television as the original announcer on The Tonight Show in 1954. He hosted his first game show, Make the Connection, in 1955 and then hosted shows such as Choose Up Sides, Dough Re Mi and Tic Tac Dough. On radio, Rayburn was one of the many announcers heard on NBC's popular Monitor. He signed on with Monitor in 1961, remaining with that weekend program until 1973.

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In 1962, Rayburn joined the game show he was best known for hosting, The Match Game. The original version, which aired on NBC, lasted until 1969. In 1973 the show returned to CBS with a new format. The popular revival of Match Game, which featured regular celebrity panelists Richard Dawson, Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly, ran until 1982. A year later the show was revived as part of The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour, with Rayburn hosting the Match Game segment and sitting on the panel of the Hollywood Squares segment. The show lasted only nine months on NBC.

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During and between his Match Game years, Rayburn also served as guest panelist on two other Goodson-Todman shows, What's My Line? and To Tell the Truth, where he exhibited the same inquisitiveness on serious subjects he showed on Monitor. After his Match Game stint ended, a reporter publicly disclosed his age, which was much older than many people believed. Rayburn had trouble finding jobs after that, blaming the reporter for disclosing his age and subjecting him to age discrimination.

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Rayburn was married to Helen Ticknor from 1940 until her death in October, 1996. They had one child, a daughter, Lynn. Helen appeared with Gene on the TV game show Tattletales during the 1970s and 1980s.

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What made Rayburn so likeable is that he was willing to do anything for a laugh, especially on Match Game. Also, he was very quick on his feet and could make the best of any situation. In addition, you could tell that he really enjoyed being around people and he communicated well with them, especially celebrities. He was the perfect combination of goofiness and togetherness for a game show host. He knew when to get back to the game and when to let things go.

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Rayburn was unabashedly liberal in his politics. So much that, on one occasion on Match Game (CBS), the name of William F. Buckley, Jr. (a famous paleo-conservative) was brought up. Rayburn said that Buckley was "...always wrong!"

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Rayburn died in Gloucester, Massachusetts, of congestive heart failure at the age of 81.

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Main game

Two contestants competed to see who could match more of the answers of the six celebrities. Much of the show's humor sprung from questions that were heavy on double-entendres. One of the principal question-writers, Dick DeBartolo, was also a writer for Mad. During the early 1960s, DeBartolo cast The Match Game panelists in his own 8mm film comedies. A rare public showing of those films was held in a Manhattan hotel ballroom in 1964.

Related Topics:
Dick DeBartolo - Mad

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In the first round, the challenger chose one of two cards, A or B. The host then read the back of the card to the celebrity panel. A typical question was something like: "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary couldn't make her garden grow with water, so she used _____ instead." Popular questions featured "Dumb Donald" (the question would always begin, "Dumb Donald is so dumb", to which the audience would respond, "How dumb is he?", and Rayburn would finish the question. (The female counterpart was "Dumb Dora", and would feature the same beginning and audience response as for "Dumb Donald".)

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The contestant had a moment to decide what word would best fit the blank while the celebrities wrote their answers down on index cards; after all of them were finished, the contestant gave his answer. Frequently, the audience would respond appropriately as Rayburn critiqued the contestant's answer (e.g., "tinkle" might be the definitive answer for the above "Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary" question, but "mud" might be a rotten answer).

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Rayburn then polled each celebrity for an answer. The contestant earned one point for each celebrity who wrote down the same answer (or reasonable simile, as determined by the judges) as he had chosen, up to a total of six points for matching everyone on the panel. After play was completed on the contestant's question, Rayburn read the statement on the other card for the challenger, and play was identical.

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In the second round, whoever was leading the game got to choose a question first. Only the celebrities who did not match that contestant in the first round played. A third round was played on Match Game PM after its first season; again, the only celebrities who played were those who did not match that contestant in previous rounds.

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Tiebreaker rounds -- during which the scores were reset to 0-0 -- were played if the game was tied after the last round. On "PM" (or in the daytime show, if a tie was still not broken after two tiebreaker rounds), a time-saving variant of the tiebreaker was used that reversed the game play. The contestants would write their answers first on a card in secret, then the celebrities were canvassed to give their answers. The first celebrity response to match a contestant's answer gave that contestant the victory; if there were still no match (which was rare), the round was replayed with a new quesiton. On the CBS version of Match Game (1973-79) the tiebreaker goes on until there is a clear winner.

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The CBS daytime version had returning champions and each show would end at whatever point they were in the game, to resume with the next show; the "PM" version was self-contained with no returning champions and each show would end with the "Super Match."

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The 1979-82 syndicated version did not feature returning champions; rather, two contestants played two complete games, with the loser of the first game returning for the second. After the second game, both contestants were retired and two new ones were brought on.

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Super Match

The winner of the game went on to play the Super Match, which consisted of the Audience Match and the Head-to-Head Match segments, for additional money. On the CBS version, the winner of the game won $100.

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Audience Match

A fill-in-the-blank phrase was given, and it was up to the contestant to choose the most common response based on a studio audience survey. After consulting with three celebrities on the panel for help, the contestant had to choose an answer. The answers were revealed after that; the most popular answer in the survey was worth $500, the second-most popular $250, and the third most popular $100. (At any time a contestants answer is not on the board the "Super Match" is over & the contestant will not win any money and s/he will not play "Head-to-Head")

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Two Audience Matches were played on Match Game PM.

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The Audience Match became the basis for another game show from the Match Game production team of Mark Goodson and Bill Todman -- Family Feud. Match Game regular Richard Dawson was chosen to host that show. Elements of the Audience Match were later incorporated in the Goodson-Todman games The Better Sex and Card Sharks.

Related Topics:
Mark Goodson - Bill Todman - Family Feud - The Better Sex - Card Sharks

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Head-to-Head Match

The contestant then had the opportunity to win ten times what he or she won in the Audience Match by exactly matching another fill-in-the-blank response with a celebrity panelist of his or her choice.

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Richard Dawson was the most frequently chosen celebrity in the 1970s version; fans have considered this the reason why the "Star Wheel" was introduced in 1978. Contestants spun the wheel to determine which celebrity they played with. They could double their potential winnings if the spin ended on one of the stars on the wheel ($10,000 was the top prize in the daytime version; with the two audience matches on Match Game PM, a jackpot of up to $20,000 was possible there). The introduction of the "Star Wheel" and a falling out with Gene Rayburn resulted in the departure of Dawson, who was already in his third year as host of Family Feud.

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Payouts on Match Game as follow:

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Daytime version

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• $5,000, $2,500, $1,000 ($10,000, $5,000 $2,000 with the "Star Wheel" 1978-82)

On Match Game PM (with two Audience Matches)

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• $10,000, $7,500, $6,000, $5,000 ($20,000, $15,000, $12,000 $10,000)
• $7,500, $5,000, $3,500, $2,500 ($15,000, $10,000, $7,000, $5,000)
• $6,000, $3,500, $2,000, $1,000 ($12,000, $7,000, $4,000, $2,000)
• $5,000, $2,500, $1,000 ($10,000, $5,000, $2,000)

Rule Changes in Other Versions

The Match Game (1962-1969)

This is the original series upon which the show described above was based. For most of its life it was aired live from New York on NBC during the early afternoons, and was a solid if unspectacular hit for the network at the time.

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The gameplay of this Match Game bore little resemblance to its more famous descendant. Here, two teams of three, each comprised of two contestants and one celebrity captain, played against each other. The teams scored points based on how many of them matched answers on a question - if only two matched, the team earned 25 points, but if all three came up with the same answer, it was worth 50 points. The first team to reach 100 points won the game and $100.

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Note: It must be noted that questions on this show were far less risqué than on its 1970s incarnation; most were simple open-ended questions, such as "Name a kind of flower" or "What is the first thing you do when you wake up?" Ironically, many of these type questions would have been prime fodder for Family Feud, which in a very real sense was a Match Game spinoff. Also, these types of questions were common during the early weeks of Match Games 1973 CBS revival. The winning team then played the Audience Match, where each teammate wrote down an answer they felt was given most frequently by a polled studio audience. Each match was worth $50 in bonus money.

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Despite the fact the original Match Game ran for just over six years, various outside factors have conspired to have virtually all of it stricken from the permanent record. It is believed no more than a dozen episodes remain of it today; GSN has aired three black-and-white kinescopes of it in the past. The rest are spread out in various university archives and television museums.

Related Topics:
GSN - Kinescopes

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The original theme music was the instrumental "A Swingin' Safari" by Bert Kaempfert. The theme was later changed in the last couple of years of this version when the show was broadcasted in colour. In the pilot episode of the show, the same music, "A Swingin' Safari," was used, but composed by Billy Vaughn.

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The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour (1983-84)

These rules were roughly the same as Match Game PM, with both contestants given three chances apiece to match each panelist once. The major difference was in the tiebreaker. Four possible answers to a Super Match-like statement (example: "_____, New Jersey") were secretly shown to the contestants (examples: "Atlantic City," "Hoboken," "Newark," "Trenton"). They each chose one by number. The host then polled the celebrities for verbal responses, just as on the PM tiebreaker. The first panelist to give an answer selected by one of the contestants won the game for that contestant.

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The winner of the Match Game segment of this show then advanced to face the returning champion in the Hollywood Squares segment, which is discussed in the Hollywood Squares article.

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The eventual winner of Squares played the Super Match, which is structured just like its classic form described above. Payoffs here were $1,000 for the most popular response in the Audience Match, with the second and third worth $500 and $250 respectively. For Head-to-Head, the player selected one of the nine celebrities (the six panelists from Match Game plus the three that were added for Squares), each of whom was concealing a different multiplier. Four of them held a 10, four a 20, and one had a 30. The chosen panelist then revealed his/her multiplier, which was then combined with the Audience Match earnings to create the Head-to-Head jackpot. Under these rules, a Head-to-Head match could be worth as much as $30,000.

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This version was a joint production of Mark Goodson Productions and Orion Television, who owned the rights to Squares at the time. All episodes are assumed to be intact. However, reruns have never aired on GSN or any other network because of cross-ownership issues.

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Some sources report that Gene Rayburn himself also requested this show never air in reruns, due to his dissatisfaction with the finished product. These reports are, at the time of this writing, mostly unsubstantiated; indeed, there is some confusion as to if this statement actually refers to a 1985 incarnation of Break the Bank which Rayburn hosted. However, in an interview (http://www.crosswinds.net/~gsfan/gene2.html), Gene Wood, the show's announcer, did mention that Rayburn was "dragged, kicking and screaming" into the host's position on the show.

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The theme music on The Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour was composed by Edd Kalehoff for Score Productions. It can still be heard today as a prize cue on The Price is Right (particularly for Super Ball and cars).

Related Topics:
Edd Kalehoff - Score Productions - The Price is Right

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