Post by WarioSajak on Aug 6, 2012 19:29:01 GMT -5
No, seriously. Those of you who have been to the Wiki may have already seen this info, but for those who haven't...
Shopper's Bazaar
* For the longest time, nobody knew who produced or directed the mess. Turns out, it was one guy - Bill Carruthers, a fact Variety very briefly mentioned in his obituary nine years ago.
* There is a production slate, but it doesn't have a recording date listed. Oddly, it's also referred to as "Pilot #1".
* The opening layout, seen in the portion Kookah uploaded, was only used for the opening; Rounds 1-2 used $500 as the top value with two Lose A Turn wedges, while Rounds 3-4 used the layout as seen on the E! True Hollywood Story.
* Free Spin already had discs, although I don't know whether they looked the same as they did until mid-1989.
* And as for Buy A Vowel, not only was it not hit during the pilot, but it was redundant from the start!
* An instrumental of "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears was used for commercial bumpers, while the Shopper's Special used a portion of Merv's "A Time For Tony" as the timer (appropriately, the part which uses ticking).
* And those models in the opening segment? That's the only time they appear, and they're not named in the credits.
Wheel of Fortune (Byrnes Pilot #1)
* The players were Marge, Gary, and Roseanne.
* The clips Wheel showed in 1998 were of Rounds 2 and 1, respectively.
* Very oddly, neither Buy A Vowel nor Bankrupt were ever hit. You think you'd want to show off all the rules...
* There was quite some confusion over which categories were introduced after the initial six, and for the longest time the Wiki had figured Fictional Character and Landmark were the seventh and eighth categories. Well, that's wrong: Edd's hint for the Round 3 puzzle MOTHER GOOSE was "a fictional character".
* And the person who Edd bullied into spinning again? Roseanne.
The 1975 Premiere
I have had the wonderful opportunity to view some footage of the premiere, via two promos sourced from an episode of The Tonight Show.
* One was for the new lineup beginning January 6. This one was a collection of clips from Celebrity Sweepstakes, The Hollywood Squares, High Rollers, Jackpot!, Blank Check, and Wheel.
* The other was solely for the Wheel debut, 30 seconds of clips including a good eyeful of the doors, the (still white) contestant displays, at least one Wheel layout, and a contestant who appears to be the one my mother remembered (memories I mentioned on here many moons ago).
From these clips (none of which showed the puzzle board, oddly), Jeff Goldstein was clearly using Pasetta's shots and the like.
Notably, one clip has Chuck mentioning how players could buy vowels anytime, which has made me think Buy A Vowel was meant to be redundant, a forced (sometimes unwanted) purchase...although the fact it wasn't touched in the first two pilots is a bit disconcerting. Either Wheel changed the wedge's rules in '75 to what the Milton-Bradley games used, or MB was fixing what they saw as a glaring problem.
Other Stuff
Thanks to "snowpeck", who has quite a few 1985 daytime episodes, the timeframe for when the Helvetica chyrons changed to their third and final design has been narrowed down from "between February 1 and mid-June" to "between February 8 and March 29".
Shopper's Bazaar
* For the longest time, nobody knew who produced or directed the mess. Turns out, it was one guy - Bill Carruthers, a fact Variety very briefly mentioned in his obituary nine years ago.
* There is a production slate, but it doesn't have a recording date listed. Oddly, it's also referred to as "Pilot #1".
* The opening layout, seen in the portion Kookah uploaded, was only used for the opening; Rounds 1-2 used $500 as the top value with two Lose A Turn wedges, while Rounds 3-4 used the layout as seen on the E! True Hollywood Story.
* Free Spin already had discs, although I don't know whether they looked the same as they did until mid-1989.
* And as for Buy A Vowel, not only was it not hit during the pilot, but it was redundant from the start!
* An instrumental of "Spinning Wheel" by Blood, Sweat & Tears was used for commercial bumpers, while the Shopper's Special used a portion of Merv's "A Time For Tony" as the timer (appropriately, the part which uses ticking).
* And those models in the opening segment? That's the only time they appear, and they're not named in the credits.
Wheel of Fortune (Byrnes Pilot #1)
* The players were Marge, Gary, and Roseanne.
* The clips Wheel showed in 1998 were of Rounds 2 and 1, respectively.
* Very oddly, neither Buy A Vowel nor Bankrupt were ever hit. You think you'd want to show off all the rules...
* There was quite some confusion over which categories were introduced after the initial six, and for the longest time the Wiki had figured Fictional Character and Landmark were the seventh and eighth categories. Well, that's wrong: Edd's hint for the Round 3 puzzle MOTHER GOOSE was "a fictional character".
* And the person who Edd bullied into spinning again? Roseanne.
The 1975 Premiere
I have had the wonderful opportunity to view some footage of the premiere, via two promos sourced from an episode of The Tonight Show.
* One was for the new lineup beginning January 6. This one was a collection of clips from Celebrity Sweepstakes, The Hollywood Squares, High Rollers, Jackpot!, Blank Check, and Wheel.
* The other was solely for the Wheel debut, 30 seconds of clips including a good eyeful of the doors, the (still white) contestant displays, at least one Wheel layout, and a contestant who appears to be the one my mother remembered (memories I mentioned on here many moons ago).
From these clips (none of which showed the puzzle board, oddly), Jeff Goldstein was clearly using Pasetta's shots and the like.
Notably, one clip has Chuck mentioning how players could buy vowels anytime, which has made me think Buy A Vowel was meant to be redundant, a forced (sometimes unwanted) purchase...although the fact it wasn't touched in the first two pilots is a bit disconcerting. Either Wheel changed the wedge's rules in '75 to what the Milton-Bradley games used, or MB was fixing what they saw as a glaring problem.
Other Stuff
Thanks to "snowpeck", who has quite a few 1985 daytime episodes, the timeframe for when the Helvetica chyrons changed to their third and final design has been narrowed down from "between February 1 and mid-June" to "between February 8 and March 29".
