DISCLAIMER: This page is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by CBS, NBC, Westinghouse/Group W, Viacom, Metromedia, General Electric, The Bud Austin Company, Burt Sugarman Productions, Jay Wolpert Productions, the Communist Party, Bruno Magli Shoes, their subsidiaries, affiliates or successor organizations.  No challenge to copyright is either intended or implied.  Honest!  I’m just a guy who loves game shows and would give nearly anything to spend the rest of his life working in the game show biz!  Jay, if this page in any way pisses you off, please let me know and I will make it disappear.

“In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Claudius kills the old king and
marries his wife Gertrude. Gertrude’s son, Hamlet, kills
Claudius, Laertes and Polonius. and the queen drinks poison…
but not before Polonius' son, Laertes, kills Hamlet…Spell ‘Ophelia.’”
- Jay Wolpert, from “Joe Gargiola’s Memory Game”

Last edited: Sunday, October 05, 2003

While everyone else is busy figuring out how to adapt parlor games or bring back Pyramid or Card Sharks or whatever, there seems to be only one person out there in game show land whose imagination consistently runs in overdrive…Jay Wolpert.  Most everything this man creates has some “bigger than life” element to it, from the original Double Dare (CBS 1976 - 77) with its Spoilers and Whew! (CBS 1979 - 80) with its Gauntlet of Villains, to NBC’s Hit Man (1983) with its…well…Space Invaders-looking Hit Men and Family Channel’s late, lamented, Shopping Spree, with its Birthday Party bonus round.  Neilsen families may not appreciate his work, but Jay makes game show fans stand up and yell “Jackpot!”  (No, that wasn’t a Jay Wolpert show, although it was cool enough to be one!)

Caveat: It’s been about 20+ years since I participated in either one of these, so my descriptions should not be taken as gospel.  (English translation: additions and corrections are appreciated.) That said…

…and, because every member of our studio audience receives $50 to start our game, you know you’re in the land of Pandemonium!”

This was an audience participation game like TPiR.  The set was done up in various shades of blue and aqua and meant to resemble the inside of a flying saucer.  The show opened with an overhead shot of the set appearing to hang in space, with a cut to vignettes of money seeming to fall from the sky (if memory serves, it was blue play money with Jay Wolpert’s photo) and studio audience members scrambling to pick it up, thus the “giving away” of $50/person.  The music was the theme from the “Superman” movies.  The MC, Steve Edwards (local LA talk show host), entered from behind upstage doors.

The game started with 118 members of the studio audience sitting at college-style desks surrounding Steve’s podium.  (For the pilot, the “audience” was mostly ex-“Whew!” contestants.)  Steve would pose a “Yes/No” question, i.e., “Jimmy Durante had his nose insured with Lloyd’s of London for $1 million.”  The audience would have five seconds to lock in their answers using the appropriate buttons on their desks.  Steve would reveal the correct answer, and anybody answering incorrectly would “disappear.”  (Cut to an overhead shot of the set; the tape would stop, the “incorrect answerers” would leave the set and tape would resume.)  Steve would pose the second question and the same procedures would be followed as for the first question.  Steve then posed the third and final elimination question, but this time, only the first four correct answers would be accepted.  An oracle-looking thingy (a chromakey board) would fly in behind Steve, revealing the faces of those fortunate four while he read their contestant numbers and names.  This lucky quartet went on to play…

As you’ll see, this involved a bit of strategy.

Steve would first announce that the previously-eliminated audience members had “magically re-appeared.”  The game started with each player getting seven “bounces” that had to last them the entire game.  Steve read a category, and based on how much the contestant felt they knew about the category, they could secretly “withdraw” from one to four bounces — but once these bounces were withdrawn they couldn’t be replaced.

After contestants “declared,” Steve posed the first question of the category to the contestant who had the first correct answer to the last question in the previous round.  A category lasted until someone was eliminated.  (S)he had the option of either attempting to answer the question or “bouncing” (i.e., passing) it to an opponent.  That opponent had the same option.  Play continued in this manner until someone either elected to attempt answering or ran out of bounces, in which case, (s)he had no choice but to give an answer.  If the (s)he answered correctly, Steve would ask another question in that same category, and the contestants would continue using whatever bounces left over from what they had initially withdrawn.  (The advantage of answering before you ran out of bounces was that your opponents had used up some of theirs in an attempt to eliminate you, but you saved some by answering.)  An incorrect answer eliminated the player, no matter how many bounces they had left.

When a new category was announced, any bounces previously withdrawn, even if they hadn’t been used, were forfeited.  Play would then continue in a manner as described above, until such time as there was only one contestant left.  That contestant, the “survivor,” went on to play…

The survivor got to meet 10 “citizens of the land of Pandemonium” in various costumes (i.e., Fidel Castro, Santa Claus) holding various props, who marched out two at a time.  Steve would ask the survivor a question relating to the two characters, i.e., if the two characters were Uncle Sam and Fidel Castro, the question might be, “Which one of these citizens hails from the biggest exporter of sugar cane per capita?”  If the contestant selected the correct character (in this case, Uncle Sam), (s)he directed the citizen to select one of 10 envelopes containing various dollar amounts.   Play continued in this manner four more times.  Following the playing of the fifth pair of citizens, Steve would reveal the money amounts in each of the selected envelopes, a like amount of which was matched and split among the remaining contestants.  If the amount of money in the accumulated envelopes totaled at least $2,000, the champion won an expensive prize package.  (In the pilot, the prize package included a pair of motorcycles and a Ferrari.)

[This was shot at the beginning of my senior year of college.  The combined pressures of a long commute to/from school, it being my senior year, and having 10 minutes to shower (it gets bloody hot here that time of year!) and change before heading off to Metromedia Center (fortunately, a five-minute drive) made for only a brief participation. I never did get to see the pilot being shot. L]

The only resemblance between the way this version was played and what aired on Lifetime nine years later is round 2.

Three players are staked to (I think) $500.  Peter asks a question about a famous person, to which the correct answer is “fact” or “rumor,” i.e., “Superman Christopher Reeve is actually afraid to fly.”  Contestants secretly bet $100, $200 or $300 and lock in their guess.  The round continues in the same manner for two more questions.

During the commercial, contestants are seated in the order in which they finished round 1, with first place at camera left.  Just as on Lifetime, contestants are asked “fact or rumor” questions at a rapid-fire pace, with correct answers earning $100.  If incorrect, the next player gets a chance.  First player to $1,500 wins the game and the right to go to…

The champion had the opportunity to “shop” at various stores along Rodeo Drive.  (Curtain parts to reveal various storefronts, similar to the end game on “Shop ’til You Drop”), the object being select prizes from certain stores as a means of amassing $2,500(?) in prizes.

[NB: While this was the first pilot Peter Tomarken did for Jay Wolpert, “Hit Man” was (at least) the third — he did another pilot for Jay Wolpert (Metromedia/NBC) in summer 1981, “Duel In the Daytime.”]

… to strategy! … to the story of Randy's big adventure! … to Deb’s adventure! … to Sally’s adventure! … to meeting up with Jay Wolpert at GSC-5! … to a description of two ed Wolpert pilots! … to see the names of the vicious varmints who make up the Gauntlet of Villains! … to download a WMV file of the Whew! open sequence! (~1.4 MB) … to download Randy battling Pat Aiello in Whew!'s main game! (~24.8 MB) … to download a WMV file of Randy Amasia defeating the Gauntlet! (~8.2 MB) … to go back to the main Whew! page!