| The Price Is Right | |
|---|---|
_(logo).jpg) | |
| Created by | Bob Stewart |
| Directed by | Paul Alter Max Miller |
| Presented by | Bill Cullen |
| Narrated by | Don Pardo Johnny Gilbert |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 9 |
| Production | |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company | Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC (1956–1963) ABC (1963–1965) |
| Release | November 26, 1956 (1956-11-26) – September 3, 1965 (1965-09-03) |
| Related | |
| The Price Is Right (1972 version) | |
The Price Is Right is an American game show produced by Mark Goodson-Bill Todman Productions, wherein contestants placed successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to each prize's actual retail price without surpassing it. The show was a precursor to thecurrent and best-known version of the program, which premiered in 1972 onCBS's daytime schedule. It makesThe Price Is Right one of only a few game show franchises to have aired in some form across all three of theBig Three television networks.
The series, hosted byBill Cullen, premiered onNBC's daytime schedule on November 26, 1956, and quickly spawned a primetime series that aired once a week.The Price Is Right became one of the few game shows to survive therigging scandals of the late 1950s, gaining even more popularity after other game shows had been canceled when exposed for being rigged.
The show was sponsored primarily throughout its run byUnilever, then known as Lever Brothers Corporation, and the specific products that were often featured were Imperial margarine,Wisk laundry detergent,Handy Andy liquid cleaner, andDove bath and beauty bar.
The four contestants of the week would usually receive a complimentary supply of Dove beauty bars.
An alternate sponsor wasSpeidel watchbands, notably their then-new Twist-O-Flex bands.
In 1963,The Price Is Right switched networks and both the daytime and primetime series moved toABC. On September 3, 1965, the show aired its final episode after nearly nine years on the air.
On the original version ofThe Price Is Right, four contestants – one a returning champion, the other three chosen from the studio audience – bid on items or ensembles of items in anauction-style format.
A prize was presented for the contestants to bid on. A minimum bid was specified. After the opening bid, contestants bid on the item in turn with each successive bid a certain amount higher than the previous bid. A contestant could freeze their current bid instead of increasing it if they believed their bid was close enough to win. A later rule allowed contestants, on their opening bid only, to "underbid" the other bids, but it automatically froze their bid and prevented them from later increasing the original bid. Some rounds were designated as "one-bid" rounds, where only one round of bidding was held (the format used on the current version ofThe Price Is Right); sometimes the minimum-bid and higher-bid threshold rules also were waived.
Other than in one-bid rounds, the bidding continued until a buzzer sounded, at which point each contestant who had not yet "frozen" was given one final bid. Bidding also ended when three of the contestants had frozen, at which point the fourth contestant was allowed one final bid unless they already had the high bid. Cullen then read the actual retail price of the prize. The contestant whose bid was closest without going over the actual price won the item. If everyone overbid, the prize was not won; however, Cullen sometimes had the overbids erased and instructed players to give lower bids prior to reading the actual price (similar to what is done on the current CBS version and its syndicated spinoffs).
After most one-bid rounds, a bonus game was played, in which the winner of the one-bid prize would play a random game (such as wordplay or tune-matching) for additional prizes.
After a set number of rounds (four on the nighttime version, six on the daytime), the contestant who accumulated the highest value in cash and prizes became the champion and returned on the next show.
The Price Is Right frequently featured a home viewer "Showcase", a multi-prize package for which home viewers were invited to submit their bids via postcard. The viewer who was closest to the actual retail price without going over won everything in the Showcase, but one item was sometimes handmade so the viewer could not check the price of all the items. The term "showcase" was later replaced by "sweepstakes".
Very often, home viewers were stunningly accurate with their bids, including several viewers who guessed the price correct down to the penny. In such a case, the tied contestants originally were informed viatelegram and asked to give the price of a specific item and continuing until one broke the tie. Re-ties and all-overbids were thrown out. By the time of the ABC run, the tiebreaker changed so that the person who was first to send in the correct bid won the prize.
Home Viewer Showcases have also been featured on the CBS version, in 1972, 1978, annually from 1980 to 1987, 1990, and in 2011. Its format was unchanged through 1990, but the 2011 version, because of the advance in technology, changed to a ten-prizes-in-a-week format, with two prizes appearing per episode during the week. Each day the price of one of the prizes was revealed to the home audience, and the price of the second prize (which was in either of the two Showcases) was not provided. Instead of postcards, the bids had to be submitted through the show's website.[1]
While many of the prizes on the originalPrice Is Right were normal, standard game show fare (e.g., furniture, appliances, home electronics, furs, trips, and cars), there were many instances of outlandish prizes being offered. This was particularly true of the nighttime version, which had a larger prize budget.
Some examples:
Sometimes, large amounts of food – such as a mile of hot dogs along with buns and enough condiments (perhaps to go with a barbecue pit) – were offered as the bonus.
Some other examples of outlandish or "exceptionally unique" bonus prizes:
In the early 1960s, the dynamic of the national economy was such that the nighttime show could offer homes in new subdivisions (sometimes fully furnished) as prizes, often with suspenseful bidding among the contestants.
In the last two seasons of the nighttime run, the series gave away small business franchises.
In some events, the outlandish prizes were merely for show; for instance, in one episode contestants bid on the original retail price for a 1920s car, but instead won a more contemporary model.
The Price Is Right was created and produced byBob Stewart forMark Goodson–Bill Todman Productions. Stewart already had created one hit series for Goodson-Todman,To Tell the Truth and he later created the enormously successfulPassword. In 1964, Stewart left Goodson-Todman to strike out on his own as a producer. (Frank Wayne, who later served as executive producer for the Barker version ofThe Price Is Right, took over Stewart'sPassword producer duties.)
Bob Stewart attributes the creation ofThe Price Is Right to watching an auctioneer from his office window in New York City, auctioning off various merchandise items.
In 1959, shortly after thequiz show scandal broke, most game and quiz shows lost their popularity rapidly and were canceled.The Price Is Right was an exception; Goodson and Todman had built a squeaky-clean reputation upon relatively low-stakes games. Thus, as the more popular competition was eliminated,The Price Is Right became the most-watched game show in the country, and remained so for two years.
When the series moved to ABC in 1963, three studio contestants – including the returning champion – played. The fourth chair was filled by a celebrity who played for either a studio audience member or a home viewer. If the celebrity was the big winner of the show, the civilian contestant who had the most winnings was considered the champion; it is unknown what would have happened in the event of a shut-out with the celebrity winning.
AsDon Pardo was still under contract at NBC, he was replaced byJohnny Gilbert. Coincidentally, both Pardo and Gilbert also had long runs as announcers for another game show,Jeopardy!
When the show moved to ABC, several CBS affiliates took up ABC secondary affiliation to showThe Price Is Right (especially if its market lacked full ABC affiliation), in part because of the still-high ratings the show enjoyed in daytime.
Goodson-Todman wantedThe Price Is Right to be ABC's first non-cartoon color show, but the network could not afford to convert to color. This meant that the nighttime version reverted to black-and-white.
After the success ofThe Price Is Right,To Tell the Truth, andPassword, producer Stewart left Goodson-Todman in 1964. Stewart's follow-up toThe Price Is Right, his first independent production, wasThe Face Is Familiar with Jack Whitaker as host. Later, Stewart created other successful shows such asEye Guess, a sight-and-memory game with Bill Cullen as host,Jackpot! andThe $10,000, $20,000, $25,000 Pyramid.
In 1972, Goodson-Todman proposed a reformatted version of the game. In the new version of the game, the auction rounds were eliminated, with every round becoming a one-bid round. The bonus games were reformatted aspricing games, as most involve the pricing of either the prize itself, grocery items, or small prizes under $100. Each winning bidder was removed from the game and replaced with another contestant, all of whom were drawn from the studio audience. A new round, borrowing the Showcase name, brought back the two biggest winners to bid on their own three-prize package, with the top winner choosing to either bid or pass on the first showcase in hopes of a better deal on the second. The pricing games, contestants from the audience, and the bid-or-pass on prizes hidden behind doors were all previously used on another hit game show of the era,Let's Make a Deal, and Goodson-Todman's first choice of host forThe New Price Is Right,Dennis James, wasLet's Make a Deal's regular guest host at the time. James would end up hosting five weekly seasons ofThe New Price Is Right infirst-run syndication; whenCBS picked up the show for daytime, it insisted that the show be hosted byBob Barker, who hosted 35 seasons of daily episodes (plus three seasons of weekly syndicated episodes after James's retirement and several prime-time specials) until his retirement in 2007, after which comedianDrew Carey assumed hosting duties. Further alterations to the format were made in 1975 when the show expanded to a "fabulous 60-minute" time slot. Various other versions ofThe Price Is Right have aired over the course of American television history, including a daily syndicated version hosted byTom Kennedy in 1985 and aradically altered version hosted byDoug Davidson in 1994; the latter was notable for eliminating the central conceit from the original series of bidding on prizes. Counting all incarnations,The Price Is Right has aired for more hours than any other nationwide game show in American television history.
Paul Alter, who directed the original version of the show, became the director of the current version in 1986, replacingMarc Breslow, who had been in that role since its start in 1972; he continued to hold the position until 2000.
The show originated from NBC'sHudson Theatre inNew York City, also home toThe Tonight Show and other NBC shows with a studio audience. A year later, afterAbraham Hirschfeld bought the Hudson Theatre, the show moved to NBC'sColonial Theater at 66th and Broadway, with the Ziegfeld Theater used for a few shows as well. When the show moved to ABC, the Ritz Theater became the show's broadcast origination.
In addition to his hosting duties onThe Price Is Right and his weekly appearances as a panelist onI've Got a Secret, Cullen also hosted a popular weekday morning radio show forWNBC in New York.
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Over the eight-year run, various people sat in Cullen's place while he was on vacation.
Throughout the nine-year run ofThe Price Is Right, the show also employed models, whose duties were similar to those of the models in the current version.
June Ferguson and Toni Wallace were the regular models, while Gail Sheldon also made frequent appearances. Ferguson, Wallace and Sheldon were featured during the show's entire nine-year run. Other models appearing includedBeverly Bentley,Carol LaBrie,[6] Carolyn Stroupe; various other models either assisted Ferguson and Wallace or appeared during their absences.
During the NBC run,Don Pardo was the main announcer. Whenever he was off or filling in for Cullen as host, substitute announcers includedDick Dudley,Vic Roby, Edward Haeffor, Roger Tuttle andJohnny Olson, who would go on to announce the 1972 version until his death in 1985.
Following the move to ABC (due to Don Pardo being under contract to NBC),Johnny Gilbert became the announcer; two fill-ins wereJohnny Olson and ABC staff announcer Ed Jordan.
The first theme song (used from 1956–1961) was an arrangement ofCharles Strouse's "Sixth Finger Tune", originally written forMilton Scott Michel's 1956 playSixth Finger in a Five Finger Glove.
The second theme song (used from 1961–1965) was calledWindow Shopping and was composed byRobert Cobert. This theme was later used on another Goodson-Todman game,Snap Judgment, and later found its way back to Bob Stewart's stable with the short-lived gameYou're Putting Me On.
AlthoughThe Price Is Right became Goodson-Todman's first regularly aired game show to be broadcastin color on September 23, 1957,[7] no colorkinescopes orvideotapes are known to exist from the nighttime run except for approximately 90 seconds preceding the debut of theKraft Music Hall on television, broadcast on October 8, 1958, taken from aquad-tape recording made off the broadcast feed[8] and discovered in 2024,[9] and since made available on YouTube by theUCLA Film & Television Archive.
Many monochrome NBC nighttime episodes (plus at least one ABC episode) aired onGame Show Network from 1996–2000, at which time the network's contract to air the show ended; it has not been renewed since. The 1961 episode hosted by Francis aired onBuzzr on March 8, 2019 as an homage toInternational Women's Day;[10] Buzzr added the program to its weekend lineup in September 2019, with its package also including episodes hosted byMerv Griffin.
Most of the daytime run is believed to bewiped; the UCLA Film and Television Archive lists the first and third episodes from 1956 among its holdings.[11] A few NBC daytime episodes with commercials intact, originally broadcast in the late spring/early summer of 1957, have been around the "collector's circuit." They are now available for viewing onYouTube.
Four episodes, including the 1964 nighttime finale, were released on "The Best ofThe Price is Right" DVD set (March 25, 2008). Despite pre-release assumptions that each of the four unique runs would be represented, as it was announced that there would be four Cullen episodes, none were of the ABC daytime run despite the existence of episodes from that era; a second NBC prime time episode instead filled that slot.
Many noticed that the four Cullen episodes lacked commercials, as well as the fact that all three NBC episodes had already been spotted prior to the DVD release. Both NBC primetime episodes (January 13 and 27, 1960) had aired onGSN before, while the daytime episode (February 21, 1957) had been available in the public domain for several years; the daytime episode is notable for not only missing its opening, but for Cullen promoting Charles Van Doren's match against Vivienne Nearing onTwenty-One – which eventually led to Van Doren's defeat.
TheFremantle logo animation was added after each episode, as the production company currently owns all Mark Goodson properties.
The episode listing included with the DVD set states the daytime episode aired March 10, 1957, and the ABC episode aired September 4, 1964 (with guestJose Ferrer); however, the former actually aired on February 21, 1957, and the latter is not actually present on the DVD set but had been aired by GSN. The 1964 finale featured Pat Carroll as the celebrity player, and the night's champion was invited back to appear on the following Monday's daytime episode.
The December 1959 issue ofMAD Magazine spoofed the show - and in particular its sometimes-outlandish prizes - with the parody feature "The Price is All Right". (Issue #51, pages 9 – 12.)
In a 1962 episode ofThe Flintstones,Barney Rubble is invited to be a contestant onThe Prize is Priced, a parody ofThe Price is Right. When it's his turn to bid, Barney says, "I'll just put in my two cents, and–" but before he's able to give his actual bid, his "bid" of two cents is locked in. (Season 2, episode 29, "Divided We Sail", original airdate April 6, 1962.)
In 1984 single "I Lost on Jeopardy", "Weird Al" Yankovic comments in the lyrics that he hopes he will do better "next weekend on The Price Is Right"