Finally Getting Around To Book About Hollywood Squares

As you can see, I love reading and writing about classic TV. Especially the funny kind.  So I can't tell you why it took me so long to read this book.

Like a lot of you I grew up with no cable TV until I was 10. There were just three channels plus PBS (which for me was three shows.) As often as Big Bird showed up on Sesame Street he would also make appearances on NBC's Hollywood Squares. I never missed an episode if I could help it. While I didn't get most of the jokes when I was younger - as with another star-studded panel show, Match Game - looking back and seeing the program in reruns as well as listening to an old copy of the soundtrack album, it's obvious this was one big drunken Hollywood party. How the perennially nine-year-old Big Bird managed to sneak in without the authorities being called, I'll never know.

Until about a decade ago or so, the majority of the Squares' sixteen years' worth of episodes on NBC and in syndication were presumed to have been completely erased. In a practice that is both tragic and infuriating, all three major networks reused video tape and or didn't bother to preserve the materials they had due to cost saving measures. For example, the clip from Johnny Carson Tonight show which I posted a couple weeks ago exists only because a copy was made for Armed Forces television so our service people in the late 60s could enjoy a tape delay version of a favorite show from back home. Although absolutely amazing, it's not even the full episode. Of the 66 minutes of actual program (not counting commercials), 40 minutes of that episode were kept by AFTV. The contents of the rest of the program, including the reasons why Johnny ditched his coat and tie for a then-fashionable Nehru suit with scarf were jettisoned.

Old Squares episodes were also presumed to have been completely "wiped" as the Brits say. Attitudes towards daytime shows were skeptical at best: "Who wants to watch an old rerun of a game show?" Then around 2002 or so, a tape researcher was seeking old tapes of the gothic 60s soap opera Dark Shadows. In the process, original tapes from the Squares going all the way back to the beginning in the late 60s were discovered. Something close to 3500 tapes were ultimately unearthed. This allowed, at long last, the repeat of full episodes from the original run of the show, which happened for a few years in the mid-2000s.

Had this not happened, there may have been far less of a demand for host Peter Marshall to pin a book. Thankfully, such a book has been written, Backstage With The Original Hollywood Squares. I just finished reading it over two days, a brisk and fun read to say the least, and it's not even $6 on Kindle!

I always thought Peter Marshall was very smooth, upbeat, personable guy, a great host. I just picked up his book from a few years ago and it depicts a regular guy named Pete LaCock (not to be confused with the Kansas City Royals' baseball player of the same name… That's his son) to whom extraordinary things happen. Sister get spotted by talent scout and his family moves from rural West Virginia to Hollywood where she changes her name to Joanne Dru, marries a famous singer named Dick Haymes and becomes a bona-fide movie star opposite such co-leads as Montgomery Clift and John Wayne. She encourages her brother to change his name to Peter Marshall, learn to sing, dance and tell jokes. As a teen, young Pete hangs around the studio with brother-in-law, then gets a job as a page at NBC with another young funny guy named Gene Rayburn, with whom he would remain friends after they both became famous. Through the late 40s through the mid-60s Pete would become a singer with the band, a member of a comedy team, and a supporting player in movies before making his way to Broadway. Finally, in 1966, seeking greater consistency in work and desiring a stable home life, Pete accepts a job as a game show host. What many would think of as a career and, is just the beginning of the wild tales in this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Backstage-Original-Hollywood-Square-laughter-ebook/dp/B00E8OVTSQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1443997590&sr=8-4&keywords=Peter+Marshall+kindle

And what post about classy TV would be complete without a clip?! This is the oldest Hollywood squares I could fine… And pay no attention to the NBC peacock, because the show is in black and white!