Managing Editor
Growing up in the 1960s, spending Saturday evenings at home with my parents was tough when I was a teenager, especially when they controlled what our family watched on television.
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| 'The Newlywed Game' was created by Chuck Barris and featured newly married couples predicting answers by their spouses to win a 'Grand Prize. It aired on Saturday evenings on ABC Television in the 1960s and 1970s. COURTESY PHOTO |
Each “Newlywed” show followed the same format with four couples married under two years competing in three rounds for a grand prize. The first set of four questions was posed to the husbands or wives with their spouses isolated offstage. They were asked by Eubanks to predict how their spouse would answer the questions.
If their answers matched the ones their spouse gave, they were awarded a series of points, starting with five points for each correct question in Round 1, ten points for Round 2 answers and a 25-point bonus question for the final round. The game show sets were sparsely decorated with a podium on the side of the stage for the host, eight seats for the contestants, sheer curtains at the back of the stage and an electronic scoreboard for each couple in front of their seats.
The concept for “The Newlywed Game” came from the mind of Chuck Barris and was intended as a companion series to “The Dating Game,” also created by Barris. The banter between Eubanks, who was just 28 when “The Newlywed Game” launched in 1966, and the couples, was supposed to prompt embarrassing answers.
The formula worked among viewers as “The Newlywed Game” program was ranked as one of the top three daytime game shows for five consecutive seasons between 1968 and 1973. It also scored big with primetime television ratings, ranking among the top three primetime game shows for five consecutive years between 1966 and 1971.
Barris chose to end the nighttime version of “The Newlywed Game” in 1974 but continued to promote the show in television syndication with editions airing on TV screens across America from 1977 to 1980, 1985 to 1988, and again from 1997 to 1999. Cable television’s Game Show Network started showing reruns of “The Newlywed Game” in 2009 with Eubanks hosting special original episodes in both 2009 and 2010, making him the only television personality to host a game show in six consecutive decades – 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
But for me, the version I recall the most was the one airing in the 1960s. Some of the crazy beehive hairstyles, outlandish clothing and just plain corny answers among the participants were sheer torture for my teenage angst having to sit and watch the show with my mother and father every Saturday evening.
Questions asked of the couples competing for the Grand Prize were not only silly but embarrassing.
Samples of typical questions included:
** What would you say is your husband’s weirdest quirk?
** What is your wife’s worst habit?
** What is your husband’s pet name for you?
** What is something that your wife is most likely to end up in jail for?
** What is the first movie that you saw together?
** Would your spouse rather spend an evening at home with you, or a night out with you?
** What are you most likely to argue about?
** If your spouse could only eat one food for the rest of their life, what would it be?
** What is your spouse's most prized possession, or the item they'd save in a fire apart from you?
** Who has more exes, you or your spouse?
** Who is a better driver, your spouse or you?
Petty arguments would often arise when contestants would differ on answers and spouses thought the other should have answered correctly but missed. Correct answers usually were rewarded with a smooch by the couples. The host was prone to provoking ridiculous arguments by pressing couples who differed on their answers on the game show.
Eubanks himself became known to many viewers for his catch-phrase questions regarding “Makin Whoopee,” on “The Newlywed Game.” Every other show seemed to include a question about it, and I found it highly disturbing that my parents would always laugh loudly or shrug it off when one of those questions was asked of the contestant couples. I suppose they came from a generation where innuendo and witty banter about the subject was humorous, but as a teenager, I found it all to be silly and preposterous.
At the end of each episode, following the reveal of the Bonus Question, the winner was the couple with the most points. The winner received a special Grand Prize selected “just for them.” Typical Grand Prizes were “all new living room furniture from Broyhill” or “a full-size camping tent and matching his and her motorcycles” or even “a shiny chrome and Formica dinette set and a new Hotpoint electric dishwasher.”
To this day, I wonder how many contestants divorced after the show aired. <
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