Insight: If love is blind can marriage be game show fodder?

By Ed Pierce
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.

'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  

“The Newlywed Game” was a staple of not only Saturday night viewing in our household but my mother never missed an episode when it aired weekdays. The show was hosted by Bob Eubanks, a popular young disc jockey and promoter of Beatles concerts and later the manager of country performers such as Dolly Parton, Barbara Mandrell, Marty Robbins and Merle Haggard.

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. <

Insight: Gone but not forgotten

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Not long ago, I wrote about people who unexpectedly re-entered being a part of my life after a prolonged absence and that got me to thinking. What about those people who unexpectedly left being part of my life and never returned?

U.S. Air Force airmen serving on a Reforger exercise
deployment in Germany in 1978 included, from left,
Ed Pierce, James Smith and Mike Hodges.
COURTESY PHOTO 

In some of these situations, I probably will never find the answers about what happened to them as too much time has passed and despite being resourceful, I’m afraid I will never know.

Airman First Class James Smith served with me in the U.S. Air Force in Germany from 1977 to 1979. He was without a doubt the wittiest and funniest individual I’ve ever known. “Smitty” as we called him was from Los Angeles, California and was a radio operator for our unit.

From the first time that I met him, I liked him, and he made me laugh heartily. His humor wasn’t the type that made fun of other people’s looks, appearances or physical traits, instead he found laughter in everyday situations.

He was adept at pointing out humorous aspects of daily life and as many of us, including me, had recently completed Air Force Basic Training in Texas, and he often found humor in the lingo or expressions used by Air Force Training Instructors at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.

Almost 50 years later, I can remember “Smitty” telling me a story about learning to march in formation with his fellow recruits during basic training. When he missed a step, “Smitty” caught the attention of the Training Instructor. He said he told the instructor “I’m sorry.” The Training Instructor then growled at him saying “I know you’re sorry. That’s why I’m screaming at you!”

“Smitty” made everyone laugh, from the unit commander to the lowliest airman, and he uplifted us all during a time when we were far from home and needed something to smile about.

On the day he was departing back to the United States as his tour in Germany was up, he stopped by my office in his dress blue uniform and shook my hand for the final time. He told me that he needed to go back to the radio operator’s trailer for a second because he had left something there that he wanted to take on the plane with him. While in the radio trailer, another radio operator grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed it over his dress uniform as a joke.

The last time I ever saw “Smitty” he was frantically brushing white fire retardant off his uniform before catching his flight home. I never saw him again after that incident in October 1979 and I left Germany myself for an assignment at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. the very next month.

I’ve tried looking for “Smitty” as best I could, but James Smith is one of the most common names in America and it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Rick Walsh was in my first- and second-grade classes at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Brighton, New York in 1959 and 1960. He was quiet and reserved but a good student and his desk was across the aisle from me. We both liked reading comic books and playing kickball. Rick also happened to be the first kid I knew who had a crew cut with his head shaved except for a small tuft remaining in the front of his scalp.

He always took a place in front of me in line when we were going to the school library, outside for recess, or to the school lunchroom. We both brought our lunches every day from home and sat together every day during lunchtime.

We were each advanced readers and in third grade in 1961, Rick and I were both reading Hardy Boys mystery books. When I finished one, I’d pass it on to him to read. After each of us finished a book, we would sit in my garage and discuss it and talk about who should play the part on television. Walt Disney had made some of the first Hardy Boys books into a serial presentation for TV’s “Mickey Mouse Club” in the 1950s but had stopped doing that by the time we were in third grade.

I would tell him that I thought Paul Petersen, the young actor from “The Donna Reed Show” should portray Frank Hardy if they ever made a new “Hardy Boys” series. Rick disagreed, saying it should be Tim Considine from “My Three Sons,” who had played the role in Disney’s 1950s adaptation.

One day in January 1962, our third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wahl, told our class that Rick had suffered a severe diabetic attack and that he was in the hospital. The class all made Get Well cards for Rick, and I was elected to take them to his bedside at the hospital. My father drove me there and we found Rick was in bad shape. Rick’s father said that he would not be able to return to school and that he would require insulin injections for the rest of his life.

I never saw Rick again and to this day, I don’t know what became of him.

We lost touch, but he’s not forgotten. <

Insight: Laughter worth remembering

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

Through the years, my relationship with my mother was somewhat confusing as she could be highly supportive yet also one of my fiercest critics. I could be on top of the world one minute, but a raised eyebrow or caustic remark from her could bring me crashing back to reality.

Harriett Pierce would have turned 100 on
Jan. 29, 2023. She died at age 95 in 2018.
COURTESY PHOTO

There’s a lot of ground to explore about my relationship with Harriett Pierce, but since she passed away at age 95 in August 2018, I am focusing on the more positive aspects of the time I spent with her and her quirky sense of humor.

One of her final remaining goals was to make it to her 100th birthday and she fell a bit short. Therefore, in remembrance of her big day on Jan. 29, 2023, here’s a few anecdotes about my mother that make me laugh to this day.

As my mother got older, her vision decreased significantly because of macular degeneration. She could no longer see to drive and surrendered her driver’s license at 84. Although saddled with declining vision, she remained in her own home and would spend her afternoons in her living room listening to Oprah Winfrey on a small 13-inch portable television set.

One day I stopped by her house on my way home from work. I wanted to see if she needed anything from the store or if there was a household chore that she wanted me to do for her. When I told her that, she told me she wanted me to scrub out her bathtub with bleach.

I had just spent the day at work and was still wearing what I normally wore to my job at the newspaper in the 1990s, which was a short-sleeve dress shirt and some nice dress pants. The shirt was an expensive Polo brand from Tommy Hilfiger that I had recently purchased.

Not wanting to get my work clothes dirty, I told her that I was going to go home and change and come right back to do what she wanted. She told me that I didn’t need to do that because my shirt already had a paint blotch on it and wasn’t worth saving.

The “paint blotch” she was referring to happened to be the Polo “Jockey” designer emblem imprinted on my shirt, which from the perspective of her blurred vision, had turned my dress shirt into attire suitable for cleaning her bathtub.

Then there was the time when a family friend was visiting Florida from our hometown in New York state. He had moved to the U.S. from England in the early 1960s and worked with my father as a mechanical engineer at Xerox Corporation.

This friend had brought my mother a book he wrote about his experiences as a child growing up in England during World War II. He had self-published the book, which was about 100 pages filled with stories about his life as a schoolboy in Great Britain.

My mother invited my wife Nancy and I over to dinner with the author and during the meal, she asked me to tell him about my work as a daily newspaper reporter. I shared with him how I had to develop and write typically three or four 750-word articles for each day’s edition as assigned by my editors and that included obtaining interviews with newsmakers and sports stars, researching topics and verifying facts, all within the span of my eight-hour workday.

I mentioned to him some of the important topics that I had covered during my career which included space launches, political campaigns, murders, tragic accidents, deadly fires, airplane crashes, and missing people. I also explained to him what was required to put some of those articles together and the steps I had to take to ensure the story was well-rounded and objective and featured varying viewpoints.

When I finished describing my duties as a daily newspaper reporter to the author, my mother turned to me and said to me that I should pay close attention to what our friend had to say.

“He’s a real writer,” she told everyone. “He’s written a book.”

As I did a slow burn, my wife pinched my arm, sensing my frustration with her remark. Years later, we still laugh about that one.

Her taste in men also was questionable. Once after my father died, she called me up, excited about a dentist who had asked her out for breakfast.

When I didn’t hear back from her later that week, I called and asked her how her date went. She told me she was disappointed.

“He asked me out for breakfast and picked me up and we drove and parked by the river,” she said. “Then he reached into the glove box and pulled out a brown paper bag that had two bagels in it. On the floor by the back seat, he had a thermos with coffee in it and two styrofoam cups. It was his idea of going out for breakfast.”

Trying to figure out my mother has always been a challenge for me, but to pay tribute to her on the occasion of her 100th birthday, I can say she was truly one of a kind. <

Insight: Exploring weird, strange, and unusual song titles

By Ed Pierce
Managing Editor

I happened to be driving my wife’s car last week and had the 70s on 7 channel playing on her Sirius XM radio. The cover of an old Randy Newman tune by Joe Cocker “You Can Leave Your Hat On” began to play and I thought to myself what a ridiculous title for a songwriter to come up with.   

Through the years I’ve listened to many songs with weird, strange and unusual titles, far too many to list in this space, but it prompted me to jot down as many odd song titles as I could recall at the time. I share them with readers here, mindful that this is a family newspaper and I’ve dropped song titles overtly relating to human biology or alcohol consumption.

“You Can Leave Your Hat On” is an exception for this list despite it being hailed as a traditional anthem for striptease artists. I include it because a version recorded by Tom Jones was featured in the 1997 film “The Full Monty.” The original absurd song was written by Randy Newman (“Short People”) for his 1972 album “Sail Away” and the video for Cocker’s cover includes Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger from the 1986 movie “9 1/2 Weeks.”   

My father was a huge fan of singer Roger Miller in the 1960s. He knew all the words to his songs and would belt them out while driving across town while listening to the radio in his 1962 Chevrolet Impala. Although I preferred Miller’s classic “King of the Road,” my father once told me that his favorite Roger Miller tune was “You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd.”

Can you imagine the creative songwriting process that went into coming up with that idea? Extremely silly but very poignant, as the song delivers a message that everyone can be happy if they have a mind to be. In this 1965 masterpiece, Miller’s lyrics mention driving around with a tiger in your car, swimming in a baseball pool and taking a shower in a parakeet cage. Truly makes me wonder about what’s actually involved in coming up with a hit song.

My list intentionally avoids discussing a bevy of nonsensical titles such as “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” by The Beatles, “De Do Do Do De Da Da Da” by The Police, “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by the Crash Test Dummies, and “MMMBop” by Hanson. It also discounts obvious drivel such as Brian Hyland’s 1960 hit “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” with such memorable lyrics as “one, two, three, four, tell the people what she wore.”

I was on my way home from serving in the U.S. Air Force in Germany in 1979 when I heard an unbelievable song by Lorretta Lynn and Conway Twitty playing in the airport in Frankfurt while I waited for my Lufthansa flight to New York City. “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly” has to rank right up there on my list of weird, strange and unusual song titles and the lyrics match that sentiment as well.

They’re certainly no Amber Heard and Johnny Depp, but country stars Twitty and Lynn capture the essence of a marriage gone bad by proclaiming in the song, “And that's the reason my good looks and my figure's gone. And that's the reason I ain't got no hair to comb. An' you're the reason our kids are ugly, little darling. Ah but looks ain't everything.”  

Along the same line, I have included on my list titles such as “I Married Her (Just Because She Looks Like You)” by Lyle Lovett, “My Lucky Pants Failed Me Again” by Tom Rosenthal, and “She never told me she was a Mime” by Weird Al Yankovich.

As a 20-year-old in 1974, I remember buying Elton John’s double-length album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” on 8-track cassette and hearing the tune “This Song Has No Title” by lyricist Bernie Taupin. Thought it was highly unusual for such a prominent singer to record such an odd song and I wasn’t disappointed when I listened to it.

It featured lyrics such as “And each day I learn just a little bit more. I don't know why but I do know what for. If we're all going somewhere let's get there soon. Oh this song's got no title just words and a tune.”

Rounding out my list are a group of song titles that pretty much need no explanation including “Satan Gave Me A Taco” by Beck; “The Voice of Cheese” by Frank Zappa; “Shoplifters of the World Unite” by The Smiths; “Washing Machine Heart” by Mitski; “Nails for Breakfast, Tacks for Snacks” by Panic! at the Disco; “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba; “I’ve Been Flushed from the Bathroom of your Heart” by Johnny Cash; and “She’s got the Gold Mine and I got the Shaft” by Jerry Reed.

As for me, I always turn up the volume whenever Napoleon XIV’s 1966 classic hit “They’re Coming to take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” comes on the radio. And if you’ve never heard its sequel tune, also from 1966, "I'm Happy They Took You Away, Ha-Haaa!" by Josephine XV, you are indeed missing some genuine schlock humor. <